Why do I find silence unbearable?

Silence is either blood-curdling or blissful, and CrowdScience listener Ziqi doesn’t like it at all. She wonders if it’s because we see it as a sign of danger.

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Is silence blood-curdling or blissful? CrowdScience listener Ziqi finds it intolerable and thinks that there’s a good reason for it – silence is so rare in nature that it could be a signal for danger.

Presenter Marnie Chesterton is on a mission to test Ziqi’s theory, starting with her own tolerance for silence.

She meets acoustic engineer Trevor Cox in the UK to find out whether silence is something we can measure. To do that she steps into an anechoic chamber, a place that’s designed to absorb all sound. In this most silent of silent places, what does silence actually sound like?

Marnie also talks to researcher Eric Pfeifer in Germany, who is exploring the impact of spending time in silence and has evidence to suggest that it could be a positive experience.

And neuroscientist Marta Moita in Portugal tells Marnie about how rats use silence to detect a threat in their environment. Her discoveries may hold the answer to Ziqi’s question.

Presenter Marnie Chesterton

Producer Jo Glanville

Editor Ben Motley
(Photo:Young woman covering ears ignoring loud noise, plugging ears with fingers annoyed by noisy neighbours - stock photo- Credit: Mariia Vitkovska via Getty Images)

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