Welcome to CLAMOR, a newsletter about how noise took over the world and how we can take it back. This newsletter is an extension of my book with the same name, which will be published in May 2025 (and can be preordered here).
For too long, we’ve mismeasured and misunderstood noise, exacerbating the harm it causes to our hearing, our minds, our overall health, and our environment. By framing noise as a loudness problem and seeking quiet as the only solution, we’ve missed countless opportunities to not only prevent noise but to cultivate soundscapes that improve focus, reduce stress, and generally make our lives easier rather than harder.
WHY NOISE?
I’ve been a journalist for more than a quarter century, both as a staff editor at the Atlantic and Mother Jones and as a freelancer reporting on everything from unsolved murders to climate engineering to artificial intelligence in schools for publications such as the New York Times, Politico, Popular Science, the Washington Post, and Wired. I’ve always been drawn to issues with an inherent complexity that defies easy answers and black-and-white framing. Noise is one such issue that we’ve oversimplified much to our detriment.
While reporting my first noise article, for the Boston Globe Sunday magazine in 2018, the people I met who thought a lot about noise tended to fall into two camps—those who warned of a serious, growing, and overlooked public-health threat requiring stricter regulations, and those who felt noise concerns were mostly proxy battles for broader cultural conflicts and not really about sound at all.
Both sides made points but also seemed stuck in their respective ruts. One was constantly reactive and steeped in a culture of complaint. The other seemed to shrug at the notion that noise causes real harm to people and the planet. On the fringes, however, a third group was emerging that seemed to bridge the gap by taking sound seriously and not just noise. It was this new movement that inspired Clamor.
Researching the book, I encountered an eclectic mix of folks, including musicians, doctors, architects, ecologists, teachers, and activists, who think that noise is a big problem—maybe bigger than we realize—but also insist that sonic solutions can’t be judged by decibel counts alone.
Clamor pushes the boundaries of noise and calls for a more proactive and holistic approach, beyond whack-a-moling decibels, to not only mitigate noise harms but to understand sound as a potential ally for better health and wellbeing.
WHY THIS NEWSLETTER?
In short, I want to keep the conversation going. I’m a storyteller with insatiable curiosity. But no matter how doggedly I report and how many words I’m allotted, even for a book, I can never tell the whole story.
During the years I worked on Clamor, I left entire chapters on the editing room floor and killed countless darlings (as one must). The people, places, research, and stories featured in its chapters remained frozen in the time of my reporting. I hope the book will spark bigger discussions about noise and soundscapes of our daily lives, and my goal for the newsletter is to fuel those conversations with updates, new ideas, and fresh analysis.
WHAT TO EXPECT
Do NOT expect a barrage of complaints and grousing about personal noise annoyances. My goal is to highlight surprising noise news that hooks into broader issues ranging from preserving nature to creating healthier buildings. I’ll also post about people proactively using sound and soundscapes to improve the places we live, learn, and work—from hospitals to homes to schools. Along the way, I’ll recommend interesting listening, whether it’s a podcast like 20,000 Hertz “The Stories Behind the World’s Most Interesting and Recognizable Sounds” or snippets of sound from the surface of Mars (from https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/sounds-of-mars/)
Mindful of all the “noise” hitting your inboxes, we’ll start small, with well-curated monthly installments of intriguing noise news and sound stories that I hope you’ll enjoy and help shape as we go. The newsletter will be completely free for now, although I may start selling paid subscriptions at some point to sustain the work. In the meantime, please spread the word and be in touch with your comments and suggestions about sound and noise issues you’d like to see covered. Thank you so much for reading, and for listening
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