Sounds Wild and Broken

"Finalist"

"Yes. Sound is a way that many animals communicate with each other and much of the information it is stuff that we can’t hear. For example, he talks about these insects, treehoppers, who communicate in ultrasound and you can only hear them with special microphones—but when you do, they are incredibly loud. He also talks about how the ocean is connected over very long distances by invisible conduits he calls “deep sound channels.” People thing the ocean is uniform, but it has zones called channels, whose edges are created by differences in salinity. Whales deep underwater can communicate over hundreds of miles by singing in these channels. Sound bounces off the edges and travels continuously, in one direction, basically sending sound that you can hear around the world. Whales are constantly communicating through these things. One part that really stuck with me was how sound and human health are related. If you hear sounds above a certain level, your heartbeat will go up and your stress levels will go up. Some of this is unconscious. So it made me think about the sound levels around me, and how a lot of underrepresented communities often have highways built right next to them. He gives the example of Harlem in New York, which has a highway going right through it. Often these places use old, loud, diesel buses rather than the electric buses, too. So the sound levels are higher, pollution is higher, it’s a lot harder for people to focus. The use of sound to oppress under-represented groups was sobering and eye-opening. There are times when Haskell’s writing becomes almost poetic. I thought that was great, it’s very different from a typical science book. Yes, there are other science awards that only emphasize the science. And we could tell that Haskell and some of the others really paid attention to the literary aspect."