Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton collects sounds from around the world. He’s recorded inside Sitka spruce logs in the Pacific Northwest, thunder in the Kalahari Desert, and dawn breaking across six continents. An attentive listener, he says silence is an endangered species on the verge of extinction. He defines real quiet as presence — not an absence of sound but an absence of noise. We take in the world through his ears.Gordon Hempton is the founder of the One Square Inch of Silence Foundation, which recently expanded to become Quiet Parks International with the mission to “save quiet for the benefit of all life.” His books include One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet, co-authored with John Grossmann, and Earth Is A Solar Powered Jukebox: A Complete Guide to Listening, Recording, and Sound Designing with Nature. He’s also produced more than 60 albums of vanishing natural soundscapes. His latest release is a collection of soundscapes called Global Sunrise: The Musical Sounds of Dawn. His podcast is called Sound Escapes.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired May 10, 2012.

Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton collects sounds from around the world. He’s recorded inside Sitka spruce logs in the Pacific Northwest, thunder in the Kalahari Desert, and dawn breaking across six continents. An attentive listener, he says silence is an endangered species on the verge of extinction. He defines real quiet as presence — not an absence of sound but an absence of noise. We take in the world through his ears.Gordon Hempton is the founder of the One Square Inch of Silence Foundation, which recently expanded to become Quiet Parks International with the mission to “save quiet for the benefit of all life.” His books include One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet, co-authored with John Grossmann, and Earth Is A Solar Powered Jukebox: A Complete Guide to Listening, Recording, and Sound Designing with Nature. He’s also produced more than 60 albums of vanishing natural soundscapes. His latest release is a collection of soundscapes called Global Sunrise: The Musical Sounds of Dawn. His podcast is called Sound Escapes.This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Gordon Hempton — Silence and the Presence of Everything." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.This show originally aired May 10, 2012.

Over his long career, Gordon Hempton has mastered the art of truly listening. He’s known as the Sound Tracker. Some people call him an acoustic ecologist. His recordings and books have made him an international expert on the beauty and importance of undisturbed, natural soundscapes — and the ways human beings have changed them.Now, Gordon Hempton is losing his hearing. But with that loss has come an intense urgency to share his life’s work — and his passion — with as many people as are willing to listen.  Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, and hosted by Dallas Taylor. Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn.Watch our video shorts on YouTube, and join the discussion on Reddit and Facebook.Become a monthly contributor at 20k.org/donate. If you know what this week's mystery sound is, tell us at mystery.20k.org. Check out the whole Sound Escapes series at BirdNote.org/SoundEscapes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check out Gordon’s work and buy recordings on his website soundtracker.com. Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: https://www.20k.org/episodes/soundescapes  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices