You're Too Loud!

04/13/23 • 34 min

You Are A Weirdo (with Historian Doug Sofer, Ph.D.)

We take for granted our present-day ability to make ourselves as obnoxiously loud as we want to be. Yet being able to pump up the volume of an individual voice—to make it so deafening that it can easily reach all 140,000 ears of a stadium full of 70,000 people—is a brand-new development in the big picture of the human past.

Vibe with your favorite professional historian on this sonic journey through thousands of years. This amped-up episode brings you around the world, from the cities of ancient Greece and the Yucatán peninsula, through the expansive countryside of North America. Experience how Europe’s Scientific Revolution ultimately changed humans’ relations with sound itself. And discover some of the different, creative, occasionally bizarre ways through which people tried to raise their voices for the thousands of years prior to electronic amplification.

Learn more about this rogue, underdog, Hail Mary pass of a project at findyourselfinhistory.com !

Support the show

Thanks for listening! To learn more about this history project, check out findyourselfinhistory.com.

Learn more about this rogue, underdog, Hail Mary pass of a project at findyourselfinhistory.com !

Support the show

Thanks for listening! To learn more about this history project, check out findyourselfinhistory.com.

Previous Episode

You Ask Leading Questions

Studying history can help you become a better, more informed leader. Yet a lot of so-called advice from 'history' out there tends to oversimplify the historical record. History is big and complex; reducing this enormous field to a bunch of digestible soundbites makes it appear small and simple.
So what would happen if we tried to follow historical leadership advice without picking and choosing examples or separating those select tidbits from their original contexts? Would that advice still make sense? In this episode we answer that very question. And we discover that the real lessons of history are deeper, richer, messier and stranger—and far more profound—than some folks would have you believe.

Learn more about this rogue, underdog, Hail Mary pass of a project at findyourselfinhistory.com !

Support the show

Thanks for listening! To learn more about this history project, check out findyourselfinhistory.com.

Next Episode

You're Amped Up

You’re presumably reading this description because you like to listen to podcasts. And you can listen to podcasts because clever people invented loudspeakers a century-and-change ago. And loudspeakers were not possible without the invention of electronic amplifiers. Which were not possible without vacuum tubes. Which are a lot like light bulbs.

What was it like to experience electronically amplified sound for the first time? Did it set crowds of people into hysterical panic? Why or why not? Why were there so many innovations in audio tech at around the same time between the 1870s and 1930s? What is a magnavox and what does it have to do with Magnavox-with-a-capital 'M'? Why did the Great Grape Juice Waterfall of 1915 never, in fact, actually take place?

These and many other fascinating interrogative sentences appear in this episode! Plug in now to learn more about how electronic amplification transformed the world into the weird place it is today.

Learn more about this rogue, underdog, Hail Mary pass of a project at findyourselfinhistory.com !

Support the show

Thanks for listening! To learn more about this history project, check out findyourselfinhistory.com.