Roman Mars

So why three minutes?

I mean, I think most podcast ads are longer than three minutes at this point.

So how far along are you with the project?

Well, I'm very excited to listen to some of these flux works, as you call them.

So let's start with one from the first circuit of stories.

This one's called The Sound of Silence.

Could you tell us about this piece?

All right, let's hear it.

So a few years ago, this thing happened to my wife, Sana.

She'd be meditating or reading a book and she'd hear a sound.

A kind of ghostly tone just above and behind her right ear.

An odd but delightful thing at a time when delight was in short supply, the pandemic's first spring, Sana's mind on high alert, schools closed, death and doom on the news, one tiny home office for the two of us.

And the tone could also tune her in to the most everyday moments.

Our kid practicing piano.

Well, you never told me this.

The tone, not what she thought it was.

Deep inside your inner ear are these special hair cells, cilia, that float in fluid like a field of seaweed.

They're tuned to different frequencies.

Dr. Jim Henry is a pioneer of research in tinnitus.

Tinnitus is the sound of the brain's refusal to let go of what it once had.