Guess who’s just turned 10 years old! Brains On that’s who! It’s been 10 years of learning, laughing, and mystery sounding. To celebrate all the fun and hard work, Brains On creators Molly Bloom, Marc Sanchez, and Sanden Totten are going to play an epic game of Mystery Sound. Grab your Smarty Pass and listen to some of the best sounds we’ve been playing for the past 10 years!
Audio Transcript
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ELECTRONIC VOICE: Now entering Brains On headquarters.
[BEEPS AND WHIRS]
MOLLY BLOOM: Hello. We're so glad you're here. We've been celebrating our 10th birthday this month.
[PARTY HORN]
We cannot believe we are 10 years old. I'm not 10, the show is 10. Some of you are younger than 10, and it blows our minds. So in honor of this special occasion, Marc Sanchez, Sanden Totten, and I are doing some bonus mystery sounds. Sanden, Marc, come on in.
MARC SANCHEZ: Hey.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Hey, Molly.
MARC SANCHEZ: Happy show birthday.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Happy birthday to us and everybody.
MOLLY BLOOM: Woo-hoo! So we have some very special sounds for you to guess. These are sounds that were used on the show not as mystery sounds, but as sound effects. Marc made all of these sounds himself, and so we're going to have Sanden guess them and Marc is going to reveal the answers.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Oh, this is going to be great, because I have the memory of a goldfish. I remember nothing.
MARC SANCHEZ: I might not even remember some of them, so this is all new to me.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Who are you people anyway? What am I doing here?
MARC SANCHEZ: Nice to meet you.
MOLLY BLOOM: Your name's Sanden, and you're guessing mystery sounds.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Got it.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK, so I'm going to start off with what I think is an easy one.
SANDEN TOTTEN: OK.
MOLLY BLOOM: You know we keep our mystery sounds in jars around here, so let me grab this jar. Take the cap off.
[SCRATCHING]
All right. Here is our first mystery sound.
[CRUNCHING]
Sanden, do you have any guesses?
SANDEN TOTTEN: Immediately, I'm picturing Marc eating a giant lettuce sandwich. It's just lettuce, like six stacks of lettuce, and he's crunching right into that sucker with all his horsey teeth.
MOLLY BLOOM: Horsey teeth? OK, I'm going to play it again. You're very close.
MARC SANCHEZ: Can I give a clue?
SANDEN TOTTEN: Yeah.
MARC SANCHEZ: OK.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yes, please.
MARC SANCHEZ: Think about-- yeah, you're very close. And I would say think about what Marc might eat.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right, here it is.
[CRUNCHING]
What do you think?
SANDEN TOTTEN: Well, I know that Marc is wacko for tacos. So I think that's Marc crunching into a hard shelled taco of the pickled variety.
MARC SANCHEZ: Pickled taco? Why hasn't that been invented yet?
[LAUGHS]
MOLLY BLOOM: Wow. Marc, is Sanden correct?
MARC SANCHEZ: Sanden is 100% correct.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Woo!
MARC SANCHEZ: This was really researched and sought after, the perfect crunch. I had to go out and buy several tacos to get just the perfect one.
MOLLY BLOOM: I know that was a bummer for you.
MARC SANCHEZ: It was hard. I enlisted my whole family. Well, we had a taco dinner and recorded it all. Silent dinner. Except for chewing. Except for crunching.
MOLLY BLOOM: And this was the best crunch of all the crunches.
MARC SANCHEZ: This is my favorite one. There's an audio file full of, I don't know, several minutes of chewing and crunching tacos. But this is my favorite.
SANDEN TOTTEN: It was a mighty fine crunch, Marc. That was an excellent crunch.
MARC SANCHEZ: Thank you. It's been used in several episodes of all the shows. Brains On, Smash Boom Best, Forever Ago, all of them.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right. Sanden, you're doing great so far. 100%.
SANDEN TOTTEN: I know. Obviously.
MOLLY BLOOM: Here is mystery sound number two.
[SCUTTLING]
[SQUEAKING]
SANDEN TOTTEN: Well my first instinct was DJ Marcy Marc scratching it on the turntables. But I actually--
I actually think I know what that is. I have a pretty strong sense.
MOLLY BLOOM: You want to make a--
MARC SANCHEZ: Should we hear it one more time?
MOLLY BLOOM: Sure, let's hear it one more time.
SANDEN TOTTEN: I'm so confident in my ability to get this right that I'm not even going to guess until we hear it one more time.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK, I love it here. Here it is again.
[SQUEAKING]
SANDEN TOTTEN: That is Marc Sanchez using a marker on a piece of paper. Writing a sign, actually, and it says, Sanden, I'm your biggest fan. Probably.
MARC SANCHEZ: I'm your biggest fanden. You're very close.
SANDEN TOTTEN: I think you meant to say I'm 100% right.
MOLLY BLOOM: Do you want to hear it for a third time?
SANDEN TOTTEN: I'm very close. There's more to it?
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, there is.
SANDEN TOTTEN: No, I don't need to hear.
MARC SANCHEZ: Yeah.
SANDEN TOTTEN: OK, then I'm stumped. What is it?
MARC SANCHEZ: It's writing with a marker on a whiteboard.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Ah. I didn't know I had to-- yeah, OK, whiteboard, close.
MOLLY BLOOM: You were really close.
MARC SANCHEZ: You got the squeaks and all that I think is a little different from writing on paper.
SANDEN TOTTEN: I thought I heard a like-- the thing wiggling a little bit that sounded like paper, but--
MOLLY BLOOM: So were you writing, Sanden, I'm your number one fanden?
MARC SANCHEZ: I was just writing gibberish. I wanted to get all sorts of different types of sounds. So it would sound like I'm writing, maybe dotting an I, maybe drawing something. It was another long session, many minutes long, of trying to get five seconds of recorded audio.
SANDEN TOTTEN: I can smell--
[SNIFFS]
Just talking about it, and I can smell the markers.
MARC SANCHEZ: Oh, 100%. Yeah.
MOLLY BLOOM: I love that smell. OK, we have one more mystery sound. Grab this jar. It's a very special jar. Kind of sparkly. OK, here it is.
[SPLATTING]
SANDEN TOTTEN: Whoa. That was a sonic assault. I jolted up with that one. OK, Sasquatch knocking on a door.
MARC SANCHEZ: Good, good.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Marc stomping on a giant frozen lake.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, I'll give you a hint that this is more of a fantasy sound. One that you might not encounter in real life.
SANDEN TOTTEN: A unicorn clomping on a castle made of glass?
[LAUGHS]
MARC SANCHEZ: You're giving me really good ideas of how to reuse this sound.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right, I'm going to play it for you again. Have your ears and your mind and your heart open.
[SPLATTING]
SANDEN TOTTEN: So it could be an alien trapped in a plastic bubble knocking to get out.
MOLLY BLOOM: That is not that far off, honestly.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Or Marc punching a beach ball because it made a joke about his sparkly bathing suit and he did not appreciate that. Or it could be-- I really don't know. It just sounds like a big round thing. In my head, I picture a big round thing getting bonked many times. But a hard round thing. Like maybe dribbling a very dense basketball.
MARC SANCHEZ: I think all of the things you mentioned, Sanden, are possible in the episode that it happened. Which was the Dream episode.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Oh, the Dream episode.
[GASPS]
Wait a minute, was this a sound we used for jellyfish falling from the sky?
MARC SANCHEZ: Yes.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Was it a wet sponge falling on the ground?
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, how did you make a sound of jellyfish rain, Marc?
MARC SANCHEZ: It was a wet sponge falling into a bucket.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Ow.
MOLLY BLOOM: Nice. Yeah, so sometimes we write into our show things that may not be in real life. And so our good friend Marc or maybe Rachel Breeze or someone else we work with, they'll make amazing sounds out of sponges and buckets.
MARC SANCHEZ: Yeah. Now, I have a good Sasquatch knocking sound, too.
[LAUGHS]
SANDEN TOTTEN: That's so cool. Marc, you're very good at your job. These were great sounds. Super satisfying to listen to. All of them expertly recorded. Oh, so fun.
MARC SANCHEZ: They're fun to make, too.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, and Smarty Pass friends, you can send us your mystery sounds whenever you want. We love them. You can make up fantasy ones. You can do ones that are just happening in your everyday life. We want to hear them. So send them to us at brainson.org/contact.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And that's it for this Smarty Pass little visit. Thank you so much for guessing these mystery sounds with us and helping us celebrate our 10th birthday. You're the best. Bye, everybody!
MARC AND SANDEN: Bye!
INTERVIEWER: That's it for this Smarty Pass episode. It was produced by Aron Woldeslassie, Molly Bloom, Joy Dolo, Rosie DuPont, Shahla Farzan, Nico Gonzalez-Wisler, Ruby Guthrie, Sanden Totten, Marc Sanchez, and Anna Weggel.
MOLLY BLOOM: We had engineering help from Josh Sauvageau with sound design by Rachel Breeze. Our executive producer is Beth Perlman, and the executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavati, Joanne Griffith, and Alex Schaffert. Brains on is a non-profit public radio program. Thanks, Smarty Pass friends.
[LAUGHS]
SANDEN TOTTEN: Bye.
[BEEPS AND WHIRS]
MOLLY BLOOM: Hello. We're so glad you're here. We've been celebrating our 10th birthday this month.
[PARTY HORN]
We cannot believe we are 10 years old. I'm not 10, the show is 10. Some of you are younger than 10, and it blows our minds. So in honor of this special occasion, Marc Sanchez, Sanden Totten, and I are doing some bonus mystery sounds. Sanden, Marc, come on in.
MARC SANCHEZ: Hey.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Hey, Molly.
MARC SANCHEZ: Happy show birthday.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Happy birthday to us and everybody.
MOLLY BLOOM: Woo-hoo! So we have some very special sounds for you to guess. These are sounds that were used on the show not as mystery sounds, but as sound effects. Marc made all of these sounds himself, and so we're going to have Sanden guess them and Marc is going to reveal the answers.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Oh, this is going to be great, because I have the memory of a goldfish. I remember nothing.
MARC SANCHEZ: I might not even remember some of them, so this is all new to me.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Who are you people anyway? What am I doing here?
MARC SANCHEZ: Nice to meet you.
MOLLY BLOOM: Your name's Sanden, and you're guessing mystery sounds.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Got it.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK, so I'm going to start off with what I think is an easy one.
SANDEN TOTTEN: OK.
MOLLY BLOOM: You know we keep our mystery sounds in jars around here, so let me grab this jar. Take the cap off.
[SCRATCHING]
All right. Here is our first mystery sound.
[CRUNCHING]
Sanden, do you have any guesses?
SANDEN TOTTEN: Immediately, I'm picturing Marc eating a giant lettuce sandwich. It's just lettuce, like six stacks of lettuce, and he's crunching right into that sucker with all his horsey teeth.
MOLLY BLOOM: Horsey teeth? OK, I'm going to play it again. You're very close.
MARC SANCHEZ: Can I give a clue?
SANDEN TOTTEN: Yeah.
MARC SANCHEZ: OK.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yes, please.
MARC SANCHEZ: Think about-- yeah, you're very close. And I would say think about what Marc might eat.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right, here it is.
[CRUNCHING]
What do you think?
SANDEN TOTTEN: Well, I know that Marc is wacko for tacos. So I think that's Marc crunching into a hard shelled taco of the pickled variety.
MARC SANCHEZ: Pickled taco? Why hasn't that been invented yet?
[LAUGHS]
MOLLY BLOOM: Wow. Marc, is Sanden correct?
MARC SANCHEZ: Sanden is 100% correct.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Woo!
MARC SANCHEZ: This was really researched and sought after, the perfect crunch. I had to go out and buy several tacos to get just the perfect one.
MOLLY BLOOM: I know that was a bummer for you.
MARC SANCHEZ: It was hard. I enlisted my whole family. Well, we had a taco dinner and recorded it all. Silent dinner. Except for chewing. Except for crunching.
MOLLY BLOOM: And this was the best crunch of all the crunches.
MARC SANCHEZ: This is my favorite one. There's an audio file full of, I don't know, several minutes of chewing and crunching tacos. But this is my favorite.
SANDEN TOTTEN: It was a mighty fine crunch, Marc. That was an excellent crunch.
MARC SANCHEZ: Thank you. It's been used in several episodes of all the shows. Brains On, Smash Boom Best, Forever Ago, all of them.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right. Sanden, you're doing great so far. 100%.
SANDEN TOTTEN: I know. Obviously.
MOLLY BLOOM: Here is mystery sound number two.
[SCUTTLING]
[SQUEAKING]
SANDEN TOTTEN: Well my first instinct was DJ Marcy Marc scratching it on the turntables. But I actually--
I actually think I know what that is. I have a pretty strong sense.
MOLLY BLOOM: You want to make a--
MARC SANCHEZ: Should we hear it one more time?
MOLLY BLOOM: Sure, let's hear it one more time.
SANDEN TOTTEN: I'm so confident in my ability to get this right that I'm not even going to guess until we hear it one more time.
MOLLY BLOOM: OK, I love it here. Here it is again.
[SQUEAKING]
SANDEN TOTTEN: That is Marc Sanchez using a marker on a piece of paper. Writing a sign, actually, and it says, Sanden, I'm your biggest fan. Probably.
MARC SANCHEZ: I'm your biggest fanden. You're very close.
SANDEN TOTTEN: I think you meant to say I'm 100% right.
MOLLY BLOOM: Do you want to hear it for a third time?
SANDEN TOTTEN: I'm very close. There's more to it?
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, there is.
SANDEN TOTTEN: No, I don't need to hear.
MARC SANCHEZ: Yeah.
SANDEN TOTTEN: OK, then I'm stumped. What is it?
MARC SANCHEZ: It's writing with a marker on a whiteboard.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Ah. I didn't know I had to-- yeah, OK, whiteboard, close.
MOLLY BLOOM: You were really close.
MARC SANCHEZ: You got the squeaks and all that I think is a little different from writing on paper.
SANDEN TOTTEN: I thought I heard a like-- the thing wiggling a little bit that sounded like paper, but--
MOLLY BLOOM: So were you writing, Sanden, I'm your number one fanden?
MARC SANCHEZ: I was just writing gibberish. I wanted to get all sorts of different types of sounds. So it would sound like I'm writing, maybe dotting an I, maybe drawing something. It was another long session, many minutes long, of trying to get five seconds of recorded audio.
SANDEN TOTTEN: I can smell--
[SNIFFS]
Just talking about it, and I can smell the markers.
MARC SANCHEZ: Oh, 100%. Yeah.
MOLLY BLOOM: I love that smell. OK, we have one more mystery sound. Grab this jar. It's a very special jar. Kind of sparkly. OK, here it is.
[SPLATTING]
SANDEN TOTTEN: Whoa. That was a sonic assault. I jolted up with that one. OK, Sasquatch knocking on a door.
MARC SANCHEZ: Good, good.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Marc stomping on a giant frozen lake.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, I'll give you a hint that this is more of a fantasy sound. One that you might not encounter in real life.
SANDEN TOTTEN: A unicorn clomping on a castle made of glass?
[LAUGHS]
MARC SANCHEZ: You're giving me really good ideas of how to reuse this sound.
MOLLY BLOOM: All right, I'm going to play it for you again. Have your ears and your mind and your heart open.
[SPLATTING]
SANDEN TOTTEN: So it could be an alien trapped in a plastic bubble knocking to get out.
MOLLY BLOOM: That is not that far off, honestly.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Or Marc punching a beach ball because it made a joke about his sparkly bathing suit and he did not appreciate that. Or it could be-- I really don't know. It just sounds like a big round thing. In my head, I picture a big round thing getting bonked many times. But a hard round thing. Like maybe dribbling a very dense basketball.
MARC SANCHEZ: I think all of the things you mentioned, Sanden, are possible in the episode that it happened. Which was the Dream episode.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Oh, the Dream episode.
[GASPS]
Wait a minute, was this a sound we used for jellyfish falling from the sky?
MARC SANCHEZ: Yes.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Was it a wet sponge falling on the ground?
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, how did you make a sound of jellyfish rain, Marc?
MARC SANCHEZ: It was a wet sponge falling into a bucket.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Ow.
MOLLY BLOOM: Nice. Yeah, so sometimes we write into our show things that may not be in real life. And so our good friend Marc or maybe Rachel Breeze or someone else we work with, they'll make amazing sounds out of sponges and buckets.
MARC SANCHEZ: Yeah. Now, I have a good Sasquatch knocking sound, too.
[LAUGHS]
SANDEN TOTTEN: That's so cool. Marc, you're very good at your job. These were great sounds. Super satisfying to listen to. All of them expertly recorded. Oh, so fun.
MARC SANCHEZ: They're fun to make, too.
MOLLY BLOOM: Yeah, and Smarty Pass friends, you can send us your mystery sounds whenever you want. We love them. You can make up fantasy ones. You can do ones that are just happening in your everyday life. We want to hear them. So send them to us at brainson.org/contact.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And that's it for this Smarty Pass little visit. Thank you so much for guessing these mystery sounds with us and helping us celebrate our 10th birthday. You're the best. Bye, everybody!
MARC AND SANDEN: Bye!
INTERVIEWER: That's it for this Smarty Pass episode. It was produced by Aron Woldeslassie, Molly Bloom, Joy Dolo, Rosie DuPont, Shahla Farzan, Nico Gonzalez-Wisler, Ruby Guthrie, Sanden Totten, Marc Sanchez, and Anna Weggel.
MOLLY BLOOM: We had engineering help from Josh Sauvageau with sound design by Rachel Breeze. Our executive producer is Beth Perlman, and the executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavati, Joanne Griffith, and Alex Schaffert. Brains on is a non-profit public radio program. Thanks, Smarty Pass friends.
[LAUGHS]
SANDEN TOTTEN: Bye.
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