Archiving Sound

Jeff Place, who works at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, talked to Terry Gross on Fresh Air about the trouble of keeping sound on media. All media decays, even compact discs will die eventually.

They played a clip from the first blast of the atomic bomb. It was pretty creepy to listen to a reporter only seven miles from Gound Zero describe what he was seeing and then to hear the incredible blast when it finally got to where he was.