Popular Science - USA (2019-10)

illustration by Kyle Hilton

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Editor-in-Chief Joe Brown

Executive Editor Corinne Iozzio

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EDITORIAL

Features Editor Susan Murcko

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ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY

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EDITORIAL PRODUCTION

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CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

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Gregory Mone, Sarah Scoles, P.W. Singer, Nick Stockton,

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WINTER 2019

This product is

from sustainably

managed forests

and controlled

sources.

6

joined in the battle of the bands.

From then on, a veil lifted and

revealed an acoustic minefield

I’d never noticed before. Every-

thing in our house, from my

old wingback chair to the fan in

the laundry room, has a theme

song—and they’re all playing

way too loud. And that’s just at

home; walk out the door, and you

dive into a sea of sound.

This might seem obvious, es-

pecially if you have kids. But I’m

confident this magazine will lift

its own veil off a world of noise

you’ve never considered before.

We searched this planet and

the far-out universe— and right

under our noses— for the most

awesome sonic phenomena, a

reality living right alongside our

own, screaming for attention.

It has ours now. Apologies in

advance if we wake your baby.

TWO DAYS AFTER MY WIFE

gave birth to our daughter, we

returned home, to the same

place we’ve lived for the past

handful of years. It was the same

apartment, except now it was

completely different: In the two

days since we turned from a

family of two into a three- person

crew, our house got loud.

I first noticed when my wife

asked me for some trail mix.

As I opened the snack drawer,

I knocked a precariously bal-

anced pot lid into a cast-iron

canyon and activated a Rube

Goldberg-like symphony of cas-

cading metal. The baby, whom

we had spent the past 90 minutes

soothing, promptly screamed as

if to compete with the noise.

We got her back to sleep,

Christine got her trail mix, and

I decided to change clothes. On

my way up to the bedroom, I

realized, for the first time, that

the stairs also had something to

say. The message was: “WE’RE

OLD”; the sound was (and still

is) something like scree- CHONK-

errr. Once again, the baby

THESE WALLS

TALK TOO MUCH

EDITOR’S LETTER