0:00:01.000,0:00:03.000
The Hindus say, "Nada brahma,"

0:00:03.000,0:00:06.000
one translation of which is, "The world is sound."

0:00:06.000,0:00:09.000
And in a way, that's true, because everything is vibrating.

0:00:09.000,0:00:12.000
In fact, all of you as you sit here right now are vibrating.

0:00:12.000,0:00:15.000
Every part of your body is vibrating at different frequencies.

0:00:15.000,0:00:17.000
So you are, in fact, a chord --

0:00:17.000,0:00:19.000
each of you an individual chord.

0:00:19.000,0:00:21.000
One definition of health may be

0:00:21.000,0:00:23.000
that that chord is in complete harmony.

0:00:23.000,0:00:25.000
Your ears can't hear that chord;

0:00:25.000,0:00:28.000
they can actually hear amazing things. Your ears can hear 10 octaves.

0:00:28.000,0:00:31.000
Incidentally, we see just one octave.

0:00:31.000,0:00:33.000
Your ears are always on -- you have no ear lids.

0:00:33.000,0:00:35.000
They work even when you sleep.

0:00:35.000,0:00:37.000
The smallest sound you can perceive

0:00:37.000,0:00:40.000
moves your eardrum just four atomic diameters.

0:00:40.000,0:00:42.000
The loudest sound you can hear

0:00:42.000,0:00:44.000
is a trillion times more powerful than that.

0:00:44.000,0:00:46.000
Ears are made not for hearing,

0:00:46.000,0:00:48.000
but for listening.

0:00:48.000,0:00:50.000
Listening is an active skill,

0:00:50.000,0:00:53.000
whereas hearing is passive, listening is something that we have to work at --

0:00:53.000,0:00:55.000
it's a relationship with sound.

0:00:55.000,0:00:57.000
And yet it's a skill that none of us are taught.

0:00:57.000,0:01:00.000
For example, have you ever considered that there are listening positions,

0:01:00.000,0:01:02.000
places you can listen from?

0:01:02.000,0:01:04.000
Here are two of them.

0:01:04.000,0:01:06.000
Reductive listening is listening "for."

0:01:06.000,0:01:09.000
It reduces everything down to what's relevant

0:01:09.000,0:01:11.000
and it discards everything that's not relevant.

0:01:11.000,0:01:13.000
Men typically listen reductively.

0:01:13.000,0:01:15.000
So he's saying, "I've got this problem."

0:01:15.000,0:01:17.000
He's saying, "Here's your solution. Thanks very much. Next."

0:01:17.000,0:01:19.000
That's the way we talk, right guys?

0:01:19.000,0:01:21.000
Expansive listening, on the other hand,

0:01:21.000,0:01:23.000
is listening "with," not listening "for."

0:01:23.000,0:01:25.000
It's got no destination in mind --

0:01:25.000,0:01:27.000
it's just enjoying the journey.

0:01:27.000,0:01:29.000
Women typically listen expansively.

0:01:29.000,0:01:31.000
If you look at these two, eye contact, facing each other,

0:01:31.000,0:01:33.000
possibly both talking at the same time.

0:01:33.000,0:01:36.000
(Laughter)

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Men, if you get nothing else out of this talk,

0:01:38.000,0:01:40.000
practice expansive listening,

0:01:40.000,0:01:42.000
and you can transform your relationships.

0:01:42.000,0:01:45.000
The trouble with listening is that so much of what we hear

0:01:45.000,0:01:48.000
is noise, surrounding us all the time.

0:01:48.000,0:01:51.000
Noise like this, according to the European Union,

0:01:51.000,0:01:53.000
is reducing the health and the quality of life

0:01:53.000,0:01:55.000
of 25 percent

0:01:55.000,0:01:57.000
of the population of Europe.

0:01:57.000,0:01:59.000
Two percent of the population of Europe --

0:01:59.000,0:02:01.000
that's 16 million people --

0:02:01.000,0:02:03.000
are having their sleep devastated

0:02:03.000,0:02:05.000
by noise like that.

0:02:05.000,0:02:07.000
Noise kills

0:02:07.000,0:02:09.000
200,000 people a year in Europe.

0:02:09.000,0:02:11.000
It's a really big problem.

0:02:11.000,0:02:13.000
Now, when you were little, if you had noise and you didn't want to hear it,

0:02:13.000,0:02:15.000
you'd stick your fingers in your ears and hum.

0:02:15.000,0:02:18.000
These days, you can do a similar thing, it just looks a bit cooler.

0:02:18.000,0:02:20.000
It looks a bit like this.

0:02:20.000,0:02:22.000
The trouble with widespread headphone use

0:02:22.000,0:02:25.000
is it brings three really big health issues.

0:02:25.000,0:02:28.000
The first really big health issue is a word that Murray Schafer coined:

0:02:28.000,0:02:30.000
"schizophonia."

0:02:30.000,0:02:32.000
It's a dislocation

0:02:32.000,0:02:34.000
between what you see and what you hear.

0:02:34.000,0:02:36.000
So, we're inviting into our lives

0:02:36.000,0:02:39.000
the voices of people who are not present with us.

0:02:39.000,0:02:41.000
I think there's something deeply unhealthy

0:02:41.000,0:02:43.000
about living all the time in schizophonia.

0:02:43.000,0:02:45.000
The second problem that comes with headphone abuse

0:02:45.000,0:02:47.000
is compression.

0:02:47.000,0:02:49.000
We squash music to fit it into our pocket

0:02:49.000,0:02:51.000
and there is a cost attached to this.

0:02:51.000,0:02:54.000
Listen to this -- this is an uncompressed piece of music.

0:02:54.000,0:02:57.000
(Music)

0:03:00.000,0:03:03.000
And now the same piece of music with 98 percent of the data removed.

0:03:03.000,0:03:07.000
(Music)

0:03:07.000,0:03:09.000
I do hope that some of you at least

0:03:09.000,0:03:11.000
can hear the difference between those two.

0:03:11.000,0:03:13.000
There is a cost of compression.

0:03:13.000,0:03:15.000
It makes you tired and irritable to have to make up all of that data.

0:03:15.000,0:03:17.000
You're having to imagine it.

0:03:17.000,0:03:19.000
It's not good for you in the long run.

0:03:19.000,0:03:22.000
The third problem with headphones is this: deafness --

0:03:22.000,0:03:24.000
noise-induced hearing disorder.

0:03:24.000,0:03:27.000
Ten million Americans already have this for one reason or another,

0:03:27.000,0:03:29.000
but really worryingly,

0:03:29.000,0:03:31.000
16 percent --

0:03:31.000,0:03:33.000
roughly one in six -- of American teenagers

0:03:33.000,0:03:35.000
suffer from noise-induced hearing disorder

0:03:35.000,0:03:38.000
as a result of headphone abuse.

0:03:38.000,0:03:40.000
One study at an American university

0:03:40.000,0:03:43.000
found that 61 percent of college freshmen

0:03:43.000,0:03:45.000
had damaged hearing

0:03:45.000,0:03:47.000
as a result of headphone abuse.

0:03:47.000,0:03:50.000
We may be raising an entire generation of deaf people.

0:03:50.000,0:03:52.000
Now that's a really serious problem.

0:03:52.000,0:03:54.000
I'll give you three quick tips to protect your ears

0:03:54.000,0:03:56.000
and pass these on to your children, please.

0:03:56.000,0:03:58.000
Professional hearing protectors are great;

0:03:58.000,0:04:00.000
I use some all the time.

0:04:00.000,0:04:03.000
If you're going to use headphones, buy the best ones you can afford

0:04:03.000,0:04:05.000
because quality means you don't have to have it so loud.

0:04:05.000,0:04:07.000
If you can't hear somebody talking to you in a loud voice,

0:04:07.000,0:04:09.000
it's too loud.

0:04:09.000,0:04:11.000
And thirdly, if you're in bad sound,

0:04:11.000,0:04:13.000
it's fine to put your fingers in your ears or just move away from it.

0:04:13.000,0:04:15.000
Protect your ears in that way.

0:04:15.000,0:04:18.000
Let's move away from bad sound and look at some friends that I urge you to seek out.

0:04:18.000,0:04:20.000
WWB:

0:04:20.000,0:04:23.000
Wind, water, birds --

0:04:23.000,0:04:25.000
stochastic natural sounds

0:04:25.000,0:04:27.000
composed of lots of individual random events,

0:04:28.000,0:04:30.000
all of it very healthy,

0:04:30.000,0:04:32.000
all of it sound that we evolved to over the years.

0:04:32.000,0:04:35.000
Seek those sounds out; they're good for you and so it this.

0:04:38.000,0:04:40.000
Silence is beautiful.

0:04:40.000,0:04:42.000
The Elizabethans described language

0:04:42.000,0:04:44.000
as decorated silence.

0:04:44.000,0:04:47.000
I urge you to move away from silence with intention

0:04:47.000,0:04:50.000
and to design soundscapes just like works of art.

0:04:50.000,0:04:53.000
Have a foreground, a background, all in beautiful proportion.

0:04:53.000,0:04:55.000
It's fun to get into designing with sound.

0:04:55.000,0:04:58.000
If you can't do it yourself, get a professional to do it for you.

0:04:58.000,0:05:00.000
Sound design is the future,

0:05:00.000,0:05:03.000
and I think it's the way we're going to change the way the world sounds.

0:05:03.000,0:05:05.000
I'm going to just run quickly through eight modalities,

0:05:05.000,0:05:08.000
eight ways sound can improve health.

0:05:08.000,0:05:11.000
First, ultrasound: we're very familiar with it from physical therapy;

0:05:11.000,0:05:13.000
it's also now being used to treat cancer.

0:05:13.000,0:05:16.000
Lithotripsy -- saving thousands of people a year from the scalpel

0:05:16.000,0:05:19.000
by pulverizing stones with high-intensity sound.

0:05:19.000,0:05:21.000
Sound healing is a wonderful modality.

0:05:21.000,0:05:23.000
It's been around for thousands of years.

0:05:23.000,0:05:25.000
I do urge you to explore this.

0:05:25.000,0:05:27.000
There are great things being done there, treating now autism,

0:05:27.000,0:05:29.000
dementia and other conditions.

0:05:29.000,0:05:32.000
And music, of course. Just listening to music is good for you,

0:05:32.000,0:05:34.000
if it's music that's made with good intention,

0:05:34.000,0:05:36.000
made with love, generally.

0:05:36.000,0:05:38.000
Devotional music, good -- Mozart, good.

0:05:38.000,0:05:40.000
There are all sorts of types of music

0:05:40.000,0:05:42.000
that are very healthy.

0:05:42.000,0:05:44.000
And four modalities where you need to take some action

0:05:44.000,0:05:46.000
and get involved.

0:05:46.000,0:05:48.000
First of all, listen consciously.

0:05:48.000,0:05:50.000
I hope that that after this talk you'll be doing that.

0:05:50.000,0:05:53.000
It's a whole new dimension to your life and it's wonderful to have that dimension.

0:05:53.000,0:05:56.000
Secondly, get in touch with making some sound --

0:05:56.000,0:05:58.000
create sound.

0:05:58.000,0:06:00.000
The voice is the instrument we all play,

0:06:00.000,0:06:03.000
and yet how many of us are trained in using our voice? Get trained;

0:06:03.000,0:06:05.000
learn to sing, learn to play an instrument.

0:06:05.000,0:06:08.000
Musicians have bigger brains -- it's true.

0:06:08.000,0:06:10.000
You can do this in groups as well.

0:06:10.000,0:06:12.000
It's a fantastic antidote to schizophonia;

0:06:12.000,0:06:14.000
to make music and sound in a group of people,

0:06:14.000,0:06:17.000
whichever style you enjoy particularly.

0:06:17.000,0:06:19.000
And let's take a stewarding role for the sound around us.

0:06:19.000,0:06:21.000
Protect your ears? Yes, absolutely.

0:06:21.000,0:06:23.000
Design soundscapes to be beautiful around you

0:06:23.000,0:06:25.000
at home and at work.

0:06:25.000,0:06:27.000
And let's start to speak up

0:06:27.000,0:06:29.000
when people are assailing us

0:06:29.000,0:06:31.000
with the noise that I played you early on.

0:06:31.000,0:06:34.000
So I'm going to leave you with seven things you can do right now

0:06:34.000,0:06:36.000
to improve your health with sound.

0:06:36.000,0:06:39.000
My vision is of a world that sounds beautiful

0:06:39.000,0:06:41.000
and if we all start doing these things,

0:06:41.000,0:06:43.000
we will take a very big step in that direction.

0:06:43.000,0:06:46.000
So I urge you to take that path.

0:06:46.000,0:06:48.000
I'm leaving you with a little more birdsong, which is very good for you.

0:06:48.000,0:06:50.000
I wish you sound health.

0:06:50.000,0:06:53.000
(Applause)