Narrator: In this episode of This Is Your Brain – The Guided Tour, we meet a man who knows how to listen…
Since 1968, Bernie Krause has traveled the globe to record the “voice” of the natural world. You are listening to one of his recordings right now… Jaguars in the Amazon…
He was one of the first people in America to earn a doctorate in the emerging field of Bioacoustics and is considered a “rockstar” in the world of natural sounds, with more than four dozen record albums to his credit.
Dr. Krause’s first experience of recording nature was very personal…
Bernie Krause: Well, growing up as a young child in the early 40s. I was really troubled by being able to concentrate and focus on things. I wasn’t able to get good grades. I wasn’t able to learn it at a pace that most kids are learning at. There was no medical diagnosis called ADHD or attention deficit disorder or any disorder of this nature. My parents, of course, had no way to determine that there was something really wrong here, except that I wasn’t achieving the kinds of expectations that they had of me. So I grew up in an environment that wasn’t terribly supportive, and all of that was because of this ADHD. And I still suffer from ADHD even today. I mean, it’s still an issue for me.
The first time I went out into the field was in October of 1968 with my little recorder And marched off into this little park, a place called Muir Woods. And I turned on my recorder and the world of sound opened up for me in a way that I never expected,
One of the things that I discovered very quickly was that being in the field and immersing myself in these natural soundscapes really helped me focus more on the world around me and the sounds around me and the information that was coming to me through this medium. And it was so compelling that I just realized right then and there because of the way that I felt physically at that moment, that that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I just made that decision. So the sounds of the natural world and that life affirming voice that to me is very important has really informed just about everything that I do and have done since.
Narrator: A personal perspective on the healing power of nature from “This Is Your Brain – The Guided Tour”…