The Sunday Read: ‘Could I Survive the “Quietest Place on Earth”?’

In a room in a modest concrete building in a leafy Minneapolis neighborhood is silence exceeding the bounds of human perception. Technically an “anechoic chamber,” the room is the quietest place on the planet — according to some.What happens to people inside the windowless steel room is the subject of wild and terrible speculation. Public fascination with it exploded 10 years ago, with an article on The Daily Mail’s website. The article left readers to extrapolate their own conclusions about the room from the short, haunting observations of its proprietor, Steven J. Orfield, of Orfield Laboratories.“You’ll hear your heart beating,” Orfield was quoted as saying. And, “In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.”Much of the lore about the chamber’s propensity for mind-annihilation centers on the concept of blood sounds. Hearing the movement of blood through the body is supposedly something like an absolute taboo, akin to witnessing the fabrication of Chicken McNuggets — an ordeal after which placid existence is irreparably shattered.Despite this, Caity Weaver, a writer for The New York Times Magazine, wanted to give the chamber a go.To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.