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Melissa Harris Perry: This is Melissa Harris Perry with you on The Takeaway. Glad to have you back from the holiday and the long weekend. We hope you had some time for reflection or relaxation, maybe just a little fun. In any event, we needed a break from some heavy news, and we know you do too, so here we go. During the past month, we've been asking you to share with us slices of your life in audio form. Just a small snippet of how your life sounds, and you have been delivering some truly great audio. Let's start with Kimber.

Kimber: Okay. This is the sound that is a train coming in. It's a unique sound. That's the electric commuter train, and it was coming in slow.

Melissa Harris Perry: I love it. That's great, Kimber, and you weren't the only one with the connection to trains. Check this one out. Now that's from Yvette in California. She tells us, "My son is a rail fan, so I take him to railroad crossings all over the country where he can film rail or unusual engines, sometimes with special horns, and post them to his YouTube channel for other rail fans to enjoy. She told us the locomotive was Amtrak number 171, which many rail fans consider the best sounding horn on Amtrak system."

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Meanwhile, Christina from San Jose takes us with her first ballet class at a high school. Very nice. Okay, a lot of you were loving on nature with your audio. This one was pretty close to home.

Susan Clawhorn: Hi, this is Susan Clawhorn. I'm from Portland, Oregon, and I'm visiting my brother in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I can hear the cicadas in the trees, and it's really hot here. There's a band playing, a live band, and there's people walking down the street. There's a lot of energy in the air tonight.

Melissa Harris Perry: Cicadas, a live band. Now for the rest of y'all, many of y'all love the birds, and you sent us some amazing bird songs. Starting with DD in San Francisco, sending us some gulfs. Frankie in Minnesota sent us some loons from the cabin where he grew up. Meanwhile, Ellen recorded her slice of life in a Midas parking lot. She thinks this might be a parrot. Take it away, birders. Y'all got to help us out with this one.

Finally, some more unknown feathered friends from Kenya in Mississippi. Those might be Pterodactyls. Listen, some of you also sent us sounds of the machines in your lives. A listener in Armonk, New York sent us this sound of their mat cutter from their framing shop. Here's another machine from Alex.

Alex: I work on cell sites. Segment of the day starts with hopping out of the truck, grabbing what I need, and walking over to what we call, 'The Shelter.' This is where the brains of a cell site live. Up on the tower, you have the antennas and the radios, and downstairs are the base bands and routers that drive at all. Can you hear the fans from afar, [unintelligible 00:04:24] Inside, it's basically just a series of Berlin fans.

Melissa Harris Perry: Rob from New Jersey sent us some woodshop moments. That's some chair sanding there from Rob. Finally, at least one of you wasn't thrilled about the surrounding sound.

Speaker 5: I am trying to prepare a video lecture for a class that I'm teaching, but my building is under renovation, and I am unfortunately being serenaded by the sound of saws in the background.

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Melissa Harris Perry: These are all so great. Please keep these coming. Remember, you can record on your phone or your gear or just whatever you got. Email us the sound file at takeawaycallars@gmail.com. That's takeawaycallars@gmail.com. Tell us a story about it too. More of these soon, folks. Thanks for the slice of your life.

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