Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Sirens

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

Alex Schmidt is joined by bestselling author Jason Pargin (pen name David Wong) for a look at why sirens are secretly incredibly fascinating. Jason’s excellent new novel releases October 13th: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250195791 Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Hey there, folks. This is a quick message to say thank you. Because on last week's show, I announced the SifPod mini-membership drive. I knew we were on the way to hitting our first group goal on Patreon. I knew once we hit that, the show's initial donors would receive a logo sticker and a handwritten card from me saying thank you. I thought it'd be more fun to make all that a membership drive, right? Where every donor, as of October 15th, gets that benefit, no matter how many people are donating.

And now dozens and dozens of you have joined in. You stepped up and you backed the show. That means the world. It means the world that you want to support what I'm doing here. So I can't thank you enough. Also, if you haven't done that yet, if you're not yet a supporter, you can go to patreon.com slash SIFPOD, S-I-F-P-O-D. If you pledge by Thursday, October 15th, good news, you will get a gift from me in the mail, along with all of the other benefits of being a backer.

And then if you're an existing donor, good news, I just need your mailing address. And then sometime in November, you'll be receiving that sticker and card and thank you from me. and then sometime in November, you'll be receiving that sticker and card and thank you from me. And thank you all for making this fun. Like it's a little membership drive for a little independent show, and you've made it a whole lot of fun. Thank you for telling friends and posting about it and sharing the link and everything. Again, to join in on that fun, the link is patreon.com slash sifpod, S-I-F-P-O-D, patreon.com slash sifpod. Anyway, that's the message, and enjoy the show. Sirens. Known for being loud. Famous for being loud in emergencies. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why sirens are secretly incredibly fascinating.

Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. I'm joined by this podcast's first ever returning guest. He is known by many names. He writes for the New York Times bestseller list as David Wong. His true name is Jason Pargin. Jason is a full-time author of amazing novels,

and his newest novel is called Zoe Punches the Future in the Dick. Jason's book comes out October 13th, which is the day after this podcast releases, and his book is a blast. I have read it in full, thanks to advanced copy privileges, blast. I have read it in full thanks to advanced copy privileges. And if you like comedy and you like information and you like just good books, this is for you. If you only like one or two of those things, this is still for you. The book has a whole bunch of chapters. They're pretty short. Every chapter has a huge idea in it or a great joke or both. There's always something that kind of comes from the

latest things going on in the modern world. And then you say, oh, wow, I see the modern world around me in a whole new way. And he's doing that on top of like writing action-packed funny fiction. Like he's doing an entire plot with meaningful characters on top of all those ideas and jokes. I feel like I'm just Rolodexing descriptive things of it. The point is, it's great. Follow our show links page, or you can search the title, again, that is Zoe Punches the Future in the D**k, to get your copy. Perhaps you have a local bookstore that could use help right now. Order the book from them, then you help Jason and the bookstore. Everybody wins. And I'm so glad Jason is here on the show today to share the news of that book and also

just be an amazing guest. Also, I have gathered all of our zip codes and I've used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba and Eno and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Jason recorded this on the traditional land of the Shawnee, Eastern Cherokee, and Sa'atsoyaha peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about sirens. And I mean like emergency sirens, right? The ones you associate with police cars or fire trucks or

ambulances. Two quick heads ups within that that I think are just useful to know. One is we are not going to play any audio of sirens on the show. So don't worry about that. You won't have that sonic experience coming at you. And the other is that Jason is one of my favorite people to talk about the absolute latest and most recent and most current things in the world with. He's very, very on top of the latest technology and developments and ways all of our culture and trends are going. And so this episode has some relatively dark material in it in terms of just what's going on with the siren. I think it's also secretly incredibly fascinating.

It's also amazing to know that this is happening and useful to know that this is happening. But there are some hard things going on in the world with siren technology. This episode also has a lot of science in it. It has a lot of history in it, especially in the numbers section. There's some kind of delightful history, I think. So there's a whole range of stuff here, and I'm so excited to get into it with my guest. So please sit back or sit with your copy of The Odyssey by Homer, because that'll be useful to brush up on here. Just kidding, you don't need to reread The Odyssey. There's just one fact from it.

And either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Jason Pargin. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then Jason, thank you so much for doing this And also congratulations on the exciting new novel I've read it, it's excellent, very excited Thank you It's the time of recording this We are right on the cusp of release, so this is the most stressful point.

Because if we discover that there is something terribly wrong with the book, it's too late. They've been printed. It is a permanent part. So any plot holes you notice or whatever, you can let other people know. There's no reason to let me know know I can't go back in there. The dock is locked. That's it. They're in the printing presses, and they're already being either shipped to bookstores or they're on shelves right now, depending on when you listen to this. Well, I didn't see anything wildly wrong when I read it, so I think you're good. I think you could be excited about it. But I suppose you've done this before, so you know the feeling. This is many novels for you.

Yes. I also know the feeling of several years ago getting the UK edition of one of my novels and finding that there were three pages missing in the middle of it due to a printing error. Well, I mean, that's the British for you. To recall this. This has always been an anti-British show, and I'm glad we can talk about this. Yeah, they don't care. Glad we had a revolution, you know what i mean yeah that was the entire point was because of their sloppy standards around manufacturing but to this day i'll never know how many people thought that was just like an artistic choice because so much of the books you know like it

was the novel was called this book is full of, so it had a title that's like a prank already. So suddenly there's just three pages missing and you've skipped ahead in an action scene. A certain number of those people had thought, that's kind of a funny joke, like he screwed up his own book. And then years, maybe years later, found out that no, actually everyone else in the world got the full story but yeah yeah i'm i'm doing bits but obviously that must have been incredibly frustrating and maybe maybe like this episode lets somebody know after all these years and it's like uh it's it's what's that movie the usual suspects like when every everybody suddenly realizes what's going on this is kind of cool for that i think that's nice yeah or it makes them it makes them like uh the the book like when you find out that the jaws that they were you're actually supposed

to see way more of this very fake shark but the only reason you didn't is because the mechanical shark didn't work and created this masterpiece of minimalism it's like well no it's they had this bad shark you were supposed to be seeing all the time. It just didn't function. Our topic today is emergency sirens, and we're mainly talking about the emergency sirens attached to police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, things like that. And obviously, you've been on the show before. You know we start with what's your relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Jason, how do you feel about emergency sirens? I feel the way a lot of our listeners do. And it's, and in fact, the reason we're even talking about it and that these are devices specifically

designed to hijack your brain and put you into a state of mild panic. Yeah. And my case, my very first vivid experience was I was 16 years old and had just gotten my license. And if you want to paint a picture, this would have been the early 90s. So just picture me rolling along in the middle of the day, blasting some music, wearing, it would have been the early 90s. So I guess I've been wearing like a spin doctor's t-shirt or something like that. I don't know what was going on at that time. Wang Chung, I don't know, whatever band I would have, Oingo Boingo. Anyway, imagine me wearing some shirt from the era and I'm driving along. Suddenly I hear, first time in my life, I hear sirens coming from the way sirens are coming from all around me. And in that moment realized, I'd only been driving for a few

months, realized I don't actually know what to do here like i know from movies you pull over but i was driving down the middle of town there wasn't like a shoulder because i surrounded by like parking lots like grocery stores and stuff and it's like well do i are they even after me or are they am i supposed to pull over and let them through like are they on their way to an emergency are they pulling me over have i done something wrong do i pull over into this grocery store parking lot and then they like arrest me in the middle of like customers walking past is that how it works i've never seen that happen before but otherwise where am i if i keep driving are they going to think i'm running away and they're just going to start shooting

because i'm like i'm a teenager i don't know the realities of life that i was never in danger of any of that but it was this moment of panic because you hear that sound and like your world a part of your world is coming to an end your whole your whole day your whole month your whole life is about to change and then several seconds later realized that the sirens were a sound effect in a song i was listening to a rap song that was about the police. And so they had inserted a loud siren at the beginning, sort of like a pre-song skit.

And in that moment, I asked myself, why is it legal to put police sirens in your song? Because coming from my loud speakers in the back, it absolutely sounded like an emergency vehicle was approaching or that I was about to be arrested. So that was my earliest experience with these devices that are designed to be the most obnoxious sound in the world.

And the sirens, as you say, they are such a brain hijacking sound. And I feel like it makes total sense that they're allowed to do that and then also none of us like it it's a really it's a really perfect overlap of this is a public necessity none of the public is happy about it which is which is a odd place to be in society yeah i feel like it's a metaphor as we will we will get into yeah Yeah. You're being surrounded by noises and things designed to get your attention. And in most cases, there's nothing for you to do. So you're just being surrounded by more and more of these noises.

But we'll talk about that. I don't want to spoil the episode. If you're wondering why sirens are an interesting subject, you're about to find out. Because it's one of those things that you may not realize how much you hate them until we explain how they were designed to make you hate them. Yeah. And let's get into that stuff. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics in a segment called Stats All Folks.

And that name was submitted by Nathan Youngaman on Twitter. That was an attempted porky pig. We're going to have a new name for this segment every week submitted by listeners like you. Please make them as silly and wacky as possible less good the better submit your name for the numbers and statistics segment to at sif pod on twitter or to sif pod at gmail.com the problem is i think he said he submitted it with like porky pig in parenthesis but unless you can do like a perfect porky pig voice it's just so hard to convey like basically i feel like some of your listeners are presenting you with the nearly impossible task every week on purpose.

The past few days, I have been, like, quietly, minorly practicing Porky Pig. And I can do a decent amount of accents. Like, I can learn an impression if I have to. Apparently, this is not one of them. I do not have it. But it's a good idea, so I did it. There we go. And getting into the numbers and stats here, the first number is 110 to 120 decibels.

And that's the approximate volume of an emergency vehicle siren. I had a hard time finding like an exact number, but that's the general range i found and the specific source here is extreme tactical dynamics.com which is a sirens and lights vendor like they sell them to emergency services that's incredibly loud by the way i don't know if you have a list of what other similar devices that are that noise range are but that's it's a lot if you've ever also had like a fire truck pull up right next to you like if you're in traffic and traffic can't quite get out of the way, but they've got their siren going anyway, right in your ear, you feel it physically. According to Marissa Ewing Moody, who is a professional audio engineer, any sounds above 85 decibels can cause permanent damage to your hearing depending on how long you're exposed to them.

So these sirens are 110 to 120, which is way above the threshold for permanent damage. And then as far as a comparison goes, normal conversation is about 60 to 70 decibels. A concert or sporting event can go from 94 to 110. And then if you're next to a jet taking off, like not as a passenger, like if you're out there by the engines, it can be between 120 and 140 decibels. So your average siren is somewhere between being at a really loud concert or game and being next to a jet taking off. Yeah, the decibel range is hard it's, it's like an exponential, because if you hear, well, the conversations at 70, like that's actually just pleasant and you

can even hardly hear it. And then you hear all sounds 120. It's like, oh, so it's twice as loud or less than twice as loud. That's not the way it works, folks. Sound like if you get up into the 140 range, you're now, you're now temporarily deaf. Like that is now, you're getting into something that's more of a weapon. Like you can't work around a jet engine without hearing protection. You don't see people down the tarmac without earmuffs on. There's a reason for that. And they're not standing right exactly next to them even. There's also, as far as where we can get a specific decibel number for sirens, according to NPR in 2019, the New York Police Department sirens are at 118 decibels. They have an exact number. And so again, that's a little toward the high range of the average and incredibly loud. loud. And that's one reason New York City has been considering changing up the tone of their sirens. They're looking at moving to a European siren, which is that two-tone thing like do-do-do-do,

you've heard it in European car chases and movies, basically. They're considering switching to that instead of the standard siren. It's the same amount of decibels but it just feels a little easier on the ears according to basically people they just asked this is sort of an unscientific process they're doing yeah but the the whole like the tone and range of the sound and how it's like engineered to be like the most maximum irritation that's what we're going to dig into because it's there's like even the difference between the european sirens and american sirens the effect they have because again decibels doesn't tell the story you can be at like a taylor swift concert and have something at that decibel range and it doesn't make you panic unless i mean like i would but uh but it's

it's it's the it's this those sound level plus all sorts of things, including where the siren is mounted and how it works, and then the kilohertz range, which we'll get into. Yeah, yeah, it's all, you're exactly right. So much of it is context, and so much of it is whether you asked for the loud sound or not. Because I enjoy being in a crowd cheering because we just won a championship. I don't really experience that very often due to the teams I root for. But it's nice when it's invited. And when it's an incredibly loud emergency vehicle, it's completely disrupting. Yeah.

And then you get into, like, initially when these things were developed, I don't know if they necessarily had a scientist say, like, this, they have, you know, they have, like, wires hooked to somebody's brain. It's like, this siren, this is the one that upsets them the most. But they absolutely did kind of figure out over time what got people's attention, like what made their heads turn the fastest. And guess what? The way you get someone to turn their head

the fastest and look at the source of a sound is by hitting the specific range. It basically imitates like a human scream or something. Like it's a specific low range, right? Yeah, we did some digging and through trial and error, emergency departments, especially police departments, have kind of figured out a siren frequency and volume and tone that is the sound you will hate the most, because you'll notice it the most. And then there have been some studies since then, and NPR writes about a 2015 study at NYU that was mainly focused on human screams. Who doesn't love a scream study? And they studied human screams and found that that triggers a set of fear circuits in the brain.

And then the team also found that certain artificial sounds, in particular alarms, triggered the same response as a scream. According to David Popel, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at NYU, that's why you want to throw your alarm clock on the floor, a scream. According to David Popel, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at NYU, that's why you want to throw your alarm clock on the floor, because that alarm or siren matches a human scream. Or why I once broke a smoke alarm that would not stop going off due to some malfunction, and why I physically destroyed it. Not just because I wanted the sound to stop, but it made me so angry. That the act of, I actually smashed it to little bits in an apartment I was in a long time ago. Because that also is geared to be a sound that you cannot ignore.

The way that when babies cry, they have evolved to have a sound you cannot ignore. If you have flown on a plane with a crying baby and you found yourself wanting to blow your brains out, that is why. That is a sound that is engineered by evolution to make your brain impossible for your brain to ignore it. The pitch, all those things, is very subtle. Science does not fully understand it but uh that's part of the whole thing here is because you're just testing these sounds in a lab and someone when they were testing smoke alarms had to have said oh yeah that's that's horrible that's perfect that sound right there that will get me out of bed no matter how drunk i am yes ship it you've

done it you genius genius, you. Like they didn't need a neurologist on staff. You just had to watch literally everyone in the office go, what is that? And how do you make it stop? That's, yeah, exactly right. And it can come from before we have some kind of amazing brain scan technology or something. Like all these completely modern studies are trying to do as much looking at a brain as you can. But you don't necessarily need to with just what sounds like shit.

You know, like what is horrible? You can kind of test it without the most advanced technology in the world. And we have a pair of numbers here left to close out the numbers and stats, and they both go to a historical element of the siren that maybe not everybody knows. One of them is the 800s BC. The 800s BC is the estimated date of the first readings out loud of Homer's Odyssey. What is now a book, it began as an oral tradition. And that's where you find the characters of the sirens, which are sort of singing ladies that try to draw Odysseus's men off of the ship into

the water to die. The other number here is 1819, because that's the year where the name siren was coined. Because there's a weird historical thing where when we hear the word siren today, we think of an incredibly loud emergency sound. But before they were used for that, they were noise-making devices that were used for acoustical experiments. Because there used to be a whole, there's still a science of acoustics, but there used to be scientists in the field of acoustics trying to figure out the basics of how sound waves work and how human hearing functions in a general way. And there were two scientists. One of them was named John Robeson,

a Scottish physicist in the 1700s, and then a French engineer named Charles Caguinard de La Tour, who lived 1777 to 1859. Robeson is credited with inventing the first siren for musical acoustic experiments. And then Caggenard de la Tour improved it and also developed one that worked if you send air through it, but also worked if you send water through it. And according to Smithsonian, this property of being sonorous in the water led de la Tour to name it a siren after the Odyssey character. I know that's sort of a long historical story but it's where the name of this device comes from yeah and prior to this like of course there were noise making devices prior to electricity and prior to all these

experiments but you would you know if you watch an old west movie if they've got a fire department they're using like a bell they're like ringing a bell you know and um well i guess as in the documentary game of thrones when you know when she went crazy on her dragon and they started they started ringing the bells in the city that's what those bells were for it's because they didn't have a siren and they didn't have a guy who could just yell at everyone but that was a sound that could echo through the city and that meant, you know, hey, it's something terrible has happened. You know, obviously, early phones, they had the two bells on them that the thing would go back and forth. And that would create what I think is an awful sound personally, but it may just be because I hate phones. Just in general.

but it may just be because I hate phones just in general. Yeah. But either way, I like, I like this idea that at some point, cause they knew they needed something for, you know, in that era, you know,

fire wagons or emergency wagons or whatever they were using that they had to alert people, you know, it's, or there was some sort of enemy invading something like that. And I just liked the idea that somebody in a lab one, two, there are two kind of like watershed moments.

One was they created something in the lab that was, that made the hair on everyone's the back of their neck stand up and they realize, Oh, this will be useful for replacing the bell we're using now. And two, there had to have been the first time somebody used one in public. The very first time, like an electrical, like a siren as we know it today,

they can make a sound that prior to that had not existed on Earth, right? Like in that tone, at that volume, that was not a thing prior to that invention. And I wonder if anyone responded to the emergency or if they just attacked that vehicle and turned it over and just burned it. Right, like you with the smoke alarm that wouldn't shut off. Like, stop it. Like, just hitting it with a big hammer, you know? So if you have no context for that sound, if you've not been warned, God, what would

you even think was happening? But then speaking of the sirens we have today, I think that takes us into the first of two takeaways in the show. Takeaway number one, siren makers and users are in an arms race with the human brain. And the basics of what that means when I say an arms race is we, human beings, are doing everything we can to not hear sirens around us because it's very unpleasant. And so that means that the companies making sirens and the emergency services using sirens are trying to make sirens more annoying to overcome that. And then it's just a back and forth where we try to shut them out more and they try to make them worse is what's going on. You also have the whole thing with automobile manufacturers trying to make their cars more and more soundproof.

So in order to get through the person in the luxury car and that car has been engineered to keep out everything, you have to make something that all but physically injures the pedestrians who do not have the luxury car wrapped around them. Because, you know, like I'm someone who grew up in a very small town as i may have mentioned you know for us hearing a siren is something that you was rare and everyone would stomp and look because it's like oh gosh somebody's meth lab must have exploded but if you live in a city i don't even think you turn your head right because you hear it multiple times a day it's you know what even whether it's right next to you or a few blocks away,

it's just part of the sound of the city. Even in Durham, which is a relatively small city, you'll just hear them from time to time. It's a thing. Yeah, or a few even. You see them watch a movie, and they've got an establishing shot of New York. They always just dub in some sirens in the background

because it's like, well, yeah, it's New York. There's always somebody dying. It's just part of life. There's also a very unfortunate fresh way that they are troubling, in particular, New Yorkers. There's a great article in the New Republic called Alone in the City of Sirens by Samer Kalaf, and it was written in April of 2020 because the big idea was as coronavirus hit, New York entered this period where the city was locked down and there were more deaths from the disease. So that meant nobody was out for normal purposes, but also emergency vehicles were out to try to save people. And so apparently life in New York in April was just full of more and more

sirens and no other noise to drown them out. And nobody had planned for this situation or how this would impact people psychologically. Yeah, because it's that situation where you have a terrible noise, but you're not, there's nothing for you to do in most cases. Like unless you happen to be in the path of it, need to get out of the way, it's just, it doesn't involve you. There's no action you can take. It's just this terrible sound engineered to get your attention and engineered to make you, like, release stress hormones into your blood, like you said. Yeah, they quote a Manhattan resident who said, quote, It's so much louder than usual because there's no other noise.

I'm so much more anxious now. They're supposed to get your attention amongst distractions. Now the distractions are uncomfortably absent, end quote. Because it's just automatic that we put a siren on if something is wrong. And I guess we don't tend to think about if it's actually necessary. We just throw it on and bother everybody, even if maybe that could be something we tone down a bit. Yeah, we'll get into that a little bit because there's obviously you have them for a reason, but no one who designed these was thinking, OK, well, what's the effect if you hear it five times a day? Right. Like it's it's just as with everything else. Nobody thinks of what the world's going to be like if this is just constant.

You're only thinking in terms of the specific use case. We're trying to get through traffic. We need people to get out of the way. There's also, in general, not just in a hard corona time, there's some basic mental effects of sirens that I think people underestimate, maybe. Like, we're used to them needing to be around us and going on and being an issue. But 99% Invisible did a great sound and health project. And as part of that, they interviewed Matthias Basner, who's a professor of psychiatry at University of Pennsylvania. And he said, quote, noises cause stress, especially

if we have little or no control over it. The body will excrete stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol that lead to changes in the composition of our blood and of our blood vessels, which actually have been shown to be stiffer after a single night of noise exposure, end quote. And he's in particular describing noises we don't control, because like we said, it's fun to be in the noise of a baseball game or a Taylor Swift concert. It is apparently blood vessel stiffening to be in the noise that we didn't ask for. Yeah. And this is something, this is a subject that is kind of important to me. I'm sensitive to irritating sounds. I'm the guy where if I'm in a restaurant and somebody in the next table over, they screech their fork across their plate.

Like I, I seize up and it doesn't seem to bother other people as much but i'm i'm sensitive to annoying sounds i you can if you saw my home you can see how like carefully i've tried to engineer my life to not hear things i don't have i don't have an infant in the house or or allow them to to visit uh so and this is something where in i don't know if you've mentioned other episodes like the rates of mental illness in general are higher in cities noise pollution is one of a bunch of factors that has to be a part of that i believe because it doesn't it's not reasonable you know people to relax tend generally tend to want to go somewhere quieter. They talk about going out to the country or fishing.

They're doing those activities because they're silent. You equate silence with stress really for a reason. And it's, you know, again, it's one thing if it's like a white noise type situation. But if it's a case where it's a series of unexpected noises your neighbors arguing you know it's whether sirens going off or just traffic sounds or horns honking below you all those things in the moment it's not going to kill you over the course of a lifetime yeah constant low level stress wreaks havoc on your system it just does it's not it's not a controversial statement, I don't think. And noise, pollution, things like that is just one factor of it.

Yeah. And it really is more than just sirens. Like you say, it can be the smallest thing, like a fork scraping. We've got a poll from WQXR, which is a classical radio station for Newark, New Jersey, greater New York. And they cite a 2006 Baruch College study that found that New Yorkers ranked police and fire sirens third on a list of the most stressful sounds in their neighborhood, which on one hand indicates how annoying they are. They're the third most annoying sound around you. But they rank car stereos number two and nearby voices number one. And people allowed to talk it's totally fine but any particular wrong noise can be the thing that kind of throws off your equilibrium if you're just trying to be a person and you can't control it around you if the if the nearby conversations

thing if that didn't make sense to you any of you listening this who work in an open floor plan office with the cubicles all around you and you're surrounded by people constantly talking or chatting or they're talking on the phone you can't quite hear what they're saying but yet they don't they never stop talking yeah um the irritation you're feeling that is your that is your body responding to stress and if you don't feel that that is great i admire you i personally found it so stressful. I actually had to wear headphones and would listen to music or something while working because I could not handle being surrounded by people talking.

My brain wanted to tune into what they were saying at all times. And again, I had no control over it, but it was just nonstop. And if someone's got an annoying voice or an annoying laugh or you're wondering what they're laughing at or whatever, just that little bit of distraction was a big factor in like my quality of life. You also, as we were putting this together, you brought up the idea of car alarms because that's one that will just suddenly pop up from time to time. And it seems like we've actually done something about it. will just suddenly pop up from time to time and it seems like we've actually done something about it yeah and if people because i the first time i moved to uh like a larger city not even like like a metropolis but like something that you could call a city where there's actually people living there it would have been you know like the like the late 90s so you could imagine me walking

around in well it would have been the same t-shirts because i i tend to wear the same shirt for like 15 15 years before it finally falls apart so it would have been the same like spin spin doctor's t-shirt or whatever but when i the in that era the car alarms i hope i hope you're in an oingo boingo shirt that is like gray and yellowed and collapsing right now that's that's very exciting yeah but see you can go to stores and buy shirts that are like artificially aged so you can pretend like like they they look faded so you can pretend like you were you've been cool this whole time but but when i moved away like the prevalence of car alarms at the time because they were really

popular in the 90s like now there's a lot of technology that kind of made that go away cars have like a lot better like remote starting systems and things like that that are a little bit but back then everybody if you had like a fancy stereo system you're trying to protect anything like that you would have these car alarms that was i mean everyone has surely heard them like they're they're horrific and the thing is you could set them off. They went off on accident all the time. Yeah. So that was one of the big things that turned me against that place I was living in was that someone's car alarm went off every five or six hours. And it would take them seemingly a very long time to realize it was their car going off and not one of the hundreds of other cars that had them.

Get their keys, go and turn it you know assuming they were even nearby and it wouldn't just keep running for two hours until their battery died and to me that was almost like dystopian like i'm living in this place that's just wailing with paranoia because this is sound of all these people who don't trust their neighbors right yeah to not steal their stupid $200 speakers they got and it's just uh and i think uh then you have found a great source here about the overall idea that people are just installing fewer car alarms too and i i hope it's driven partly by our collective frustration at that being just an endless whale in a lot of situations i don't think it was because they're improving quality of life. I think it's because they were ineffective because with everything on here,

if you hear it every few hours, you stop like looking at it. Cause if I'm, if I'm McCarthy, if I'm going around breaking into cars and stealing stereos, I'm not worried about the alarm going off because I now, I now know that nobody cares. Nobody looks your direction. No one comes running. Everyone just gets annoyed at that car owner

because it's taking them too long to get out their key fob and turn off, turn off the thing. So at some point it just doesn't help you because it's so pervasive. If, if every car is screeching every couple of hours, then no, it no longer functions as an alarm. It'd be the same as if everybody decided, like if BMW decided, hey, it's actually cool the way police cars have sirens that make everybody clear the way. We're going to put one of those on every car. And it just goes off all the time. Like if somebody is in a hurry, if they're late to work, they can just turn on their siren. That'll make people get out of their way like eventually you would get to point to where

everyone would ditch the sirens because it's like well they no longer do everything people are intentionally blocking the road when they hear a siren now because they figure it's just some bmw driver it was it was that it was the equivalent of that it's like it's making a noise like this is an emergency i need to attend to when in reality all that happened is someone walked too close to the vehicle and then the the owner was too drunk to turn off the alarm in a timely manner right it's also like a perfect metaphor for kind of everything now like in news media if every if every headline is saying you should be panicked about a thing right eventually you just get numb to it right because it's every headline is saying you should be panicked about a thing right eventually you just get numb to it right because it's every headline is an alarm every headline is a screeching alarm about some

new apocalypse and or this this food can kill you or this whatever is killing you and at some point it's like oh okay whatever eventually you wind up in a society that's just full of alarm signals everywhere man well and it also i think speaks to not not the news alarms but the literal sounding alarms all the time speaks to a broader thing going on especially with personal consumer technology where we are finding things as people that let us shut out noise as much as possible. We already talked about luxury cars that are designed to be soundproofed from loud noises around you. A bunch of us have noise-canceling headphones. You might be hearing this podcast on some right now.

There's also what I think is the future, where The Verge reported on a tech startup in 2015 that kickstarted smartphone-enabled earplugs. They work as earbuds that let you listen to music, but they also let you use pretty advanced technology to block out sounds you don't want to hear, also do super specific filtering of frequencies and kinds of noises you don't want to hear. They cost at about $300 per pair, and this startup is folded. But I think that's obviously a technology that's going to be a huge hit as soon as somebody does it good. Because we all want that power to listen to stuff on headphones or whatever,

but to really control the audio around us. Because if nothing else, it would be great for our health. It would give us a lot of control over how we feel physically and mentally day to day. Because also we're getting more and more technology to block out noise. And also the standard rubber earplug has been around forever. So that's one thing they're up against. But we have a few articles here then about new sirens or existing sirens that people are using to try to overcome that with even worse noises than ever before. One article is from back in 2007, the New York Times. It's called Ear Splitting Symphony with the Maestro in Blue.

It's by Kara Buckley. And she rides along with NYPD to see what their police cars have in terms of sirens. PD to see what their police cars have in terms of sirens. And we'll have it linked. There's an amazing picture of a policeman using this really advanced little system on his dashboard that offers at least five different siren options at the push of a button. There is the Yelp, which is an electronic yodel, the article says. Then there's something called the whale, which is the more traditional wind-up police siren. They also have the high-low, which we in the U.S. think of as a European siren. It's two tones up and down. And then the article says, quote, the air horn siren works well, officers say, for clearing intersections of pedestrians and getting the

attention of speeding drivers. And then the fast or priority siren sounds like an asteroid blaster from an old video game and feels like a jackhammer assault on the ears, end quote. So this is way back in 2007, New York police still had at least five different crazy sirens to flip through depending on which one they thought would get your attention the most. Yeah. Which meanwhile, they're making sounds that you don't normally associate with a police car. So now you're not sure, wait, is that an ambulance? Is that a fire truck? Is it something else? Like that's an air raid siren. Is that like a storm warning thing we can talk about later? Like it's, and none of them fix the problem that i personally have is that i

mentioned in my anecdote at the start that when i heard the siren i didn't know what direction it was coming from like i didn't know what to do because i didn't see anything behind me but when you hear a siren that doesn't mean anything for me especially if you're like downtown there's buildings you know the sound kind of just bounces off all the walls when i hear a siren and it's close i do not know if it's oncoming, if it's about to enter the intersection from one of the sides, or if it's behind me I need to pull over. And that's kind of important

because you don't know what to do as a driver unless you can locate the direction of the sound. I actually, in prep for this, I actually looked up if other people had this problem, and it's a known issue. They call it localization in s for this, I actually looked up if other people had this problem and it's a known issue. They call it localization and siren design, like the ability for people to localize what direction the sound is coming from, which is crucial. But if sirens today are good at it, then my ears are bad at it. Cause to this day, if I hear a sign, I, I immediately have to try to look around. And

if I can't find where it's coming from, I kind of panic because I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Am I in their way? Do I just need to let them through the intersection? You know, because you can't. For me, it just seems to come from all around. I do that same thing. Like, I think it's behind me and then the fire truck swings around out front. Or, like, as soon as there's a siren, I'm trying to look every direction all at once, which is also probably making me a worse driver.

Because I can't tell. So I really relate to that. There's also even further advances in the technology. We've got another New York Times article here. I find that like just looking at NYPD is a good barometer for the whole thing. This article is from 2011. It's called The New Police Siren, You'll Feel It Coming by Ariel Kaminer. And that's because about 10 years ago, there's a company in the US called

Federal Signal Corporation. And Federal Signal Corporation, you've probably never heard of it, but it's one of the biggest siren manufacturers in the US. Also, it's not part of the federal government, it's a private company. But they developed a new siren called the Rumbler. And the concept is, quote, a siren that would make people sit up and take notice, even people accustomed to hearing sirens all of the time, even people wearing earbuds or talking on the phone, even people insulated from street noise by a layer of glass and steel, even New Yorkers, end quote. And that's because they developed a siren that's a regular siren sound paired with a low frequency tone that is, it's audio, but it's designed to be felt physically. So they said, we already have these five sirens in the police car that are super confusing. Let's add another one that also makes people feel like it's shaking their body a little bit. And they rolled this out across NYPD and a bunch of other police sirens in the U.S. My favorite quote from that article is,

The effect is hard to ignore. It's like the combination of a bagpipe's high chanter and low drone, or perhaps like a train whistle and the caboose that moves that whistles through space if you can mentally picture like like a like the devil's bagpipes i guess would be how i how would i say but their whole thing like are we painting a clear picture for you here guys because their whole deal as well people are bored with the old sirens so we've got a siren that you can feel in your bones and the even new yorkers have to stop what they're doing and pay attention to it but once they start hearing the rumbler every five minutes right you know the exact same immune response you're going

to build up a tolerance to it same as everything else and so they're going to have to come up with that's why we described it as an arms race earlier yeah because what sound possibly holds up like even you know in world war ii when london was being bombed every hour at some point the air raid sirens people just started like all right i'm not you can't i can't go into the shelters every time that thing goes off and i think they had a compliance issue because eventually at some point it's like okay it's if i get hit with the bomb i get hit with the bomb i'm not gonna i can't i can't respond the same way every time i hear that siren because that's human nature you eventually start to tune things out the unfortunately you can't you are consciously tuning it out but your body's stress response is not yeah absolutely it's like and it really feels like a body's stress response is not.

Yeah, absolutely. And it really feels like it's going to be an arms race that's hard to diffuse or shrink down. And not just because there's a public health and safety imperative to have sirens that work to clear the road for an ambulance or for a fire truck, but also like the two sides of the war are siren makers which is powered by capitalism a very powerful force and then the other side is just our brains mostly passive demand to uh like get used to sounds because otherwise we'll be upset all the time and it still like affects us you know but i i don't see a point where we'll stop shutting out these horrible sirens even if they make them better and better we won't shut them out all the way but we'll keep trying uh unconsciously i mean it almost they all seem to

be implying like well there'll be a spectrum of sirens and some mean that it's just like a mild emergency and some are like demand more immediate action. But, you know, for a fact, that's not the way it works. You're going to go with the one that gets people's attention the fastest every time. Because why wouldn't you? Why would you not take the most extreme step possible in every circumstance? Yeah. And I think it's got to be a parallel that keeps coming up but you know we've

seen how uh policemen use guns uh so to anticipate that they would use like only the mildest sirens except when it's necessary is pretty foolish it just doesn't seem like that's going to bear out that yeah that was the implication yeah because that's like's like, well, just to be safe, we'll do the most extreme thing, right? That'll be the safest option. It's like, well, okay, not really. But anyway, not to get off on a tangent. But again, there's a reason we chose sirens as our example here. Sirens mean different things to different people,

but our physical response to them is kind of almost universal. It's also an arms race that seems to be continuing because I looked around and if you go to Federal Signal Corporation's website, it's still on sale there. There's also an advocacy group called Noise Off that's opposed to these kinds of things. But they say that more than 100 U.S. police departments now use the rumbler currently. Like, I don't have a lot of experience being close to police sirens. I suppose maybe some listeners have experienced the rumbler, like, right in, if you know how that feels.

I'm sure it's not good. Yeah. And again, we cannot, would not, and cannot play you a sample of it, because even if we could, it would not have the effect. The whole point of these, it has to do with the the power has to do with how they're mounted on the vehicle has to do with how close or how far away you are from it the context you're hearing it in like you're not going to get the same stress response like if right now you go try to find like a

youtube video or something that plays you what it sounds like that's going to give you a vague hint of it because it's the whole thing is that it's like it sounds like, that's going to give you a vague hint of it because it's the whole thing is that it's like your whole body feels that it's not just a sound you hear. Yeah, that's exactly right. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway. Before that, we're going to take a little break. We'll be right back. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes.

I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, One you have no choice but to embrace

because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. We also, I think we can go ahead and move into our other big takeaway of the episode,

because it's more advanced technology. Takeaway number two. Siren technology inspired a dangerous new crowd control weapon, the LRAD cannon. Because this is kind of the latest thing going on. And I don't know, especially if you could see yourself being in the streets demonstrating against something. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a safety expert in any fashion. But you may just want to know that this exists out there. Yes, because these noises, and this range, when made loud enough, it becomes an actual physical weapon you can use against a human being a literal weapon. Yeah, absolutely. And I said the name briefly, LRAD, that stands for long range acoustic device. And so I think it's also worth putting the word canon at the end of the acronym,

because it is something that we have a lot of sources here. The main one is Popular Mechanics, How to Dodge the Sonic Weapon Used by Police. It's by Lin-Pesco Yang, and it was written in June 2020. And most of the sources on this are from this year or an extremely recent year, because it's a very new thing that's being used mainly on crowds of people in countries like the United States. Yeah, but was developed by the military. They mounted them on ships to like, and again, if someone's wondering how we got from sirens to the LRAD, it's just a big siren. Yeah.

Because at lower decibel levels, it just uses like a warning tone to like warn off smaller vessels to get away. But then when they want to incapacitate a person, all they have to do is turn up the power. away. But then when they want to incapacitate a person, all they have to do is turn up the power. But it's that same thing hitting that same noise range that kind of hijacks your brain. And actually, literally, we've got quotes down here about that. Yeah. Popular Mechanics talked to Robert Ault, who's an audio engineer and also former chair of the New York chapter of the Audio Engineers Society. I didn't know that was a group,

but that's fun. But he said, quote, it is a brute force design dedicated to a single purpose, playing really loud in the most sensitive part of human hearing. There is nothing particularly sophisticated about it, end quote. And he goes on to describe it as basically just the basic technology of a siren. But there's been some design done so that all of the siren noise is pointed, almost like a beam of sound. And according to audio engineer Marissa Ewing Moody, the LRAD can create sounds up to about 160 decibels when used at full power. And again, the top range for a regular siren was about 120. So this is just an extreme literal amplification of a siren's noise element, power element,

irritation element, designed to more or less shoot your head with sound like a gun. Yeah, and reportedly can induce vomiting. Like you get to 160 decibels, again, that's the max this thing can go, and it's a weapon developed by the military to start to kind of put that decibel range number into some sort of context. This is a level designed to incapacitate someone who you've decided is violent or hostile or you want to stop them from doing. It's like instead of a taser, instead electric shock instead of a beanbag it's just a very loud noise that will drop you in your tracks in the exact same way but you know in terms of the military like using noise as that kind of to mess with brains that's not new we even did an episode of the crack podcast years ago where we had they had found like that aztec death whistle do you remember that yeah oh boy and i remember we warned people

a bunch before we played the sound of it yeah yeah and you can and it sounded like they had opened up a portal to hell and you heard the sounds of souls screaming down there but i'm gonna guess it was in the exact same frequency range, and it was like a war whistle, they think. It was something meant to cause enemies to poop their pants or run away. If you watch World War II movies or just the movie Dunkirk, and when the dive bombers are swooping down, they make this high-pitched shrieking sound, that's a device they attach to the bombers.

It's a siren, And so the air coming in, flowing across the airframe would be funneled into the siren and would spin a little thing inside there and make that horrible shrieking sound. It was just designed to terrify and incapacitate the people on the ground so that that aircraft had two weapons, had the bomb and the siren. We've also described these LRADs as being developed by the military. And we have like the specifics and the chain of events on that. Popular Mechanics says, quote, the first LRADs were developed as military weapons in response to the bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000. Quick aside, I remember that. That was in my lifetime. They say, quote,

military officials asked the Elrad Corporation, which is now called Genesis, for a device with two functions to communicate at a distance with potential threats and to disperse them with an unbearable alarm-like sound. And they go on to say every Elrad emits tones in the most sensitive range of frequencies for most humans, which is the exact same idea behind a whistle or a siren. Like it's just this exact gear, but they've done some apparently incredibly basic engineering work to turn it into a sound gun. But like not everybody knows about it. And it seems like it's something that can be used and in some cases is being used as a pretty violent weapon against civilians and basically they think they can get away with it i think because the general public doesn't know about this as a tool or or know what it can really do but this is where i can't emphasize enough this is one device and it's just got a little knob on it

at this level it works as a siren. If we turn it up, it's now a weapon that will incapacitate you. The only difference is the power level. Yeah. And it's also got what is on purpose or not, I think, sort of a sneaky thing where, as you said, the military partly asked them to develop it as a loudspeaker. partly asked them to develop it as a loudspeaker. So in particular, police departments are saying, hey, we need to have this device so we can speak to a crowd, right? So they can hear us and they can know what to do. It's all very, very vanilla and on the up and up. And then you just turn the knob up and blow their eardrums out. It's a very normal sounding piece of equipment that can be used for things that are not. Yes. Thus their vague acronym DEVICE at the end. The T stands for device,

which does not describe what it does. So that's why adding the word canon to the end is helpful. It's also, it's so new that, and there may be more news as the weeks go on, but it's so new that we're still figuring out whether people can take legal action against a police department for using it. And once again, NYPD is the cutting edge of this. In 2017, there was a group of New Yorkers who sued the New York Police Department for damages resulting from sonic attacks

during the protests that followed the non-indictment of Daniel Pantaleo, who was one of the officers who murdered Eric Garner in 2014. And Papa Mechanics says the department argued loud sounds can't constitute a use of force, but the judge rejected that and allowed the case to proceed. The following year, 2018, Gothamist describes it as a first-of-its-kind ruling where a federal appeals panel for this New York case said that the LRAD cannon can qualify as excessive force, it can qualify as a weapon. However, quote, the court said it remains open to their use as a communication tool, and even in some circumstances, perhaps as a crowd dispersal tool, end quote. So really the one big judgment we have on the book so far

says that departments can keep using it. Like it just asks them to please not use it too hard. Exactly, which is why this device is sort of the culmination of the episode because you arrive at this where it's like, well, if you're just using it to communicate, that's probably fine. And like, yeah, you know, if things get bad if there's an emergency maybe you can maybe you can turn the knob up but okay so what at what level of power does it stop being a communication device and start being a canon yeah even in 2018 you had to have you know you had to litigate in court whether

or not this is something you should be able to sue for because if you're going to argue to me that everyone within range of that thing was guilty and was deserving of some level of permanent hearing loss you're going to you're going to struggle to make that case to me because that by nature seems like a very indiscriminate device or weapon or whatever you want to call it right yeah exactly because this this lrad cannon is getting used in at least in a u.s context where we have uh just a real slippery loose messy grasp on what devices can be used on a crowd of protesters like well like well, like, for one thing, people will

just get shot with a gun. We also have things where a police department will say, well, we use non-lethal methods. And then you say, what is that? And they say, well, it's tear gas that might mess up your body chemistry. And it's rubber bullets that will, you know, give you huge bruises or fracture a bone, maybe. So that's non-lethal. That's fine. So then these LRAD cannons are just getting put in that group of incredibly destructive and painful weapons that get used on groups of people just because they are not literal bullets. And well, and specifically, you know, like tear gas has started to get a bad reputation. Obviously shooting anything at a processor you've now got viral videos of people being you know losing eyes and things like that to projectiles

so it feels like with devices like this where what it's doing is invisible and hard to convey and like a youtube video or something like that or if you're not there it's like well it's just a loud noise it's hard to convey what this thing does. So it feels like this is on the frontier of crowd control that doesn't necessarily get you backlash from the public at large. Because now like the sight of tear gas makes you think, you know, the world has fallen apart. You know, it makes you think of like oppression and that kind of thing or shooting rubber bullets or marching with those riot shields. It all looks very bad. It kind of rallies public support to the protesters.

But something if it's just a device that you can mount to a truck that doesn't appear to be doing anything and you just see people in front of it like clutching their heads and falling to their knees or running away as fast as they can that it almost seems like they found a stealthier way to do crowd control that is extremely painful and damaging to the people who are there but maybe to the rest of us because we don't take sound seriously it's like well it's just a big loud siren just sounds like a siren on the clip on the news clip like what's the big deal these people's just a big loud siren. It just sounds like a siren on the clip, on the news clip. Like, what's the big deal? These people are just, they'll complain about anything, won't they? That's so dead on about it being totally invisible. I hadn't even thought of it that way, that there won't be a, like, I think the most famous picture from Ferguson, Missouri might have been that protester, like, throwing back a tear gas canister.

And there are waves of smoke and gas all around them and it's very very visual but the pictures of this would just be a truck it just has a thing on it and that's it and it's it's a creepy way to go about a similar thing there's also a context that these are happening into where i think that we're starting to mainly in the state of Florida and the U.S. see new laws against protests that are just unacceptable. But also that's part of a wider movement toward some people on the conservative side of things trying to make it easier to attack protesters and attack peaceful demonstrators. There's a piece from the Orlando Sentinel on September 23rd. It said that there's a new proposal from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis that would make it a felony to

participate in a protest that results in property damage, a felony to participate in a protest that results in blocking a road, and then also lets the state prosecute anyone who donates money to that protest under Florida's racketeering laws. And the latest I could find is that not only is DeSantis still pushing for this, but he's trying to get the Florida legislature back together to pass it by November of 2020, because normally they'd be off until March of 2021. So those kind of laws are concerning in a general way, but I think one thing those laws can do is open up the use of this kind of laws are concerning in a general way. But I think one thing those laws can do is open up the use of this kind of device on a group of protesters. Because if they're felons now,

you know, you can just frame it as, well, a felon is the worst kind of criminal there is. So obviously, we had to use this totally non-lethal noise box that just hurts your ears a little bit to deal with the felons. Exactly. Yeah, It has to do with completely reframing the entire scenario and why those people are there, what they're doing. And then obviously in that context, if you've got a crowd of felons who are part of a racketeering scheme to destroy public property, well, just trying to disperse them with a siren, a warning siren, almost seems like you're not going far enough. Yeah, right. Like all your Tucker Carlson type has to say is, felons running through the streets, and this Democrat mayor won't use a little loudspeaker to break them up? What a fool. The mayor must be Antifa. Even the mainstream news, I would say, look going forward, see how they frame the use

of this device. Do they call it an LRAD? Do they call it a warning siren? Or do they call it an LRAD cannon? Because those mean very different things in the mind of the reader or the listener, right? So if the news story reads like, like well a crowd of demonstrators you know went in front of the courthouse and broke windows but police dispersed them with a warning tone that literally just sounds like they they turned on a horn that said please disperse right

yeah but if they if you say they activated their their lD cannon and everyone ran away clutching their ears and some people have lost entire ranges of tone to their hearing for the rest of their lives due to that, it's a completely different thing. But they will try very hard to frame it as the former. It's going to depend on what outlet you listen to. But even mainstream news outlets kind of fall into using the phrasing that's in the police department's press release right yeah so they'll release a press release saying today there was you know violent demonstrators gathered in x block and then you know officers responded and

played warning tones urging them to disperse and then they dispersed and everything was fine uh they will they will definitely try to frame it the same way all weaponized noise is framed as being, well, it's just a sound to send a message. But this is the kind of thing that, in my belief, is not going away. It's when we talked about the science of what noise does to you, what it does to your brain, what it does to your body, so much of what we talked about is recent, and so much of it is how they think it works. This is a cutting-edge frontier thing, like how to manipulate a human brain with a really horrible sound. And they are rapidly in laboratories across the world trying to find new and horrible noises in ways to aim those specifically.

They can fire a specific, they even talk about a laser of sound. It hits a specific group of people you're trying to debilitate while maybe not sounding like much from behind the device. Because sound can be manipulated that way if you know because sound can be manipulated that way if you know if you know what you're doing so this is uh this is new uh but you're going to be hearing in my belief you're going to be hearing more and more about it i absolutely agree yeah with any topic like this uh i like to find a takeaway if they're not not take away in the framing i've been using in the show i mean like a thing you can do is always like nice to come away with. And, and with this one, it might be a small but simple and good thing of making yourself and others aware that sound is real. And it has like a real impact on the human body and a person, whether it's sirens or these weapons based on sirens or anything else. Like, if you can, you know, when these news stories come across, tell your friend who doesn't

think it's a big deal that it is a big deal. I don't know, maybe that's something useful for moving in a good direction with this. In general, we tend to not think of any kind of a sound as having a permanent effect on us, because once the sound is gone, then you figure it's fine. Conversely, if you smell what smells like some sort of a chemical or something that you think has been spilled or is burning, we all instinctively think, oh, if I breathe enough of that, it's possible it could kill me. Because we're aware of the concept of smoke inhalation, that sort of thing. None of us think of a sound that way. None of us hear an annoying noise and think, oh, if I keep listening to that, that will destroy my body. We just don't think in those terms. But your ears are fragile. Your body's stress responses are sensitive. Obnoxious noises are doing permanent damage to your brain, your mental health, your ears.

You don't have to hear at certain decibel ranges. You don't have to hear very much of it at all before you've permanently lost a part of your hearing that you will never get back. It cannot be repaired except in very rare circumstances. except in very rare circumstances. So just being aware that certain noises are a physical attack on your body is helpful. The way that you are, you do tend to be aware of other things. You are aware of what you eat and what you drink and even what you breathe in, that this could permanently harm me, that this food could be poison, or this alcohol might be bad for me

if I drink enough of it. But none of us think of sound that way, virtually none of us. It's as like, oh, this is going to permanently destroy my ears or this is going to, I'm going to be up all night tonight and I'm not going to know why, but it's like you triggered a stress response in your body six hours ago and it hasn't gone away, even though the sound went away. So I feel like, like you you mentioned an advocacy group that was working you know against noise pollution they're

out there but just in your everyday life if you're in an environment at work wherever you're doing where you're constantly hearing an annoying noise i'm telling you whatever you have to do to get something over your ears or to move or to close your door or whatever, you may not feel the effects immediately. Long-term, it'll make a difference. It'll make a difference in how you feel. Yeah, a hundred percent. And that group is called Noise Off. I'm realizing I just found them for that source. I'll find some like, I don't know, actual resources or things that people can use. We'll have that in the show links for the episode.

Yeah, because someone has to push back because otherwise it's too like obviously every city has like noise ordinances and things like that. But they tend to be in kind of discriminated and how they choose who they're going to go after. Like you can get in trouble for playing loud music in the middle of the night. But, you know, if it's anything that's perceived as an alarm or anything like that, it's not going to be the same thing. So, you know, you described it earlier as an arms race, but it's only an arms race if there's somebody on the other side. Like saying, no, somebody's got to protect our sensitive ears. We've got to protect our sensitive ears. Yeah, as you say that, I'm realizing the main touchstone I know for the authorities helping with sound is the cops shutting down the loud music at a teenage party, which is not all that important, really. Like, they're just ruining fun.

That's not really doing the thing we're looking for. And my parents were out of town, man. That's, you know, how do I not throw a thing? I'm in a high school movie now. That's who I am. But anyway, the next time you hear a siren from a police car, stop and listen to it. And stop and listen to, like, is there anything different about it?

Is there anything weird about it? You may be on the cutting edge of something they're trying, because they are always trying something, it turns out. Yeah. Folks, that's the main episode for this week. My thanks to Jason Pargin for being a pleasure to talk to every time. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com,

patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic, America's tornado slash nuclear sirens. That's something you may know the basics of if you live in the US, but there are a whole bunch of details to know. And if you're in another country, I really want to know what you think. Visit SIFpod.fun to hear Jason and I cover that,

to hear every other bonus show from the entire run of the series, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring Sirens with us. Here is one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, Siren makers and users are in an arms race with the entire rest of the public. And takeaway number two, siren technology inspired a dangerous new crowd control weapon called the LRAD cannon. And if there's any other takeaway there, it's to simply take sound seriously and help people you know take it seriously as well. It's worth doing. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guest jason is at john dies at the en on twitter

that is john dies at the end minus one letter his new book is entitled zoe punches the future in the dick it's phenomenal i'm telling you and it's out october 13th which is tomorrow if you heard this episode the moment it released. Otherwise, the book is out right now. Search Zoe Punches the Future in the Dick at your favorite bookseller's website, or give them a phone call about that name because then you get to say it out loud, or use this episode's links at sifpod.fun. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones.

We have a couple things from the New York Times, because they've been incredibly helpful in covering the New York Police Department. One article is called Ear-Splitting Symphony with the Maestro in Blue. It's by Kara Buckley and from 2007. Another article is called The New Police Siren, You'll Feel It Coming by Ariel Kaminer in 2011. And then my favorite source I've found on the LRArad canon is from Popular Mechanics. It's a piece called How to Dodge the Sonic Weapon Used by Police. It's by Lin-Pesco Yang, written in June. Find those and more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. The Budos Band's

brand new album is called Long in the Tooth. It's only been out for a couple days. Get your copy at daptonerecords.com. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. See more of Burt's art on Instagram at Burt Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show.

And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.