S4E7: Republic of Noise with Jeremy Gordon

Claudia talks to Jeremy Gordon about the concept “Republic of Noise”. They discuss the relationship between noise and politics and think through how noise might be used as a tool that enables listening and democracy. They “riff” with each other trying to think through the tensions between noise and harmony as well as whose sounds are considered pleasant or not and how that shapes how one belongs to place.  

Date Recorded: 9 February 2022

Jeremy Gordon is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Gonzaga University who studies and teaches where environmental communication, environmental studies, and critical animal studies get entangled. He is obsessed with questions of how ecological relations are “rhetorically” animated – by human and more-than-human messmates. Specifically, how urban ecologies and feral spaces are, and should be, shaped by everyday creaturely encounters. Jeremy has co-edited a special volume on “animal rhetoric” for Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and is currently enchanted by, and kinning with, the feral chickens of Tampa, Florida’s Ybor City. Those chickens have scratched and strutted their way into The Journal of Urban Affairs and Dr. Laura Reese’s edited book on Animals in the City. Find out more about Jeremy on his University website. 

Featured: 

A fowl politics of urban dwelling. Or, Ybor City’s republic of noise; Of fowl feet, beaks, and streets: eyes on the ground in Ybor City by Jeremy G. Gordon; Ybor Chicken Society ; The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening by Jennifer Lynn Stoever; Practices of Space and

A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

Sonic Arts Studio
The Queen’s Sonic Arts Studio (formerly Electroacoustic Music Studio) was founded in 1970.

Sonic Arts of Place Laboratory (SAPLab)
The SAP Lab provides workspace and equipment for students engaged in sound related activities.

iROAR Network
iROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

This is another I roll podcast.

SPEAKER_05: 0:05

Ebor Cities also in the process of gentrification. So I think that's important. And so, you know, the chickens almost serve as proxy for eviction of other quote unquote noisy neighbors, like very human animal presences in the city. And so, in a way, you know, I think in the process of gentrification, chicken residents and non-chicken residents are connected in terms of who is making the noise and who is not part of the harmonious neighborhood.

SPEAKER_02: 0:53

This is season four, episode seven. We're almost there. We're getting near the end. It's been an incredible season so far. And in today's episode, we're talking about a pretty cool concept, the Republic of Noise. Now I knew I wanted to talk a bit about noise in this season because noise is kind of one of those sounds we all think of, like noise and silence, and it just seems like an obvious concept to talk about. But when I came across the concept of republic of noise in Jeremy Gordon's paper, I just knew that I needed to talk to him. And this builds on really well from the last episode where we spoke to Ava Mayer, who was already kind of thinking a bit about the politics of noise. And I think Jeremy Gordon's concept here, Republic of Noise, gives us some interesting, different interventions. So Ava in her episode, she spoke a lot about kind of the embodied experiences and how to pay attention to bodies. And in this episode with Jeremy Gordon today, we do speak a bit about bodies. We speak about beaks and feet and voices and vocalizations, and we focus a lot on chickens. But before I tell you any more, obviously I'm getting very excited. Let me tell you a bit about Jeremy. So Jeremy Gordon is an assistant professor of communication studies at Gonzango University, where he studies and teaches environmental communication, environmental studies, and critical animal studies. He is, what he says, obsessed with questions of how ecological relations are rhetorically animated by both human and more than human messmates. He is specifically interested in how urban ecologies and feral spaces are entangled with one another and create a variety of encounters. Jeremy has co-edited a special volume on animal rhetoric for the Rhetoric Society Quarterly. And he is currently, what he says, enchanted by the Kinning with Feral Chickens in Tampa, Florida's Yorbore City. And this isn't the first time we've spoken about chickens on this podcast. Actually, it's starting to, I'm starting to accrue a pretty cool collection of chicken-oriented episodes, you know, between Patrice Jones speaking of chickens as survivors and Catherine Oliver speaking about urban metabolisms. And now here we've got Jeremy Gordon speaking about a republic of noise. And of course, Jeremy is speaking a lot about chickens in this episode. But I think the concept of Republic of Noise can really stretch far beyond chickens and also potentially far beyond the urban. We have a really interesting, I think, dynamic conversation where we're quite obviously riffing off one another and enjoying uh chatting with each other. So I hope that you kind of build on and get some of that energy too and feel inspired to write using this concept as well. Before we get into everything, I just wanted to say thank you once again to the sponsors, to Animals and Philosophy Politics, Law and Ethics Apple for sponsoring this podcast, as well as to SAP Lab and the Sonic Arts Studio for sponsoring this season. All right, everybody, happy listening. Hi, Jeremy. Welcome to the Animal Term Podcast.

SPEAKER_05: 3:56

Oh, thank you very much. This is um an absolute pleasure, a humbling pleasure to be on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02: 4:02

Yeah, we were just speaking in the green room that I'm also super excited that you were aware of the podcast and that you've listened, that you've listened to the podcast um before.

SPEAKER_04: 4:11

It's a little funky transition from fan to guest.

SPEAKER_02: 4:15

Well, I think you're a great guest to have right now because I I just read your your paper on. Actually, I've read it a couple of times now, on, you know, where you talk about the Republic of Noise, which of course we're going to be speaking a bit about today. But I actually think you sit at a really neat intersection of some of the ideas that have come up in the season so far. You know, soundscapes, sound ecologies, this comes up in your paper. Music, you definitely use a lot of like music words and music ideas, resonance, et cetera, in your in your writing. And of course, Martin Ulrich spoke quite a bit about that. And um, you you won't yet be aware of this, but the next episode that's going to be released is with Eva Mayer, where I speak about voice. And uh you also talk about rhetoric and voice. So I think there's a lot of cool stuff with regards to your work. So I think you're coming at just the right time of the season, which is really interesting. Yeah. Um, but as you know, as someone who listens to the podcast, before we delve into Republic of Noise, um, I like to hear a bit about my guests. So could you tell me a little bit about you and how you came to be interested in what's a fairly niche area of interest, right? How how chickens sound in a city. Um uh yeah, so take it away.

SPEAKER_05: 5:30

Uh that's that's a long story. I won't go back too far. Um, I've always been not always, I think I've always growing up, I was um growing up in a rural Nevada space. So I grew up in central Nevada uh in the US. And uh one of my first jobs, I was uh I was 12, 13, was trapping prairie dogs or gophers on an alfalfa farm. And so I won't go into too much detail about what that involves, uh, but needless to say that um being out in the fields, both listening to prairie dogs and gophers uh quote unquote speak to each other and then also uh call to each other um during the uh well, during the process of me trapping and quote unquote taking care of the prairie dogs. Uh that I think was a pretty profound experience in terms of thinking about the relationship between humans and um animals in agricultural spaces. And so then fast forwarding to my time in Florida, uh I lived in Florida, Tampa for a couple years and um didn't know too much about Tampa before moving there, and happened to go to Ibor City, which is a Cuban influenced neighborhood in Tampa. And I was sitting, it was a fairly common occurrence for me to to drive into Ibor, uh, walk up and down 7th Avenue, which is the primary avenue or the primary walkway in Ibor City. It's where all the it's where all the tourism happens. There's cigar rolling um that still takes place there, coffee roasting. Um, so the the smells, the sights, and the sounds are really visceral, especially in the summer, where Florida humidity, it's almost as if uh all of these things like seep and stick to your body and the space.

unknown: 7:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_05: 7:48

So I fell in love with Ybor City really fast, really quickly. Um, but one day sitting at the Blind Tiger Cafe, I was grating, I was sipping espresso, and I was watching these feral urban chickens, the Ybor City chickens, stand at the crosswalk with uh their more than human animal counterparts waiting for the light to change so they could use the crosswalk and go across the street. And so I watched this happen, and my initial response was was kind of pithy. Uh the old joke came to mind, you know, why do chickens cross the road? And then that pithy thought was quickly replaced by a much deeper reflection. Well, maybe because uh they have places to go and things to do, right? This is their street. Um, so the more I got interested in the in the chickens, I just became really curious about um, you know, who they were, how they ended up in Ibor City. And that, of course, um, not to you know give away too much here at the beginning, uh, but that got me really into this exploration of of how the chickens, how the Ibor City chickens have become part of the neighborhood, but also central to a struggle over uh uh Igor City's public ecology. So they're at the center of a controversy. I would say that those, you know, between my my past experiences with with agriculture and and how that influenced my um attention to chickens in urban space, I would say those two moments really kind of bookmark um how I came to this particular project.

SPEAKER_02: 9:47

And it's it's it's fascinating. I mean, hearing you speak now as well as how you write, uh, you really are able to kind of convey a sense, a sensory experience. Like even as you were talking, I could smell the coffee and I could hear the rolling of the cigars, and you you kind of bring that attentiveness of the place into focus. And the fact that you saw chickens as contributing to that um sense of place is, I think, really profound. But were you always asking uh animal? So before this kind of encounter with with chickens, were you asking animal studies related questions or sound-related questions? What's your kind of scholarly background? What did anything prime you or what primed you to actually see the significance of the moments that chickens have things to do and places to go?

SPEAKER_05: 10:36

Oh, that's such a wonderful question. I would say I'm a I came to, I was inspired and enchanted by critical animal studies fairly late in my graduate school experience. I think it emerged in uh I was randomly, kind of randomly chosen to be a uh graduate assistant for an environmental communication class, an undergraduate environmental communication class. And so being part of that experience, uh I realized that environmental communication was, you know, that's where I wanted to be. That's where uh I wanted to study and teach. And that was emphasized or amplified by uh a small reading group full of wonderful weirdos, um, my friends and colleagues in grad school. Uh we were we put together informal reading groups and that really tried to push the limits of what rhetoric is, what rhetorical studies could be. Um, and so we focused a lot on um rhetoric as embodied, as energetic, as relational in all kinds of different ways that pushed against uh maybe a more traditional model of rhetoric, which is about um, you know, quote-unquote, the good man speaking well. And so I think all of those things came together to inspire this move towards thinking about um not only rhetoric as sound or the sonic dimensions of rhetoric and how we amplify that, but also how that really becomes central for understanding and taking part in uh quote unquote the environment.

SPEAKER_02: 12:28

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so this is something I've often uh kind of struggled with the thought about is kind of the tensions between writing about environments and about animals. Uh and it's it's something that I uh, you know, one of my supervisors, Laura Cameron, she's an environmental historian and she's uh she's actually written a fair deal about like sound and and sound ecologies herself. Um and yet, even in my own kind of dapplings in thinking about sound and environments, I've often found animals lacking somehow. Somehow, even though animals are a really important part of thinking about environments, um, sometimes I've I've felt as though what they're trying to say or how they are in those places is sometimes opaque, um, which is really kind of interesting. And I think this brings us kind of well to the what the concept for today, which is Republic of Noise. And before getting into kind of the the whole thing of Republic of Noise, perhaps we could uh sit a little bit with the idea of noise and what is noise. Because I think noise is quite political as well. So um maybe you could start us off with just walking through how you think about noise as a useful concept for animal studies uh folks.

SPEAKER_05: 13:43

Yeah. Um maybe a way into this uh would be through um maybe talking a little bit more about the controversy surrounding the chickens in Ibor City as kind of a sideways, getting into the question of noise a little sideways. So um because in in Ibor City, um there is right now the chickens are protected by uh laws and ordinances because they're feral, so they're considered wildfowl. Um but there are residents now who um want to evict the chickens because they make too much noise, or at least that's one of the reasons that that's often given in city council meetings. Um so you might hear, like, if you go to any city council meeting, you might hear things like, well, they're making it hard to sleep, they're they're um they're disrupting the harmony of the neighborhood. And so noise becomes the way that I think about um those reasons is well, it seems like noise is separate from what it means to live in a good community or a harmonious community. So noise almost punctures this sense of order, of productivity and efficiency, of sense. So there seems to be this connection between harmony and making sense.

SPEAKER_06: 15:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 15:20

And so the way that people talk about noise typically is well, it's nonsense, it's disorder, it's excessive, it's inefficient. And so um noise then becomes uh not only a reason for eviction, but it's also constructed by all of these, constructed and maintained by all of these ideologies about who and what is worth listening to, and um assumptions of how a place should sound. And so for this, I'm really thinking about uh a communication study scholar named Jennifer Stover, who describes uh what's called the listening ear. And the listening ear is a concept that helps us take into account all of how habits of listening uh accrue over time. So, how do certain ideologies and assumptions um filter the way that I hear something like the chickens in an urban space? Um, noise, I think, is tends to be heard as something negative excess, and thus it needs to be excised in favor of harmony. So, in at least in this context, that's how I'm thinking about noise.

SPEAKER_02: 16:46

That's that's really useful. And I and I think because I I do think that there's we've I've spoken about it, I think, earlier in the season, where there was a shift and change in terms of thinking about what noises or what sounds were appropriate in in cities at particular moments in time, right? I think it's fairly reasonable to assume that chickens and roosters were sounding in most cities for most of cities' existence. Uh there are small animals who who humans have used throughout history. Um and it's arguably their sounds have been in cities for longer periods of time than they've been outside of cities. So there was a time in which the sound of roosters and the sounds of chickens were were welcomed, um, or maybe not even welcomed, just not thought about. They just were there. But then obviously you kind of see in the early 20th century ordinances come into place. Um, so even the the city I'm looking at, the roosters all of a sudden became a problem. It almost seemed like overnight roosters became a problem. And um, you had the Board of Health saying, wait, how do we, how do we, and I like that you use the word evict. I hadn't thought of that before, but how do we banish these birds from the city? And all of these kinds of um municipal government bodies trying to figure out how they can get rid of birds in a legal way, which is just really fascinating when you think about it. And eventually a noise ordinance was the way they did it. Um they realized that they couldn't just outright banish the birds, but they could regulate noise, and those regulations had really material impacts for roosters in the in the city. But yet here you've got Yorbor City, which is a uh, you know, a special kind of city here because the birds are protected by an ordinance as opposed to being banished by one, which I think is fascinating for two reasons. One, it points to the fact that cities can be different. Um, that the you know, kind of and there are many cities today that are this way. I think most cities in the world do have chicken residents and rooster residents. It's only a very handful of small developed cities that are absent, where these noises don't permeate the soundscape, right? And sometimes when I have these conversations, I I I kind of forget that that actually it's kind of weird that you don't hear roosters and chickens in the city, actually, if you if you think about it. Anyway, I'm rambling. Um, I think that it's interesting here though, how regulation and ordinances are used to manage chicken and rooster populations. And I think that this maybe speaks a bit to the the republic part of your your concept here. So it's republic of noise. So here, if I understand you correctly, noise, we're kind of managing expectations and societal kind of hopes as well. But republic, am I correct in understanding that republic is speaking more to like these governance things? Or what are we what are we talking about when we say republic of noise?

SPEAKER_05: 19:52

That's that's a great question. Um yeah, I'll just back up for a minute. Um because there's also because what I'm I mean, uh what you what you were talking about just made me think about how umor cities are also in the process of gentrification. So I think that's important. And so, you know, the chickens almost serve as proxy for eviction of um other quote unquote noisy neighbors, like very human animal um presences in the city. And so, in a way, um, you know, I think in the process of gentrification, um chicken residents and non-chicken residents um are connected in terms of who is making the noise and who is not part of the harmonious neighborhood. Um but in addition to that, I was also thinking about how harmony, when it's situated opposite noise, also helps to maintain these binaries between human and animal, nature, culture, urban, rural, um voice, noise, or speech and noise. Uh, because a lot of the the proposals for what to do with the chickens are related to, well, we just need to put them back where they belong, which is typically framed as back on the farm or as poultry. Um, so there's this, you know, if they make if noise seems to be also this marker or this binary that constructs the chicken as already out of place. It can't be urban chicken, so we'll just put it back on the farm without even considering well, no, these chickens have been here a long time. They've adopted the rules of the road. They're not farm chickens. Um so they are part of this republic. And so this is uh a segue into this republic idea. So uh when we're thinking about when I'm thinking about a republic of noise, um I'm I'm thinking about how, and this might be, I might go about this sideways as well, um, with pro-chicken rhetoric and activism in Ibor City, and how they're trying to form this larger uh political cultural body that wants to develop a different way of listening and a different way of relating, um, where they actually foster noise as something not to be negated, but noise is something that actually is central to a rabble of voices that come together that shape the atmosphere of what it means to exist in this space. So um, this republic of noise is made up of members of what's called the Ybor Chicken Society, a nonprofit organization that um advocates for, that serves as ambassadors for chickens, um, and and tries to educate not only tourists and other members of the community, but also um newer residents who are moving in. And so the volunteers for the Ebor Chicken Society with the chickens have in the way that they walk together, in the way that they um move and and communicate in body ways in this space, have created this almost a different valuation of what it means to be noisy, if that makes sense. So the the Republic of Noise is less a uh a governing political body and more of a a loose chorus of footsteps that thinks about well, if harmony forecloses a community, because harmony assumes a perfect sounding place that's finished, uh the Republic of Noise is actually a recognition of well, Igor City is an ongoing imperfect attempt to sound out relationships and um becoming together.

SPEAKER_02: 24:44

So uh I like that. I think so. So if I understand you correctly, it's leaning more towards the the messy side of things. Sometimes we construe, I think, nature or like I was speaking about earlier, environmental history is kind of you as you say here, you tend towards harmony, but I think we often tend towards thinking about silence or purity or perfection. Whereas noise here is is messy and not easily defined and not um harmonious, but that doesn't make it not beautiful. Noise can be beautiful, you can sound together, um, you can find new openings. And again, here music, you said chorus, you know, you can find a way to sing together, or you can find ways to, I guess, pick up a beat or a rhythm and move in a different direction. So, so here, if I'm understanding you, you're meaning that through noising together in the same locality, in the same place, which is Yorbo City, chickens and humans, and arguably many of the other residents who make up the soundscape, are making a republic. It's not the this is a it's political to recognize that these sounds are not just nothing. They're not out there. They they together, even in the ways in which they rub up against one another, make the city what the city is.

SPEAKER_04: 26:14

Yeah, absolutely. I love the way you put that.

SPEAKER_05: 26:19

It it it makes it that is beautiful. Um in a messy way. It it amplifies the city as multi-species resonance more than a map. So, you know, vibes, um, expenditure and circulation of energy, um that makes room for for excess, not as nonsense, right? Excess is this this noise is not nonsense. It's very much right what defines Igor City. And Igor City is inherently a loud place anyway. It's um I hear this from students. Uh, I heard this from students, it's where all the best clubs are. Uh it's where all of the loudest music are.

SPEAKER_02: 27:00

You're not going to all these best clubs.

SPEAKER_05: 27:05

Uh I I will neither admit nor deny um club hopping with chickens in Ybor City. Um but it but it's a loud space anyway. And so it's almost as if um uh there's this possibility that comes with embracing noise in this urban ecology um as a way to puncture or rupture this desire for a closed off and finished community. So I I think about it more as a as a this clamor is at the heart of what it means to relate. And it's this ongoing constant um back and forth negotiation, struggle, um, multi-species collaboration to make Igor what it is and what it should be. Um, which I think then perhaps starts to get at these binaries between nature, culture, urban, rural, human, animal.

SPEAKER_02: 28:11

And I like the fact that you're focusing on the oral components here. So we we tend to, you know, in thinking of the unwanted and how the unwanted also constitute space. Kind of the those that we try to disavow and we push away somehow through that very act of saying, we don't want you here, seem to like um I was speaking earlier with with my husband Oliver about uh raccoons in Toronto. Torontonians speak about raccoons all the time. You know, they're notorious, they're they're thrifty, they figure out how to open up cans, like trash cans that the government's invested millions into figuring out. And uh these bandits just know what they're doing. They they trouble they trouble the ideas that we have. Yet I think they make us think of Toronto as Toronto. Somehow, even in trying to push those raccoons out, I don't think they're like the national, they're the urban animal of the city. You know, you wouldn't Toronto wouldn't be the same without those animals there. And I think to kind of sanitize the space of their presence would be to lose something. Um but I still wonder though about the use of of noise because it does have so many negative connotations, uh so many ideas that uh to be noisy is to be out of place and to almost call for some sort of um governance, right? Uh it already comes with some preconceived ideas about the extent to which you belong or don't belong. So then I then I'm like, hmm. Because I actually I really like noise. Noise calls attention. Just because it's noisy to me doesn't mean it's noisy to someone else. So I think it calls attention to some power imbalances. But do you ever worry that noise might not be helping with this um this project of thinking? Of your boss city as a as a multi-species place?

SPEAKER_05: 30:05

Yeah, I it's that is a difficult question. Um I and part of me, uh I'm thinking in a couple of different ways. So noise certainly has negative connotation, and I think that depends a lot on habits of listening. So in a republic of noise, maybe there's a sense that, well, noise challenges me to reflect on my listening ear. So again, like my habits of listening, how certain ideologies and identities inform the way that I hear things and make judgments about who and what is worth listening to. Um and so just you know, just the presence of noise maybe presses me to reflect on my own attachments uh to certain sounds over others. Um and I'm also thinking about um you know democratic politics as noisy, as inherently about a cacophony of voices um coming together to make decisions, um, but but not rational. So this isn't the the perfect speech situation. Um, so I think amplifying noise also challenges me to rethink well, the phrase is often this is what democracy looks like.

SPEAKER_03: 31:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 31:42

And so what if we shift that phrase to, well, this is what democracy sounds like? Democracy should be noisy. Um, it shouldn't be, well, maybe there's you know, times and places, different contexts, but democracy at its heart is about discord, dissent, being noisy, raising voices. And so there's a sense that embracing noise is also this attempt in this context to also embrace the inherent messy cacophony that is um democracy, I think.

SPEAKER_02: 32:19

That's really that that's really cool. So um so noise allows me to at a personal level stop and think, okay, I've heard something that's bothered me, and to stop and realize why did that bother me, and to actually reflect on the sounds and spaces that jar me. Uh, because sometimes that's a product of unequal power dynamics. So sometimes I might have a sound that I hate, but I need to think, why do I hate that sound? Uh and I think earlier in the season someone spoke about kind of the unpleasant sound of seagulls. And I was like, I love seagulls because of my own history. So there, I think that speaks to kind of your own individual histories and how stopping to find out what irritates you, how that was shaped. And then on the other hand, I really like what you're saying there about democracy being um discordant, like there are different voices and different sounds and different ideas, and they don't always have to be harmonious for it to actually be what politics looks like. Um, actually, if everything is sounding the same and everything is in harmony, then maybe voices are actually being stifled, um, ideas are being stifled. So that's really, that's really um, yeah, I think that's super powerful in thinking about sound and animals and how we can kind of mobilize the their voices in a political way and taking seriously the ways in which they sound places. Um, but I think yeah, you also talk about noise in a fascinating way, in that you focus not only on the sounds the birds make uh in terms of their vocal capacities, but on the sounds that their bodies make in general. You you spend a lot of time in the paper speaking about feet and steps. And I and I love the idea of talking about chickens as pedestrians as opposed to poultry, uh, because that just shifts the whole narrative. That shifts the the way in which we think about them. So could you maybe talk us through that a little bit, kind of the embodied understanding of noise and um I guess pedestrian making?

SPEAKER_05: 34:29

Yeah, this is probably my most favorite thing to talk about, actually, is the feet. Um because and this is I think this is why I love um Michelle Deserteux. Um, in the way that he describes walking rhetoric and pedestrian speech acts, and trying to bridge this notion of speech and walking. So the way that Deserteaux describes walking rhetoric is in the very steps that we take in any space, we can make things appear, make things disappear, foreground some things, background other things. We create meaning through these different paths, ways to go. Um, we can change the dimension of a place with footsteps. And um and of course, Deserto is talking really about um everyday acts of resistance. So, um, how do ordinary everyday acts of walking rhetoric or pedestrian speech acts enunciate a different direction, um provide detours around power structures or um uh throughways um into cracks of oppressive, unjust uh systems of power. And so um, as I was thinking about, as I was sitting there watching the chickens move, walk across the road, and you know, I there were moments where I started following the walking with the chickens through the city, and the volunteers for the Ybor Chicken Society also walk with chickens through farmers' markets, advocating for the chickens and making sure they're not stepped on or kicked out. So there's this sense that that that these pedestrian speech acts are trying to enunciate a different form of belonging, um, you know, while scratching along the pavement with uh with talons. And so I I really think about this walking rhetoric as um as a really embodied form of communication that tries to connect you know speech and advocacy to, well, if we're going to enunciate a city together or a space together, then we should probably get into the habits of paying attention to each other's steps and walking together in this space.

SPEAKER_02: 37:12

Um that's that's incredible. And I think there's a long history of of seeing how disenfranchised groups have taken to space to lay claim, to, to get to get heard uh politically and to be taken seriously. Um I of course grew up in in South Africa, and there's a long history of resistance against apartheid by occupying space, by walking in spaces that were defined as white. And this could very well be a um a death sentence. Like it was really and truly uh a profound thing to walk in a space where you were not allowed. So I think that that's really powerful in terms of thinking about the spaces that animals occupy and who is allowed to decide where they're allowed to occupy. Um, and of course, this is not to equivocate the kind of history of um apartheid South Africa um here, but just to think about how numerous scholars are thinking through kind of how space is used in these political ways. Um and and I like that the idea of the chickens walking through the market and that they they have you started the interview saying they have places to go and things to do, that these chickens have a long history, they know these spaces and they might have different agendas. They might not be going to the market to buy chicken, um, they are going to the market to to find grain or to find shelter, or just I don't know, maybe that's where they meet their friends. They've got a different agenda. So the the space that we have our preconceived ideas of that space shift when we start to try and think about what are they doing in that space, um, which is really cool. Um, another thing I wanted to ask you about though is something I think and thinking about the Republic of Noise is to not collapse all chicken experiences as being uniform and the same. So you you spoke earlier about uh Yorbull chickens having a long history and they're intergenerational, and this is how they know their city. But these aren't the only chickens that are in in your boy. You you speak a lot about uh immigrant chickens. Could you maybe talk us through through how this speaks to a republic of noise?

SPEAKER_05: 39:28

Yeah, I think this goes to the the complicated um, I think this goes to really complicated ways that Ibor is constructed as inclusive and exclusive because we have in Ibor there there are the Ibor city chickens, and they are protected, they have more protection both by advocates and and legal codes than than quote unquote um the chickens who are dropped off. And so there has been an increase over you know the last few years of chickens who have been abandoned in the city, um, in the neighborhood. And these could be backyard chickens, they could be chickens that were were taken up as pets, um, chickens who were used for uh prize fighting. Um part of the reason is because, well, there is a history of chickens being taken care of in Igor City. So we have these chickens who have been abandoned, and these and the Ybor City chickens. And so certainly here is this tension between uh the Ybor City chickens through their walking um in their enunciations have proclaimed and have advocated for their belonging, and activists have advocated for their belonging. Um, but what happens to these quote-unquote other chickens? Um are they now part of the Republic of Noise? And what the Ibor City Chicken Society has started to do is to expand the republic. So they recognize, and I think we have to recognize that that the chickens who have been abandoned or found their way into Ibor City more recently aren't necessarily versed in the atmospheres, the movements and the reverberations of Ibor City yet. Doesn't mean that they can't, it just hasn't happened yet. And so members of the Ibor Chicken Society recognize this, like they wouldn't be able to flourish in this space yet. And so they've created uh what's called the Ibor City Microsanctuary. And this is a place where um I don't know if I would call it uh it's a refuge, it's an urban refuge for um these chickens who have arrived for various reasons. And it's a way to to almost, I don't want to say acclimate, but certainly kind of let's join the republic of noise. Um but we need some refuge first before there's um before there's like real, not real, before there is there's a refuge space, an in-between space.

SPEAKER_02: 42:31

What it makes me think of, and something Patrice Jones mentioned in an earlier season is sometimes we forget that chickens are birds. Um we've come to think of chickens as kind of this monolithic group, um, and we forget that they're birds and they've got particular bird things that they would like to do. But here I think what you've done is also kind of show how particular groups of chickens have very different histories. Um, your boar chickens have a different history and a way in which they've come to constitute your boar than the um the immigrant chickens, and both histories are valid. When you were talking about a sanctuary there, it just made me think how many people would second guess kind of the establishments of a sanctuary for songbirds or for, you know, that that other other birds kind of that have been prized because their sounds arguably have been prized, their music is prized, and their presence in the city is viewed as welcome. If if an urban sanctuary or an urban space were to be cornered off for them, um I wonder to what extent people would raise an eyebrow. But then you think about a sanctuary for chickens in the city, it's that in itself is kind of doing what you said earlier, it's taking up space, which is actually pretty neat.

SPEAKER_05: 43:44

Yeah, and it's it's also expanded, it I think it also embraces this idea that a community in a in the Republic of Noise, the community is is always in process of becoming, it's never finished. And so um, so we have to you know figure this out. And it's gonna be messy and it's gonna be imperfect and it's gonna be noisy, but that's okay because that's part of what it means to be here and to take part in in sounding out a community. So I think this, you know, these tensions are are being, I think these tensions are being addressed in really imperfect but yet caring ways that tries to pay attention to, well, yeah, like there are different individual chickens with individual needs and desires and and movements, but also groups of chickens who who need and we should listen to differently because flourishing might mean something different. And so under the Republic of Noise, I think the that's all taken into account. Um so and this uh this actually this question actually came up during uh a recent lecture I gave on this topic here on campus. Um, one of the students asked about, well, what about you know, what about backyard chickens? Are they part of this, you know, political formation, this political cultural formation? And and I and I wasn't quite sure how to answer that question because the backyard chickens are also different, they have different relationships with more than human animals, and human animals, uh they're they're in a different space, um, but yet part of Ibor City. So that raises even more complicated questions about you know who is part of this republic of noise and are there are there actually boundaries to it?

SPEAKER_02: 46:02

Yeah, and I think that's really important because even as you were saying, kind of becoming with, and this is something I struggle with in my own kind of writing and thinking, is it's one at what point do any sort of hard and fast rules get applied to our public of noise? So I think it's really generative and powerful to recognize that these sounds and embodiment of animals in particular places make those places what they are, and that those places, you know, in line with ecology and ecological thinking, shift and change over time, and that we produce in both our togetherness and our frictions that place. So I'm I'm with you there. But then the republic part or the political part says to me that there should possibly be some lines in the sand drawn, that there are some becomings that we potentially want to prevent. There are some becomings that we say are actually not ethically appropriate or problematic. And uh maybe this is just another sounding uh board that someone gets to stand up and say, uh, you know, you spoke about the colonel in in the paper, and he was he was killed. So what are the rules of engagement in a republic of noise? You know, what what ethical and who gets to determine those? And these are big questions. I don't expect you to have the answers to them, but but it's just kind of in terms of thinking through it it's it's something I struggle with a little bit, with becoming with kind of rhetoric.

SPEAKER_05: 47:40

Yeah, the kind of the the limits, the limits of the republic. And I and to be honest, I haven't um because I've been so focused on noise and this republic of noise as as resistance, as as a way to to sound out an alternative way of of hearing, listening, and being. Um, I don't think I've spent enough time reflecting on on the possible limits, um, but certainly the rules of engagement. Um, I think maybe I can riff a little about you know, deserto with deserto and thinking about what it means to walk, to create a space while to create a space with walking rhetoric as a as a collective. And so right, an openness, an openness and and practice of of walking, um, broadly defined, um, could be one of those, I guess, rules of engagement or one of those uh habits necessary to promote this republic, along with um maybe being comfortable with with discord and clamor. But but beyond that, I I don't think I've I've thought enough about the limit cases.

SPEAKER_02: 49:16

Yeah, the the reason like I think walking as a methodology and as a way of engagement is really I think walking and food as as animal studies scholars are actually interesting points to think through eating and walking and how they constitute space, um, and and how both humans and a variety of animals, we all do these things. We we walk or we fly or we swim, we have mobility and we we eat. So I think that's really important. But you know, in thinking about uncomfortable noises here, um you said you've listened to the some of the previous episodes. So a story that stuck with me so far is obviously the story Mickey Valley kind of presents with him. Um a moment for him where he was just trying to record the sound of pigs being slaughtered. And that actually, and maybe this proves the Republic of Noise here. It's not necessarily something to refute it, but that that sound he realized that he was participating in something awful, and that um that sound struck him in the most emotive way. So there was noise there. That noise actually cut to the heart of him, and maybe that is the republic of noise, but then I think it's thinking through the the boundaries. So is this a yeah? Um sorry, and I'm I'm just I'm thinking with you here. Like, what is what does that do? Is it is it the is it the republic of noise is the ability to get people to stop and act, or is it an acceptance of the ever-evolving sounds? And what sounds don't we want to be in that noise? Do we want the squeals of pigs? Um, for example.

SPEAKER_05: 50:54

So yeah, I think yeah, I think the yeah, that is wow. Um so again, riffing now. So the Republic of Norse. Still in the spirit of riffing. Um I'm trying to use more auditory metaphors to challenge the the visual metaphors that are that are highlighted and foregrounded in a lot of the ways that I talk already.

SPEAKER_02: 51:18

Let's drum it out. Let's um let's let's I don't know, I'm not good with this, but you've wrote lots of them. Let's reverberate, let's vibe.

SPEAKER_05: 51:30

Amplify. Let's amplify some stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 51:31

Yeah, let's amplify. That's cool. I'm gonna start saying that just to random people. Let's amplify.

SPEAKER_04: 51:38

I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_05: 51:40

Um well I'm thinking about. Okay, so like if I if I center the Ebor Chicken Society, volunteers, activists, their relationships with certain chickens, it's it becomes clear to me that there that there are limits to this particular republic of noise. That doesn't mean that those limits can't change and shift over time, depending on context. Um, but there, but there are. And this is, you know, I I think that they would, I think volunteers and the people I've talked to in the organization would agree that, yeah, there are definitely voices, sounds, um presences that that we should not necessarily promote in this republic, whether that's you know, I'm thinking about barking dogs that also scare chickens. Um that's probably right, not life-affirming in this sense. Um there's also cars that while most cars on Seventh Avenue will stop and let chickens cross the road, there are other autos that will they may stop or slow down, but they will rev engines as a way to get the or honk to get the chickens to hurry up or to show dissatisfaction or impatience. And and I would argue that that's another sound that that shouldn't be part of this republic of noise. Like it doesn't partake in the um uh uh the the democratic, it doesn't try to sound out the community, it tries to control the community via sound. And maybe that's a uh one of the differences, one of the ways that I would differentiate control and and um management um versus participation and sounding out relations.

SPEAKER_02: 53:54

Yeah, that's very useful. So to pass them apart instead of collapsing them all into one another, that's uh and I guess it depends from whose point of view, right? Like if you are walking with dogs versus walking with chickens, you might have different priorities and like you said, making uh noise about them and finding, you know, maybe there's a dawn chorus to cities, maybe there's a maybe there is a uh, but now I'm trying to take us back to harmony. Wait, Claudia, wait, have you learned that's working? Maybe, maybe there's a way in which these sounds can um, but yeah, okay. I think this has been really helpful in terms of noise as being something that we can use as a useful concept to thinking about animals, not only in terms of how they're positioned in human politics and governance structures, but also as something that uh problematizes their place, but potentially provides useful avenues for thinking about how that happened, I think.

SPEAKER_01: 54:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 54:55

So I I think this is really, really uh useful and powerful. And um, I love all the use of uh sound metaphors and and music throughout there. But we're we're quickly running out of time. So um maybe now we could just switch to uh talking a bit about your quote if you've if you've got it with you.

SPEAKER_05: 55:12

Oh, I'm torn between two quotes.

SPEAKER_01: 55:16

You won't read them both if you like.

SPEAKER_05: 55:19

A lot of people do. Okay, I appreciate that. Um, because I was also thinking about we we were talking a little bit about writing and style earlier, and so I was trying to be attentive to not only um you know my own writing, but but whose writing has some bounce to it, whose writing is poetic, and and you can almost hear it in addition to seeing the words on the page. So the first quote is from David Abram, um who and the book is The Spell of the Sensuous. So David Abram writes a lot about uh these poetic encounters with environments and strange relationships that emerge and and really tries to feature the embodied visceral forms of communication. So this is from the chapter The Flesh of Language.

SPEAKER_03: 56:30

Um, and it starts.

SPEAKER_05: 56:33

So he's trying to really, pun intended, flesh out a different way of thinking about this thing we call speech. If language is always in its depth, physically and sensorily resonant, that it can never be definitively separated from the evident expressiveness of bird song or the evocative howl of a wolf late at night, the chorus of frogs gurgling in unison at the edge of the pond, the snarl of a wild cat as it springs upon its prey, or the distant honking of Canadian geese veering south for the winter, all reverberate with affective gestural significance. The same significance that vibrates through our own conversations and soliloquies, moving us at time to tears, or to anger, or to intellectual insights we could never have anticipated. Language as a bodily phenomenon accrues to all expressive bodies, not just to the human. Our own speaking then does not set us outside of the animate landscape, but whether or not we are aware of it, inscribes us more fully in its chattering, whispering, soundful depth. So I love that quote.

SPEAKER_02: 57:46

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_05: 57:54

So there's the sense that that humans' proclamations to own speech from the very beginning is fallible because we only borrow speech from ecology. And I just that completely shifted my way of thinking about what it means to communicate. Um and then the second quote is a little less the second quote, and you can include this or not, it's totally up to you. Um is a little less joyful. Um, another scholar who inspires me is Deborah Bird Rose. Um, the book Wild Dog Dreaming, Love and Extinction, specifically the chapter Um What If the Angel of History Were a Dog. So Rose is reflecting on Ben Hamine's ruminations on the angel of history painting, um, which becomes a metaphor for looking, like looking back on the the catastrophe and the the violence and the wreckage of modernity. And so Rose asks, What if the angel of history were a dog? And this is the answer. If the angel of history were a dog, she would be in the world, in relationship, in communication, and she would be calling out. Let us say that this is so. Let us continue with the idea that the world is real and that others communicate, and that we too are called into connection. This angel is howling now because her fellow human creatures have lost themselves in the labyrinths of their own death world and seem not to know how to find their way out. She is howling with grief over the deaths and the torture and the relentless relentlessness of it all. And she's calling out in search, trying to pull us. And others back into connectivity. Come back, she calls, come back to the world of the living.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:08

Wow. I love that. Um both of them. I mean, both of them kind of show sound and voice, but not, you know, something Ava said was it's not this idea of giving voice, but actually of just recognizing that animals' voice and animals have history and animals have place. Um and that even our very idea of that voice as being noise says something maybe more about us than about them. Um but really, uh, really, yeah, she writes beautifully. Um I think just incredible to kind of think about the histories and and the different spaces that they occupy. And I like the idea of like thinking about history written by other animals. What events would they include? Uh, what kind of we always tell the same historical events? Um in in school in South Africa, I was taught primarily about World War I, World War II, but very little about African histories, which I think is um actually this says something about the politics of the world and the the hegemony is what what histories we are taught, what histories we are told. So, what would happen if we told a the big history of chickens, right?

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:18

Um what it what would it mean? I love both of those quotes because it asks it asks me a really hard question what does it really mean to listen at the end of right at the end of it, like ultimately who and what do I listen for?

SPEAKER_05: 1:01:36

Who and what do I deem worth listening to? And and how do I develop the the practices and habits to develop a different attunement to these presences that don't fit or that that are deemed out of place. I think for me those two quotes really emphasize that idea as well.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:02

Yeah. And possibly even how to listen for those that silent is not the right word, but those that get lost. I I constantly think back to Paula Akari when she said so many animals are just part of the wallpaper of our lives. And I think there are there are animals who demand to be listened to because they lay claim to space. They they take the space as their own, and we have to almost respond, whether through our policies or our actions, and and I think the ethics of the ways we respond is you know open for debate. But there are many other animals who kind of are invisible, who we don't really think about. Um how do we how do we how do we start to train our ears and our minds to thinking about a variety of animals? Um how do I get empathy for the fish in the ocean and the whales and the you know? Um yeah, it's it's it's interesting to think through for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:03:10

How do I how do I let go of my own desire for harmony?

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:14

Yeah, I mean, I saw that throughout this episode, and I kept wanting to kind of push the noise or the republic of noise into an idea of all of the noises. How do we get to a place where all the noises we make are kind of viewed as just uh like a dawn chorus type thing, that we all operate at different frequencies and that we all have our own space to make noise. Um, but maybe kind of gearing for this type of equilibrium is not the right way to go about it. Maybe there is this kind of embracing of the messy.

SPEAKER_05: 1:03:43

Um so yeah, yeah, and we didn't get to talk about this, but but there's also you know, the the literal shit on the ground that become controversial for the chickens because they just there are feces all over, and so there's this desire to clean that up. But what you know, could we imagine just living with it and being okay with it? And I don't know the answer.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:12

I mean, that opens up that opens up a whole bunch of other questions, right? Like there's a reason why we started removing shit as shit gets into waterways and it creates other sorts of problems that are real problems and tend to obviously impact um they impact very specific populations, human populations in cities, uh, and this is often shaped by class dynamics and stuff. So whose whose lives that shit impacts is very different to who is necessarily asking for that poop to be cleaned or not. Um, and these are not easy questions to be fixed, but I do think being okay with a bit more messiness and and being aware of what the limits of that messiness should be or could be, is yeah, it's it's not easy, but it's definitely something that we haven't that we've only started, I think, to try and grapple with is how do we navigate this? And I think that is what makes this political, is it's not just an easy answer, it's not an easy fix. It is it is um navigating different desires and interests, right?

SPEAKER_05: 1:05:19

Um I love Donna Haraway's um notion of messmates. And so whenever I talk about whenever uh a lot of times when I when I talk about human more than human-animal relations, usually I just refer to to us as messmates. Like we make we make messes together, one way or another.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:43

We do make messes together, but sometimes humans make messes with or using animals as well. So um we both make messes, but sometimes the ways in which we make messes are differently visible, I suppose. Um or differently legitimized, right? So like the ways in which we make a mess, we've created policies that enable us to make a mess, that enable us to put pollution in water and and we've created contra policies to try and figure out our trash and our waste as well. But we've legitimized our waste in many ways. But the mess that other animals make um maybe depending on the space it's in, it's more legitimate or less legitimate. You know, a a deer that poops in a forest is allowed to poop in the forest, and we also oh it's a beautiful part of ecology. But a dog that poops on a sidewalk is this could be, you know, a big thing of strife for the the community and um and kind of sidewalk politics. So yeah. I like the idea of messmates, but I think it's it's very place dependent. You need to kind of who who is allowed to mess where, um, who is allowed to be dirty when um is is um significant, right? Oh okay, well obviously this has been a really fruitful concept. Um I I like that we started with noise and kind of the usefulness of noise and and unpacking how a place comes to be thought of and kind of the political potential of censoring noise um for for specific animals, species, or even populations of that species. That's really, really useful. Um is there anything else you want to add before we start uh rounding up or or anything like that?

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:32

Um I don't think so. As long as you think that that was okay and you got some stuff you can use.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:38

I think we got plenty of um okay.

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:42

So before we Was it too messy?

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:44

No, I don't think it was too messy. I think I mean the the podcast episodes are here for I I mean the way I view them is it's it's half me trying to figure out what this concept is and chiming about half-baked ideas I have and hoping that we can um do something together. And I think we've we've done that and that it's uh useful for listeners to kind of think of new concepts, right? Like you've got so many useful concepts in in this paper um that we could have, I think, spent tons of time on. I mean, Republic of Noise, Rhetoric, Afoul Politics. I absolutely love a foul politics, pedestrian speech acts. Um yeah, I think there's there's a lot a lot here. Um and the idea of politics as being auditory, and and yeah, I encourage everyone to head out and and read this paper and to maybe think a bit about noise and pollution and dirt and how how we've kind of got sanitized ideas of what sounds are okay. Um but while we're wrapping up, perhaps you want to tell us a bit about what you're working on now and if people are interested in learning more about your work or want to get in touch with you about these chickens, um, or maybe some of your methods as well, because this is a great paper for methods. Kind of you use photography, you use walking. Um so if people want to get in touch with you about any of these uh things, how do they do that?

SPEAKER_05: 1:09:06

Yeah, certainly uh I'll welcome you know any anyone who wants to to email uh to set up coffee or drinks, happy hours, more than welcome to do that. Uh I'm I am a huge proponent of of collaboration and collective intellectual work. Um I'm not uh versed in in social media, so I don't have a Twitter um or an Instagram or anything like that. Um I should probably should. But in the future, so looking ahead, um I'm currently in the process of of hoping to start a documentary on the Ybor City chickens.

SPEAKER_06: 1:09:52

Wow.

SPEAKER_05: 1:09:52

Um a little intimidating, but I think it will be uh a nice way to maybe combine all these methods. Um the walking, the photography, the the audio recording, a little bit of ethnography, a little bit of rhetorical analysis. So that's in the works, and then I've also been thinking a lot about um where I'm currently residing, in Spokane, Washington, in the US, and the feral politics here. So currently there are the South Hill feral turkeys that are starting to become uh another um presence at the heart of a controversy over uh residency and eviction, inclusion and exclusion. So I'm probably gonna ground myself a little bit more here in Spokane. Um and I think this is emerging or evolving into uh a larger project about feral birds and urban ecology.

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:03

Yeah, I mean I I think the ideas you've brought up here with with noise and also with a foul politics or actually any sort of uh politics, you could uh any city, I imagine, any place, even a rural place, you you start to pay attention and attentiveness to it and you'll you'll unpack those stories. Um so that's really, really exciting. Uh I look forward to kind of and and like starting to compare how those politics manifest in different cities in different ways. Um will be really kind of some of Jennifer Robinson's ideas of um comparative cities uh and ordinary cities, kind of thinking through elsewhere and stuff. I think that's really cool. Um and I love that you're doing a documentary, that's wild, and I think what a great moment. I think about all of these work, these movies that are coming out now, like Space Dogs and Stray and Gunda and our cow, and they're all starting to position animals and often taken for granted animals as like these protagonists, which is really um I think it's a really transformative uh device and way of kind of engaging with people in a way that maybe gets away from some of the more um more I don't know, different it's a different way of telling a story. I don't know what I'm trying to say, but it's really exciting.

SPEAKER_05: 1:12:19

The charismatic creek. So yeah, ask this question to to students is you know, because some of them were asking, like, well, why chickens? As if and my my my pithy response was, well, if we were talking about dogs or dolphins, would you ask that same question? Well, no, because it's just chickens. I'm like, ah, so what would happen if you know the chicken became the the poster animal for a climate catastrophe? Um how would that influence environmental justice activism in specific places? You know, does it ground it? Does it ground environmental justice differently given how industrial agriculture is attached to unjust labor and toxic flows that that, like you said, impact um marginalized communities? Yeah. So we got into a discussion about well, which are the the creatures, which animals should we really be foregrounding as the protagonist for climate catastrophe.

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:29

No, it's it's I mean, like I do work with with cows, and I think cows have very quickly become a poster child for climate change, but not in the same way that a polar bear has, right? A polar bear is viewed as kind of a a victim of climate change. Um someone who someone or populations that have been deeply impacted by our decisions. Um whereas cows have kind of become these poster children in that they're seen as villains and contributors to climate change without necessarily accounting for our relationships. And then I would love to kind of see polar bears and cows come together and see how there is a connection here. Like if you're having a conversation about the Arctic uh and you're not talking about uh agriculture, you're you're missing a big portion of what's happening here, the the ecologies and the politics.

unknown: 1:14:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:14:19

If there was if not a documentary, I'm thinking about Judith Jack Halberstan's Pixarville uh notion where you know kids' films have these radical uh anti-capitalist, um socialist, utopian political visions. And so what would happen, you know, if if if we develop this, you know, kids' cartoon animated films that feature polar bears, cows, chickens, like the the animals that quote unquote don't get the go together, like that becomes the the medium in addition to a documentary. That could be kind of like that.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:59

I could definitely do a whole episode just on on these films because I think there is a lot of the the right type of stuff, the good stuff mentioned in these Disney films and the ways in which but at the same time you watch the movie and you step outside and there's Dory the fish to buy. So like it's it's like Yep, come on, what are you doing to me? Um so it's yeah, yeah, that would really be an interesting kind of thinking through aesthetics and kind of moralizing, but also the material like actions of these industries. It's it's fascinating. Gosh, I think I could talk to you for ages, but I'm gonna I'm gonna stop it there. Thank you so much for being a fantastic guest. It was really a joy to have you on the show. Hi Hannah, welcome back once again uh to the Animal Turn. I believe today we're gonna be speaking about what's gonna be one of the coolest named animals ever. Pistol shrimps.

SPEAKER_08: 1:15:59

Pistol shrimps, yes, pistol shrimps and sonic warfare is my title of this highlight. Um so uh let's just start with shrimp in general. So so certain kinds of shrimp, um of which pistol shrimp are a family, these kind of snapping shrimps, are collectively some of the loudest beings in the ocean. So, in certain places in the world, if you kind of have ever been lucky enough to snorkel or go scuba diving, um, you'll be very familiar with this sound of shrimp. Um, so they have these kind of snapping or popping sounds on the ocean floor. Um, and this kind of fact of shrimp being really noisy um was memorialized in a um sound artist called Jaina Windrin. She has a recording album called The Noisiest Guys on the Planet, um, which records a kind of crustacean called a decapoda. Um and they're a kind of very integral part of the ocean soundscape in a way that a passing ship might be as well. And yeah, they're just really loud for such a small species and they kind of come together. Um, so some shrimp use this sound-making capability for their survival, and that's where our friends, the pistol shrimp, come in. So they capture their food and warn off competition and predators through sound. So they have this amazing ability where they kind of cock their claws open and clamp them shut really quickly in the direction of the prey, and this creates a bubble, and this bubble pops, creating a sound that's so loud that it stuns that prey, and then the pistols after them. And so that's where the physical.

SPEAKER_02: 1:17:59

Before you continue, how big is a pistol shrimp here?

SPEAKER_08: 1:18:01

Like how how big am I Well, you're thinking small, you're thinking small kind of crustacean that might live under a rock at the bottom of the ocean.

SPEAKER_02: 1:18:10

Like the size of my pinky.

SPEAKER_08: 1:18:13

Three to five centimeters. So you're probably about right that they're about the size of your pinky, or smaller even.

SPEAKER_02: 1:18:20

Okay. And there's a there's a shrimp who snaps closed his claws, creates a bubble, and stuns whoever's trying who he's trying to catch, or who's trying to catch him.

SPEAKER_08: 1:18:34

So he's trying to catch it, and then they might also do this to kind of warn off predators as well, or or kind of sexual competition. Um, but it's and then the but yeah, the bubble bursts and it's the really the sound. Um, and there's also a heating element of it, um, that the the kind of it gets there's so much energy in it that it's so hot, um, and it's really damaging too. So yeah, it's this real power. Um, and that has been, I don't know if you've ever seen the film um Project Power. Um, I hadn't heard about it until I started researching this. So it's this film where everyone kind of has these superpowers. Spoiler alert, I don't know. Um, and the lead character played by Jamie Foxx, and sorry, and all the all the powers are something that an animal also has. And so um the lead character Jamie Foxx, his superhero character, has the powers of the pistol shrimp. So he can kind of make these kind of hot sonic booms um to kind of uh stun people in the same way that a pistol shrimp would. But having said all that, I think it's maybe important not to like sensationalise this. I think in the way that because they're called a pistol shrimp and they're kind of considered, you know, the most dangerous or most noisy or whatever animals on a planet, we've kind of militarized them in that sense. You know, they're also just beings kind of hanging out, surviving on this on the on the uh ocean floor, and it's just kind of have this really cool power. One of their claws is substantially bigger than the other, and the big one is kind of that pistol one with these kind of superhero-like abilities. These snapping shrimp do make such a huge sonic impact on this kind of soundscape of the ocean. I think that's really cool.

SPEAKER_02: 1:20:32

Well, I mean, when you go underwater, you hear that crackling, right? You hear that crackling, and that I knew that that was a lot of um like shrimp and smaller animals in the in the but I had no idea. Like I'm reading here that a pistol shrimp, the bigger claw, it snaps at a speed of 97 kilometers per hour. 97 kilometers per hour. I mean, that is unbelievably fast. And then it says, so so you said it's really loud. It says it's 210 decibels, and the average gun is 150 decibels, and a lion's roar is about 114 decibels. So it's not just loud, it's substantially louder than than sounds that we would consider you know loud in our in our in our worlds, which is just really cool, absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for that that wonderful uh animal highlight.

SPEAKER_08: 1:21:30

No problem. I'm glad to have introduced the pistol to you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:41

Thank you once again to Jeremy for being such a wonderful and dynamic guest, to Hannah for the animal highlight. Uh, also, as always, a thank you to Jeremy John for the logo and to Gordon Clark for the bed music and to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics, Apple for sponsoring the podcast, as well as SAP Lab and the Sonic Arts Studio for sponsoring the season. If you'd like to find out more about these sponsors, I've got tons of information about them up on the website. You just have to go to the about, click sponsors, and you'll learn all about them. There's also details there uh about how you could support the podcast uh or become a sponsor yourself. And if you don't want to sponsor, but you still want to support the podcast, then please, please, please leave a review. It goes a really long way in terms of helping people to find the podcast. And uh it's just really nice to be able to get those reviews and hear from you guys. Uh, my favorite place to collect them and listen and read them is on Podchaser. So if you head over there and leave a review, I would be most grateful. Okay, enough yammering for me, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for constantly connecting in with the animal turn. I am humbled and amazed at the extent to which you join in and listen to this podcast, and uh it really is a joy doing this for you. So have a wonderful day wherever you are.

SPEAKER_00: 1:23:06

This is the Animal Turn with me, Claudia Hirtenfelder For more great iRoll Podcasts, visit iRulPod.com. That's I R O A R P O D.com.