Learn about how we preserve analog and digital audio (and other media) with special guest Damon Krukowski, who is a musician, writer, and author of the new book “Ways of Hearing.” We’ll also answer a listener question about why quickly rotating objects seem to rotate in the opposite direction. Get your copy of “Ways of Hearing” on Amazon: https://amazon.com More from Damon Krukowski: “Ways of Hearing” on Amazon — https://amazon.com Damon Krukowski’s website — http://www.dadadrummer.com/ Pitchfork profile — https://pitchfork.com/staff/damon-krukowski/ Follow Damon K on Twitter @dada_drummer — https://twitter.com/dada_drummer Radiotopia Showcase — https://www.radiotopia.fm/showcase/ways-of-hearing Additional resources discussed: The wagon wheel illusion in movies and reality | PNAS — https://www.pnas.org/content/93/8/3693.short Illusory motion reversal is caused by rivalry, not by perceptual snapshots of the visual field | ScienceDirect — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698904002731 The Continuous Wagon Wheel Illusion and the ‘When’ Pathway of the Right Parietal Lobe: A Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study | PLOS — https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0002911 If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about how we preserve analog and digital audio (and other media) with special guest Damon Krukowski, who is a musician, writer, and author of the new book “Ways of Hearing.” We’ll also answer a listener question about why quickly rotating objects seem to rotate in the opposite direction.
Get your copy of “Ways of Hearing” on Amazon: https://amazon.com
More from Damon Krukowski:
Additional resources discussed:
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/analog-and-digital-media-preservation-w-damon-krukowski-and-the-wagon-wheel-illusion
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how analog and digital media help us preserve our musical heritage, from a special guest: writer, musician, and podcaster Damon Krukowski. We’ll also answer a listener question about why quickly rotating objects like wheels and fans seem to rotate in the opposite direction.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Damon Krukowski Interview Clip 2 - Media preservation (Cody)
CODY: It’s time for the second half of our Sunday Sounds mini-series, where writer and musician Damon Krukowski helps us examine the implications of the changing ways that we listen to media in a digital world. He hosted the Ways of Hearing podcast, which was part of the Radiotopia Showcase, and now you can pick up the book “Ways of Hearing” from the MIT Press. This week, Damon and I talk not about what you’re hearing, but how audio is stored. What are the implications of the way we use analog and digital audio to preserve our aural heritage? I’ll kick off this exchange with a pretty outrageous story from the world of physical media.
[CLIP 1:48]
CODY: I couldn’t remember the exact temperature or time this took, but to give you a rough idea of what this involved, one article on NPR’s website says they bake their tapes at 125 degrees Fahrenheit, or 51 degrees Celsius — for about 8 hours. I’ve found other articles mentioning slightly higher temperatures from 130 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit for as little as 4 hours, and a lot of it depends on the humidity, the type of oven, and other factors. But the device I used was literally a microwave oven. Anyway. Here’s Damon on the implications.
[CLIP 3:01]
CODY: Damon told us that he hasn’t particularly seen any renewed efforts to figure out the best way to archive audio. But we’ve got some good news if you’re still hanging onto your music CDs you picked up starting in the early 1980s.
[CLIP 1:05]
CODY: You can learn a lot more about analog and digital audio from Damon Krukowski’s new book, “Ways of Hearing.” You can find links to the book and to Damon’s other work in today’s show notes. AND you can hear our full, uncut, hour-long conversation with Damon for free on our Patreon page at patreon-dot-com-slash-curiosity-dot-com, all spelled out. Enjoy!
[NHTSA]
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is paid for by NIT-suh.
CODY: It can be a little frustrating, especially if you’re in a hurry or running late, to find yourself at a railway crossing, waiting for a train. And if the signals are going and the train’s not even there yet, you can feel a bit tempted to try and sneak across the tracks.
ASHLEY: Well, don’t. Ever. Trains are often going a lot faster than you expect them to be. And they can’t stop. Even if the engineer hits the brakes right away, it can take a train over a mile to stop.
CODY: By that time, what used to be your car is just a crushed hunk of metal and what used to be you… well, better not to think about that.
ASHLEY: The point is, you can’t know how quickly the train will arrive. The train can’t stop even if it sees you. The result is disaster. If the signals are on, the train is on its way.
CODY: And you... just need to remember one thing… Stop. Trains can’t.
LISTENER QUESTION
ASHLEY: We got a listener question from Raiyan from Bangladesh, who asks, “Why does a fast clockwise-rotating object seems to rotate in an anti-clockwise direction, and vice versa?” Love this question!
The thing you’re referring to is known as the “wagon wheel illusion.” You see it a lot in car commercials — a sleek sedan is cruising down the highway, but its wheels look like they’re slowly spinning in the wrong direction. There’s an easy answer for why this happens on TV: the frame rate doesn’t quite match up with the wheel’s spin. So like, if the camera is filming at 24 frames per second and the spoke of a wheel only completes a rotation 23 times per second, every frame is going to see that spoke a little bit further back in its rotation, as if it’s slowly spinning backward.
Ok, but why does this happen in real life, when you’re looking at a wheel with your naked eye? That’s the million-dollar question. Seriously: I searched Google scholar for “wagon wheel illusion,” and it came back with more than 1,700 results. This is such a hot topic for research because the reason it happens says something profound about the way we perceive the world. One research camp says the wagon-wheel illusion shows that we process motion the same way a camera does: by “sampling” it in individual frames. By that explanation, the illusion works in real life for the same reason it does on camera. But later research found that people who watched two wheels spinning at the same rate would sometimes see one wheel switch direction but not the other. That team says the reason for the illusion is perceptual rivalry, or basically, the brain coming up with multiple competing interpretations of the same scene. The same thing happens in the silhouette illusion, where a dancer’s spinning silhouette seems to switch directions whenever you want it to. But another study found that when they temporarily reduced activity in people’s right parietal lobe, which is responsible for judging when things happen, and in what order, those people experienced the wagon wheel illusion much less often, which those researchers say throws a wrench in the perceptual rivalry theory. Research into this question is only heating up, so we don’t have a solid answer. But for practical purposes? The answer is that it’s just an optical illusion. Thanks for your question!
https://www.pnas.org/content/93/8/3693.short
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698904002731
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0002911
CODY: Before we wrap up, we want to give a special shout-out to Dr. Mary Yancy and Muhammad Shifaz, who are executive producers for today’s episode thanks to their generous support on Patreon. Thank you SO. MUCH.
ASHLEY: If you’re listening and you want to support Curiosity Daily, then visit patreon-dot-com-slash-curiosity-dot-com, all spelled out. We’re producing special podcast episodes and offering other exclusive perks to show our appreciation for your support. One more time, you can learn more at Patreon-dot-com-slash-curiosity-dot-com.
Join us again tomorrow for the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m [NAME] and I’m [NAME]. Stay curious!