Radio College | Reading Room: Articles

The Pulse of the Planet is Sound: A Profile of Jim Metzner

by Janet Dagley Dagley

From the roar of a charging mountain gorilla to the barely perceptible murmur of dung beetles at work, the Pulse of the Planet has been beating steadily for 10 years, with more than 2,000 2-minute programs heard on more than 230 public and commercial stations by more than a million daily listeners. Pulse of the Planet Executive Producer, Jim Metzner, spoke about the program and his lifelong quest for exotic sounds.

"I always feel beckoned by sound," Metzner says. "I always feel that there's something about it that I haven't fully understood, something that has led me on this path. If you listened to all of the dozens of programs I've done for NPR or PRI, the series I've created, the thousands of programs I've done, sound is usually lurking in there, either obviously or around the corner."

Metzner became fascinated with recording as a boy. "My brother had a tape recorder which was like a magic box. It was one of these big wooden things - a tube tape recorder. When you talked into it, instead of having volume needles, the tubes were facing you, and when you spoke, the green of the tube opened and shut in response to your voice. To me it was like the gates of the Emerald City opening and closing. I used to talk to it and blather just to watch the green windows open and shut in response to my voice."

Metzner studied acting at Yale, then traveled to Poland in 1969 in hopes of studying with the legendary stage director Jerzy Grotowski, only to be turned away. He wound up in London, playing guitar and singing in pubs, even opening for Pink Floyd at Hyde Park. Despite his success there he returned to the U.S. and began studying ethnomusicology. He self-published three records featuring collected sounds and accompanying photographs. By the mid-1970s he was a frustrated substitute teacher in Boston. He decided to give radio a try, and, after selling a couple of pieces locally and nationally, he was ready to pursue a program of his own.

"I got the idea to do a local piece called I Listen to Boston or something like that, and I put together a prototype, took it to a soft-rock station, plunked down my records, which allegedly gave me some kind of credibility, then plunked the earphones around the ears of the program director and said, 'Listen to this, please.'"

"He had not actually heard - most people in those days had not heard that much ambient stereo sound. They'd heard stereo music before, but not ambient sound. It still surprises me how few people record in stereo. It's like the difference between color and black-and-white. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with mono, but I would encourage more people to try stereo."

The program director liked it; told Metzner, "Make it shorter," and gave him another title: You're Hearing Boston. That program was followed by You're Hearing San Francisco and later You're Hearing America, which was sponsored by Maxell.

"When the sponsorship ran out, I tried to renew, but it was tough," Metzner says. "DuPont was interested in the science aspect of You're Hearing America, and from that, Sounds of Science was born, with DuPont as the new sponsor. Then in the mid-1980s, DuPont wanted to switch to something environmental, so I came up with Pulse of the Planet."

DuPont's sponsorship ended after eight years, and Metzner had to scramble not only to keep the show on the air without funding, but to find a new sponsor: The American Museum of Natural History.

"That's when the program came into its current format, which is seasonal, sort of tracking the rhythms of nature, culture and science," he says. "Then that funding dried up after two years, and amazingly, DuPont decided to come back. We have a wonderful relationship, they let me do whatever I want to do, and they're pleased and happy with the program."

Is there a sound that has eluded him so far?

"For me, it's not necessarily a particular sound but a place," Metzner says. "I loved New Orleans. And I want to go back there and record. I couldn't tell you what the sound is, but I know it's waiting for me to record it. So I'm going to go, I'm going to be prepared, and I'm going to be open, and that's the sound that I want to record.

When you go looking for that sound - 'I'm going to find the red-throated grebe' - you'll find all this other stuff on the way to record the red-throated grebe that'll probably be much more interesting, and, when you get to the grebe, it'll probably disappoint you. Almost always, the best stuff is the stuff that ends up surprising you."

Janet Dagley Dagley, an independent producer based in New York City. She has produced features for PRI's Marketplace, Panos Radio in London, and the late Radio Metropolis in Prague.

Jim Metzner's show, Pulse of The Planet, is a daily two minute seasonal radio almanac that tracks the rhythms of nature, culture and science worldwide. The show features interviews and ambient sound recorded on location, whenever possible. Pulse of the Planet http://www.pulseplanet.com is open to freelance contributions.