Reply All - #147 The Woman in the Air Conditioner

Episode Date: September 12, 2019

One night, alone in his new apartment, Halen hears something unexpected — a set of footsteps in the dark, and an unfamiliar voice telling him “Moshi, moshi.” Super Tech Support returns, Alex investigates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Alex Goldman. And I'm PJ Vote. Alex Goldman. PJ Vote. We're back. We are? Did you kind of miss me?

I feel like I could see the point in the break where you started to miss me. How could you tell? You started tweeting it a little bit more. There are some more text messages. I actually said I miss you a lot, buddy, or something like that. Oh, yeah. There was also that. So that might have been a giveaway.

I missed you too. Okay. You have a story. Yes, I do. All right. What have we got? This week we have a super tech support. Super tech support is the segment on our show where listeners come to us with tech problems that seem totally intractable and unsolvable, and I do my best to solve them.

So this week we got an email from a gentleman named Halen. Okay. His mom was a big fan of Van Halen. Oh, that's cool. That's funny. There's this van in Brooklyn for like a plumbing company that's H-A-L-L-E-N, and every time I see it, my brain's like Van Halen every single time. Your brain's pretty clever. I want a new brain.

So let me tell you what happened to Haley Haley has what I would call a strange passion, which is that ever since he was young, he loved air conditioners. I was always obsessed with cold weather when I was a kid. And being in Louisiana, we didn't get it alive. Okay. I grew up in a trailer and we always had like window units.

So I would just sit in front of the window units. it and just let it like blow in my face and just think about like skiing. I would pretend that I was like skiing or something like something in the cold weather. God, that's so cute. So a couple months ago, Halen, who's now in his early 30s, moved to Colorado Springs. And he's super stoked because he's no longer in like humid Louisiana weather. He is in like cool Colorado weather. Okay.

So Haley moves in with some people he knew from Louisiana. And he takes a room in the basement. It's unfinished, it's all tile. And one night, not long after he moves in, his roommates have all gone to sleep. And he's just like downstairs by himself in this big, echoey, totally bare room. I had nothing down there. It was literally just a mattress, a blanket, and a pillow. There's literally nothing down there.

And then when he's ready to go to sleep, he has his Google home set up. And he's looking for like white noise to help him sleep. And he finds a sound that says air conditioner, and he's like, oh, the comforting sound of my youth. That's perfect. That's exactly what I want. That's wonderful. And he lays down in bed, closes his eyes. And, you know, I'm drifting off. And then I hear what I believe to be the jingling of keys and a door opening.

The back door leads directly down the stairs of my room. And my first thought was, oh, my roommates, which they go to sleep at like 9 p.m. So I'm like, that's weird that they're up. And coming in, you know, I was sure everyone was home for the night. And then I hear footsteps like they're coming downstairs. This can't be them. So I just start wondering. I'm like, wait, who is this?

Did I lock the door? I just kind of start panicking. My heart immediately began to palpitate. and my hands kind of went numb. The footsteps get closer and closer, and I was, you know, basically just paralyzed. It's pitch black. He can't see anything. And I thought my best bet was to just basically hide under the covers.

Yeah, I didn't think there was any escape at this point. And then he hears a woman say something he can't understand. It sounds like it's in a foreign language. And the footsteps stop. All he can hear is the... air conditioner. But then he hears the footsteps again and he hears the woman speak again

somewhere in the room. And he realizes she's saying the exact same thing she just said. And when he finally peeks out from under his covers, the basement is empty. Okay, I have a theory about what's going on. Yes. The footsteps and the woman talking are on the artificial air conditioner track? Yeah. So he's hearing it loop. Yeah. Okay.

So... He must have felt somewhat embarrassed. Yeah, he was pretty embarrassed. But he became, he was like, why would an app that's meant to calm you down have the serial killer sound of like a woman jingling her keys with approaching footsteps? Yeah, it feels a little weird. So he wakes up the next morning and starts trying to figure out what's going on. So I've listened to this probably upwards of like 30 to 40 times. The other night I just kind of sat in front of it on.

on the floor and just listened on repeat a bunch. That sounds like an activity I would do if I was super high. Yeah, well, it's Colorado. So this is the sound. She just said moshi-moshi? Yeah. So she said hello in Japanese. So it sounds like somewhere in Japan,

a woman is walking down a long hallway while jangling her key. and then she sees someone and says hello. Yeah, and then at the end there's like the sound of a door opening. It sounds to me like she's like saying hello to the security guard at the front desk of a place and being like, hello, I'm going to my office now. In my head, it's like she's walking down the hallway of her apartment. And it's like when you go to let yourself in and someone's already there. Oh.

Yeah. It's so weird. It gives me more feelings than I thought it would. What kind of feelings does it give you? Um, do you ever get the feeling like when you meet somebody and you wonder how many times you like cross paths with them in the world before you met them? This is a real PJ thought. You never think that?

I thought everybody thought that. Like, how many times you incidentally were, like, at the same bar, or on the same street, or at the same show? I'm only ever in my basement, so I don't know what other, how have... Well, I mean, you must feel that way about your victims then. I don't know. You know, this new runner that you've got going, that I'm a serial killer? Uh-huh.

It's not true. I just want to get that out there. And on the record, I don't, I've never killed anyone. Okay. Your denial is noted. I don't know. I guess you don't feel this with the people in your basement, but like just the weird, like there's a slightly like weird, sweet, lonely feeling to just like someone out in the world doing something. Do you know what I mean?

Just like getting a glimpse of a human being. Yeah, totally. I do understand that. Before you snuff their life's out. Yeah, before I watch the light go out of their eyes. Okay, so anyway. So Haley wanted to figure out, like, first of all, who is this woman? And second of all, how did she end up on this white noise app?

Right. So I actually heard the clip while I was talking to Halen on the phone. But what I wanted to do is recreate the bug for myself, which I thought would be very simple. Please log in through the Google Home app. I don't know how to log in, but it turned out to be really hard. Hey, Google, play the sound of an air conditioner. To get help with that, you'll need to give me some more information. Don't you just have to be like, Google, play me air conditioner sounds.

That is what I thought. It was Shreuthi and I in the studio. Maybe you have to tell it what kind of sounds you like in the Google Home app. Hey, Google, play the sound of an air conditioner. To get help with that, you'll need to need to use a more information. You can do that in the Google Home app. Google, play sleep sounds. Okay.

No, damn it. That's not what I will. So, I actually gave up on the Google Home. Uh-huh. And I had to install the Google Assistant on my phone to get the sound. I did get the sound. You gave up on, you were just like, I can't use a Google Home? I don't think I can't.

That's the thing that children use. But in the process of trying to make this sound play on the Google Home, I figured out that it actually came from a third-party app that you have to install on Google Home. That's made by a little company from Melbourne, Australia, called Healing. Okay. And all they traffic in is like meditation and relaxation apps. That's all they make. They make more than one?

Yeah, they make sleep sounds, healing sounds, storm sounds, just anything and everything to help you relax. So I reached out to the co-founder of Healing.fm, this guy named Adrian Rish, and he told me that he got into the relaxation app game because he himself was trying to be a more relaxed person. At the time, you know, I was going through personal, I guess, journey, I can call it. I've quit smoking, I quit drinking, and I was also looking for ways I could actually meditate myself, which is something I wasn't really used to at the time.

What way to solve that problem? So Adrian starts pulling together all these sounds for this app that he wants to build. And I was like really surprised at the level of thought that goes into picking sounds for a relaxation app. So like what? I can tell you how I would think about it. Go ahead. You want your rain? you want your beach with waves

and woods with sort of like humming sound in it. What does that mean humming sound? You know, just like the like hum of the wilderness where it's just like crickets and cicadas. Your lack of thought is astounding. I'm really astounded by it. What else is there? I think one thing people really want is to be able to mix up.

They might have a wave sound and then they might want to rain on top of that or... Oh. But some people don't like seagulls on the beach. Some people have a different idea of what a beach is You know, some people can imagine a stormy beach with noisy gulls And the waves really crushing the sand It's funny, you know, when I play like a beach sound

On a relaxation app, it never occurred to me To be like, I don't like these waves, they're crashing too hard So what does that mean? Like, do French people know? need to hear the sounds of French beaches. He was like... And does that mean there has to be, like, there has to be like a French man

selling like French punch? French punch. The famous French punch. French punch. And like a surfer, like, do you need everybody's beach in the beach sound? Basically, you need several different beach sounds. Anyway, I asked Adrian about the air conditioner sound.

The reason that I'm calling, the specific sound that I'm calling about is the air conditioner sound? Okay. We had to change it recently. It had some talking in the background of it, I think it was someone was talking in the background saying hello in some other language. Yes.

So Adrian, he was like, that is a mistake. Makes sense. We did not mean to put that on the app. We fixed that actually now. And if you went on there right now, you hear no footsteps and no talking. We apologize for that. I mean, we do, you know, more than 50 sounds. But that's no longer there.

So Adrian was very apologetic about the sound. But I just wanted to do. know what Halen wanted to know, which is like, how did this snippet, this slice of this Japanese woman's life, end up on this sleep sounds app? Uh-huh. Which seemed like it would be pretty easy to answer, but it was not easy to answer. Like, for starters, Adrian told me, well, we didn't make that recording. We get our sounds from other companies.

And I was like, I thought that's exactly what you guys did. You made recordings for your sleep sounds app. And he was like, oh, no, no, no, no. There is this other company that has a whole library of sounds. And that is where we get our sounds from. Nobody does anything in this world. It's crazy. But, like, the whole game is, like, you try and get the best possible sounds.

And so there's, like, a market for, hey, you want to buy an air conditioner sound? Basically. Do you know where you guys got that sound? Pro sound effects as a company? Yes. One of the biggest, yes. One of the biggest companies that records these. Yes.

Interesting. Pro Sound Effects is a company based in Brooklyn. We are rolling. We are rolling. We are on the corner of Kent Avenue and North First in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We are about to go to meet Douglas Price, the owner of prosoundefx.com. He is going to hopefully shed some light on the mysterious recording of the air conditioner. Hi.

So my producer Damiano and I met Douglas in the last. lobby of his office. And he is a very physically imposing guy. He's really big, but he was super friendly. So we're in a second floor office room. Should I sit over here? This is like our field kit. I assume that you also have a few days about recording. I mean, I have much more on the business end of thing, but we have a bunch of audio nerds. A lot of them came from NYU Music Tech. And I'm the boring business guy. So pro sound effects whole business model is like if you are in need of any sound effect for any situation, they want to be the ones that can provide it for you. And what Douglas told me was like every time you hear a video game sound, a lot of times when you're hearing like a notification sound in an app, a lot of sounds from sound effects and movies, they will source them from companies like his.

Right. So you're saying that like it's more surprising than I think it is. It was surprising to me. So before that, did you think that when you use an IM program on your phone that the company hires a wind chime or something? No, I don't. I just figured that they made the sound in-house. I mean, you know, the Windows 95 song was by Brian Eno. Uh-huh.

So I'm just like, oh, my understanding. You think Brian Eno just is constantly getting phone calls from somebody who's like, oh, we got a banking app and we needed cash register sound Brian Eno? But I figured they're like, I want to think about the reference. refreshing sounds from like the sound you to refresh your like Facebook feed. It's like this really cool like, whoop. I assumed that Brian Eno. No. You're being different.

You're being purposefully obtuse. What? Okay. So it's shocking. This is shocking news. So they have. And do you feel betrayed now? Yeah, I'm furious.

Well, I just, I guess that I'd never really thought about where it comes from. where it comes from. It's weird that everything in the world is somebody's job. Right. I'm curious, what are some of the weirder sounds that you have? We have animals, where animals. Like, we have this one called the Jupramagalow, and then we have another one called a Zarya,

which is X-A-R-Y-H. Then getting to, you know, more bleak things. Like we have 9-11, the ambience to 9-11, on 9-11, before 9-11 happened. We have, you know, NASA spacecrafts, taking off, you know, these are things that cannot be recreated. They have some pretty out there sounds. Like, here, let me play this one for you.

Tell me if you can figure out what it is. Dog having nightmare. This is called... Wolf having nightmare. This is called... Wolf eating wolf having nightmare. The title of this... Lion having nightmare.

The title of this file is Tiger Copulation. Oh, no. Seventy-180. Why do they record that? In case someone has a new app and they want like a really unique notification sound? They work with like tiger mail. They work with people.

Oh, sorry, I should have sound with my phone. Sorry, it's making the sounds of two tigers having sex. They work with people who record animals and someone recorded that and they were like, hey, I've got this catalog of animal sounds and this was just among them and they took the whole thing. Huh. So like at this point,

I get that pro sound effects is trying to have a sound effect for like every occasion. But I'm really puzzled as to like what use there would be for air conditioner with Japanese women talking faintly behind it. But first, I wanted to play the sound for Douglas just to see what he heard. Jail swamp. What does swampy mean? It's just the reverberant tones especially that I noticed from like the footsteps just brought like swampy and also like jaily type. It was like I couldn't tell it was like outdoor.

indoor, but it kept, those were the two thoughts that, uh, they came up. So it's some kind of swampy's jail. Yeah, it's one of the swampiest jails. Um, so I asked Douglas, like, okay, why would you guys have recorded something like this? And he said, we didn't record this. He also got his sound from somebody else. Yeah. So pro sound effects does record sounds, but they also license sounds from other companies. And this is one of those. Yes. But, uh, Douglas was really eager to help us feel. figure out where it came from. And, you know, whatever we can do to support our neighbors, just let us not like,

you want to shoot me an email and you want to see what we can do to, like, track down the record us to see what was really going on. I'm happy to do that. So, that would be great. So two days after we went to meet Douglas, he sent me an email. And he said, I don't know who exactly recorded this, but I do know two things. One, it was recorded before 2004. And two, it is part of a library of sounds that we licensed from a conference.

called Soundstorm. Okay. So I looked up Soundstorm and they're this company that records sound for movies. And they did like, they did done like a lot of very prestigious movies. They did like The Fugitive. And do you remember that Steven Sagan movie Under Siege? Said very prestigious movies. Fine.

They did LA Confidential. Ooh, okay. Dude wears my car. You can't make it more than one movie in a list without screwing it up. I'm doing my best here. And so all of a sudden I started to think like, oh, maybe the sound was recorded as part of a movie. Like maybe this Japanese woman is from a scene in a movie. Oh, like they put that down.

And then there's like two characters. Like that's like background noise for a movie. Maybe. And so I'm like, cool. All I have to do is contact Soundstorm. The only problem is Soundstorm shut down 15 years ago. After the break, the creator of our mystery sound and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Welcome back to the show.

So Soundstorm, the company that's responsible for the weird air conditioner recording, they shut down in 2004. But I got in touch with a guy who used to be a sound editor there. Hello. Hi, is this Jay? Yes, it is. His name is Jay Nirenberg, and I told him all about this air conditioner recording. It came from a library of sounds that was created by Soundstorm,

which, as I understand it, from... That's a blast from the past. Jane Nirenberg still does sound editing for movies and TV, and he has a very sharp ear. He is very good at what he does because I played him that recording, and he could hear all kinds of stuff that I couldn't hear. Here's the sound. I don't know if you can hear it. I can. So there's a little bit of a bang I hear, a little clunk. It sounds like a door.

And then I hear some footsteps. They're wet footsteps. So somebody is walking through an alley that is wet either from rain or has puddles for whatever reason. How can you tell if they're wet? Well, it's either wet or it's incredibly gritty. The reason is that I can hear the gripped, and I'm pretty sure I hear a little, tiny little bit of splashing on each footstep. And I also hear the, I also hear a dog collar jingling, and I can hear some additional movement from something else. Oh, wow.

And I was like, whoa, that's wild. And he said also, the way that it's echoing, it seems really narrow. So it's either a hallway or more likely it's like an alley. Oh, my brain was making it a hallway, but that makes sense if it's wet that it's an alley. Right. It like totally changed the image I had in my head of what was going on here. But the problem is, not only did Jay not remember this particular sound, Soundstorm, the company that was made for, shut down a decade and a half ago.

The good news is Jay told me that he has a copy of the Soundstorm Library, which includes more detailed information on each sound, which means that he can go into that library of sounds, find this original file, and tell me once and for all. Hello? Who recorded the air conditioner sound? Hi, Michael? Yeah.

This is Alex Goldman. I was trying to get in touch with you because I got your contact info from Jay. I worked for that radio show. I was asking about that sound. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. How you doing? Good. How are you?

Good. Do you have a moment to chat? Yeah, how long are you need? I'm kind of doing something, but... If you're in the middle of something, I'd be happy to call back. Is there a better time to call back today or tomorrow? No, I mean, let's just do it. I mean, you know...

All right. So what? You're doing a podcast? So, this is Michael Dressel. He's primarily a photographer now, but he used to be a sound recordist at Soundstorm. And I have to say, he's honestly unlike anyone I've ever interviewed before. and he told us that when he recorded this particular sound, the air conditioner sound that Halen heard in his Google Home,

it was while he was working on a movie based in Prague. And that movie is the 2002 Vin Diesel action thriller Triple X. Really? Yes. That does not sound like a sound that belongs in Triple X. I know. It doesn't. What happened was I was working on the editing crew for Triple X. We were basically doing the soundtrack for it.

And in order to do that, you usually do some specific recordings of sound effects, atmospheric sounds. And all the bigwigs at the company were too scared to fly. It was a year after 9-11. Got it. So since I'm German and I was going to visit. visit my mom for Christmas, they were all going like, oh, you're going anyway. Why don't you go to Czechoslovakia or the Czech Republic and record some sounds for us? So I did. So you grew up in Germany? Yeah, I grew up in East Germany. And, you know, then when I was in my 20s, I climbed the wall and got out of there.

What, really? And then I lived in West Berlin for a little while. Did you climb the wall before it came down? Yeah, obviously. There would be no point in climbing it after it was gone. I don't know. Maybe you climbed it to, you know, to knock it down. For fun, iconic images.

No. So Michael told me that when he tried to climb the Berlin Wall, he got arrested. He ended up spending two years in a Stasi prison. And the second time he climbed the Berlin Wall, he was successful, but he left his whole family behind. And for six years, it was almost impossible to see them. We would occasionally meet, like, in Czechoslovakia or in Hungary, where they could travel. It was always like some big production.

God, that sounds really hard. It was. But, you know, that's like what I always think. It's like, I'm so glad I had all this hardship. It's like I say, you know, that when they go, oh, how terrible, you know, you were in prison. and all that. And I go like, you know, to me it's kind of like I inherited a real big bunch of money and it's in the bank and I'm living off the interest.

And the interest is appreciation that I get every day. And I still have it. You know, I sometimes go to the supermarket and this kind of happiness rushes through me where I go, hey, I'm such a lucky dog. I can buy anything I want here. If I want to eat a lobster today, I can just buy one. What a great thing, you know. Isn't that great?

The reason I was laughing is because you really passed that rush of appreciation onto someone who had never been able to experience it before just now. That's really incredible. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I feel like I have been exceptionally lucky. A couple years after he got out of East Germany, Michael took a trip to the United States. And while he was in L.A., he met some people in the film industry, and he just kind of stayed there.

That's how he ended up becoming a sound recordist. And that's how he ended up working on triple X. Yeah, so what happened was I basically hooked up with an old friend of mine in Germany and we made a road trip out of it. He still had his car. So I said, like, hey, you want to be my assistant for a week? We got to go and record some sounds. And he was happy to do it.

So we took a little trip and stayed in Prague. It was very cold, I remember that. And, you know, we kind of moved around, went to different places, you know, hunted for sound. Why do you have to go to the Czech Republic as opposed to just recording a sound in, say, Jersey City? Spoken language? Every place is completely unique. And if there's a scene in a restaurant and it's in the Czech Republic, then it will sound different from a restaurant in L.A. New York or Berlin.

The language is different. The background, you know, that is a really unique signature thing that people are usually not aware of, but it makes for things being real or not real. You know, like a quiet forest. You drive somewhere and it's snowy and you stop and it's super quiet.

That's a rare thing. It doesn't matter that much where that is recorded unless there's birds or something. that might be identifiable, you know. But people go like, that bird can't be there, you know. There's always somebody, you know. Do people really do that? Oh, sure.

There's always nitpickers and, you know, and nerds who are really into it. I have a question. Okay. He went to Prague to get Prague sound. But the sound is a woman saying moshi-moshi. Yeah. And Michael couldn't remember recording this specific sound. Uh-huh.

But I spoke to a. couple people who speak check, and they told me that what we're hearing as moshi-moshi is actually someone saying, pochke-pochke, which is check for, wait, wait, wait, like, wait up. Oh. Yeah. And if you listen to it again, like, I could not hear the plosive sound at the beginning of the words, but I listened to it again, and you can definitely hear poachke-pochke-chke once you know that that's what it is. Weird. And also, she might be saying, like, wait, wait, Philip. Wait, really? Yeah. Okay, so now we have woman walking down dingy alleyway in Prague asking someone to wait up, possibly a fill up. And also, there is one more thing that we got wrong about this recording.

Which is what? By the way, I was thinking about this. I don't really remember recording it, but I can tell you it was not an air conditioning. It cannot have been an air conditioner, I mean, because it was winter and it wasn't Prague. Of course. This was some kind of event from a kitchen or something like that. Of course. That's what it was.

Right. I just, I have to say, I love talking to you. It makes me feel really happy. And I really appreciate it. That's a nice thing. I like to hear that. You know, it's fun to tell some old stories. Hey, if you ever come to L.A., give me a buzz.

Then we can hook up. That sounds great. All right. Okay. Take care, Michael. Thanks again. Okay. Bye. Bye. Bye, Alex. Bye. So I watched Triple X to see if I could hear the air conditioner sound in it, and I did not hear it. Michael told me that it could be layered under, you know, 20 different sounds,

or he could have just recorded it and never ended up using it. Got it. What would your, if you had like a custom Alex Goldman? Relaxation app? Yeah, what sound would be the most relaxing for you? The sound of me about to insult you? It would be. Like the pregnant paulman.

before you get burned? It would be a swimming hole in Michigan. A synthesizer drone with like a filter sweep. You would really want an endless filter sweep? Yeah, that would be great. Okay. I'm a simple man, beach town. It's not that you asked.

PJ Vote and me, Alex Goldman. We're produced by Shruti Pinnaminani, Fia Bannon, Damiano Marquetti, Anna Foley, Jessica Young, and Emmanuel Jochi. Our executive producer is Tim Howard. We're mixed by Rick Kwong. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our intern is Emily Rosick. Special thanks this week to Danielle Assasman of Scrovanic Translation Services.

Our theme song is by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, and our ad music is by Build Buildings. Matt Lieber is a relaxing sound that does not have unsettling footsteps underneath it. You can listen to our show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in a couple weeks.