Yuen: Tour the ‘quietest place on Earth,’ and see if it quiets your mind

Can the Quietest Place on Earth cure the phenomenon known as “popcorn brain”?

The term applies to a scattered attention span, exacerbated by social media use, that sends one’s brain flitting from one idea to the next, much like kernels bursting in the microwave. I’m feeling it now, struggling to write a column in the face of so many shiny objects — from the next item on my to-do list to breaking-news notifications.

Enter Orfield Laboratories. Decades ago, this spot — once home to recording studio Sound 80 — was known for helping birth some of the most notable music to emerge from Minneapolis, including Lipps Inc.’s “Funkytown,” Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” and Prince’s early demo tape. Now it’s on the map for its world-renowned silence.

The lab’s anechoic chamber (”an-ih-KOH-ic,” meaning it’s free of echoes) is so quiet that the lab’s owner, Steve Orfield, says you may hear things you’ve never heard before. The quieter the place, the more sensitive your ability to truly listen becomes.

“If you stay in the anechoic chamber for 30 to 45 minutes, you could hear your own heartbeat,” he says. “You could hear your knees and elbows scraping together when you move your joints. You can hear the blood flowing in your carotid arteries up to your brain. You’re the show.”

If the idea of “being the show” intimidates you, you’re in good company. I’m thankful to live in a time when I never have to be alone with my thoughts. Podcasts and playlists can entertain us on our walks. A million diversions beckon from our phone. Why sit down and focus when I can watch a video of a horse farting on a Siamese cat?

But don’t be fooled by myths about entering Minneapolis anechoic chamber. Over the years, outlets have reported that spending more than 45 minutes there would drive a person insane.

On TikTok, a false rumor spread that Orfield Labs would pay millions of dollars to anyone who could stay in the chamber for an hour. Calls to the five-person staff inquiring about the cash prizes have been so incessant that Orfield says he is hoping to pursue legal action against the sources of those claims.

But there was one rumor that was true, known as “The Orfield Challenge.” For a story published last year, a New York Times Magazine reporter was determined to clinch the record for the amount of time sitting in the dark in the Quietest Place on Earth. It had been previously set at two hours, so she reserved the chamber for three hours.

“She did last three hours,” Orfield says. “She beat the last record.”

The labs are used for consumer product research and design. Orfield bought Sound 80 in 1990, five years after the recording studio closed. He built his acoustic lab onto the back of it, only to discover that “one of our chambers was quieter than any accredited chamber in the world,” he says.

Guinness World Records deemed the anechoic chamber the “quietest place on Earth” in 2005. But in 2015, it took the honor away, bestowing it to an anechoic chamber at the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash. Orfield disputed the claim, saying Microsoft was held to different standards for its sound measurements. Orfield Labs got the title back in late 2021.

The business has helped corporations, from 3M to Harley-Davidson, measure how people perceive their products. But these days, Orfield is just as passionate about studying how quieter, less stimulating environments can soothe people with invisible disabilities, everything from autism and ADHD to dementia and PTSD. Orfield Labs helped design a sensory-friendly clinic in Woodbury for Fraser that opened in 2018.

Orfield is convinced that our over-reliance on devices and social media is causing us to withdraw from real life and nature. Those deficits, he says, don’t bode well for people as they age or children as they make sense of the world.

So who’s ready to reset? Instead of only fielding individual requests for private tours at the hourly $600 rate, Orfield Labs is for the first time promoting group tours on Eventbrite, Facebook and its website. Visitors can visit the anechoic chamber in a group of five for $75 per person on March 15, 22 and 29. (Group sessions to tour the Sound 80 recording studio, which can hold up to 25 people at a time, are March 11 and 18 for $30 per person.)

Orfield’s granddaughter, Emma Orfield Johnston, who is coordinating the tours, said she’s still trying to gauge interest. If there’s enough demand, she might extend the series to continue on a weekly basis. Email info@orfieldlabs.com to inquire about future dates.

Visitors should step into the space with realistic expectations, Steve Orfield says.

“They’re not tours to give you any kind of fundamental experience of silence because when you have four or five people, we ask them all to be quiet, but they aren’t necessarily,” he said. “We ask them all to turn off their phones, but they don’t necessarily.”

But the intent, he says, is to give people “a quiet experience in the quietest place that they’ll ever be.”

Maybe there, in a silent sanctuary that absorbs 99.99% of all sound, the mind can finally rest.