Sound Affects by Julian Treasure How Sound Shapes Our Lives, Our Wellbeing and Our Planet
What's it about?
Sound Affects (2025) explores the wonder of sound and its impacts on the human psyche, physical health and wellbeing. Exploring the universe through its distinct sonic realms, it weaves science, stories, and sensory exploration into a compelling case for rediscovering the lost art of listening.
Right now, as you listen to these words or to the world around you, your brain is orchestrating an astonishing feat. It is transforming invisible energy vibrations into meaning, emotion, and memory. Your auditory system processes millions of sonic details every second, from the subtle rustle of your clothing to the complex harmonics of human speech, each one shaping your experience of being alive.
Yet hearing is only half the story. Whether you experience sound through your ears, through the vibrations in your bones and body, or through the rich tactile world of sound's physical presence, the profound ways these vibrations move through human consciousness reveal the lost art of listening – deliberate, conscious engagement with our acoustic world.
This lesson explores the distinct sonic realms that surround us – showcasing how conscious listening can transform not just what you hear, but how you move through the world.
Sound is an energy wave, or frequency vibration, moving through a medium like air or water. When something creates a disturbance in the air around it, that energy travels outward in waves, much like ripples spreading across a pond when you drop a stone. These vibrations can move through air, water, and even solid materials like rock or bone.
Before any creature walked the Earth, the planet was already making music. Geophony is a term that includes every natural sound that comes from the physical world. Think of thunder rolling across the sky, wind moving through valleys, waves crashing on shores, and rain falling on different surfaces. These sounds have been part of Earth for millions of years, creating a steady background symphony that shaped how all life evolved.
Your brain developed alongside these natural sounds. When you hear geophonic sound patterns, your nervous system responds in ancient ways. The sound of falling rain can lower your heart rate in seconds. Ocean waves naturally sync with your breathing patterns. Mountain winds can reduce stress hormones in your bloodstream. This happens because your ancestors survived by reading these acoustic signals from the environment.
In modern Japan people practice forest bathing, where they sit quietly in wooded areas and focus entirely on natural sounds. Medical researchers have found that patients in hospitals heal faster when they can hear geophonic elements like flowing water or gentle wind. Cities now pay millions to install water features and plant trees partly because residents feel calmer around these natural sound sources. Real estate near parks or rivers costs more because people instinctively seek relief from human-made noise.
The challenge is that most people experience less and less true geophony today. Urban environments mask ancient sound patterns with constant traffic, construction, broadcasts and electronic noise. Your system craves this acoustic connection to the natural world, but you might not even realize it’s missing.
Luckily, you can start reconnecting at any time. To start, set aside ten minutes each day for geophonic listening. Find any natural sound source near you – be it rain against your window, wind through the leafy trees outside, or just recordings of natural environments if you live in a city. Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Let these sounds fill your awareness completely.
Notice how your body responds. Your breathing will likely slow down. Tension in your shoulders and jaw will start to release. Focus on the details within each sound: rain hitting leaves sounds different from rain on concrete, for instance. This simple practice can reconnect you with sound patterns that have supported human wellbeing for thousands of generations.
Your ears are just the most surface, visible parts of an incredibly complex sensing system hidden deep inside your head. The real work of hearing happens in a maze of tiny bones, fluid-filled chambers, and thousands of microscopic hair cells buried within your skull. Your middle ear contains the three smallest bones in your body, which amplify vibrations and pass them to a spiral structure called the cochlea that translates different frequencies into electrical signals your brain interprets.
Sound acts as the primary human warning system as well. When you hear a sudden noise, your nervous system reacts in milliseconds, far faster than your eyes can process visual information. This is why a car horn makes you jump before you ever see the car. Your brain prioritizes sound because throughout human evolution, hearing threats often meant the difference between life and death. Even while you sleep, your auditory system remains alert, ready to wake you at the first sign of danger.
The world is bathed in sound from every living creature. This biophony encompasses every species on Earth, all of whom have evolved unique ways to create and detect biological sounds. Birds time their dawn chorus to specific frequencies that travel furthest in morning air. Whales sing songs targeting frequencies that can travel hundreds of miles underwater. Elephants communicate through vibrations so low that humans are unable to hear them, but are capable of traveling through the ground for miles. Tiny snapping shrimp create sounds as loud as rock concerts to stun their prey.
Different animals have developed remarkable hearing abilities that surpass human senses as well. Dolphins use echolocation to navigate murky waters. Bats hunt flying insects in complete darkness using similar techniques. Owls have ear openings positioned differently on each side of their heads, letting them pinpoint prey locations in three dimensions using only sound.
Similar to the health benefits from geophony listed in the previous section, research also reveals that exposure to rich biophonic environments can measurably improve human health and cognitive abilities as well. Children who grow up in natural soundscapes develop better language skills and longer attention spans. Adults living in areas with more bird species report lower stress levels and better sleep quality. Some hospitals even play recordings of natural biophonic sounds to help patients recover faster, because they activate healing responses in the nervous system.
You can tune into biophony by spending a few minutes each day listening specifically to living sounds in your environment like bird calls, dogs barking, or insects buzzing. Try the counting exercise: identify five different biological sounds, then focus on each one for a full minute. Notice how it changes and responds to other sounds. The practice will expand your awareness of the living acoustic community that shares your space.
Humans create more sound than any other species on Earth. This anthropophony includes every noise made by people and their inventions, from whispered conversations to roaring jet engines. Unlike the natural sounds your brain evolved alongside, many human-made sounds trigger stress responses because they arrive unpredictably, and at volumes that signal extreme danger in nature.
Your nervous system treats sudden car alarms, construction noise, and electronic beeps as potential threats. This constant low-level alarm state can raise your blood pressure, disrupt your sleep, and make it harder to concentrate. Modern cities produce sound levels that would have been unimaginable to your ancestors, creating an acoustic environment your body was never designed to handle.
But humans create beautiful sounds, too. Music can synchronize heart rates across an entire concert audience. The human voice carries emotional meaning that goes far beyond words. A mother singing to her baby activates the same neural pathways in both their brains. Even everyday speech contains complex melodies and rhythms that help you understand meaning and emotion.
Businesses have learned to use anthropophony strategically – to influence your behavior. Grocery stores play slower music to make you browse longer. Fast food chains design their acoustic environments to encourage quick eating and faster turnover. Coffee shops often carefully balance background noise levels to create the perfect atmosphere for either focused work or casual conversation.
The challenge is that most people have no control over the human sounds around them. You absorb hours of car engines, air conditioning hums, notification alerts, and other people's conversations whether you want to or not. This acoustic pollution can be just as harmful as air pollution, but it receives far less attention.
But you can start taking control of your sound environment, to help lessen the impacts of sound stress on your body. Set aside some time in your home or workplace to note the human-made sound you encounter for just one hour. Notice which sounds make you feel tense and which ones bring you peace.
Then make one small change to reduce negative anthropophony in your daily life. This might mean turning off unnecessary notifications, using noise-cancelling headphones in noisy spaces, or adding positive human sounds like gentle music while working. Even tiny adjustments to your acoustic diet can significantly improve your stress levels, and to help you create a soundscape around you that supports your health and wellbeing.
Space is not actually silent. This might surprise you, since astronauts cannot hear each other speak without radios. But the universe produces an incredible symphony of sounds that scientists have only recently learned to detect and translate. Cosmophony encompasses all the acoustic phenomena generated by cosmic events, from the birth of stars to the collision of black holes.
Every planet, moon, and star creates its own unique acoustic signature. Saturn's rings actually sing with radio waves that sound like haunting melodies when transposed to audio frequencies that humans can hear. Jupiter produces sounds like whale songs mixed with electronic music. Even our own Earth hums with a constant low-frequency vibration that comes from ocean waves, wind patterns, and seismic activity combining into a planetary chord.
The sun itself is constantly ringing like a giant bell. Its surface bubbles and churns, creating sound waves that would be deafeningly loud if they could travel through the vacuum of space to reach us. Solar storms send acoustic shockwaves through charged particles in space. When these waves interact with planetary magnetic fields, they create the otherworldly sounds that accompany aurora displays.
Scientists have discovered that even black holes make sounds when they collide, creating gravitational waves that sensitive instruments can detect and convert into audio. These cosmic crashes produce deep bass notes that are lower than anything humans can naturally hear. Neutron stars spinning at incredible speeds create rhythmic pulses like cosmic drumbeats. Even the Big Bang itself left an acoustic fingerprint that astronomers can still measure in the background radiation of the universe.
Listening to cosmophony can profoundly shift your perspective on your place in the universe. When you hear the actual sounds of Jupiter or Saturn, you realize that you live on a small planet within a vast acoustic ecosystem that extends far beyond Earth. These cosmic sounds can connect you to processes that have been unfolding for billions of years, long before life existed anywhere.
Most people never consider that the universe has its own soundscape, but you can explore cosmophony yourself. Search online for recordings of planetary sounds captured by space missions. NASA and other international space agencies have made thousands of these cosmic audio files freely available. Spend some time exploring sounds from different planets, moons, and cosmic events. Notice how hearing these otherworldly acoustics makes you feel about the Earth, and your daily concerns or stresses.
Many find that cosmophony ignites a sense of wonder that puts everyday stress into cosmic perspective. Let these sounds remind you that you are part of something infinitely larger and more mysterious than the human-made noise of daily life.
True silence is one of the rarest experiences on Earth. Even in the quietest places you can find, there are still subtle sounds if you listen carefully enough. Scientists have created special rooms called anechoic chambers that absorb virtually all sound reflections, creating spaces quieter than anything found in nature. People who enter these chambers often report hearing sounds they never noticed before: their own heartbeat, blood flowing through their ears, even the electrical activity of their own nervous system.
This reveals something profound about silence. What you think of as quiet is actually filled with layers of sound that your brain normally filters out. Your mind constantly chooses which sounds deserve attention and which should fade into the background. When external noise disappears, you become aware of the acoustic activity happening inside your own body. You discover that you are never truly silent, even when the world around you is.
Silence also acts as a powerful tool for sharpening your listening skills. When you deliberately seek quiet moments, your ears become more sensitive to subtle sounds. Musicians and sound engineers know this effect well. After spending time in silent environments, they can detect acoustic details that would normally be masked by background noise. Their hearing essentially recalibrates to pick up finer distinctions in sound quality, timing, and space.
Different cultures have long understood the value of intentional silence. Meditation practices across the world use quiet as a way to deepen awareness and focus attention. Many religious traditions include periods of silence that help people connect with something larger than themselves. Modern research confirms what these practices have always known: regular exposure to quiet environments can reduce stress hormones, improve memory, and enhance creative thinking.
The challenge is that genuine quiet has become increasingly hard to find in modern life. Cities never truly sleep, and electronic devices fill even the remotest locations with alarms and beeps. Many modern humans feel uncomfortable in deep silence because they have lost familiarity with their own internal soundscape. They prefer the constant background noise to an unfamiliar experience of actually hearing themselves.
But you can reclaim silence as a tool for deeper listening by spending just a few minutes each day in the quietest space you can find. Turn off all your electronic gadgets and sit comfortably without trying to think, or not think. Just notice what you hear when you stop adding sound to your environment.
In the quiet, you can pay attention to the layers of subtle sound that emerge as your ears adjust. This practice will not only give your nervous system a break from acoustic stress, but train your listening skills to become more precise and aware. Through silence, you can learn to hear the world again, and bask in the joyful noise of the living universe that surrounds you.
In this lesson to Sound Affects by Justin Treasure, you’ve learned that sound shapes every moment of your existence, yet most people remain unconscious consumers of their acoustic environments. With focused listening, and awareness of geophony, biophony, cosmophony, anthropophony, and silence, you gain the power to transform both your lived experience and your impact on the world. Conscious listening isn't just a personal practice – it's an act of environmental awareness, social connection, and cultural healing.
As you begin to truly hear the world around you, you join a growing movement of people working to create more intentional, healthier soundscapes for all. The question isn't whether sound affects you, but how you'll choose to engage with the acoustic universe surrounding you.
Sound Affects (2025) explores the wonder of sound and its impacts on the human psyche, physical health and wellbeing. Exploring the universe through its distinct sonic realms, it weaves science, stories, and sensory exploration into a compelling case for rediscovering the lost art of listening.
Right now, as you listen to these words or to the world around you, your brain is orchestrating an astonishing feat. It is transforming invisible energy vibrations into meaning, emotion, and memory. Your auditory system processes millions of sonic details every second, from the subtle rustle of your clothing to the complex harmonics of human speech, each one shaping your experience of being alive.
Yet hearing is only half the story. Whether you experience sound through your ears, through the vibrations in your bones and body, or through the rich tactile world of sound's physical presence, the profound ways these vibrations move through human consciousness reveal the lost art of listening – deliberate, conscious engagement with our acoustic world.
This lesson explores the distinct sonic realms that surround us – showcasing how conscious listening can transform not just what you hear, but how you move through the world.
Sound is an energy wave, or frequency vibration, moving through a medium like air or water. When something creates a disturbance in the air around it, that energy travels outward in waves, much like ripples spreading across a pond when you drop a stone. These vibrations can move through air, water, and even solid materials like rock or bone.
Before any creature walked the Earth, the planet was already making music. Geophony is a term that includes every natural sound that comes from the physical world. Think of thunder rolling across the sky, wind moving through valleys, waves crashing on shores, and rain falling on different surfaces. These sounds have been part of Earth for millions of years, creating a steady background symphony that shaped how all life evolved.
Your brain developed alongside these natural sounds. When you hear geophonic sound patterns, your nervous system responds in ancient ways. The sound of falling rain can lower your heart rate in seconds. Ocean waves naturally sync with your breathing patterns. Mountain winds can reduce stress hormones in your bloodstream. This happens because your ancestors survived by reading these acoustic signals from the environment.
In modern Japan people practice forest bathing, where they sit quietly in wooded areas and focus entirely on natural sounds. Medical researchers have found that patients in hospitals heal faster when they can hear geophonic elements like flowing water or gentle wind. Cities now pay millions to install water features and plant trees partly because residents feel calmer around these natural sound sources. Real estate near parks or rivers costs more because people instinctively seek relief from human-made noise.
The challenge is that most people experience less and less true geophony today. Urban environments mask ancient sound patterns with constant traffic, construction, broadcasts and electronic noise. Your system craves this acoustic connection to the natural world, but you might not even realize it’s missing.
Luckily, you can start reconnecting at any time. To start, set aside ten minutes each day for geophonic listening. Find any natural sound source near you – be it rain against your window, wind through the leafy trees outside, or just recordings of natural environments if you live in a city. Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Let these sounds fill your awareness completely.
Notice how your body responds. Your breathing will likely slow down. Tension in your shoulders and jaw will start to release. Focus on the details within each sound: rain hitting leaves sounds different from rain on concrete, for instance. This simple practice can reconnect you with sound patterns that have supported human wellbeing for thousands of generations.
Your ears are just the most surface, visible parts of an incredibly complex sensing system hidden deep inside your head. The real work of hearing happens in a maze of tiny bones, fluid-filled chambers, and thousands of microscopic hair cells buried within your skull. Your middle ear contains the three smallest bones in your body, which amplify vibrations and pass them to a spiral structure called the cochlea that translates different frequencies into electrical signals your brain interprets.
Sound acts as the primary human warning system as well. When you hear a sudden noise, your nervous system reacts in milliseconds, far faster than your eyes can process visual information. This is why a car horn makes you jump before you ever see the car. Your brain prioritizes sound because throughout human evolution, hearing threats often meant the difference between life and death. Even while you sleep, your auditory system remains alert, ready to wake you at the first sign of danger.
The world is bathed in sound from every living creature. This biophony encompasses every species on Earth, all of whom have evolved unique ways to create and detect biological sounds. Birds time their dawn chorus to specific frequencies that travel furthest in morning air. Whales sing songs targeting frequencies that can travel hundreds of miles underwater. Elephants communicate through vibrations so low that humans are unable to hear them, but are capable of traveling through the ground for miles. Tiny snapping shrimp create sounds as loud as rock concerts to stun their prey.
Different animals have developed remarkable hearing abilities that surpass human senses as well. Dolphins use echolocation to navigate murky waters. Bats hunt flying insects in complete darkness using similar techniques. Owls have ear openings positioned differently on each side of their heads, letting them pinpoint prey locations in three dimensions using only sound.
Similar to the health benefits from geophony listed in the previous section, research also reveals that exposure to rich biophonic environments can measurably improve human health and cognitive abilities as well. Children who grow up in natural soundscapes develop better language skills and longer attention spans. Adults living in areas with more bird species report lower stress levels and better sleep quality. Some hospitals even play recordings of natural biophonic sounds to help patients recover faster, because they activate healing responses in the nervous system.
You can tune into biophony by spending a few minutes each day listening specifically to living sounds in your environment like bird calls, dogs barking, or insects buzzing. Try the counting exercise: identify five different biological sounds, then focus on each one for a full minute. Notice how it changes and responds to other sounds. The practice will expand your awareness of the living acoustic community that shares your space.
Humans create more sound than any other species on Earth. This anthropophony includes every noise made by people and their inventions, from whispered conversations to roaring jet engines. Unlike the natural sounds your brain evolved alongside, many human-made sounds trigger stress responses because they arrive unpredictably, and at volumes that signal extreme danger in nature.
Your nervous system treats sudden car alarms, construction noise, and electronic beeps as potential threats. This constant low-level alarm state can raise your blood pressure, disrupt your sleep, and make it harder to concentrate. Modern cities produce sound levels that would have been unimaginable to your ancestors, creating an acoustic environment your body was never designed to handle.
But humans create beautiful sounds, too. Music can synchronize heart rates across an entire concert audience. The human voice carries emotional meaning that goes far beyond words. A mother singing to her baby activates the same neural pathways in both their brains. Even everyday speech contains complex melodies and rhythms that help you understand meaning and emotion.
Businesses have learned to use anthropophony strategically – to influence your behavior. Grocery stores play slower music to make you browse longer. Fast food chains design their acoustic environments to encourage quick eating and faster turnover. Coffee shops often carefully balance background noise levels to create the perfect atmosphere for either focused work or casual conversation.
The challenge is that most people have no control over the human sounds around them. You absorb hours of car engines, air conditioning hums, notification alerts, and other people's conversations whether you want to or not. This acoustic pollution can be just as harmful as air pollution, but it receives far less attention.
But you can start taking control of your sound environment, to help lessen the impacts of sound stress on your body. Set aside some time in your home or workplace to note the human-made sound you encounter for just one hour. Notice which sounds make you feel tense and which ones bring you peace.
Then make one small change to reduce negative anthropophony in your daily life. This might mean turning off unnecessary notifications, using noise-cancelling headphones in noisy spaces, or adding positive human sounds like gentle music while working. Even tiny adjustments to your acoustic diet can significantly improve your stress levels, and to help you create a soundscape around you that supports your health and wellbeing.
Space is not actually silent. This might surprise you, since astronauts cannot hear each other speak without radios. But the universe produces an incredible symphony of sounds that scientists have only recently learned to detect and translate. Cosmophony encompasses all the acoustic phenomena generated by cosmic events, from the birth of stars to the collision of black holes.
Every planet, moon, and star creates its own unique acoustic signature. Saturn's rings actually sing with radio waves that sound like haunting melodies when transposed to audio frequencies that humans can hear. Jupiter produces sounds like whale songs mixed with electronic music. Even our own Earth hums with a constant low-frequency vibration that comes from ocean waves, wind patterns, and seismic activity combining into a planetary chord.
The sun itself is constantly ringing like a giant bell. Its surface bubbles and churns, creating sound waves that would be deafeningly loud if they could travel through the vacuum of space to reach us. Solar storms send acoustic shockwaves through charged particles in space. When these waves interact with planetary magnetic fields, they create the otherworldly sounds that accompany aurora displays.
Scientists have discovered that even black holes make sounds when they collide, creating gravitational waves that sensitive instruments can detect and convert into audio. These cosmic crashes produce deep bass notes that are lower than anything humans can naturally hear. Neutron stars spinning at incredible speeds create rhythmic pulses like cosmic drumbeats. Even the Big Bang itself left an acoustic fingerprint that astronomers can still measure in the background radiation of the universe.
Listening to cosmophony can profoundly shift your perspective on your place in the universe. When you hear the actual sounds of Jupiter or Saturn, you realize that you live on a small planet within a vast acoustic ecosystem that extends far beyond Earth. These cosmic sounds can connect you to processes that have been unfolding for billions of years, long before life existed anywhere.
Most people never consider that the universe has its own soundscape, but you can explore cosmophony yourself. Search online for recordings of planetary sounds captured by space missions. NASA and other international space agencies have made thousands of these cosmic audio files freely available. Spend some time exploring sounds from different planets, moons, and cosmic events. Notice how hearing these otherworldly acoustics makes you feel about the Earth, and your daily concerns or stresses.
Many find that cosmophony ignites a sense of wonder that puts everyday stress into cosmic perspective. Let these sounds remind you that you are part of something infinitely larger and more mysterious than the human-made noise of daily life.
True silence is one of the rarest experiences on Earth. Even in the quietest places you can find, there are still subtle sounds if you listen carefully enough. Scientists have created special rooms called anechoic chambers that absorb virtually all sound reflections, creating spaces quieter than anything found in nature. People who enter these chambers often report hearing sounds they never noticed before: their own heartbeat, blood flowing through their ears, even the electrical activity of their own nervous system.
This reveals something profound about silence. What you think of as quiet is actually filled with layers of sound that your brain normally filters out. Your mind constantly chooses which sounds deserve attention and which should fade into the background. When external noise disappears, you become aware of the acoustic activity happening inside your own body. You discover that you are never truly silent, even when the world around you is.
Silence also acts as a powerful tool for sharpening your listening skills. When you deliberately seek quiet moments, your ears become more sensitive to subtle sounds. Musicians and sound engineers know this effect well. After spending time in silent environments, they can detect acoustic details that would normally be masked by background noise. Their hearing essentially recalibrates to pick up finer distinctions in sound quality, timing, and space.
Different cultures have long understood the value of intentional silence. Meditation practices across the world use quiet as a way to deepen awareness and focus attention. Many religious traditions include periods of silence that help people connect with something larger than themselves. Modern research confirms what these practices have always known: regular exposure to quiet environments can reduce stress hormones, improve memory, and enhance creative thinking.
The challenge is that genuine quiet has become increasingly hard to find in modern life. Cities never truly sleep, and electronic devices fill even the remotest locations with alarms and beeps. Many modern humans feel uncomfortable in deep silence because they have lost familiarity with their own internal soundscape. They prefer the constant background noise to an unfamiliar experience of actually hearing themselves.
But you can reclaim silence as a tool for deeper listening by spending just a few minutes each day in the quietest space you can find. Turn off all your electronic gadgets and sit comfortably without trying to think, or not think. Just notice what you hear when you stop adding sound to your environment.
In the quiet, you can pay attention to the layers of subtle sound that emerge as your ears adjust. This practice will not only give your nervous system a break from acoustic stress, but train your listening skills to become more precise and aware. Through silence, you can learn to hear the world again, and bask in the joyful noise of the living universe that surrounds you.
In this lesson to Sound Affects by Justin Treasure, you’ve learned that sound shapes every moment of your existence, yet most people remain unconscious consumers of their acoustic environments. With focused listening, and awareness of geophony, biophony, cosmophony, anthropophony, and silence, you gain the power to transform both your lived experience and your impact on the world. Conscious listening isn't just a personal practice – it's an act of environmental awareness, social connection, and cultural healing.
As you begin to truly hear the world around you, you join a growing movement of people working to create more intentional, healthier soundscapes for all. The question isn't whether sound affects you, but how you'll choose to engage with the acoustic universe surrounding you.
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