Science Friday - Astronaut Food, Nope Creature, Nature Soundscapes. Dec 30, 2022, Part 2

Episode Date: December 30, 2022

This Soundscape Artist Has Been Listening To The Planet For Decades Jim Metzner is one of the pioneers of science radio—he’s been making field recordings and sharing them with audiences for more than 40 years. He hosted shows such as “Sounds of Science” in the 1980s, which later grew into “Pulse of the Planet,” a radio show about “the sound of life on Earth.” Over the decades, Metzner has created an incredible time capsule of soundscapes, and now, his entire collection is going to the Library of Congress. John Dankosky talks with Metzner about what he’s learned about the natural world from endless hours of recordings and what we can all learn from listening. Plus, they’ll discuss some of his favorite recordings. To hear the best audio quality, it might be a good idea to use headphones if you can.   The Surprising Animal Science Behind Jordan Peele’s ‘Nope’ One of the summer’s biggest blockbusters has been the alien horror film Nope, from director Jordan Peele. Nope has elements of many classic UFO films, with the Spielbergian charm of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the horror and destruction from The War of the Worlds. For the spoiler-averse, this is your warning to turn back now. The big twist in Nope that differentiates it from other alien films is that it isn’t a UFO (or UAP if you’re up to date on the lingo) hanging out in the skies above our main characters. The saucer-shaped figure is the alien itself. Writer and director Jordan Peele attributes much of the inspiration for the alien as coming from sea creatures. He enlisted the help of scientific consultants including marine biologist Kelsi Rutledge to help bring the creature, known in the film as Jean Jacket, to life. She even gave it a scientific name: Occulonimbus edoequus, meaning “hidden dark cloud stallion eater.” Kelsi, who is a PhD candidate at UCLA in Los Angeles, California, talks to Ira about the ingredients that went into creating a new creature to scare audiences.   Making A Meal Fit For An Astronaut Life on the International Space Station throws some wrenches into how food and eating work. There’s very little gravity, after all. And there are big differences between nutritional needs on Earth and in space. Astronauts must exercise two hours each day on the International Space Station to prevent bone and muscle loss, meaning daily caloric intake needs to be somewhere between 2,500 and 3,500 calories. Sodium must also be reduced, as an astronaut’s body sheds less of it in space. Astronauts also have an increased need for Vitamin D, as their skin isn’t able to create it from sunlight as people on Earth do. So, how do all these limitations affect the food astronauts eat? Joining guest host Kathleen Davis to answer these gustatory questions is Xulei Wu, food systems manager for the International Space Station in Houston, Texas. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. We have a special show this hour, celebrating the new year by listening back to some of our favorite stories of 2022. We'll recall some sci-fi special effects that use an alien-looking sea creature as inspiration in a terrific sci-fi movie. And Pulse of the Planet producer Jim Metzner joins us. He shares sounds of the Earth from his 40 years of collecting them. But first, I'll bet you're enjoying your holiday. meals from the comfort of a festive dining room, a table, or even a sofa. But what do you do if, let's say, your sofa is up in space residing on the International Space Station? Sci-fi producer Kathleen Davis is here to tell us about how far space food has come from the days when astronauts squeezed

food out of a tube or a sucked in an orange-flavored breakfast drink. Yes, not the most appetizing idea. And life on the International Space Station does throw some wrenches into how food and eating work. But Ira, today, dining in space is actually quite different. Is it? Tell us about it. Well, to answer some of my gustatory questions is my guest, Shulewoo, Food Systems Manager for the International Space Station. She's joining us from Houston, Texas. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much, counseling. Happy to be here. We are happy to have you. So I want to start with a quick, Is nutrition and what your body needs different in space than it is when you are on the ground here on Earth? Actually, the terrestrial nutritional recommendation on Earth are typically used by us as a starting point for spaceflight requirement.

But several nutritional requirements, they do change in space due to the nature of space travel. For example, the microgravity has negative impact to astronauts on their bones, muscles, and cardiovascular system. So as a countermeasure to mitigate those effects, on average, astronauts need to spend at least two hours per day to exercise on ISS. Not sure how that compared to you or our listeners, but that's definitely more exercise than I would do on a daily basis. And of course, more exercise means higher caloric needs. And another example is vitamin D. On Earth, our skin can synthesis vitamin D when we're exposed to the UVB radiation in the sunlight. However, astronauts are protected from sunlight exposure during spaceflight.

So the requirement of vitamin D is also higher. Can you explain to me what kind of foods are actually available to astronauts that are prepared in your lab. I mean, what might an astronaut's daily menu, I guess, look like? Yeah, so we actually offer a standard menu to astronauts. We call standard menu. It doesn't mean that they have to follow the menu, but more like a pantry stacked up with 200 different food and beverage items,

with the quantity between one to three for each item, for crew member to pick and choose what they want to eat each day. so that they can eat the same meals but they don't have to or they can choose to eat different meals and they don't have to. And we often hear crew members say that food is one of the few things crew members have total control over on ISS unless their flight surgeon noticed something out of whack from her food intake tracking data.

And those standard menu foods account for about 80% of their food intake intake, other than those 80% standard menu foods, they also get personal preference food accounting for the remaining 20% of their total food consumption. And I have to mention all those food are definitely packaged and stowed at Johnson Space Center here in Houston to prepare for International Space Station. So a big part of what you do is food packaging. So can you tell me a little bit about how gravity, I would imagine that's a big factor in something that would impact how you would package foods? How does that change how you work with packaging? Right. Totally. It's actually difficult to mix solid with liquid in the microgravity environment. So what we do, we have different strategies. One thing like the drink, the coffee,

We get with crew member before they fly and find out what's their preference on the coffee. If they prefer black coffee with cream and sugar, then we add those pre-mixed dry powder together in the beverage pouch and send up in the dehydrated form. So that all crew member need to do on ISS is add water back, then they get their coffee with creamer and sugar. So that's one strategy. and another strategy like condiments. On ground, we like to use salt and pepper to flavor our food. And for astronauts in microgravity environments, they cannot really shake the salt bottle out.

What we do is we dissolve the salt in water so that they can apply the liquid salt onto their food for flavoring. Is the reason why you can't have the granular salt because it may just go everywhere and just float around? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, we're definitely trying to avoid any crumbs in the microgravity environment.

Because when we had crumbs on Earth, they fall onto the table, fall onto the floor. In microgravity, they can go anywhere. So I'm imagining no potato chips. Yes, that's correct. No potato chips. Okay. And even Cracker, you know, our scientists really does a great job. identify the cracker that can withhold this transportation process,

and also identify the right amount of vacuum we can apply to package the cracker, to hold the cracker in place without cracking it. So we're talking about how these foods are prepared before they go into space, but once they are actually on the International Space Station and the astronauts have this package in their hands, How do they actually prepare their food to make sure that it is ready to eat? Yeah, that's a good question. So with the challenge of microgravity, astronauts, they actually cannot cook the food yet, cook on their own.

And also, they are very busy human beings. So most of the food we provide are ready to eat. All Cremember needs to do is depend on the food type, If it's a we call thermostabilized or irradiated food, those are basically ready to eat food. The thermostabilized food can be compared as like the canned foods you can find in grocery store, except we package those in a flexible pouch so that they're less in weight and also consume less volume after consumption. For those crew members just need to put into a food warmer. The food warmer on ISS, they can heat out food to about 185 fan high, and they have those clamps

inside the food warmer to hold the food packages in place and heat out the food by conduction. And for free-drive food, crew member will need to add water first, as I mentioned earlier. And on ISS, they can choose either cold water or hot water to hydrate the food before they cut open the package and eat from the package. So I want to talk a little bit about shelf-stable technology, which I'm sure is a huge part of what you do, because you don't want astronauts to get food poisoning. I mean, how do you avoid astronauts getting sick from the food? Yeah, that is a big part of what we do here at the Johnson Space Center.

We need to make the food shelf stable because I... food system is a shelf-stable food system. This is due to the logistic lead time to have the food prepared, till the point they can be consumed on ISS, it could be ranging between 1 to 3 years. Therefore, the food we provide has to have a minimum 3-year shelf life for ISS. And to make the food shelf stable, we have several processing technologies we apply to achieve this goal.

One example is a free-stable. example is a freeze drying. That is a process to freeze the food first and because food are made of water like a beef stick that could be about 80% water. If we talk about salad, that would be even more. And free drying is this process to first freeze the food, convert all the water, liquid water into solid ice, and then we pull a vacuum to the food to allow the ice, the solid ice to supplement into vapor without going through the liquid phase. The end product become very dry, very dry cake that shelf stable. Yeah, without water, food become very stable. Another technology is thermal stabilizing. That's a process we apply heat to the food to deactivate

the bacteria and some of the spores in order to make the food shelf stable. Just like the canned foods, find in grocery store. And the third technology is irradiation. NASA actually have the federal approval to apply certain amount of dosage, irradiation dosage, to achieve commercial sterility of food so that they don't need to be refrigerated or kept frozen and still be good for three years. So I have been camping before. I have had dehydrated food before. It's not. It's not. not always delicious. How does your lab make sure that the food that goes through all these processes to become shelf-stable actually tastes good? That's actually quite a challenging. Going through those processes and also going through

those killing step to making sure the food is safe to eat, at the same time, we also need to meet the nutritional requirements. Our scientists normally play with different flavors. For example, like we can add some spicy kick to the food if we have to take the salt out. So we're just trying to be very creative and make sure the food still tastes good. Food and the active eating can really be such an important part of life for a lot of people. And people across cultures too. How is this recreated in space? Yes. So first of all, we try to provide as diet. standard menu as possible, trying to accommodate astronauts with different background and culture.

At the same time, we also work very closely with our international partners, like Japanese Space Agency, ESA space agency, etc. Normally, when they have their crew member flying, they will be sending some specialty food as well to allow crew member to share those unique food on ISS. Shule Wu is Food Systems Manager for the International Space Station. She's joining us from Houston, Texas. Thank you so much for joining us. This was a great conversation.

My player. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you, Kathleen, sci-fi producer Kathleen Davis. We have to take a break, but when we come back, a summer sci-fi blackbuster that turned to ocean creatures.

Yes, for inspiration for its alien life form. Stay with us. Hey, folks. You know, it has been one. one heck of another long year, and before it's over, I want to remind you that this is your last chance to make a donation for 2022. We still have the dollar-for-dollar donation match in effect. So please take advantage and make your gift before midnight tonight. Don't wait, Science Friday is depending on you. Go to ScienceFriiday.com slash support. Each one of you can make a difference

in our work. For everyone at Science Friday, wishing you a happy and science-filled new year. And thanks. This is Science Friday. I'm Irafledo. As we look back at our favorite stories of the year, we're going to turn to a summer blockbuster, a film called Nope. It's by director Jordan Peel, and you can watch it now on streaming platforms. But a warning, if you haven't seen it yet, This conversation will contain a lot of spoilers. You have been warned. What you see? Some of above the clouds.

That's big. I'll be. Big. Nope has elements of a lot of UFO films. There's a bit of close encounter Spielbergness, a bit of the War of the World's horror and destruction. The big twist, and here's the main spoiler alert. It's not a UFO that's hanging out in the skies above our main characters.

the saucer-shaped figure is itself the alien, and Jordan Peel, the writer and director, attributes much of the inspiration for the alien as coming from sea creatures. That will become evident in a moment when I introduce my guest. Joining me to discuss creating a brand new creature to scare audiences is marine biologist Kelsey Rutledge, scientific consultant for the film Nope and PhD candidate

at UCLA in Los Angeles. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira. Thanks so much for having me. I'm honored to be here. Well, it's so nice to have you, and I've got to say that in all the movies we've ever discussed on the show, I've never had to give way of the spoilers so early in our conversation. But let's get into it, because it's a great film. As a scientific consultant for the creature, you had a very unique role in creating a brand new creature. Let's talk about what it looks like. Give us a brief description of it in the film. Definitely. So this creature has two main forms. So there's a very unique role in a new creature. So there's a

saucer form and there's the unfurled form. And the saucer form looks like an alien spaceship or the UAP as Angel in the movie calls it. And it looks very mechanical from afar, but then later on we see that there's actually, you know, many subtle details that make it more animal-like. And then for the unfurled form, the creature unfurls to reveal this beautiful kind of sail-like structure. So it kind of has this main sail that looks like its head and these very dynamic, pulle-y, like systems that control that sail, and then in the middle of that structure is its very ominous-looking square eye. You as a marine biologist, did Jordan Peel seek your advice on how to construct that creature? Yeah, definitely. So Jordan had a clear vision for certain elements and

things he wanted for how the creature looked, but he wanted to really draw from nature and different animals for inspiration. So I helped provide inspiration for different animals that he could use when creating the creature. Let's talk about the alien having these two forms, as you said. It's saucer shaped, which is for most of the movie, and then it's more unfurled shape it turns into at the end of the movie. You know, when I was looking at that, I was thinking of marine creatures, more like a jellyfish or something like that.

Is that what you had in your head? Yes, definitely. So jellyfish and other cephalopods like squid and octopus were really big inspirations for the creature. and how it moves and it flies. Jordan, for the unfurled shape, he really wanted to create something that was really hard for the characters to look away from.

So he described it as peacocking. So trying to get the character's attention because if you looked at it for too long, you know, it would eat you. But there was many deep sea creatures that inspired that shape. And the creature hides in the cloud, right? Yes, yes.

So the creature has this really amazing kind of camouflage ability that's actually based on cephalopods as well. So like cuttlefish, they have these color-changing pigment cells called chromatophores. It can blend into any background. So the creature actually blends in to look like a cloud. And it also kind of goes to a specific region in the skies, like it's homing base, like a cave, like area. You know, when I saw that cloud after we see it in the movie and we find out that the creature hides in the cloud, I'm saying maybe the creature becomes the cloud, you know,

like the cephalopods have the ability to change shapes, like the octopus, can sit there and become a rock and then something else? Yes, definitely. Yeah, so they have this amazing camouflage ability that scientists don't really understand how it works completely. And for the saucer shape, what sea creature is that based on? Yeah, so the saucer shape was actually directly modeled after a sand dollar. So sand dollars kind of have these ridges.

They're not, you know, perfectly spherical. and they have this kind of notch on the front too that Gene Jacket also has in its saucer form. And then on the underside is its mouth similar to Gene Jacket. We should say that Gene Jacket is the name that the characters give the alien. Why is it so different than the name you gave it? Yes. So Gene Jacket is the common name. So in humans, you know, our common name would be just humans or the Great White Shark or the Bald Eagle.

But then the scientific name is a two-part name that scientists, use so that we can use it all across the world with no confusion, and it has to follow specific rules, and it has to be Latinized. So that would be like Homo sapien. And you gave a scientific name to this creature, did you not? Yes. So when you discover a new species to science, you have to give it a name. So the scientific name we gave for this creature is oculonimbus Ido Equis, which is Latin, and it translates to hidden dark cloud, stallion eater. So kind of ominous sounding. But it's a Latin name and has to follow the rules of biological nomenclature.

So there's all these rules you have to follow when you're naming a new species. And we also gave it lots of other names as well. So you may have heard like the kingdoms of life. There's the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom. And that below that level of hierarchy is phylum, class, order, family, genus, and then species. So for humans, you know, we're in kingdom animalia, and then we go down to Homo sapien. And so for each of those levels, you know, we have to follow specific rules for naming something new. It has to be Latinized.

It has to have a certain ending. So I created different names for all those different categories as well. Any idea what this creature could be related to in that naming process? Oh, yeah. So there is lots of different creatures. Of course, you know, my preference is a lot of marine animals. but one of the class, the class is Oblateozoa, which comes from this Latin word oblateus and zion meaning oblate shaped animal. So Oblate means like flattened at the ends, which describes

this saucer form of gene jacket. And so there's another class that exists in the animal kingdom that's Skyphozoa. So that kind of parallels that. And there's a really horrifying scene about halfway through the film where the alien sucks up a bunch of people who have gathered to see it. And when then we get a shot, I can't say I've seen in movies before, a shot inside the creature and how it digests its prey. It's really creepy and impactful. And is that also derived from sea creatures? Yes. So sea creatures and birds, actually. So the digestive system, the anatomy looks very similar to a giant larvation, which is this really weird, deep sea creature with this labyrinth-like internal anatomy, but that digestive system is very similar to birds.

So we'll actually describe this later on in some of the bonus materials we'll talk about, but birds actually swallow their prey whole. So it travels down the esophagus, which expands and contracts, and then it continues on past the stomach and into this organ called the gizzard. And the gizzard essentially functions as the teeth of the bird. And so this is where the mechanical crushing takes place. and birds will also swallow grit and rocks to help kind of break up this material in its gizzard. And Gene Jacket also swallows all these non-biological items that will eventually help it digest.

That explains that. Thank you for explaining all that stuff it spits out at the end. Yeah, like wheelchairs and nickels. Having that do with digestion. And there's another connection to the birds with this creature, and that as it's eating them, there's a sound that they're making, right? Yeah, so there's this scary kind of noise that the creature makes as well, which is actually just slowed down bird calls.

So kind of it's roar. There's a scene toward the end with the creature is out there, and it's displaying this big either rectangle or square thing. What is that? Yeah, so that's actually the eye of the creature. So Jordan really wanted a square eye. That was something that he thought would be really unique. And so octopuses actually have square-shaped pupils.

So that was part of the inspiration for this square-shaped eyeball. Because I couldn't understand whether it was looking at me or sizing me up to eat me. I think both. If you watch Nope, you know that it is part horror film and Gene Jacket is quite scary. but you don't find the creatures this alien was based on to be scary in the oceans, do you? Not particularly. I think I don't find many animals super scary because like this creature in the movie, you know, most animals aren't killing machines. So if we take the time to understand the natural rules, you know, that an animal abides by and respect those rules, then we're unlikely

to get hurt by these animals. And do you think that's one of the themes of the things of the film is understanding and giving respect to these other kinds of animals. There were horses there. There was the creature giving them the respect that they'd like and deserve. Yes, definitely. That was definitely at least a theme that I saw essentially respecting these animals and learning kind of the rules they abide by. Yeah. I think we're definitely a theme. You know, if the creatures, this alien is based on usually live in the sea, could you not think of the sky in the film, which is right is essential character the sky itself as sort of an ocean above instead of below us you know where there's this ocean of an animal living in yeah definitely so an animal that lives

exclusively in the sky you know is very unique and unexplored similar to the ocean could there be creatures like this one living in uncharted parts of our oceans i mean right we have explored so little of our sea life could there be giant, mysterious creatures like this, still living down there? Possibly. I mean, there's lots to still explore. I think larger animals are kind of less of a possibility because a scientist, a scientist we would kind of see some sort of signal likely, but, you know,

there's new species being discovered every day. And you discovered a species of your own and named one. Tell us about that. Yes. So I discovered a new species of guitar fish, which is a type of ray, like a stingray, but it doesn't have a stinger. It's this unique looking fish that kind of looks like the intermediate form between a shark and a ray. It's an endangered group of animals, and I discovered it in 2019, and I got to name it as well.

That's cool. And speaking of naming and discovering, I understand that there's going to be like a faux research paper about this species published. Can you tell us about that? Yes, so I'm super excited about this. This is probably my largest contribution, but I'm writing this. entire scientific manuscript to debut this new creature. So when you describe a new creature to science and new species, you have to prove it to the scientific community. So that consists of writing up a whole manuscript and getting it published and going through the peer review process. So we're writing a whole mock scientific manuscript where we replicate the entire scientific process of describing this creature with the same accuracy and level of detail as I would do

for a real animal. And where will you publish it? So we're going to fake publish it in one of the top journals in the U.S., which is called Nature. So we're going to kind of have the cover look like it's published in one of these top journals, and then it's going to be like a physical kind of coffee table book magazine that you can hold and read through. Too bad it's not near April 1st, and you could get it really placed. Yeah. A magazine. But people are taking this seriously enough to go along with this.

And the idea of naming this as a species and publishing it? Yeah, I think this whole process is extremely unique and creative for the whole Nope team to want to replicate, you know, this entire scientific process. So I think it will give, you know, a different perspective to the readers to try and understand, you know, what goes into describing a new species. And, you know, really just describing every aspect will be a really cool read. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studio. In case you're just joining us, we're talking to Kelsey Rutledge, scientific consultant for the movie Nope, based in Los Angeles. Did Jordan Peel ask you to do something with the species that you really did not or could not want to do in such a way that would be too far out?

Or did he really say, give me how the creature would really act? There were certain things that they were really hoping for. For example, the square eyeball, which when he had spoken with other. scientific consultants, they're like, well, this, you know, isn't super plausible. And I was like, well, maybe not a square eyeball, but, you know, octopuses do have a square shape pupil. And so that's, like, very similar to what you're hoping for. And he's like, okay, perfect. You know, that's good enough for me. This is what I wanted. And we've got, you know, that justification. Does the creature give warnings like other creatures might, if they're coming upon prey and get fearful or not know what it is and try to defend itself first? Yeah, I think you can see in the way it moves and kind of flies

away. It kind of darts and moves in this kind of very animal-like motion. It also, when you get the close-up image of the eye and kind of this feather-like motion kind of entrancing you with the eyeball as well, it's kind of analyzing you. But Jordan really wanted the creature to kind of have a look at me aspect. So the creature specifically wants to get, you know, the character's attention so that it can then eat them. You know, the sort of, the movie sort of is left unresolved at the end. Do you think there's a sequel that could come after this one? Well, I haven't asked him, so I definitely am not sure. I feel like I would love for there to be a sequel because I would love to be consulted again. But I'm not sure. I feel like the kind of sequel will be the manuscript coming afterwards where we say, oh, we reached out, you know, the animal died. Scientists, you know, went to analyze it. And then we published this scientific manuscript. And here's the next stage.

Yeah. Let's talk about what you just said. You said, I was really excited to work on this. And I wish I could work on another one. Tell me about that excitement. Yeah. I mean, I was just extremely honored. to be involved. I think as, you know, I've been in science, I never expected that I'd be working with Hollywood on something, but it's just been an amazing experience, and I really hope to do it again sometime, but I just really admire the whole team for creating a creature with science in mind. And they were very, they were very eager to cooperate with you and get the science right as much as you can in a science fiction movie. Definitely, yeah. So as a scientist, when you go to the movies sometimes and you watch a scene, you're like, oh, God.

you know, that wasn't realistic at all. But this was the exact opposite of what I felt about NOPP. So they did a great job making it realistic and unique and new and scary. But, you know, there's still a little bit of magic in there. I want to thank you, Kelsey, for your work on the film and all the spoilers we got through. I can blame it on you instead of me now. So thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you so much.

Marine biologist Kelsey Rutledge, Scientific Consultant for the film, Nope, and PhD candidate at UCLA in LA. And if you want to see pictures of some of the creatures that inspired Gene Jacket, head over to our website, ScienceFriday.com slash nope. We have to take a break, but when we come back listening to the natural world with one of the pioneers of science radio, Jim Metzner. Every time you press the red button, it's with the hope that something wonderful will happen. Stay with us.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. To finish out the show, how about some soothing sounds of the natural world from the man who recorded them? Here's Cy Fries, John Dan Koski with more. I don't know about you, but for years, the alarm clock in my bedroom woke me up with my local public radio station. And what voice did I hear? Very first thing in the morning. Every summer in the McNeil River in Alaska is filled with spawning salmon. It's an annual feast that bears in this region have come to rely on. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the pulse of the planet.

And it wasn't just Jim's voice that eased me out of my sleep. It was the weird and wonderful sounds that he gathered from around our planet. Maybe your memory goes back even further to his show The Sounds of Science, where his guests included Coco the Gorilla. She's nice to be with. She's got a sense of humor. She's very warm and outgoing. And she is a gorilla. I'm Jim Metzner, and these are. the sounds of science. Jim Metzner is one of the pioneers of science radio, making field recordings and sharing them with audiences for more than 40 years. And now this time capsule of sound he's created,

his entire collection, is going to the Library of Congress. Today we're going to talk with Jim about what he's learned about the natural world from endless hours of recordings and what we can all learn from listening. We're going to hear some of his favorite recordings too, so I don't know, if you can listen along with headphones, now might be a good time to put them on. Jim Metzner, welcome back to Science Friday. Hi, it's a pleasure to be here, and I just wanted to tell you to put a bookend on it. You might have wakened with my voice, but my voice puts my wife to sleep every night. Well, I certainly appreciated waking up to your voice all those mornings on Pulse of the Planet.

Of all the ways that you can tell a story, Jim, why do you think sound helps us understand the world around us so well. Ooh, boy, we could talk about that the whole day. It's such a great question. How does it that sounds grab you? Where do they hit you? They certainly hit me where I live. You know, there's a voice, but then there's the sound of my mother's voice.

There's the sound of something that I grew up with. It's like a sound that came in and never left. Sounds are the touchstones to our emotional words. world, our emotional life. So that's part of it. They also seem to trickle down, you know, as if there was like some cave inside. The sounds trickled down and go to places where words don't go. And they tell us things. You could be listening to somebody and you can tell as much by the sound of their voice as what they are saying. I want to actually play a sound here that I know really resonated with you. It's the sound of a parrot and a girl laughing, Jim. So, of course, I can't help but to laugh when I hear that. Tell us about that sound.

I still smile and laugh every time I hear it, this recording. So it took place in Brazil, in Bahia. I was in Bahia, in the 70s, I was in my 20s, and I stumbled upon this group of young women who, were all clustered around another woman with a parrot. And they're talking back and forth. And, you know, it was a serendipitous moment. I waltzed in and recorded it. And what the parrot is saying, I'm mad at, in Portuguese, of course, I'm mad at you. And the girl says, you're mad at me? Yeah, I'm mad at you. But it's like, you know, the glee of this moment, you know, I think I could play this anywhere in the world and people would get it. There's something in that sound that just cracks everybody up. Yeah. And that's, as you said, say it sort of touches a place inside you that just hearing people talk isn't going to do.

The sound of people's laughter is something that we have a physiological response to, Jim. Yeah, yeah. And I bet you there's something about the sound itself, songs video, that just does it. I don't think a video would necessarily help. It's the sounds that carry that emotion. So let's go back a little bit to the start of your series Pulse of the Planet. It's this very popular series in which, you've intertwined science and nature and culture and these really short, beautiful segments

there on, hundreds of public radio stations around the country. Do you have an idea of what the pulse of the planet is? Is the pulse of the planet what we hear on the daily news every day? I hope not. Underneath is sort of the tsunamis of the news. There's something else going on. There's the seasonal rhythms of nature. The whales are migrating. The cicadas are emerging and so forth. When you said that, the thing that resonated with me is I remember being in the rainforests in Costa Rica and feeling, I don't know what to say. It's a vibration coming from around you. And as you listen, you hear millions of insects and birds and other animals and people and motorbikes and the ocean waves. And they're all coming together.

And it feels like this vibration of the earth. And if you think about, I mean, at least for me, the pulse is not a regular glub-dub-dub that a human would have, but it's this rha, amazing vibration that's coming from everywhere. Yes, indeed. It's many. It is diverse. It is varied. It's ever-changing.

So if you were in the rainforest, you'd notice that there was a different sound at night than in the morning, of course. And you don't have to go to the rainforest to hear that anyone in the country or or I dare say the city as well. Sounds morph and change moment to moment. So take us through a day of field recording. Like, what is it like? When you go out with a microphone, what are you carrying? Does anybody come with you?

Just, I know, give us a little day in a life because I think our listeners would really love to know how you go and capture the sounds, especially of the natural world. Okay. I rarely use the word capture. I'll tell you why in a moment. But it's a great. question. I remind listeners that right now for the first time in human history, virtually every one of us is carrying a sound recording device in our pocket. And it makes a damn good recording. And so go out

today, take a sound walk and you record the sounds. Please, listeners, try it, whether you're interviewing mom or grandpa or whoever or just the sounds of the neighborhood. Go on a journey of discovery. But if I go out with a recorder, there's no typical day, no typical day. And that's the beauty of sound recording. And I tend to be a bit more inclusive. I don't go out and say, I'm going to record a yellow belly sap sucker today or whatever. I mean, if I comes across my path, then great. But I usually, rarely, sometimes, however, I do go out and search for sounds. But more often than not, whatever comes up, my way is grist through the mill. to play another sound that you sent along to us as one of your favorites. And this is a sound that is very rich and varied. It was recorded in Grampians National Park in Victoria, Australia. Let's listen for a moment. Jim, what are we hearing there? So there I was in Grampians National Park, just west of Melbourne, a park that is run by indigenous peoples. It was an extraordinary place. And one of the great visuals. It had nothing really to do with the sound, but I'll just tell you because it was just so

out of the ordinary. I was surrounded by kangaroos. They weren't making any sounds, but there they were. And then, of course, there were this canopy of trees and this immense, textured panoply. I'm running out of adjectives to just try to describe it because words only dance around what sounds do. They do so much better than words. But I think the challenge for me and maybe other listeners too is I see that typically, honestly, I don't know how to listen to the sounds of nature. I mean, it's wondrous at moments. But, you know, if you're going to sit down and listen to, you know, a Bach concerto or, you know, a little bit of Mozart, you can give yourself 10 minutes for that easy, longer maybe. But for sounds, which every bit is interesting and varied, we don't typically have that

kind of training and experience. So I'm still learning how to listen to. And you can listen for species. Oh, that's a liar bird, for example. Or you could listen in another way to this orchestration. That's so interesting the way that you just put that, Jim, though, because by contrast, if you're listening to a Bach keyboard piece, that part of the context that's important to you is you know that this man, some hundreds of years ago, wrote this piece and it's been adapted and adopted, and all the context of it is also what you're listening to and for. But that sound that we just heard, we might not know what any of the birds are that we just heard. But the sound itself clearly is beautiful. It speaks to a natural environment that we can potentially,

imagine in our minds. And it's just so evocative of something and hits us in a way that even without context, I think people might think is just stunningly beautiful. I think so too. And just following your line of thought, you could say, you know, unlike Baku only put a year, a mere 10 years into it, this is the result of a million years of evolution that we're hearing right now. They've been working on it for a long time. They're finally starting to get good at it, huh? I have to ask you, with all of these sounds that you've collected over all of these years, they're now going to go into the Library of Congress.

I mean, it's the most basic question in the world, but how does that make you feel? That must be an amazing feeling to know that you've contributed so much and that people will be able to experience these sounds forever. Yes. The recording is often a solo endeavor. You go into a booth, it's a solo endeavor. You know that a lot of people are listening, but that's sort of like an idea. To know that these vibrations will be heard, that's why I don't use the word capture. These were incredible gifts to me. I was extraordinarily honored to receive these sounds, to be the one who was entrusted with them. And so the imperative to share the them. So how do you share them? That's in part up to the library. To me, I'm writing a book about my adventures called adventures of a lifelong listener. So to answer your question, you know, it's like, I mean, every time you press the red button, it's with the hope that something wonderful will happen.

Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. And then there's that imperative, that's human imperative, the wish to share these vibrations with other sentient beings, because in the act of sharing, it's like we're all resonating again together with the environment, with the world around us. So in the act of sharing and knowing that for centuries, people will share in these vibrations, it's a good feeling, but also I feel like I've fulfilled my part of the bargain that I was given this material, and now I've done my best to share it in a way that hopefully will reach across the gap. I'm John Dankosky, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. I'm talking with Jim Metzner, the host of Pulse of the Planet,

about all the many recordings that he's made of our world. They're all going to the Library of Congress. I'd like to share one more sound that you brought us here, and I won't even set this up first. Let's just listen to this sound that you've sent along. right now we're covering them with blankets and sheets one to keep the sun off them and keep them moist and also in some degree help them control their body temperature they can quickly overheat in a situation like this so keep the water on to keep them cool or in some cases if they're going to shock they can start getting cold

in that case we'll use other things and put more blankets on and try to keep them warm this is a good example jim of something where if you give people just a little bit of information or no information at all they can make up their own minds tell us tell us where you recorded the sound. I was in Cape Cod some years back, just driving around listening to the radio. And it was a call out to this ad hoc network of seat of your pants, animal rescuers, just vigilante rescuers, anybody within the sound of the voice of the announcer to come because there was a whale, pilot whales were beaching at this particular location. I thought, well, I'm near there. I'm going to show up. And I had my tape recorder with me. So they show up and I'm with them and they're trying to rescue these whales who have beached themselves for no apparent reason, one of these odd quandaries that we're still facing.

Why do whales beach? We really don't know. And so I joined them and saw that they were putting blankets on them to keep, just as he was this man was describing. And then they were trying to lifting blankets underneath them and stretchers that they were jury rigging and taking them out and trying to get them out swimming again. And at a certain point, I just put down my microphone and joined in. But for a moment, you know, to hear the sounds, to be with them and to look a whale in the eye from close up, which I never had that experience before, was extraordinary. And to think that you were helping, how could you not want to help them and feel for them and see that all of these people with the best of intentions were trying to do the best they could to help

these fellow creatures? Before I let you go, Jim, quickly, I'd love to hear about your American Soundscapes project. It's a crowdsource project where people can submit their own special sounds. Can you tell us about it? Thank you. American Soundscapes.com. You can be among the first to check it out in its beta form. So if you go, you'll see that there are some featured soundscapes from some professional sound recorders, some of the best sound recordists I know of. But the chance for anybody using that sound recording device that you have in your pocketbook or back pocket to go out, take that journey of discovery that we were speaking about earlier, go out and have your own journey that way and send it in.

It doesn't have to be a whale rescue. It can be something as simple as the bells of the church and the town where you live, the sound that your grandfather makes whenever he picks up a heavy box, a word that only your family knows and is privy to, or whatever sounds that are in your home, your neighborhood, your environment, or in your cultural group that are significant, that are emblematic, that are significant. They can be sounds of nature or culture, but share them with us.

This American Soundscape Project is an opportunity for us to share our sounds with each other. That's fantastic. Jim Metzner, thank you so much and congratulations. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Jim Metzner is a field recordist and radio producer based in Kingston, New York. His entire collection of sounds is going to the Library of Congress. But you can't listen to all of them there just yet, though.

That much sound, it takes a while to upload. SciFri's John Dan Koski. That about wraps up our last show of the year. If you missed any part of it or any of the series programs, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. Have a safe and happy new year. We'll see you next year. I'm Ira Flato.