Science Friday Podcast Recap: Recording the Global Soundscape

On a recent episode of the Science Friday podcast with host Ira Flatow, he and his guest Bryan Pijanowski - a professor of forestry and natural resources at Purdue University and a soundscape ecologist - discussed Pijanowski's new app he created in an attempt to record the sounds of nature all around the world. Pijanowski wants to ask people all around the world to help him by recording nature sounds in their ecosystems and uploading these to a server in order to share all the different sounds of nature with the world. There are several reasons behind Pijanowski's goal. One is that he recognizes that animals are being lost at an alarming rate, and he wants to capture their sounds before they are gone. He also not only wants scientists to have access to them but also ordinary people. He believes that sounds are a wonderful thing that can do anything from symbolizing human values to bringing back memories. Additionally, he thinks that this global soundscape could help people escape the industrial hum that is ever-present nowadays. One may download this extraordinary app by going to the iTunes or Google Play stores and searching for the app called Soundscape Recorder.