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Our May series about noise, "Sound Off," concludes with a look at silence. For the past seventeen years, author Anne D. LeClaire has spent two days each month silent. She details the regimen in her book Listening Below the Noise. She explains how practicing silence helps her expand awareness and ...

All this month on our series Sound Off we've been looking at Noise. We live with it, sometimes it feels like we live IN it, and it affects everything from the music we hear to the way we shop. But what if we literally could turn all the sound off?

When stores, restaurants or bars pump up the volume on their sound systems it's believed to energize customers -- but it can also inflict hearing damage on employees. Joining us to explain the impact of loud music on shopping is Adrian North, a professor of applied psychology research at Heriot ...

It sounds like a joke, so it was no surprise that when we first learned of music being used as an "enhanced interrogation technique" there were lots of jokes to be heard. But we're not talking about being in a store and feeling like the music being piped in is going to drive you crazy. We are talking about music deliberately being used in way that can drive you crazy. You can walk out of a store; prisoners cannot escape from the loud onslaught of the music they're subjected to.

Noise has been a musical ingredient from the 60’s rock (The Who, Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix) to the 70’s punk to experimental classical movements like Futurism and Dada, not to mention recent artists like Rhys Chatham and Sonic Youth. Today, Frank J. Oteri, founding editor of NewMusicBox.org, and Paul D. ...

With the advent of iPods audiologists say they are seeing more young people with old ears. And New Yorkers have it particularly bad. In the latest installment of our month-long series "Sound Off," we explore the latest frontiers in hearing loss and ask what you can do to protect your ...

Noise plays an undeniable role in music -- and in our lives. Today we kick off the Friday series "Sound Off" with a look at New York City's noisiest neighborhoods and the artists that live in them. Guests include Alan Fierstein, founder and president of the acoustic consulting firm Acoustilog ...

A look at the Iranian film "Sounds of Silence."