Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh Clark,
and this is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's there.
She didn't have a sound associated with her because she's
already listening to sound and this is short stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, we're we're doing one on the different color noises,
you know, white noise, brown noise, pink noise.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
And Jerry literally just said.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hey, I'm listening to brown noise right now, which I've
never heard of anyone just listening to noise unless they
were trying to sleep or you know, at a place
where they were trying to block out other noise. But
I think Jerry just said it like helped her relax
or something, or concentrate, would I think she said, yeah,
(00:46):
kind of the same thing I said, but with a
different word.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
I used to try it too during work. It is
supposed to help you focus and at the very at
least drown out other noises. But it just didn't take
with me, at least at first, at least for working.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Get you do like ambient music, now, don't you?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yes? But I get it for sleep for sure, which
is what most people use it for. Jerry's an odd duck.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, and I have been on record before. I'm a
brown nose adherent brown no noise.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I didn't know. Apparently I almost say brown nose.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I think you did say brown nose.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
It can also be called red nose or red noise,
which I didn't know, but brown noise, as I've demonstrated
on the show, if this is white noise, this is
brown noise, and this is pink noise. Wo brown noises deeper,
has lower frequencies, has got more base, minimalizes that higher frequency.
(01:49):
And I didn't really know this, but apparently you can
liken some of these two sounds in nature. And apparently
brown noise is more akin to like a river rapid
or a heavy rainfall or fun.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yes, distant thunder, rumbling thunder even yeah. Yeah, So obviously
that's very alluring. Everybody likes those sounds, So brown noise
makes sense. And because there's also white noise and pink noise,
you think brown noise is just named after the color brown,
like for some reason, maybe it evoked the color brown
and the person who named it wrong. There was a
(02:23):
scientist named Robert Brown from Scotland who in the very
early eighteen hundreds was looking at pollen grains through his
microscope and saw them basically dancing around, and he said,
this is not possible because pollen is not alive, and
he had no idea what this was, but he published
(02:43):
his paper so that future generations could solve it, and
apparently no less than Albert Einstein took it on and
found this was an excellent demonstration of atomic particles interacting
and basically moving ultimately these pollen grains along. And the
reason that it's named after Robert Brown Brown Noise is
(03:04):
because he tried to figure out how to quantify these
random movements, right.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah, and this is a part like, I don't know,
this is way above my scientific pay grade, so I'm
not sure how you go about this. But he devised
this mathematical formula to predict the movements of the pollen
and use that to generate an electronic sound, and that
was Brown Noise.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah. Well, other people who came used his formula to
generate sound. I don't understand why either, but.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, but so the sound of brown noise is literally
the formula for the sound of pollen moving, which is
just kooky to think.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
About it is, but it's pretty cool too. I just
think good good factor the show. I think, yeah, I mean,
it's all maths, so technically you could use math to
translate into other kinds of math, I'm guessing. But just
the idea of, yeah, figuring out how random movements can
turn into a sound is just I love that stuff.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Let's talk about this offline, Chuck while we take a break.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
All right, Well, we just had a great conversation about
(04:27):
brown noise offline, but now we're going to talk about
white noise, the higher cousin to brown noise. Obviously, it
does have a range. It's not like it's just high frequency,
but it's not as base heavy. They have the lows
in there, they have the mids and the highs. But
white noise is used aside from just sleeping a lot
(04:48):
of times with like noise canceling headphones and stuff masking
other sounds. This one is a kid naturally to like
a light rain or a gentle breeze through the trees.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Sounds kind of nice.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
One of the coolest things I learned ever, is that
in Kyoto, Japan, there is a the sound of wind
blowing through bamboo in this one. Park is a protected
heritage site like the sound itself is protected as a
world heritage.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah, and I think I remember talking about that game
I played, the Ghost of Tsushima.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
I think that's what it's called.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
It was the sort of feudal Japanese Warrior PS four
game that I played. That the sounds in that game,
it's a gorgeous game, but the sounds of the wind
blowing through the poppy fields and through the bamboo forests,
like you could tell it was a thing that they
really wanted to capture and they did so cool.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
I think you're confusing that with Cubert.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah, dying, Dying, all right? What about pink noise.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Pink noise is a little different. It's kind of like
the compromise between white noise and brown noise, because the
white noise includes all frequencies. A lot of people are like,
I don't like those high frequencies, especially when I'm trying
to sleep. But I'm not down with just nothing but
the low base heavy stuff. Give me some mid range
and maybe accentuate the lower and higher things a little bit,
(06:16):
but not too much. And if you do that kind
of stuff, you have pink noise.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Yeah, And you know, I just realized I have my
app here I might as well figure out what pink
noise sounds like because I wasn't exactly sure, So we
can just play this if that's right with you.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So that's pink. Yeah, that's white.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, I couldn't kiss well.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
I mean that does sound like ocean waves.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
That's brown, okay, But my app has a bunch of
other colors, and I'm not sure if this is like, hey,
let's just go crazy.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
But there's also purple noise, blue noise?
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Which app are you talking about? Dwell Spring?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
No, no, no, this is a different one.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
But uh yeah, our our friend actually developed a white
noise app, right.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, it's called dwell Spring. The guy who created our website,
Brandon Reid, friend of the show and just friend in general,
and also h one time world record holder Guinness record
holder of the four piggyback Man. Yeah, he created just
a world class sound generator app. And in addition to
all this the different colored noises, he also has things
(07:25):
like a box fan, the airplane cabin sound.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
That's the one I use on my app, but I
forgot Brandon had his. I'm gonna switch over it just
to support.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yeah. It's really great. I mean like it's a really
good app The one that got me was crackling fireplace
in a thunderstorm.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Oh buddy Niche, Yeah, exactly so, but that just put
me to sleep thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
So check out dwell spring. It's it really is a
good app and I think it's everywhere you can get apps.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
I'm sure it is nice work, Brandon. So back to
the noises.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Like as far as which one is best for sleep,
there have been some very middling studies over the years.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
We'll mention a few of them.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
But the problem with these is, you know, in twenty
seventeen they were like, hey, let's get eight people in
here and watch them sleep, or the one in twenty
sixteen they got sixteen people.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
It's just never a lot of folks, you know. I
guess you know.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Bed space is probably not the easiest thing to do
unless people are doing this at home. But at Oxford
in twenty seventeen, they got those eight people and they
said that they fell asleep forty percent faster listening to
white noise, but their overall sleep was about the same.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Okay, but still falling asleep, not being able to fall
asleep as a part of yea insomnia, not being sent
back to sleep as another part of it too, So yeah,
I mean I would I would say that's great. A
year before, somebody decided that they wanted to see how
how much better you could recall vocabulary words if you
(08:54):
slept using pink noise. Yeah, and I guess there was.
They they found that sixteen young adults who slept with
pink noise had slightly improved recollection of vocabulary words. So
they were like and pickle, whereas the other the control
group couldn't ever remember pickle.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
They're like the green thing that was a cucumber one.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
They're like, man, I should have slept with pink noise.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
There was a study in twenty seventeen from Northwestern of
thirteen older adults and they said pink noise provided deeper
sleep overall and improved again ability to recall.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Words and again that word with pickle.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
There was a study in Iran. This is probably the
most robust of all of them. They looked at sixty
elderly coronary patients and they said half of you are
going to sleep with white noise. The other half are
not going to have white noise, but all of you
are in a hospital. And if you've ever tried to
sleep in a hospital, it should be illegal the sounds
(09:57):
that they have, because your sleep just to t rates
the longer you're in the hospital. It's awful. And he
took care of a brother when he was in the
hospital for like three weeks. She would stay there overnight.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
It's tough.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
She would. In addition to just all the beans and
the beeps and all that stuff. The nurses come in
and they're just like, hey, how's it going. It's time
for your blood pressure, like, and it's three in the morning,
and that happens every like, you know, there's something that
wakes up every twenty minutes. And it's just so nuts
that hospitals are just so aloof about that when we
all know how important sleep is. And then that and
(10:32):
then nutrition in hospitals is abysmal as well, I should
say American hospitals. Yeah, I just wanted to go off
on that because it is something that should be fixed
in remedy.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
No, it's it's tough.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
If you've ever had to be at a hospital for
a long time, supporting somebody or just you know, being
the patient, it is hard to sleep. The beds are
not great and they're always throwing on those fluorescent lights
right when you're dozing off.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
It'd be like going to get your tires changed at
sears and they keep tax all over the floor, you know,
like they're trying to they're just sabotaging themselves and doing
what they're supposed to be doing, which is healing.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yeah, that's a good point, and we should say the
results of the study in the control group, they found
the quality of sleep degraded as they obviously spent multiple
nights there with all those beeps and you know, let
me check your blood blood pressures happening. Once they had
the ones who had the white noise, they are quality
of sleep remained basically the same throughout their stay, so
(11:30):
it did not degrade over time.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, not that it's great, Yeah for sure. I mean,
like just put a white noise generator in every single
room or give every patient dwell spring.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, exactly. Or you know, there there's that app, there's
other apps. There are standalone sound machines that you can get.
You know, it's just a little thing that you put
beside your bed or maybe Jerry has beside her desk
at work so she can sleep on the job.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
And then as far as like how to use it, Like, that's.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Up to you, depending on what noise does best for you.
Try different ones out the volume, try some different ones out.
I find that I get my very best sort of
put me to sleep stuff when I run it through
an actual speaker instead of just through my phone speaker,
because you get some more deep bass resonance. Oh yeah,
(12:22):
and my napping trick is I will put a pillow
over my head and face and stick that phone under
there with me, and it creates this sort of echoe,
not echoe, but like a just sort of a it
traps the sound.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
It's like a cavern of sound. And that really gets me.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Out that in three shots of rum.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Yeah, yeah, you know, the afternoon rum.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
You got anything else, man, I got nothing else. I
think that was very nice of you. Gave some great
advice to people who have trouble sleeping, which my heart
goes on. I next people like that for sure. Yeah, yeah,
I guess. I mean short stuff is out.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
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Speaker 2 (13:02):
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