Tempest Audio

I'm collecting THE 50 SOUNDS TO HEAR BEFORE YOU DIE. Check it out: http://deck.tempest.audio/

10/28/2026

The only mummy you can hear

Nesyamun was a priest at the temple of Karnak around 1100 BC. His mummy has been in Leeds, England, since 1824, and in 1941 it was the only one in the museum to survive a German bomb. In 2016 a team of scientists scanned him in a hospital, printed a copy of the inside of his throat, fitted it with an artificial voice box, and in 2020 published the only sound ever made by an Egyptian mummy. You will hear it at the end of the video, and then what I did with it. Turn your sound on. You can play the mummy synth yourself at hearit.now/egyptvoice
Sound: Howard, Schofield, Fletcher, Baxter, Iball and Buckley, Scientific Reports, 2020, free to use with credit (CC BY 4.0). The tune is that single recording, sampled and played on a keyboard by me.

10/27/2026

The only recording of Houdini's voice

Harry Houdini died in Detroit on October 31, 1926, of a ruptured appendix. For decades people believed his Water Torture Cell had killed him, because that is how the 1953 film with Tony Curtis ends. On October 29, 1914, Houdini recorded himself on Edison wax cylinders, rehearsing the speech he gave on stage before that very trick. The cylinders were lost, found in 1970 hidden inside a rolled-up photograph in a magician's collection, and are now owned by David Copperfield.

His widow Bess held a séance for him every Halloween for ten years, and people still do; this year there was a series inside his own house in New York, the first held there in over fifty years. Turn your sound on, and if you know someone who thinks the tank got him, send this to them.
Recording: public domain.

10/22/2026

An actual sound from space

hearit.now/space

The surface of the Sun rises and falls about once every five minutes, and those are real sound waves, trapped inside the Sun. Speed them up forty thousand times and you can hear them. Every planet in the solar system has a sound that a spacecraft brought home, most of them radio waves turned into something you can hear, and exactly one of them was recorded with a microphone. I put all of them on one keyboard, and you can play it yourself, free, at the address above. Turn your sound on.
📬 If you would like another sound story like this about once a week, you can sign up on that page.
Sounds: NASA, NASA/JPL, University of Iowa, ESA. Planet maps: NASA and USGS.

10/20/2026

The only recording of Florence Nightingale

On 30 July 1890, Colonel George Gouraud, Thomas Edison's agent in Britain, brought a phonograph to Florence Nightingale's home in London and recorded her voice on a wax cylinder. She was seventy years old. The recording was made for the Light Brigade Relief Fund, after it came out that some of the men who rode in the Charge of the Light Brigade were destitute and the government had declined to help. It is the only known recording of her voice, and what she chose to say on it is at the end of the video. Turn your sound on. If you know a nurse, send it to them.
Recording: Wellcome Collection, London; public domain.

10/14/2026

A scream made of clay

hearit.now/deathwhistle

This is a replica of an Aztec clay whistle shaped like a skull. Blown gently, it sounds like wind. Blown hard, it sounds like a person screaming. Two of the originals were found in the hands of a young man who was sacrificed at the temple of the Aztec wind god, in what is now Mexico City. Researchers in Zurich played more than 2,500 sounds to listeners, and this one was rated the most unpleasant of all. At the end of the video you can hear one of the real ones. Turn your sound on.
You can play the whistle yourself for free and sign up for one sound story a week. Type the address above into your browser, or use the link in the comments.
Original recording: Frühholz et al. 2024, University of Zurich.

10/13/2026

The only recording of King Tut's trumpet

hearit.now/kingtut

Two trumpets were buried with King Tut more than 3,000 years ago, one made of silver and one of bronze. On 16 April 1939 the BBC broadcast them live from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to an estimated 150 million listeners, and that broadcast is the only known recording of the originals. In 2011 the curator of the Tutankhamun collection said that whenever someone blows into the bronze trumpet, a war breaks out. Both are now too fragile to be played again. Near the end of the video you can hear what a British army bandsman played on one of them that night. Turn your sound on.
You can play a version of the trumpet yourself for free and sign up for one sound story a week. Type the address above into your browser, or use the link in the comments.
1939 recording: BBC broadcast from the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, 16 April 1939, played by bandsman James Tappern, 11th Hussars.

10/07/2026

The Oldest Music Ever Recorded

https://hearit.now/firstmusic

Two recordings have been called the oldest music ever recorded: a choir of 4,000 in London in 1888, and a sheet of tinfoil from St. Louis in 1878 that nobody could play until 2012. You can vote for the one that deserves the title and listen to both full recordings.

10/07/2026

The ghosts Marco Polo heard are real

I made the recordings into a free instrument you can play on your phone or computer. Type this into your browser: hearit.now/dunes

Around 1300, Marco Polo wrote about a desert in western China where travelers heard spirits calling them by name, and the sound of drums coming out of the sand. The sound is real. About 30 sand dunes around the world hum a deep note when very dry sand slides down the steep side, and it can be about as loud as a chainsaw. Scientists studied it in Death Valley in the middle of summer, and they still do not agree on how it works. In this video you can hear dunes from Morocco, Oman and California. Turn your sound on.

09/24/2026

Brahms himself at the piano in 1889

In 1889 Johannes Brahms played about a minute of his own music into one of Thomas Edison's recording machines in Vienna. It is the only recording of him that exists. The family who owned it played it so many times on the wrong kind of machine that they wore most of the music away, and for a century it was mostly noise. In the 1990s a team at Stanford recovered him from it. Turn your sound on to hear Brahms himself.
🎧 I'm collecting 50 SOUNDS TO HEAR BEFORE YOU DIE — the strangest recordings on Earth, in one place. Get it first: the link is in the comments.
Piano: the Vieness Piano Duo, used with permission. 1889 cylinder: Berlin State Library; restoration: Stanford CCRMA.

09/19/2026

Edison's Greatest Failure

In 1890 Thomas Edison sold a doll with a small phonograph inside it. It was on sale for six weeks. Every doll had to be recorded by hand, by young women in his factory shouting nursery rhymes into a horn. The few records that survived could not be played for over a century, because a needle might destroy them. Then scientists found a way to read the grooves with light. Turn your sound on to hear one.
🎧 I'm collecting THE 50 SOUNDS YOU NEED TO HEAR BEFORE YOU DIE — the strangest recordings on Earth, in one place. Get it first: the link is in the first comment.
Recording: Thomas Edison National Historical Park / National Park Service.

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