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Julia Barnett Rice Waged an Elitist War on Noise · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
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Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. That's our super producer, the
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Speaker 1: Man the myth Legend, Mr Max Williams. I'm ben noel. Uh.
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Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say, and we've joked about
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Speaker 1: it before in meetings and stuff that we are. We
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Speaker 1: you and me are two guys who are kind of
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Speaker 1: like paid to make noise. Yeah, you can call we do.
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Speaker 1: It's like organized noise. We just sort of expel sounds
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Speaker 1: from our mouths in a certain order as to communicate
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Speaker 1: ideas a k a. Talking yes, right, then it is
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Speaker 1: noise too, or one person's noise is another person's information
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Speaker 1: or music perhaps, you know, I don't know if you're
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Speaker 1: familiar with the genre of harsh noise is a genre involving, uh,
1:15
Speaker 1: you know, using mixers and weird noisemakers to just generate
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Speaker 1: you know, absolute chaos. And some people really like it,
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Speaker 1: you know, like eight people that you know listen to
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Speaker 1: the tapes of this Italian label puts out. I'm kidding
1:30
Speaker 1: them over generalizing harsh noise enthusiast seth there don't pillary me.
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Speaker 1: There's some powerful it's just not for me. Yeah, this
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Speaker 1: is They really are the Harsh Noise Lobby. It's taking
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Speaker 1: Washington by storm. It's like the n r A and
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Speaker 1: the Harsh Noise Lobby run in Washington. Well, one thing's funny.
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Speaker 1: As we were preparing for this episode, this stood out
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Speaker 1: to me. The three of us do you could say,
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Speaker 1: make noise for a living, make mostly word noise for
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Speaker 1: a living, But we're also very particular about the noise
2:00
Speaker 1: is that we like on the show. Uh, my great
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Speaker 1: nemesis as a leafblower, didn't see that froming. And I
2:08
Speaker 1: don't know if this ever happened to you, But have
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Speaker 1: you ever moved into a place that like it's a
2:14
Speaker 1: new neighborhood and all of a sudden you hop on
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Speaker 1: one of those just vicious neighborhood chat forums and there's
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Speaker 1: someone complaining about noise. Has ever happened to you? Yeah?
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Speaker 1: I don't. I stay trying to stay away from those
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Speaker 1: because they're usually a bummer. But I will say, um,
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Speaker 1: my neighbor takes an ungodly amount of time to mow
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Speaker 1: his lawn. I just don't understand. It feels like it
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Speaker 1: takes like half of the day and it's just you know,
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Speaker 1: and he's right there and it's quite a loud lawn mower,
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Speaker 1: and yeah, it does bug me. I think, you know,
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Speaker 1: specifically droning, repetitive noises or something that can genuinely cause
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Speaker 1: like mental duress. Um. You live a little closer to
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Speaker 1: like an urban center than me, you're often having to
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Speaker 1: pause for ambulances and sirens and things like that. Are
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Speaker 1: are super producer Paul mission Control Deck here for stuff
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Speaker 1: that I want you to know, lives in New York
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Speaker 1: City and oft times before we even get started, we're
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Speaker 1: hearing like crazy, crazy sounds coming from his end of
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Speaker 1: the of the of the zoom. I'm a little bit
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Speaker 1: more protective, but this neighbor with his lawnmower, it's crazy.
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Speaker 1: These are all things that the subject to Day's podcast,
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Speaker 1: Julia Barnett Rice, would have had a real problem with.
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Speaker 1: But she lived before the advent of things like gas
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Speaker 1: powered lawnmowers and leaf blowers. She was really more concerned with, like,
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Speaker 1: what was it been tug tug boats a little too
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Speaker 1: toots that tug boats make, and you know, street buskers
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Speaker 1: and all kinds of the riff raff you know in
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Speaker 1: in New York City. Um that disturbed her solitude was
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Speaker 1: she felt that she so greatly deserved. The subject of
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Speaker 1: today's episode is the idea of Julia Barnett Rice launching
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Speaker 1: an elitist war on noise? What does that entail? Ben,
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Speaker 1: How does one launch a war on noise like door
4:00
Speaker 1: on drugs? You can't win? Well, it depends, It depends
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Speaker 1: on how you want to wage this war. And her campaign,
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Speaker 1: her campaign took a little bit of an elitist approach.
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Speaker 1: It's true, Mrs Rice, or doctor Rice, I should say,
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Speaker 1: because she was a physician when she founded something called
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Speaker 1: the Society for Suppression of Unnecessary Noise in nineteen o six.
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Speaker 1: She called noise the quote chief torment of illness, And
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Speaker 1: as we'll see in today's episode, she gathered a cavalcade
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Speaker 1: of very well known influential figures, including like Mark Twain
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Speaker 1: and Thomas Edison, along with hundreds of others, to wage
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Speaker 1: what they wanted to become an international campaign for quote
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Speaker 1: dinless cities. So uh, I love the word din so
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Speaker 1: cities that, somehow, despite the precedent set by all other
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Speaker 1: human cities throughout all moments of civilization, these cities would
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Speaker 1: somehow be quiet. And if you look at it, it's
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Speaker 1: part of an old, old belief, like people are not
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Speaker 1: the most tolerant organisms, right, We stink at group work.
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Speaker 1: We have our own priorities that we often put over
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Speaker 1: the greater good. And as long as you've seen people
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Speaker 1: living in close quarters, you've also seeing people who are
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Speaker 1: tremendously upset about the noise that their neighbors make. So
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Speaker 1: the problems you and I and and probably Max too
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Speaker 1: have had just in the course of the show over
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Speaker 1: the Pandemic are actually age age old problems. And it's
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Speaker 1: amazing how much writing there is about this, like throughout
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Speaker 1: the historical record. Yeah, and the sixteen sixties. Uh. A
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Speaker 1: French philosopher named Ablaze pascal Um had this to say. Ah.
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Speaker 1: He said, quote, the sole cause of man's unhappiness is
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Speaker 1: that he does not know how to stay quietly in
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Speaker 1: his rooms. So that's interesting. I would argue that is
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Speaker 1: not a comment on noise per se, and more just
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Speaker 1: about occupying one's own time, uh properly and in being
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Speaker 1: able to enjoy one's own company. I don't really think
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Speaker 1: he was necessarily nagging noise exactly in that statement. But
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Speaker 1: it is an interesting one. There's more, of course though, right.
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Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, so Pascal great thinker, was he seriously
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Speaker 1: proposing that everybody go in time out to solve the
6:27
Speaker 1: world's problems. Go to your room, everyone, But yeah, you're right,
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Speaker 1: because so back in the days, you know, when the
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Speaker 1: majority of people did not live in cities and much
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Speaker 1: of the world was built on agrarian communities. We know
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Speaker 1: that noise was often a problem that was just attributed
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Speaker 1: to people living in big metropolitan areas like London or Paris.
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Speaker 1: But then when the Industrial Revolution came, more and more
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Speaker 1: people moved to cities. They wanted to work in these
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Speaker 1: new exciting industries. Train whistles were filling the air. There
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Speaker 1: were factory furnaces roaring. You would go down the street
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Speaker 1: and hear people yelling at each other in a panopoly
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Speaker 1: of languages, talking over each other. It was like the
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Speaker 1: worst party ever, because it's a party you had to
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Speaker 1: live at. Uh. There's another German philosopher named Author Schopenhauer
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Speaker 1: who called this quote torture for intellectual people. And he said, look,
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Speaker 1: if you're a thoughtful person, you need a quiet space
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Speaker 1: so that you can do quality work. Schopenhauer was a
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Speaker 1: lot of things, including an intellectual elitist of the highest order.
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Speaker 1: From his point of view, only stupid people like noise,
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Speaker 1: not supernuanced. Yeah he was. I was not a not
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Speaker 1: a fan of harsh noise, um of the harsh noises genre. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: but you know, my whole thing is like, okay, but
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Speaker 1: like you're not entitled to live in a city, right, like,
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Speaker 1: go live in the in the countryside if it's such
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Speaker 1: a problem, especially if you're wealthy like Julia Barnett Rice.
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Speaker 1: But we'll get to that. I just feel like there's
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Speaker 1: a lot of entitlement going on here because the nature
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Speaker 1: of the city is people swarm there, there's hustle and bustle,
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Speaker 1: there's industrialization. It's like, what are you gonna, like just
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Speaker 1: completely stem the flow of of progress just so you can,
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Speaker 1: like you know, write your journals or whatever, like your poetry.
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Speaker 1: Like it doesn't seem quite right any who. So you're right, uh,
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Speaker 1: Chopenhauer was kind of a jerk, definitely elitist, intellectual elitist
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Speaker 1: of the highest order. Like you said, um, we've got
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Speaker 1: some contemplations from say like Charles Dickens. For example, he
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Speaker 1: described feeling quote harassed, worried, wearied, driven nearly mad by
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Speaker 1: street musicians in London and the Times of London on
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Speaker 1: eight fifty six, and a similar critique of the of
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Speaker 1: the these uh, these buskers, saying that they created a noisy, dizzy,
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Speaker 1: scatter brained atmosphere. And this is a lot of all
9:03
Speaker 1: of this stuff that we're pulling from early on. Here
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Speaker 1: is from a really great article in the Smithsonian call
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Speaker 1: why are we always searching for a quiet place? Perhaps
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Speaker 1: the real monster is not noise, they say, but instead
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Speaker 1: our own intolerance of unwanted sound um by Matthew Jordan's
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Speaker 1: of the conversation. Yeah, and we know this was at
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Speaker 1: the very least a transatlantic problem. By the time Dr
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Speaker 1: Rice comes on the scene in nineteen o five, the
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Speaker 1: New York Times was writing about this. There's a there's
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Speaker 1: a wonderful little article you can see from this time
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Speaker 1: where they talk about the problem of noise in New York,
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Speaker 1: which they summarize as a quote bonfire of sound, and
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Speaker 1: they say the culprits are trolley cars, boiler making, elevated roads,
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Speaker 1: subway trains, hoby sirens and various steam whistles, riveting machines,
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Speaker 1: trucks laden with slabs of iron and rails of steel,
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Speaker 1: milk wagons banging over the pavements in the small morning hours,
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Speaker 1: deep breath, hand organs, photographs with Bega photo attachment, fish horns,
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Speaker 1: knife grinding serenades, yet in junkmen, hunsters, and pet lives
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Speaker 1: with cowbell distractions, cracked bells ringing day at night, in
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Speaker 1: churches and chapels. I had to do a Natalie and
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Speaker 1: brute lea pause to get a deep Oh dude, those
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Speaker 1: those hand organs and photographs with megaphone attachment, those are
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Speaker 1: really the bane of urban existence, you know. And it's
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Speaker 1: not to say that living in a city and like
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Speaker 1: communing and just like the drone of the subway in
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Speaker 1: New York for examples, all of these sounds don't get
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Speaker 1: to you. I choose not to live in a city
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Speaker 1: like New York. I choose to live in a place
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Speaker 1: where I can kind of control my environment. I love
10:47
Speaker 1: going to New York. I love traveling to places that
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Speaker 1: are exciting and bustling like this. But after about a
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Speaker 1: week or so, it gets to me too, and I
10:55
Speaker 1: need to high tail it back home to my you know,
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Speaker 1: little humble a quiet ode. But all of these sounds
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Speaker 1: you know that people are regularly exposed to in these
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Speaker 1: large cities, they can actually cause hearing damage over time.
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Speaker 1: There's no question about that. Any noise that's above eighty
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Speaker 1: five decibels from things like that I just described all
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Speaker 1: of that stuff, industrial manufacturing, airports, traffic, subway hand organs,
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Speaker 1: photographs with megaphone attachments, sirens, yesic milk wagons, you know,
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Speaker 1: all those milk wagons, cluck andy clacking across those cobblestone streets. Um,
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Speaker 1: these absolutely can cause hearing loss over time if you
11:35
Speaker 1: don't take care of it. Uh. And you notice that
11:38
Speaker 1: walking around New York most people have their little noise
11:41
Speaker 1: canceling earbuds, and for good reason, because that stuff is
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Speaker 1: really monotonous and can absolutely not only cause hearing loss,
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Speaker 1: because you know, you can kind of lose your marbles
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Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Studies show that the average
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Speaker 1: life of an urban resident will contain a background noise
12:01
Speaker 1: level of about sixty deciples, which is just below what
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Speaker 1: what we described as being uh as leading to hearing loss.
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Speaker 1: But sixty deccibles on its own, according to the Atlantic,
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Speaker 1: is loud enough to raise your blood pressure, your heart rate.
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Speaker 1: It can cause stress. You'll have a hard time concentrating,
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Speaker 1: you can even lose sleep. Want to shout out Kate
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Speaker 1: Wagner's Atlantic article, great title, city noise might be making
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Speaker 1: you sick. It's a true story. And sirens especially. The
12:31
Speaker 1: reason I want to highlight those is because they can
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Speaker 1: hit a hundred and twenty decibels, and that is the
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Speaker 1: human pain threshold according to the World Health Organization. So say,
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Speaker 1: we're gonna introduce you to Rice right now and say
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Speaker 1: what you will about her. We've already made some of
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Speaker 1: our opinions known. It's important to realize that she is
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Speaker 1: not making this problem up. In fact, she is one
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Speaker 1: of the earliest urban anti noise campaigners. She grew up wealthy,
13:07
Speaker 1: she was well educated. Her partner, her husband, was a
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Speaker 1: known businessman and publisher. I love saying known businessman. That
13:16
Speaker 1: makes it so it's something terrible. He's a known businessman
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Speaker 1: and philanderer and philanderer as well, although it's entirely so Rice.
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Speaker 1: Rice lived in Manhattan. She was in a mansion, great
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Speaker 1: view of the Hudson River. And she got mad, Like
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Speaker 1: you said at the top nal, she became livid by
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Speaker 1: the regular passage of tug boats. They would blow their
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Speaker 1: horns in her mind, incessantly up and down the Hudson.
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Speaker 1: She would hear a tug amit not two or three hundred,
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Speaker 1: but two or three thousand twot's and these were, in
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Speaker 1: her mind unnecessary. Now, if you're familiar with how uh
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Speaker 1: tug boats navigated at this time, due to weather conditions,
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Speaker 1: you would need to use the horn so that people
14:03
Speaker 1: would be aware of your presence. Right, So it's a
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Speaker 1: safety thing. But she said, these guys are just saying
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Speaker 1: each other and just can't stay in Hello. Yeah. Again,
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Speaker 1: she's already starting off on like a foundation of kind
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Speaker 1: of elitist ignorance, blissful ignorance. I would argue, because, yeah,
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Speaker 1: this is a system, you know, like it's it's a
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Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's probably specific to you know,
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Speaker 1: freight in in that kind of scenario when close quarters
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Speaker 1: like that. But we know that nautical systems of communication
14:32
Speaker 1: have existed for hundreds of years, you know, in terms
14:35
Speaker 1: of being able to communicate with other vessels uh near
14:38
Speaker 1: or far um. So yeah, this is probably a way
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Speaker 1: to keep things from becoming dangerous in these closer quarters
14:45
Speaker 1: when they're passing through the Hudson Um, which is not
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Speaker 1: a like super narrow body of water, but it's not
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Speaker 1: like the open sea, and there's a lot of tugboat
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Speaker 1: traffic in there, you know. Nowadays it would be more
14:57
Speaker 1: like barges, you know, freight carrying, big old barges. And
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Speaker 1: it's true, it's noisy. I mean, I was just in
15:04
Speaker 1: my hometown of Augusta visiting my mom and the there's
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Speaker 1: like a railroad crossing right in the middle of town,
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Speaker 1: right by a hospital um and I was walking from
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Speaker 1: my car and the thing's blasting through, just honking, laying
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Speaker 1: on that horn, and I'm just like, maybe I'm not
15:19
Speaker 1: in the best moon in the first play that I
15:20
Speaker 1: say out loud to myself, really, really, you really need
15:24
Speaker 1: to do that for this long And I get it.
15:27
Speaker 1: They need to announce their presence so people don't accidentally
15:29
Speaker 1: get pancake by the train if they're like park you know,
15:32
Speaker 1: or they're not like paying attention to the railroad crossing.
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Speaker 1: But it does come a point where it's like, did
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Speaker 1: you need to lay onto it for five whole minutes.
15:39
Speaker 1: I'll tell you another thing that makes it very disconcerting
15:42
Speaker 1: at this time. So now the majority of people across
15:46
Speaker 1: the planet live in densely populated urban areas, right, And
15:51
Speaker 1: it's unusual maybe for us in two to realize that
15:55
Speaker 1: was not always the norm. And I can speak from
15:58
Speaker 1: personal experience. For a time, when I was living in
16:01
Speaker 1: Central America, I was in the middle of nowhere, places
16:04
Speaker 1: where I would go days without hearing a machine other
16:08
Speaker 1: than maybe the distant hum of an airplane. And then
16:11
Speaker 1: when I went back to civilization, I was like dumbfounded.
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Speaker 1: It's it's like, how if you don't eat salt for
16:18
Speaker 1: a while and then you eat fast food, You're like,
16:21
Speaker 1: what where did all this salt come from? The noises
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Speaker 1: astonished me. So it's a real thing. But yes, is
16:27
Speaker 1: she the best casting to have a complaint about this,
16:30
Speaker 1: I don't know, because she's never quarreled with other problems
16:34
Speaker 1: of the human condition, like the need for shelter, clean water,
16:37
Speaker 1: or food. So picture her. She's up in her Italian style,
16:42
Speaker 1: quite opulent mansion, and she says she's smart too, She's
16:46
Speaker 1: quite intelligent. So she says, look, if I, as a
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Speaker 1: lady of means, complained to the great unwashed about the
16:53
Speaker 1: problem I have with noise I may become a public enemy.
16:57
Speaker 1: I need a cause to rally around. I don't know
17:00
Speaker 1: why I made her sound so evil. That's probably unfair,
17:02
Speaker 1: But she says, there are all these hospitals in the city,
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Speaker 1: and many of the people in the hospitals are poor
17:10
Speaker 1: and sick, So why don't we stick up for them.
17:16
Speaker 1: We won't tell people that I'm mainly mad about my mansion.
17:20
Speaker 1: Will tell people that I'm trying to help the poor.
17:23
Speaker 1: That's pronounced pe w e r Okay, then I mean
17:27
Speaker 1: I I think I get what you're putting down here,
17:30
Speaker 1: and I think I'm on the same way. You feel
17:32
Speaker 1: like she was using this philanthropic angle as a bit
17:36
Speaker 1: of a subterfuge when all she really wanted was to
17:39
Speaker 1: quiet down the noise around her opulent palatial estate. Oh yeah, yes, sir,
17:44
Speaker 1: and her her husband, Remember publisher Mr Rice, partners with her,
17:49
Speaker 1: and in nineteen o six he publishes a piece that
17:52
Speaker 1: she's written an effort to suppress noise, and she starts
17:56
Speaker 1: by quote Schopenhauer, who we mentioned earlier, another fellow elitist, saying,
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Speaker 1: there are people, it is true, nay, a great many
18:05
Speaker 1: people who smile at such sounds because they are not
18:08
Speaker 1: sensitive to noise. But they're just the very people who
18:11
Speaker 1: are also not sensitive to argument or thought, or poetry
18:14
Speaker 1: or art anywhere in a word, to any kind of
18:17
Speaker 1: intellectual influence. Gross. What Wow, what a reductive way of
18:25
Speaker 1: looking at things. That's absurd, that's ignorant. I'm sorry, that's
18:30
Speaker 1: just radicious. Who are those people she's talking about? Poor people?
18:36
Speaker 1: She's talking about poor people. I mean that that's just
18:39
Speaker 1: who she's or or you know, people who are like
18:41
Speaker 1: subhuman in some way. I mean, she's describing these poor,
18:44
Speaker 1: borish oaths who can't enjoy you know, florid poetry and
18:50
Speaker 1: and uh and and beautiful chamber music. Instead they just
18:54
Speaker 1: get their rocks off listening to the sounds of anvils
18:56
Speaker 1: or something. You know, It's like, it's weird. And again
19:00
Speaker 1: when I say she is specifically describing blue collar workers, specifically,
19:06
Speaker 1: again that tugboat workers, who are you know, the longshoreman
19:11
Speaker 1: of of the era. Essentially right, And the piece goes
19:14
Speaker 1: on to further elaborate her efforts to ban it's whistling,
19:20
Speaker 1: you know, these tug boat toots or whatever, and Rice
19:24
Speaker 1: kind of casts herself as this like crusader of of
19:28
Speaker 1: of quietude, this um you know, like, what do you
19:32
Speaker 1: like some sort of like winged avenger of of order
19:36
Speaker 1: and uh and solitude and an enemy of chaos and cacophony. Yeah. Yeah,
19:42
Speaker 1: And so she had an order of operations first, as
19:46
Speaker 1: is a pattern for many well to do, very wealthy people,
19:49
Speaker 1: she goes through the legal system. She says, Okay, I'm
19:53
Speaker 1: gonna go to the New York City Collector's Office Law Division,
19:58
Speaker 1: and I found a clause in their policies that say
20:05
Speaker 1: they can punish any licensed tug boat officer, specifically that
20:10
Speaker 1: they had judged to be uh conducting, negligence or unskillfulness,
20:15
Speaker 1: or to be guilty of misconduct. So she said, let
20:18
Speaker 1: me tell you guys this, those tugboat horns, those countless
20:23
Speaker 1: professional misconduct. The US local Steamboat Inspectors weighed in and
20:27
Speaker 1: basically said nasan. So no dice with that one. So
20:33
Speaker 1: she goes to the cops and she says, I want
20:35
Speaker 1: to start a petition. We'll get We'll get poor and
20:39
Speaker 1: rich people alike to sign off on this and say
20:42
Speaker 1: the noise is out of control, it's a problem. But
20:45
Speaker 1: we're going to send v I P. S. Movers and
20:48
Speaker 1: shakers early nineteen hundreds New York versions of Instagram influencers
20:54
Speaker 1: to get these to get these signatures, wealthy high, monkey,
20:58
Speaker 1: Muck's hospital, etcetera. You name it, important people. But the
21:03
Speaker 1: inspectors are still saying Na son Nason. Indeed, she's like
21:08
Speaker 1: a combination of like the original or the proto Karen.
21:11
Speaker 1: And I know, sorry for all people who actually named Karen,
21:14
Speaker 1: who are lovely people. I know that term has been
21:16
Speaker 1: kind of co opted and for that I am sorry,
21:19
Speaker 1: but it is what it is. Um. And also like
21:22
Speaker 1: she's kind of like Clint Eastwood in Grand Torino. She's
21:24
Speaker 1: very good off my lawn and no, it's weird. So
21:27
Speaker 1: what happens next? She starts to get a little traction,
21:30
Speaker 1: doesn't she? At first she's kind of somewhat shrugged off
21:34
Speaker 1: or her complaints fallen deaf ears um. But then she
21:38
Speaker 1: gets a bit of a win, right, well she does.
21:42
Speaker 1: First she uh, she does, to her credit, interviews some
21:45
Speaker 1: of the actual tugboat workers, the people she's vilified in
21:49
Speaker 1: the press, and they come back to and they say, look,
21:52
Speaker 1: we're not doing this for funzies. If we couldn't use
21:56
Speaker 1: our if we couldn't use our sonic equipment. We have
22:00
Speaker 1: to have an extra employee just to act as a messenger,
22:04
Speaker 1: and then we still lose a lot of time, and
22:07
Speaker 1: then we wouldn't be able to communicate with the people
22:09
Speaker 1: on the barge. We have to whistle to wake up
22:11
Speaker 1: the crew. And you can't expect, like Dr Rice, you
22:14
Speaker 1: can't expect people to legitimately stay up all day and
22:18
Speaker 1: all night just on the off chance someone waves at them.
22:21
Speaker 1: Our system works. And this is where she gets her win.
22:25
Speaker 1: She says, fine whatever. She goes to academics in various
22:30
Speaker 1: maritime disciplines and also to even more higher ups, and
22:34
Speaker 1: they endorse her and they start researching her claim that
22:38
Speaker 1: sound is bad. Finally, the National Board of Steam Navigation
22:43
Speaker 1: passes this resolution. It's pretty simple. It just prohibits unnecessary
22:48
Speaker 1: whistle blowing. The tugboat workers follow these rules for maybe
22:53
Speaker 1: two days, and then they find it's impossible to do
22:56
Speaker 1: their jobs. Also, this National Board of Steam Navigation has
23:00
Speaker 1: no realistic way of enforcing this because you can't stop
23:03
Speaker 1: all the horns so yeah, or identify which individual that
23:08
Speaker 1: came from. Once you kind of become part of like
23:10
Speaker 1: this giant body of noise, it's very very difficult to
23:14
Speaker 1: uh isolate which which which which tug boat was tooting
23:19
Speaker 1: at what particular moment. I love that word, by the way,
23:21
Speaker 1: just it just gives me a little giggle every time it. Yeah,
23:25
Speaker 1: I love it. Boy does it ever? But but but
23:28
Speaker 1: here's the thing again, totally misinformed in the first place,
23:31
Speaker 1: because Rice was like, this is unnecessary noise. Well, says you,
23:37
Speaker 1: but what about the tugboat workers, you know, who don't
23:40
Speaker 1: want to have a collision, you know, or need to
23:42
Speaker 1: be able to communicate something to one of their you know, cohorts.
23:47
Speaker 1: They would argue, this noise is absolutely necessary. Yeah, absolutely that.
23:51
Speaker 1: And they were arguing it was totally necessary. And so
23:56
Speaker 1: Rice tries to step it back a little and she
23:59
Speaker 1: puts out a law up. Oh wait, by the way,
24:01
Speaker 1: here comes the leafblower. I don't know if you guys
24:04
Speaker 1: can hear it, but Max, let's leave it in. This
24:06
Speaker 1: is illustrative of the points. Yeah. So so she says, Okay,
24:10
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to use a little bit of nuance.
24:13
Speaker 1: She wants a law passed that restricts all but a
24:18
Speaker 1: few scenarios that allow tugboats to use their whistles or
24:21
Speaker 1: their horns and she goes to the Department of Commerce
24:24
Speaker 1: and Labor and she says, I want I want a
24:28
Speaker 1: toot cop. Basically, I want someone patrolling the waterways to
24:32
Speaker 1: make sure these ruffians aren't using their horns. And everyone said,
24:38
Speaker 1: no way, that's not gonna happen. So she goes to
24:41
Speaker 1: one last ditch effort, and this is where she finds success.
24:46
Speaker 1: There's an outfit called the American Association and Masters, Mates
24:49
Speaker 1: and Pilots. They had a meeting of about ten thousand people,
24:54
Speaker 1: huge crowd, and she gets them to pass the resolution
24:58
Speaker 1: ending the quote use of indiscriminate and above all noisy signaling.
25:03
Speaker 1: This gets replicated at the federal level under something called
25:07
Speaker 1: the nine seven Bennett Act, which is the very first
25:10
Speaker 1: anti noise bill ever ratified by Congress. And you would
25:16
Speaker 1: think maybe they agreed because she had put this battina
25:20
Speaker 1: of the poor and the sick over her real goal here,
25:24
Speaker 1: but not really. Instead, they found that signaling was actually
25:28
Speaker 1: hurting tugboat navigation and it was making a confusing for
25:33
Speaker 1: the same reason we mentioned earlier, was making confusing to
25:36
Speaker 1: enter and exit the harbor at night. It was making
25:39
Speaker 1: it unsafe because again, you can have a hard time
25:43
Speaker 1: telling which boat is tooting win. She also was super
25:47
Speaker 1: antagonistic to the tugboat workers because she was already starting
25:51
Speaker 1: off on a pretty pretty irritated you know. So she
25:54
Speaker 1: saw those guys as like personal nemessies, personal enemies instead
26:00
Speaker 1: folks she could collaborate with. She thought the mariners had
26:05
Speaker 1: knowingly deviously stolen her peace of mind. So that's why
26:10
Speaker 1: that's why when we look back, she seems kind of
26:13
Speaker 1: elitist and belligerent. But she also said a precedent other
26:20
Speaker 1: campaigns and other cities started springing up. So this is
26:23
Speaker 1: kind of that wind that I was alluding to, and
26:25
Speaker 1: Rice is riding high off of this. She organizes um
26:30
Speaker 1: this society that we talked about, uh and starts to
26:34
Speaker 1: you know, gather supporters, and she needs Ben a figurehead,
26:40
Speaker 1: you know, because at this point, yeah, she's definitely the
26:42
Speaker 1: loudest voice in the quiet room, but she needs someone
26:46
Speaker 1: that's famous to carry this torch with her at the
26:50
Speaker 1: very least in in name and reputation, if not actively,
26:54
Speaker 1: you know, being involved in the day to day of
26:56
Speaker 1: the organization. And she finds this in Mark Twain just
27:01
Speaker 1: really interesting considering his background as like a steamboat captain
27:05
Speaker 1: or a steamboat worker. Who how why is he on
27:08
Speaker 1: board with this cause? I don't understand you think he
27:10
Speaker 1: would relate more to the the tugboat workers than to
27:13
Speaker 1: to this, Uh, this woman complaining about noise? Yeah? How
27:17
Speaker 1: did he get from someone who worked in that industry
27:21
Speaker 1: to a guy who said, I'll help you tell kids
27:23
Speaker 1: to be quiet when they're walking or near hospitals? He wrote,
27:28
Speaker 1: He wrote an acceptance letter to her. Here's the dexert.
27:31
Speaker 1: I have an abundance of sympathy for this movement while
27:35
Speaker 1: with young guy, I would like to work for it. Now.
27:37
Speaker 1: Thank you for the compliment and pay me, and shall
27:40
Speaker 1: be happy to have my name used as president of
27:42
Speaker 1: the children's hospital brand. Sincerely, yours, Mark Quain. So these
27:47
Speaker 1: kids would get swag if they agreed to this anti
27:51
Speaker 1: noise pledge, they would get buttons, and the buttons would
27:55
Speaker 1: uh were mentor mind kids to be quiet around hospitals.
28:00
Speaker 1: They're in black and white and at the center you
28:04
Speaker 1: can see the word. The word is just humanity. So
28:13
Speaker 1: this is this is a kind of a weird thing.
28:16
Speaker 1: We also want to introduce a historian, Emily Thompson, who
28:20
Speaker 1: had a book come out called the Soundscape of Modernity,
28:24
Speaker 1: in which she talks about how there was a lot
28:26
Speaker 1: of classism in these laws. Yeah. I think this has
28:29
Speaker 1: been the acts we've been grinding this whole time, and
28:31
Speaker 1: it feels pretty obvious. But um, she lays it out
28:35
Speaker 1: in the Soundscape of Modernity and refers to the idea
28:39
Speaker 1: that these noise, these anti noise laws were essentially targeting
28:45
Speaker 1: the people that that Rice claimed to want to protect,
28:50
Speaker 1: the relatively powerless, Uh, folks who were seeing as some
28:55
Speaker 1: sort of I don't know, some sort of blight on
28:59
Speaker 1: the plant said, you know, middle and upper class kind
29:03
Speaker 1: of vision of a of a well ordered city. Uh.
29:06
Speaker 1: That quote right there is actually directly from the Soundscape
29:10
Speaker 1: of modernity. I like that, Uh, this idea that they
29:12
Speaker 1: were somehow standing in the way of this American dream.
29:16
Speaker 1: Right there was the nineteen o eight General Order of
29:19
Speaker 1: forty seven the New York City Police Commissioner Thomas Bingham
29:22
Speaker 1: issued that targeted the general idea of street ruckus uh,
29:27
Speaker 1: much more than port noise, which is as far been
29:30
Speaker 1: kind of what we've been talking about the idea of
29:33
Speaker 1: like you know, newsboys, uh and street vendors and all
29:37
Speaker 1: of that. People on roller skates, buskers, car horns in
29:41
Speaker 1: the like uh, flat wheeled street cars. The law even
29:45
Speaker 1: went on to ban uh noises like that resulted from
29:49
Speaker 1: people's jobs, like construction work, for example. And these kinds
29:53
Speaker 1: of law started popping up all over the country in
29:55
Speaker 1: places like Boston and Arkansas, even San Francisco and and yeah, exactly,
30:01
Speaker 1: these laws were targeting folks who were working outdoors, you know,
30:06
Speaker 1: like who were trying to eke out a living in
30:09
Speaker 1: a very you know, dog eat dog situation, and a
30:12
Speaker 1: lot of these urban centers, Yeah, people who had to
30:15
Speaker 1: work in the street. And often these people were immigrants.
30:20
Speaker 1: They didn't have a lot of agency and the legal system.
30:24
Speaker 1: Their rights were routinely stamped upon, you know, doing part
30:27
Speaker 1: to racism, doing part to classism, you name it. Bad
30:30
Speaker 1: things happened to them. There were even laws that that
30:34
Speaker 1: got pretty discriminatory, like peddlers in Chicago for a time
30:39
Speaker 1: could only be in certain parts of the city and
30:42
Speaker 1: they could not shout as a way of advertising, so
30:45
Speaker 1: you no more extra extra get your paper here kind
30:49
Speaker 1: of things. Uh. The courts upheld this law in nineteen
30:52
Speaker 1: eleven and the peddlers went on strike. Then they rioted
30:57
Speaker 1: and just wrecked part of the city. The police broke
31:00
Speaker 1: the strike violently as they did back in the day,
31:03
Speaker 1: and soon there were no more vendors on the streets.
31:07
Speaker 1: More and more laws passed as the decades went on,
31:10
Speaker 1: more and more noise laws, and eventually this paved the way.
31:19
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for cars because cut Yeah, no, no apologies, Max,
31:25
Speaker 1: because cars were now the kind of the dominant species
31:31
Speaker 1: of the ecosystem of the American street. Uh, and they
31:35
Speaker 1: of course create their own noise. So Rice didn't really
31:39
Speaker 1: solve the problem so much as she set up the
31:42
Speaker 1: stage where a different kind of noise. And this is um,
31:46
Speaker 1: every time we talked about this, the rise of cars.
31:48
Speaker 1: I want to do a history of jaywalking one day.
31:51
Speaker 1: It's some of the most successful propaganda ever. I think
31:54
Speaker 1: I may have done it on car stuff. Anyway, just
31:55
Speaker 1: listen to that episode. Well, I don't remember where we
31:59
Speaker 1: did it. Um, we've definitely discussed the idea of jaywalking
32:03
Speaker 1: was meant to basically reduce the idea of like a
32:08
Speaker 1: pedestrian situation, because it was like in Favor, it was like,
32:12
Speaker 1: you know, rods are now for cars, not for people.
32:14
Speaker 1: So jaywalking was again kind of this like weird law
32:18
Speaker 1: that allowed cops to harass people for walking exactly. It
32:22
Speaker 1: was vilifying the pedestrian. But cars also may have brought
32:28
Speaker 1: the first serious blow to Rice's anti noise movement because
32:34
Speaker 1: the automobile was unstoppable. It made a lot of noise.
32:38
Speaker 1: It drowned out protests on either side. It's funny too,
32:43
Speaker 1: because there's a bit of irony in the history here.
32:46
Speaker 1: You know, one of the people who may have driven
32:50
Speaker 1: the first motor car in Manhattan was Isaac Rice, Julia's husband,
32:57
Speaker 1: and he loved racing his agend Noisy Shane through Central Park.
33:03
Speaker 1: And the problem was, like, I don't know, I think
33:07
Speaker 1: this was an impossible task from the get go, even
33:10
Speaker 1: if the motivations weren't as selfish as it appears they
33:13
Speaker 1: actually are. But the big, big problem New Republic has
33:17
Speaker 1: a great article about this. The big, big problem with
33:19
Speaker 1: fighting unnecessary or loud noise is that the people who
33:25
Speaker 1: are making the noise. I don't think it's unnecessary. It
33:29
Speaker 1: all depends from your perspective. The guy wants to sell
33:31
Speaker 1: the papers, someone wants to take a joy ride. Someone
33:34
Speaker 1: doesn't want their tugboat to wreck. That seems like three
33:38
Speaker 1: very necessary things a million percent. I mean, especially the
33:41
Speaker 1: like things that involved safety for the workers and those
33:46
Speaker 1: around them. Maybe the newsies could you know, keep their
33:49
Speaker 1: voices down a little bit, wasn't waving the thing in
33:50
Speaker 1: the air. And now if you really have to shout
33:52
Speaker 1: again here I am playing the part of the curmudgeon
33:55
Speaker 1: ley city dweller that's just tired of all this stuff.
33:57
Speaker 1: But it is necessary, and it is the price pay
34:00
Speaker 1: of living in a city where there's like a lot
34:02
Speaker 1: going on. Uh So, again, I would argue that a
34:04
Speaker 1: lot of these like you know, naysayers should probably just
34:08
Speaker 1: move into the country they can afford it, get it,
34:10
Speaker 1: get a country house, you know, get a place in
34:12
Speaker 1: the Hampton's or whatever. I mean, this is just what
34:16
Speaker 1: comes along with living in a place where you're literally
34:19
Speaker 1: everyone's stacked on top of each other, you know. I mean,
34:22
Speaker 1: there's really no way around it. This idea of what
34:24
Speaker 1: was the word they used, ben the dinless city. That's
34:28
Speaker 1: that's that's imaginary. It's not possoble. Yeah, it's very it's
34:34
Speaker 1: very true, nal and we know that other people have
34:37
Speaker 1: tried similar things. In the decades. Sets uh anti noise
34:42
Speaker 1: organizations became a planetary thing, and after World War One,
34:47
Speaker 1: the war against noise hit a new fever pitch UH.
34:51
Speaker 1: People were targeting things like the automobile horn in Paris
34:57
Speaker 1: and London and Chicago. It was banned in the nineteen twenties.
35:00
Speaker 1: In the nineteen thirties there was a Noiseless Nights campaign
35:04
Speaker 1: in New York where they would station these noise measuring
35:08
Speaker 1: devices across the city, and then New York past law
35:12
Speaker 1: multiple laws, like dozens of laws over the x UH
35:17
Speaker 1: like the next few decades to try to shut down
35:21
Speaker 1: really loud noises, and by the nineteen seventies, governments, not
35:25
Speaker 1: just Uncle Sam world governments were treating noise as environmental pollution,
35:30
Speaker 1: which it really is. I mean, to be fair, Rice
35:33
Speaker 1: may not have had the most noble of motivations, but
35:36
Speaker 1: she was onto something because you know you and I
35:39
Speaker 1: just pointed out earlier, the science is there that noise
35:42
Speaker 1: can do lasting harm to people exposed to it isn't
35:46
Speaker 1: if I know that Rice's husband, once he got his
35:48
Speaker 1: hand on a sweet ride, he was like totally over
35:51
Speaker 1: the whole anti noise things. I say not as I
35:54
Speaker 1: do exactly. It's like, if people knew how cool this
35:58
Speaker 1: was everybody do it? You know that's where Yeah, very
36:02
Speaker 1: much so. But it's not for you poors, you know,
36:05
Speaker 1: it's just for me and my joy rides around the
36:08
Speaker 1: city with my leather driving gloves. You're you're right, Ben,
36:11
Speaker 1: I mean there is some merit to this stuff, and
36:14
Speaker 1: again it is thankfully nowadays, you know, you can get
36:17
Speaker 1: these very very effective noise canceling headphones or earbuds that
36:22
Speaker 1: use technology to filter out a lot of frequencies. Uh.
36:26
Speaker 1: And it's actually I was just in we were just
36:28
Speaker 1: in Austin together and I was wearing those while walking around,
36:32
Speaker 1: or I think we were in in a barcade and
36:34
Speaker 1: I was just listening to some podcast stuff for work
36:38
Speaker 1: and I walked outside, I took them out, and it's
36:40
Speaker 1: like it's just like the world opens up and it's
36:44
Speaker 1: very jarring. Just as I did it, this like line
36:46
Speaker 1: of Hary Krishna dudes playing like the most jarring jangly
36:51
Speaker 1: tambourines and pots and pan banging kind of sound that
36:55
Speaker 1: ever passed right by me. And I almost bowled me
36:57
Speaker 1: over because I went from this control rolled kind of
37:00
Speaker 1: you know, measured quiet to just the world was on
37:04
Speaker 1: fire with noise. So I get it. It can be jarring,
37:07
Speaker 1: but again, nowadays it's a lot easier to filter that out.
37:10
Speaker 1: And I think it's probably the saving grace of a
37:12
Speaker 1: lot of people that live in super noisy places like
37:15
Speaker 1: New York and London. Uh, is this noise canceling technology? Yeah,
37:19
Speaker 1: And that's like, that's why I go back to that
37:21
Speaker 1: Central America example, because I get it. I was I
37:25
Speaker 1: was astounded, like I could not hang out for a while.
37:28
Speaker 1: I had to get to a quiet place and like
37:30
Speaker 1: gradually introduce myself to city life again the way that
37:33
Speaker 1: a DPC diver has to gradually reach the surface to
37:37
Speaker 1: avoid the bends. And really, you know, another important point
37:41
Speaker 1: about this is it's targeting the noise of individual people,
37:46
Speaker 1: like Wagnon points out in the Atlantic article, doesn't really
37:49
Speaker 1: do much. It doesn't address the real problem. The real
37:52
Speaker 1: problem is environmental noise, transportation, industrial activity. That's the kind
37:58
Speaker 1: of stuff that can really call us lasting harm. That's
38:01
Speaker 1: what has to be targeted if someone wants these campaigns
38:05
Speaker 1: to be successful. And I gotta tell you, I gotta
38:08
Speaker 1: tell you I'm very biased with this because I don't
38:10
Speaker 1: know if you guys know this, but I have miss aphonia,
38:14
Speaker 1: which means that certain certain noises just drive me up
38:19
Speaker 1: the wall, through the ceiling, out of town and into orbit.
38:23
Speaker 1: Mouth noises in particular snoring, eating, you know, chewing loudly,
38:27
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. So I also am really well
38:30
Speaker 1: aware that not everybody likes every noise. It's just when
38:35
Speaker 1: you get to the idea of policing other people's individual behavior,
38:41
Speaker 1: you have to ask yourself if you're really solving a problem.
38:44
Speaker 1: And I'm starting to wonder if Rice herself may have
38:46
Speaker 1: had miss aphonia just because of the way she targeted
38:49
Speaker 1: tugboats in particular. Absolutely, And you also have to decide
38:52
Speaker 1: how far are you willing to go, because you know,
38:55
Speaker 1: once you open up this kind of thinking and then
38:59
Speaker 1: these types of law, it's like, we're not going to
39:01
Speaker 1: arrest until we live in a completely noise protected world,
39:07
Speaker 1: and that's just not possible. So at the beginning, I said,
39:09
Speaker 1: is the is the war on noise like the war
39:12
Speaker 1: on drugs, and that it's unwinnable. I would argue, yes,
39:15
Speaker 1: noise is part of life. You really can't get rid
39:18
Speaker 1: of it entirely. And I think you're totally ripe. And
39:20
Speaker 1: this is one person's crusade because of a personal vendetta
39:25
Speaker 1: that then kind of became um falsely, I would argue,
39:30
Speaker 1: wrapped up in some greater good argument, But I think
39:33
Speaker 1: you're right then. I think it all came down to
39:34
Speaker 1: she was just annoyed by the thing and therefore wasn't
39:37
Speaker 1: gonna rest until you know, she solved the problem for her.
39:41
Speaker 1: And with that, this episode of Ridiculous History Noise draws
39:47
Speaker 1: to a close. We hope you enjoyed it. Uh big,
39:50
Speaker 1: big thanks to that leaf blower out there who is
39:53
Speaker 1: just trying to do his job. Big big thanks to
39:56
Speaker 1: Mr Max Williams, are super producer, and uh big thanks.
39:59
Speaker 1: In a advance, by the way, breaking news to some
40:03
Speaker 1: guests we're going to have on in the near future,
40:05
Speaker 1: brand new guests from a brand new show that just
40:09
Speaker 1: came Well. Yeah, Bill and Mark from Ridiculous News, good
40:13
Speaker 1: friends of ours. The show is fantastic. You don't have
40:16
Speaker 1: to take our word for it. Just tune in next week.
40:18
Speaker 1: You're gonna hear all about it with those guys. Yeah,
40:21
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a solid hang very much looking forward
40:23
Speaker 1: to uh. In the meantime, if you wish to find
40:25
Speaker 1: us on the internet, you may do so by joining
40:27
Speaker 1: our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians. Can also find us on
40:31
Speaker 1: Instagram or a Ridiculous History, or you can find us
40:33
Speaker 1: as individual human people on the Internet. I'm on Instagram
40:36
Speaker 1: pretty much exclusively at how Now, Noel Brown, Ben Bolan,
40:39
Speaker 1: how about yourself? Yes, yes, you can get a behind
40:43
Speaker 1: the scene sneak peek at the various things I'm working
40:45
Speaker 1: on my various misadventures by going to Twitter where I'm
40:49
Speaker 1: at Ben Bolan hs W or you can find me
40:52
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Ben Bowling bo w L. I n
40:57
Speaker 1: had to remember how to spell my last name. There.
40:59
Speaker 1: Example of Twitter thing recently, Max, you saw this, I
41:03
Speaker 1: just started writing a list of bands for people who
41:06
Speaker 1: want to sleep in, bands like Rage Against the Coffee Machine,
41:10
Speaker 1: System of a Down Blanket and of course Green Day Bed.
41:14
Speaker 1: Uh so next I know, the list kept going. I
41:18
Speaker 1: should be doing my job. But Max, you're you're on
41:20
Speaker 1: Twitter as well, aren't you? Are? The rumors true? Yes?
41:23
Speaker 1: I was on Twitter reading that and I literally was
41:25
Speaker 1: looking at him like, isn't Ben I know what Ben's
41:28
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing right now, and he's twitting this instead.
41:32
Speaker 1: But yes, you can find me on Twitter at at
41:34
Speaker 1: at l Underscore Max Williams. You can see stuff about
41:37
Speaker 1: you know shows I'm working on you know, both here
41:38
Speaker 1: and for Ephemeral. And if you're ever interested in a
41:41
Speaker 1: good you know episode about some silence and stuff, or
41:45
Speaker 1: at least humans ever wanting quest for it, we have
41:49
Speaker 1: an episode called the Sounds of Silence from season one
41:52
Speaker 1: of Ephemeral. It is an excellent little check out of
41:54
Speaker 1: the kind of on this topic right here. Fantastic fantastic.
41:58
Speaker 1: Maybe we end on a slightly positively because I was
42:00
Speaker 1: gonna say, ask people what their worst sounds are, but no,
42:03
Speaker 1: how about we do this? What are some of your
42:06
Speaker 1: favorite sounds? Folks? Can't wait to hear from you. Let
42:09
Speaker 1: us know. We'll see you next time Fox. For more
42:19
Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.