WILL: I've got a confession to make.
I've never swum in a lake.
Never climbed a mountain.
I was in a cave once.
And I've never slept in a tent.
But I'm beginning to think that I might be missing something.
So, I hooked up with some modern-day explorers
and I asked them to take me to the ends of the Earth.
And they said, "Oh, we can go further than that."
So, I'm 51, and I haven't done any climbing whatsoever.
And I've... I've always had this secret fantasy
that I wanted to summit Everest.
-Wh... -ERIK: I think we're the same age, almost.
-Yeah, I'm, uh, September 25th. -Yeah, no, I'm the 23rd.
-Really? -ERIK: Yeah.
I have two days more of wisdom...
-(LAUGHS) -ERIK: ...in my life.
WILL: What are my chances? Or... Or is that like a young man's game?
ERIK: No, no, I think you could totally do it.
I climbed Everest in 2001.
I've gotten to climb some beautiful mountains around the world.
Been to the tallest mountain on every continent, so...
-Wow. -Yeah.
So, Jackson, what's the name of the volcano?
-Yasur. -Yasur.
-Yasur, what does that mean?
Someone bigger than us.
It's like, um, God to us. So, it's bigger.
So, we could be driving up there right now to a volcano that's about to erupt.
Right.
(SUSPENSEFUL INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING)
So, we're actually gonna see boiling lava.
-Yeah. Yeah. -(CHUCKLES) Okay.
(SUSPENSEFUL INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC CONTINUES)
-ERIK: So, we are entering the ash fields? -JACKSON: Yes.
-So what? Vegetation is ending and... -WILL: Yup.
Right, we're getting into the ash?
And I can hear it hitting the... the windshield.
ERIK: (CHUCKLES) Yeah.
(ASH PATTERING)
(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)
WILL: This is scary.
-I almost guarantee you're gonna survive. -All right. (LAUGHS)
(THEME MUSIC CONTINUES)
WILL: Face-to-face with Mount Yasur.
One of the most active volcanoes on Earth.
But there's another reason why Erik thinks I'll be more curious than scared.
For one, the loudest sound ever recorded was made by a volcano.
But the loud sound that this volcano makes is completely silent.
Yeah, I know. I don't understand it either.
-ERIK: Did you just hear it? -WILL: What?
-Oh, no, there was a sound? Oh, damn it. -ERIK: Yeah.
ERIK: It echoed all the way across up there.
WILL: Erik is clearly listening. But to what?
(SUSPENSEFUL INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC CONTINUES)
(RUMBLING)
-ERIK: I'm officially sweating. -WILL: Yeah. (CHUCKLES)
WILL: You gotta be kidding me.
-Right? -ERIK: Yeah.
-WILL: Is the edge okay, you think? -ERIK: You tell me.
That's crazy.
-(VOLCANO RUMBLING) -(LAVA WHOOSHES)
WILL: Like looking into the gates of Hell.
(LAVA WHOOSHES)
(LAVA WHOOSHES, CRASHES)
ERIK: You can hear the sound like compressing, like hitting the walls...
-WILL: Yeah. -ERIK: ...down there. Like that!
And it's kinda dark right now, right, so it's...
-Yeah. -It's really lit up.
WILL: Mm-hmm.
You just kind of forget that Erik is completely blind.
I mean, this a man who climbed Everest.
Who just hiked this volcano without a single stumble.
Who could even tell when the landscape changed on the drive over.
You... You just kind of forget until he asks you to describe it to him.
And it's what colors, orange?
(LAVA CRASHING)
It's like orange fireworks shooting out of the ground.
Uh-huh.
(LAVA WHOOSHES)
Do you have any emotion around... not being able to see it?
(VOLCANO RUMBLING)
You know...
when I went blind, there was a time where you sort of regret
and stuff like that, but...
eventually, I think I learned that you gotta sort of
-say goodbye to that sighted life. -Mm-hmm.
And kinda take on a new life and, you know,
part of you dies, a part of you is reborn.
(WHOOSHING)
ERIK: Close your eyes. What do you hear?
So, it's really similar to the ocean. It's like waves crashing.
-Comes in and goes out and... -Yeah. Totally.
(LAVA WHOOSHES, CRACKLES)
ERIK: On Yasur, there's such a spectrum of sound.
There's this sound that you can consciously hear.
(LAVA WHOOSHES)
ERIK: But I'm beginning to feel this deeper sound.
(RUMBLING)
ERIK: You can't quite hear it.
But you kind of just know it's happening beneath you.
(LAVA WHOOSHES)
WILL: Erik and I aren't the only ones looking for a hidden world of sound.
There's a new breed of explorers going to the ends of the Earth
in an attempt to discover the hidden worlds
that sit beyond our senses.
And some of them are taking it way, way further than I would ever dare.
(SUSPENSEFUL INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING)
WILL: Diva Amon studies the loudest animal on the planet up close.
But getting that near requires some pretty special skills.
(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING)
DIVA: When you want to listen to the sounds of the ocean,
you have to free dive.
Without any oxygen tanks, it's so much quieter.
And you don't exhale loads of bubbles, which can scare the animals off.
But you can only stay under for as long as you can hold one breath.
(WHALE CLICKS)
DIVA: You don't normally think of clicks as noisy.
These ones, they're louder than a chainsaw.
(WHALE CLICKS LOUDLY)
DIVA: That's what makes sperm whales so interesting.
(WHALES CLICK)
(WHALES CLICKING)
(WHALES CLICK)
DIVA: It's their way of talking.
And each click contains whole paragraphs of information.
(WHALES CLICK)
DIVA: The clicks are so loud
that they can carry across hundreds of miles of ocean.
(WHALES CLICK)
DIVA: They can also use their clicks to echolocate...
or to scan unknown objects.
Like me.
(WHALES CLICK)
(BLAST)
DIVA: The noise is so powerful... you can feel it pulse right through you.
(BLAST)
FEMALE VOICE 1: Oh, my God, it was amazing! I actually felt that!
Could you feel them?
-FEMALE VOICE 1: It's just... -FEMALE VOICE 2: Crazy!
(LAUGHTER)
You don't just pick up sound with these. You can also pick it up here.
But if I'm going to experience sound through my body,
then I'm gonna have to get my body closer to the sound.
And that means stepping off the rim of this volcano and going in.
-JEFFREY: Hello. -WILL: What's up, man?
-I'm good. Real nice to meet you. -All right, pleasure, man.
Welcome to Yasur. Hey, Erik.
-How're you doing? -Awesome.
-How are you? -Cool.
WILL: I think you're my... my first volcanologist.
JEFFREY: All right, cool.
So, uh, have you ever been to an active volcano before?
WILL: I have not.
Later on today, we're gonna be descending into the crater
and then I'm... I'm gonna have you help me install some sensors.
Thought maybe I would draw this, uh... an illustration.
-Using a stick in the ash. -Mind using this pole, so that I can feel?
Um, yeah, love to do that...
ERIK: All right, now I'll be able to feel you.
Great, um, so, right, um...
Well, this is a big crater, and I'm drawing an arc of the crater rim,
which is about a 300-meter or a 1,000-foot diameter crater.
-ERIK: Mm-hmm. -And what we'll be doing later
is descending
via three independent rope systems down into the crater,
but not all the way down.
So that we can get down to an ideal location
to install this apparatus.
Uh, in fact, there's a bench right down here, a flat area,
that I think is ideal for the installation of the sensors.
So what... what are the, uh, potential dangers?
The thing I am most careful about is making sure none of this ash
-gets blown into your eyes. -WILL: Got it.
-It's little pieces of glass, right? -WILL: Glass.
JEFFREY: Could really hurt your eyes.
Uh, so, goggles, gas mask always at the ready.
WILL: Mm-hmm.
So, you're... you're... you're a volcanologist by trade.
So you feel comfortable going in there,
and you'd take your students or anything in there, right?
Yeah, I would take you in there.
-I didn't answer that question. -I know, yeah, right. (LAUGHS)
-JEFFREY: Yeah, but... -WILL: Oh, man.
It sounds like the beginning of a really bad joke.
It's like, okay, okay.
A rapper, a blind man, and a volcanologist rappel down into a volcano.
But that's what we're gonna do. Help Jeff record the mystery sounds
this volcano is making.
(ERIK SNAPPING FINGERS)
WILL: I saw you a couple of times,
and you'll, like, snap your fingers or make a sound.
ERIK: Yeah, snap your fingers, I'll tap my cane,
or sometimes, some people do a click. (CLICKS TONGUE)
It's like... really like, the sharper the better.
-WILL: And you're... you're echolocating? -ERIK: Yeah.
-WILL: And that works? -ERIK: Yeah.
I went totally blind about a week before my freshman year in high school.
I'd been diagnosed with this incredibly rare eye disease
called "juvenile retinoschisis" as a young boy.
And throughout elementary school and middle school,
I just watched the world shrink away.
I struggled for a while,
thinking without sight I would be stuck on the sidelines of things.
But the beauty of hearing is
that you can hear things that no eye could see.
You can hear behind you, uh, just as well as in front of you.
So, yeah, there's all kinds of things that I can see with my ears
that you may not be able to see with your eyes.
-(VOLCANO RUMBLING) -(WHOOSHING)
WILL: These rocks, I'm assuming,
were fired out of the volcano and landed here.
Yeah. This is a... This is a beautiful example of a spatter bomb.
-WILL: Jeez. -And, you know why it's flat, right?
-Flattish. -Oh, because...
So it was probably malleable.
-Uh-huh. -And then it hit and squashed down?
-That's right. -(WHOOSHING)
ERIK: I'm guessing that's what's shooting above us right now?
JEFFREY: Yeah, so, this is not a good place to be right now,
-when there's elevated activity. -Whoo!
-That seemed like a big one. -Wow!
(WHOOSHING)
Oh, whoa! Those spatter bombs are huge.
-ERIK: How high did that one go? -JEFFREY: Above our heads.
WILL: Yeah. (CHUCKLES)
JEFFREY: The very rare potential for catastrophic harm
is a direct ballistic that goes from the vents straight shot up.
-WILL: Yeah. -And if you're leaning over the edge...
Leaning over... Got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-...that would be potentially really bad. -Absolutely.
JEFFREY: You don't have any warning when it's a straight shot.
WILL: We were told that when you hear the sound of the volcano
to immediately turn and take your eyes to the spatter bombs
because they go up as lava but they come down as massive rocks.
And I'm thinking... Well, what about Erik?
ERIK: With a sighted person,
their visual cortex lights up when they're seeing motion.
For me, my visual cortex lights up when I'm hearing motion.
(LAVA CRASHES)
ERIK: I create a picture in my mind. So I still see,
but it's all based on sound.
(THUD)
WILL: There is a way that we can all see sound.
But it's not for the fainthearted.
(THUD)
(WHITE NOISE)
-(CHUCKLES) -(SPEAKING SPANISH)
-(BIRD CHIRPS) -(DOGS BARKING)
-Vámonos. -(SPEAKING SPANISH)
FEMALE VOICE: (ON TV) Both planets became molten on impact.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
FEMALE VOICE: (ON TV) Debris thrown out into space...
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
Sí, adios.
-(CARNIVAL MUSIC PLAYING) -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
WILL: Every February, the townspeople of San Juan de la Vega
take part in what has to be one of the world's most bizarre festivals.
(DRUMBEATS)
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
(BLAST)
WILL: It might seem crazy dangerous,
and it is.
(CARNIVAL MUSIC PLAYING)
(BLAST)
(SINGING IN SPANISH)
(BLAST)
WILL: These violent explosions demonstrate something crucial about sound.
(BLAST)
WILL: Something that explains why you can feel it
even if you can't hear it.
It can move stuff.
(BLAST REVERBERATES)
WILL: Sound doesn't just travel through the air.
(BLAST)
WILL: It causes movement of the air.
These invisible forces can even burst an eardrum.
Because sound is movement.
That is what Erik is feeling on our volcano.
And down in the crater, it's just possible that I'll feel it too.
Uh, and we need the helmet because the volcano spits rocks and stuff,
and the rocks go up in the air, and then they come down.
And they hit you in your head.
-As if this helmet's gonna do something... -(JEFFREY LAUGHS)
WILL: ...for one of these big-ass rocks.
JEFFREY: You know, you might ask why we're going inside.
The answer is that we're getting the highest quality signals possible
if we go in the crater as opposed to up on the rim here.
For real, that's hot.
(RUMBLING)
WILL: Now that we're actually about to go down there,
I can't stop thinking, a few days ago without warning,
a volcano erupted in New Zealand killing 22 people.
Now, does that volcano erupting mean anything about this one?
-JEFFREY: Any last words? -Yeah, this is my action hero pose.
-(LAUGHING) -JEFFREY: Yeah.
-JEFFREY: Erik, you ready? -ERIK: Yes, I'm in.
-JEFFREY: Will, ready? -Yes, sir.
I may have lost my mind.
There's crazy heat, toxic gas, glass, ash. Hell, even the smoke is out to get you.
ERIK: All right, on rappel.
-JEFFERY: All right, on rappel, guys. -WILL: Let's do it.
JEFFREY: You've never done this before, huh?
WILL: Not for real.
-WILL: Oh, wow. Yo. -JEFFREY: This is for real.
(SUSPENSEFUL INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING)
(WHOOSHING)
WILL: Whoa!
Hey, that's coming up over the rim.
JEFFREY: Yeah.
WILL: Let's do the science quick.
-(VOLCANO RUMBLING) -ERIK: Oh, my God!
(RUMBLING)
WILL: Oh, that's immense.
Oh, my God! All right, that's the biggest one yet.
-You feel that? -ERIK: Hell, yeah.
JEFFREY: Guys, um, let's get this array out as quickly as possible.
If we hear a big explosion, eyes towards the crater...
Yeah.
...and let's walk that out as carefully as you can.
(WIND HOWLING)
(RUMBLING)
JEFFREY: Will, did you feel that through your body?
-Yeah, that's crazy. -JEFFREY: Yeah.
It's like a, uh...
-I felt the vibration before the sound. -Right, it's like a shock wave
-that hits you before you hear it. -A shock wave before you... Yeah.
ERIK: Will, are you starting to understand what I'm feeling?
-WILL: I get it. -(VOLCANO RUMBLES)
The last one that went,
my eardrum wobbled, but I didn't hear a sound.
-But I felt the pressure of the wobble. -JEFFREY: Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I feel that wobble like all the time. I don't know.
-Do... Do you feel that wobble right now? -Yeah. Yeah, I feel it right now.
Erik, I can't hear that wobble that you're discussing right now.
I'm just not sensitive to it.
-But I believe you. -Yeah.
Because this is what the device is telling us.
-ERIK: Right. -JEFFREY: And when we turn it up...
(DEVICE RUMBLES)
JEFFREY: ...this is generating audible tones from that wobble
that you're perceiving.
(RUMBLES)
If you could hear this, it would be like you were next to a jackhammer.
-Right, right. -JEFFREY: And you would not be able
to have a conversation.
-What you're hearing is infrasound. -Right.
(VOLCANO RUMBLES)
WILL: Talk about low. Infrasound is bass and then some.
So, when you feel it, you better pay attention.
(VOLCANO RUMBLES)
Huh? What did you say? Oh, we need to leave?
-Okay, I heard you. I heard you. -Infrasound just told you that?
Infrasound said we need to get the hell out of here.
(LAUGHS)
Rock! Rock! Rock! Rock!
You all right, Erik?
ERIK: Yeah.
WILL: That's fantastic.
(RUMBLES)
WILL: Decoding the infrasound could help predict
when volcanoes like Yasur will erupt.
But there might be other messages coming from down there.
Sounds that could tell us something crucial about our world.
(CRACKING)
-(CRACKING) -(RUMBLING)
(CRACKING)
(SUSPENSEFUL INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING)
(FIRE CRACKLING)
WILL: Out on thin ice, these skaters only stay safe
by listening really carefully.
(CRACK)
(LOW RUMBLING)
WILL: Extremely rarely, ice can behave a bit like the Earth's crust,
amplifying even the slightest noise
into something weird and unexpected.
And just like the volcano might be signaling it's about to explode,
the sounds from a frozen lake can warn us how weak the ice is.
Higher sounds mean thinner ice.
WILL: It doesn't take much to make the sound,
just the tiniest bit of pressure can do it.
Sound travels faster and much further through solid surfaces.
So, now you know why in old cowboy movies,
folks put their ear to the ground when they wanted to hear distant riders.
That's the idea that one group of explorers
are taking a little bit further.
But first, they need to find somewhere with no sound at all.
And it ain't easy to get to.
(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING)
(OMINOUS MUSIC CONTINUES)
We are going to try to get to a place
where we get the absolute silence for human beings.
Ah, okay, cool. I'm excited.
(PANTS)
MICHEL: Okay.
All right. Down we go.
(GRUNTS)
-Get this. -Thank you so much.
-Do you want some more? I can fill. -Ah, sure, thank you.
(HIGH-PITCHED BEEPING)
(HIGH-PITCHED BEEPING STOPS)
The phenomenon that we experience here is that our brain doesn't want us
to experience the silence. But if you pay attention,
if we... if we keep silence, then we still hear
the, uh, water dropping.
-Okay. -Just... Just try it.
(WATER DRIPPING)
MICHEL: This is probably the last sound that we're gonna hear now.
-EXPLORER: Uh-huh. -Until we get to the place
where we hope to find the virtual silence.
EXPLORER: Okay. So, we keep going now?
-Just deeper. All right. -Yes. Yeah. Going deeper.
(PANTS)
(SUSPENSEFUL INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING)
It looks like we, uh... we found it.
Wow!
Hey, guys, let's... let's try to, uh, be quiet for a minute
to see it's really something that we've perceived the...
these quests of the silence,
and then we can maybe deploy the technology.
There's nothing. There's nothing.
I think that's the first time in my life I've ever heard...
-MICHEL: Nothing. -Nothing.
MICHEL: Naturally nothing.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-Wow! -Yeah, nice and pretty amazing.
-It's heavy. -MICHEL: It's heavy, yeah, totally.
It's like... It's a... It's a heavy sensation.
Yeah. So, this instrument what they will do...
is to record whatever we cannot hear now.
WILL: If you want to hear something really quiet,
quieter than your breathing, quieter than your heart beating,
then you either have to stop those things
or get the hell out of the way.
That way, you might just have a chance of hearing something
no one's ever heard before.
(RUMBLING)
WILL: Sounds from deep within the mountains.
It's actually thought to be the sound
of the moon's gravity dragging the mountains.
(LOUD RUMBLING)
The moon pulls on the sea to create tides.
It turns out, it does the same to the land.
And it's not just the mountains that are moving.
Imagine you could peel away the sounds of New York City, one by one.
(SIRENS WAILING)
WILL: Eventually, if you get quiet enough,
you just might find those same deep, primal rhythms
recorded in the Dolomites.
(RUMBLING)
WILL: Because the moon moves cities too.
New York rises and falls up to 14 inches
twice a day, every day.
An invisible wave of concrete and steel.
They're called Earth tides.
(CHILDREN CHATTERING IN DISTANCE)
WILL: Coming down from the volcano,
Jackson takes us to his village to celebrate.
And I realize I am listening to everything differently.
(FIRE CRACKLING)
(INSECTS CHIRPING)
WILL: The layers of sound.
(CHICKEN CLUCKING)
WILL: I could feel my hearing turn up.
(PAN FLUTE PLAYING)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
I was tuned into a... a whole world of sound
that even as a musician had been hidden from me.
ERIK: I feel pretty proud that I was able to give Will
a little glimpse into my experience.
To not just be wowed by all the visual things in the world,
but to actually be able to hear subtleties and beautiful things and violent things.
Sight is just a sliver of reality.
And so, in a way,
maybe I'm helping him to really experience the full spectrum of living.
WILL: That's beautiful.
WILL: He's singing up there.
(VILLAGERS SINGING)
WILL: This dance symbolizes the villagers' relationship
with the sounds of the volcano,
like harmonizing with the primal forces of nature.
Whoo!
So, all of these dances and everything are about the volcano?
Yes. Exactly how the... the lava is melting inside, like, boiling...
So that's why... Sometimes you can hear it like this.
-(FEET POUNDING) -(VILLAGERS SINGING)
WILL: The dance mirrors the sounds of the volcano.
-The claps are the explosions. -(RUMBLING)
WILL: The stomps are infrasound.
The whole thing celebrates the sounds that pass through their bodies
every single day.
-(FEET POUNDING) -(VILLAGERS SINGING)
WILL: Wow!
You want me to go? All right, let's go.
Everybody up. Let's get it.
WILL: Yo, that's crazy. It's like the ground is a bass drum.
(VILLAGERS SINGING)
WILL: There you go, man. That's it, Erik.
(SINGING CONTINUES)
WILL: Everything on Earth is making a sound.
Each and every thing.
It's a song we might not always be able to hear,
but it's a song we can learn to feel.
Tune in to the Earth.
Pick up its hidden rhythm.
And learn to dance along.
(CHEERING)
WILL: Yes!
I've changed how I listen, how to really listen,
but that's just the beginning.
There are more hidden worlds to explore.
Alien worlds where color exists in total darkness.
Wow, look at that.
Where strange things start to happen when millions of animals come together.
Where stillness doesn't exist because every single thing is moving.
These are the hidden worlds that drive our planet.
The new frontiers that challenge everything we thought we knew.
(CHEERING)
(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)