By Katie Shepherd Willa Paskin
White noise has a very precise technical definition, but people use the term loosely, to describe all sorts of washes of sound鈥攕ynthetic hums, or natural sounds like a rainstorm or crashing waves鈥攖hat can be used to mask other sounds. Twenty years ago, if you鈥檇 told someone white noise was a regular part of your life, they would have found that unusual. Nowadays, it鈥檚 likely they use it themselves or know someone who does. The global white noise business is valued at $1.3 billion; TikTok is full of people trumpeting its powers; and Spotify users alone listen to three million hours of it daily. Far more of these sounds already exist than any one person could need鈥攐r use. And yet, more keep coming.
Looking out at this uncanny ocean of seemingly indistinguishable noises, we wanted to see if it was possible to put a human face on it; to understand why there is so much of it, and what motivates the people trying to soothe our desperate ears with sounds you鈥檙e not really supposed to hear.
In this episode, you鈥檒l hear from Elan Ullendorff, who writes the illuminating Substack Escape the Algorithm; St茅phane Pigeon, founder of myNoise; Brandon Reed, who runs Dwellspring; and Mack Haygood, author of Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control and host of the podcast Phantom Power.We鈥檇 also like to thank Dan Berlau, Sarah Anderson, and Ashley Carman.
This episode was written by Katie Shepherd, Evan Chung, and Willa Paskin. It was produced by Katie Shepherd. We produce Decoder Ring with Max Freedman, and Evan is also our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.
If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.
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Sources for This Episode
Anderson, Sarah. The Lost Art of Silence: Reconnecting to the Power and Beauty of Quiet, Shambhala Publications, 2023.
Blum, Dani. 鈥淐an Brown Noise Turn Off Your Brain?鈥 New York Times, Sep. 23, 2022.
Carman, Ashley. 鈥淪potify Looked to Ban White Noise Podcasts to Become More Profitable,鈥 Bloomberg, Aug. 17, 2023.
Carman, Ashley. 鈥淪potify to Cut Back Promotional Spending on White Noise Podcasts,鈥 Bloomberg, Sep. 1, 2023.
Hagood, Mack. Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control, Duke University Press, 2019.
Pickens, Thomas A., Sara P. Khan, and Daniel J. Berlau. 鈥淲hite noise as a possible therapeutic option for children with ADHD,鈥 Complementary Therapies in Medicine, Feb. 2019.
Riva, Michele Augusto, Vincenzo Cimino, and Stefano Sanchirico. 鈥淕ian Lorenzo Bernini鈥檚 17th century white noise machine,鈥 The Lancet Neurology, Oct. 2017.