Wired for Silence
The Hidden Science of Noise and the Human BrainBy K. Balachander
Length9h 7m
About this audiobook
The pollutant we stopped regulating fifty years ago — and what it’s doing to your nervous system right now.
Noise is the only major pollutant America agreed to stop regulating.
Particulate matter got a federal agency. Lead got a threshold. Secondhand smoke got a compliance regime. Sound got an annoyance survey — and then, in 1981, the office responsible for it got defunded. The law that created it is still on the books. It just has no one left to enforce it, and it quietly bars states from stepping in.
This book asks what fifty years of silence has cost. Not metaphorical silence — the actual absence of a federal noise policy, and the exposure–response curves that have piled up in its place, linking traffic noise to hypertension, heart disease, fragmented sleep, and children who can’t hold a sentence in their heads long enough to read it.
Audiobook details
GenreScience and Nature
Length9 hrs 7 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateSep 5, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Dedication
2Acknowledgments
3Chapter 1: “The Quietest Room”
4Chapter 2: “The Tuning of the World”
5Chapter 3: “What the Meter Misses”
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6Chapter 4: “A Federal Agency That No Longer Exists”
7Chapter 5: “The Ear That Cannot Close”
8Chapter 6: “Annoyance”
9Chapter 7: “Night Work”
10Chapter 8: “HYENA”
11Chapter 9: “Reading in the Flight Path”
12Chapter 10: “The Amygdala and the Artery”
13Chapter 11: “Munich”
14Chapter 12: “Denmark”
15Chapter 13: “Whale Fall”
16Chapter 14: “The Phantom Road”
17Chapter 15: “Protected Areas”
18Chapter 16: “The Anthropause”
19Chapter 17: “Who Lives Under the Flight Path”
20Chapter 18: “The Loudest Cities”
21Chapter 19: “The Directive”
22Chapter 20: “Engineering the Quiet”
23Chapter 21: “Inside the Building”
24Chapter 22: “The Restoration Hypothesis”
25Chapter 23: “What Would Falsify This”
26Chapter 24: “The Agenda”
27Character Guide
28References & Bibliography
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