Silence isn’t just the absence of sound. It has a texture—and sometimes it feels so thick you can almost lean on it.That’s ...

Silence has been described as simply the absence of sound — like the end of a song just before the next one starts or the lull in a conversation. For a long time, it’s been considered the placeholder ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Hugh McIntyre covers music, with a focus on the global charts. Disturbed’s “Sound of Silence” has been experiencing something of a ...

In auditory illusion tests, people perceive silence as a form of sound, just as Simon and Garfunkel suggested. By Bethany Brookshire The hush at the end of the musical performance. The pause in a ...

Have an idea for a Coffee Break topic? Submit your idea for a future theme and browse past Coffee Breaks in our archive.

“We used to use our culture to understand cancer. Now we use cancer to understand our culture.” (From NPR interview of Pulitzer Prize winning author of “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of ...

Original broadcast date: Friday, October 16, 2020. Sound surrounds us, from cacophony even to silence. But depending on how we hear, the world can be a different auditory experience for each of us.

Fifty years ago, composer Morton Feldman wrote music to commemorate the opening of the Rothko Chapel in Houston. A half-century later, composer, conductor, multi-instrumentalist and MacArthur "genius" ...