Phantom Power

Do fish have ears? What is the nature of underwater hearing and how does it differ from hearing in the air? If humans are the evolutionary descendants of ocean creatures, do we retain any fishy traces in the way we hear the world? And what about all the noise we humans make in our oceans? If we want to save the planet, do we need to learn to listen like the fishes once again? Today we explore these questions with Marine biologist and bioacoustics expert Dr. Sophie Nedelec. Nedelec has a PhD in bioacoustics and behavioral ecology from the University of Bristol. She is a Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow of the Royal Society and he's a senior research fellow at the University of Exeter. She researches underwater sound, sensory ecology, and human’s sonic impacts on the environment and sustainability. Speaking of oceans, today marks a bit of a sea change here at Phantom Power: the addition of occasional “SOS” episodes on the Science of Sound with co-host Dr. Nathan Morehouse. Nate's an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Cincinnati, where he also serves as the Director of the Institute for Research in Sensing (IRiS), an interdisciplinary research institute focused on sensing, perception, and sensor technology development through adventurous integration of insights from the sciences, engineering, humanities, and arts. Cited Media: Sophie L. Nedelec et al. - "Particle Motion: The Missing Link in Underwater Acoustic Ecology" (2016) Sophie L. Nedelec et al. - Motorboat noise impacts parental behaviour and offspring survival in a reef fish (2017) Sophie L. Nedelec et al. - Hormonal and behavioural effects of motorboat noise on wild coral reef fish (2020) Sophie L. Nedelec et al. - Soundscapes and living communities in coral reefs: temporal and spatial variation (2015) Machine Listening (Sean Dockery, James Parker, Joel Stern) - Environments 12 (2023) Chapters: 0:00 Intro0:52 Meet the Guests1:42 Introducing SOS Episodes4:25 Do Fish Have Ears?9:29 The Otolith Explained12:44 The Lateral Line26:29 Particle Motion: The Missing Link34:57 Protecting Marine Life36:58 Boat Speed & Noise45:06 Reef Restoration with Sound49:23 Noise Cancellation Underwater54:52 Outro Click here to read the full transcript Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why does a sixty-year-old media theory resurface in the media every few years, while journalists ignore the great communication scholarship that has emerged in the meantime? More importantly, what effects does antiquated thinking have on the public understanding of our current digital discontent? In this episode, Cameron Naylor interviews our usual host, Mack Hagood, about his recent newsletter, “Oral Residue: A Zombie Media Theory Rises Again.” Marshall McLuhan and Walter J. Ong believed that all of human history is dividable into three eras: the oral, the literate, and the electronic. However, this kind of “Great Divide” thinking has long been criticized by scholars who study oral communication, literacy, media, and sound. In this episode we talk about the good, bad, and ugly of McLuhan and Ong’s long legacy. Cited Media: Marshall McLuhan - Understanding Media (1964) Walter J. Ong - Orality and Literacy (1982) Raymond Williams - Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974) Derek Thompson - Plain English (podcast episode with Joe Weisenthal) (2026) Jonathan Sterne - The Audible Past Harold Innis - works on communication theory Eric Havelock - works on orality and literacy Gerard Manley Hopkins - Poetry Homer - The Iliad and The Odyssey (8th century BCE) Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 0:44 Episode Overview 3:20 Introducing Mack Hagood 4:14 First Encounter with Ong 8:52 Discovering McLuhan 17:25 Why McLuhan Keeps Returning 25:49 Critiques of the Great Divide 33:36 The Ear as a Source of Terror 37:40 Closing Thoughts 38:33 Outro Click here for the full transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Creativity doesn’t come out of thin air–it evolves in relation to the communities around us and the tools available to us. Some of the most common forms of everyday creative works–memes, podcasts, vertical videos–barely existed a couple of decades ago. And obviously, we can’t ignore the changing economics of creative industries, which wield an outsized influence over what kind of work gets made. Today host Mack Hagood talks to legendary podcast executive Julie Shapiro’s about what it means to be creative in the year 2026, particularly from an audio perspective. Given their shared history in 20th century indie music scenes, they also talk about the ways that indie music and fan culture shaped them–and how practices like zine making shaped the internet as we know it. But does the current shape of the internet promote good creative work and a fulfilling life? In this frank conversation, Mack and Julie discuss the challenges of making a living as a creative and doing fulfilling work when the digital system does its best to prevent those things. In our members-only version of the podcast, Mack and Julie discuss the turn to video podcasting and in the What's Good segment, Julie suggests some incredible podcasts to listen to, as well as things to do and to read. Cited Media: Nancy Baym - Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection (2018) Nigel Poor & Earlonne Woods - Ear Hustle (Radiotopia/PRX) Nathan Heller - The Battle for Attention: How do we hold on to what matters in a distracted age? (2024)Tumi Magnússon - Voyage There and Back (2015) Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 03:27 Mardi Gras and Mobile Sound 13:47 Indie Music Origins 26:15 DIY Ethics and Community 30:32 Being Broke vs Career Pressure 44:37 How DIY Became the Internet 57:47 Returning to Creative Roots 01:05:12 The Podcast Industry Crisis 01:22:32 Information vs Experience 01:31:21 Making Work in This Moment Click here to read the full transcript Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we go on a listening tour with audio legend Julie Shapiro, who has helped define what radio and podcasts could be over the past 25-plus years. Shapiro co-founded the Third Coast International Audio Festival, one of the most prestigious and influential awards in audio. She was a longtime executive at PRX Radiotopia, home of shows like Song Exploder, Kitchen Sisters Present and Everything is Alive. She helped launch and executive produced narrative podcasts such as Ear Hustle, first recorded inside San Quentin State Prison. Her shows have won Webby awards and Signal awards and been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In this episode, host Mack Hagood plays stellar moments from Julie’s long history in audio and asks her to elaborate on how they were made and what made them great. They also discuss the current industry retrenchment, where budgets are shrinking and low-ambition video chat shows are redefining the very meaning of the word podcast. It’s an illuminating conversation that will appeal to fans and have audio producers taking notes. Finally, Julie discusses her new project with partner John DeLore, Audio Flux—a platform and podcast for short audio pieces that is inspiring fantastic new works from around the world. The Audio Flux Podcast was just named by The New Yorker as one of the top 10 podcasts of 2025. In this episode Julie announces a call for new works that Phantom Power listeners might want to respond to! Audio Showcase: Katie Mingle - The Dead Can't Do You Nothin' (Third Coast Audio Festival) Owen Ever & Laine Kaplan-Levenson - A Field Guide to Gay Animals (Canadaland) Nigel Poor & Earlonne Woods - Ear Hustle (Radiotopia/PRX) Vivien Schütz & Laura Rojas Aponte - Red Card (AudioFlux) Julie Shapiro & John DeLore - AudioFlux Radio Shows/Podcasts: Hrishikesh Hirway - Song Exploder (Radiotopia) The Kitchen Sisters - The Kitchen Sisters Present (Radiotopia) Ian Chillag - Everything is Alive (Radiotopia) Roman Mars - 99% Invisible (Radiotopia) Sarah Koenig - Serial (Serial Productions) Ira Glass - This American Life (WBEZ/PRX) Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich - Radiolab (WNYC) Gwen Macsai - Re:sound (Third Coast/WBEZ) Signal Hill (Audio Magazine) Organizations/Festivals: Third Coast International Audio Festival PRX Radiotopia Radio Workshop Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 0:21 Julie Shapiro Introduction 5:44 Listening Habits 8:26 Katie Mingle: The Dead Can't Do You Nothin' 9:52 Third Coast Audio Festival 16:47 A Field Guide to Gay Animals 24:38 Ear Hustle Ep. 7 Unwritten. 9:47-11:07 32:17 Red Card by Vivien Schütz and Laura Rojas Aponte (AudioFlux) 36:28 Audio Flux Circuit Seven - Trash or Treasure 44:50 Closing Remarks Click here to read the full transcript Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The year is off to a very disturbing start thanks to ICE’s violent paramilitary incursion in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Minnesota citizens have responded with mass protests and direct action, much of it sonic in nature—with the sound of whistles alerting neighbors and making life harder on ICE. This episode, we speak with an expert on noise, power, and protest who also happens to live and teach in Minneapolis: Gabriel Saloman Mindel. Gabriel is one half of the Noise band Yellow Swans. Last month, we discussed the aesthetics and politics of noise music. This month, Gabriel discusses settler-colonial ways of treating the land, humans, and the soundscape in service of capital and political power, as well as noise, protest, and political power in the troubling context of current events. This episode features an interview we did in November and excepts from a follow-up in December, after the ICE incursion began. If you’d like to hear the full conversation about Minneapolis, we’ll be dropping it in our members feed. (If finances are an issue, just drop us a line an we’ll get you access.) Gabriel has an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a PhD in the History of Consciousness from UC, Santa Cruz. He teaches at. Learn about upcoming Yellow Swans shows on their Instagram. Also mentioned: Mack’s launched a new newsletter series, "What has the digital done to our listening?" Media Cited Hildegard Westerkamp - Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989) Prince - 1999 (Official Music Video) Raven Chacon - Voiceless Mass (2021) Hildegard Westerkamp - "The New Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver: An Acoustic Dump" Gabriel Mindel - "Sovereignty, Sonic Limits Music and Spectacle at the Border" in Studies in Social Justice (2025) Chapters: 01:40 Guest Introduction: Gabriel Saloman Mindel 05:16 Gabriel's Academic Journey 09:36 Settler Colonialism and Soundscapes 26:21 Silence and Indigenous Perspectives 27:34 Raven Chacon's Voiceless Mass 30:39 Prince and the End of the World 39:09 Operation Metro Surge 43:42 Direct Action and Protest Click here to read the full transcript Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gabriel Saloman Mindel is a lot more than one half of the United States best known noise bands. He's also an interdisciplinary artist and a scholar whose research studies the interplay between sound and power, as he theorizes how noise can push the limits of the body in struggles over space and political autonomy. Gabriel has an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a PhD in the History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz. He's also a longtime Phantom Power listener and supporter of the show. We first met a little over a year ago at the Unsound Festival in Poland, where Yellow Swans played a packed reunion show. It's been a lovely thing to get to know him--he's a gentle soul who makes aggressive sounds tied to some serious ethical and political commitments. In today's interview, we talk about the history and music of Yellow Swans, the interplay between noise, ethics, aesthetics, and politics. Gabriel even breaks down how he and Pete produced the track we were just listening to. Even if you're not a fan of noise music, I think you're going to love this fascinating conversation. And next month, we'll play part two of the interview, in which Gabriel discusses his scholarship on the work of other artists, including Raven Chacon, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Prince. You can find Yellow Swans online at Bandcamp and Instagram. They will be performing at GRM's annual Présences Électronique festival on Feb 13. In London, first at the Lexington on Feb 16 and then Corsica on Feb 18, and then finish at Bozar in Brussels. Chapters: 0:00 Intro & Welcome 5:53 Gabriel Saloman Mindel 6:52 What is a Yellow Swans Show? 12:48 Early Influences & Discovering Noise 13:45 DIY, Punk, and the Noise Scene 21:57 Noise, Community, and Spirituality 22:45 Performance, Consent, and Audience Experience 24:00 Paradoxes: Noise, Calm, and Reception 29:17 Crafting the Sound: Gear & Process 41:43 Band Dynamics & Collaboration 45:07 Legacy, Recognition, and Touring 51:04 Art, Politics, and the Noise Scene 53:09 Fascism, Provocation, and Identity in Noise 59:44 Inclusivity and Change in the Scene 60:24 Outro: Thanks & What’s Next Click here to read the full transcript. ⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today host Mack Hagood is joined by three remarkable scholars whose work sits at the intersection of African music, technology, and culture. Dr. Louise Meintjes is Marcello Lotti Professor at Duke University. She's a distinguished ethnomusicologist whose groundbreaking research on South African music has transformed how we understand the recording studio as a site of cultural negotiation and creative production. Media anthropologist Dr. Reginold Royston is an Associate Professor jointly-appointed in the School of Information (formerly SLIS) and the Department of African Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He examines a range of African and African diasporic media and technology, from Black Atlantic audiobooks to African podcasting to viral dance videos emanating from Ghana and Chicago's footwork scene. And Kingsley Okyere is graduate student at Penn whose work on African and Afro-diasporic musical circulation and genres is bringing fresh perspectives on the sounds shaping the continent today. In this episode, we explore the evolution of Afrobeats and Amapiano, two genres that have captured global attention in recent years. We also discuss how technology and diaspora networks have shaped African popular music, examine questions of genre, identity, and global circulation, and consider the social and political contexts that inform music production and reception across the continent and beyond. Chapters: 3:21 Meet the Guests: African Music Scholars 6:03 What Are Afrobeats and Amapiano? 7:56 Afrobeats vs. Afrobeat: History & Identity 11:49 Branding, World Music, and South African Context 14:29 Recording Studios as Sites of Negotiation 17:42 Digital Networks and Diaspora Influence 23:23 Listening Practices: Streaming, Social Media, and Algorithms 29:00 Dance, Timelines, and Global Rhythms 33:13 Economic Realities and Global Music Industry Click here to read the full transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did we humans become so dependent on white noise machines, noise-canceling headphones, lo-fi girl and other technologies that help us privatize and individualize our soundscape? An important character in that cultural history is Irv Teibel, whose environments series helped change how we listen. These records were the first to use recorded natural soundscapes as technologies to change how we feel and function. My guests this episode are Joel Stern and James Parker, two thirds of the art and research collective known as Machine Listening—a group that shares my fascination with Teibel. With their partner Sean Dockray, James and Joel have released a vinyl record called Environments 12: New Concepts in Acoustic Enrichment. This album reimagines Irv Teibel’s 1970s Environments albums—those “relaxation records” made for stressed-out people—as a set of soundscapes made for the stressed-out environment itself. The project mixes archival nature recordings, synthetic atmospheres, and AI-generated voices into strange new habitats. Narrators—some human, some machine—tell fables about seashores, reefs, and animal enclosures, where the line between the natural and the artificial dissolves. The result is a haunting, witty, and thought-provoking album that asks what it means to listen when both humans and environments are under pressure. Machine Listening’s art and research practice is deeply engaged with the politics of datasets, algorithmic systems, surveillance, and the shifting dynamics of power in “listening” technologies. Among other things, they interrogate how voice assistants, smart speakers, and algorithmic audio systems mediate — and often extract data from — human sound. Their installations and performances have been shown in institutions worldwide, including the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, and at festivals like Unsound. In short, Machine Listening blends creative and critical strategies to explore and expose the hidden infrastructures of acoustic power. James Parker and Joel Stern are both based in Melbourne Australia, where Parker is Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School and Stern is Research Fellow at RMIT School of Media and Communication. In this conversation we go deep on environments, AI, and recent innovations that surveil and remediate the environment in order to save it--for example playing recordings of healthy ocean reefs to sick ones to improve their vitality. It's some pretty wild shit. As always, you can join to get the extra long version of this conversation, including our guests recommendations on things to read, listen and do. Just go to mackhagood.com to join. That's also where you should go to get our free monthly newsletter with all kinds of great links and resources for people obsessed with sound. We just dropped the first edition and I'm telling you, it's brimming with sonic content that I can't squeeze into the podcast. Chapters: 0:00 The Origins of Environments: Irv Teibel’s Ocean Recording 7:14 Introducing Machine Listening: Art, Technology, and Sound 13:08 The Environments Series: Cultural Impact and Reception 18:58 Avant-Garde Meets Commerce: Teibel’s Methods and Influence 24:51 Bell Labs, IBM, and the Birth of Machine Listening 30:53 Simulation, Emulation, and the Legacy of Environments 36:53 Environments 12: Reimagining Soundscapes for the Environment 42:45 Technologies of the Self and Environmentality 47:55 Sound Design for Zoos: From Field Recordings to Animal Welfare 53:39 Closing Thoughts and Future Directions For full transcript visit irv-teibels-environments-ai-audio-and-the-future-of-listening-w-machine-listening Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Graham Reznick is a multifaceted sound designer, screenwriter, director, and musician, best known for his work on indie horror films like Ti West's X and the critically acclaimed video game Until Dawn. In this episode, Reznick discusses Rabbit Trap, a film based on Welsh folklore blending analog synthesis with supernatural soundscapes. Host Mack Hagood and Reznick begin talking about horror sound design as a technical and creative process, examining how he crafted specific uncanny soundscapes in the film. The conversation then expands to the evolving relationship between sound design and musical scores in horror films, Reznick's limited series on Shudder called "Dead Wax: A Vinyl Hunter's Tale" and a discussion of haunted media, sensory deprivation, brainwave entrainment, self-improvement tapes from the 1970s, and other Halloween-appropriate topics! Members of Phantom Power can hear our ad-free, extended version, which includes Reznick's world-record breaking work as a writer on the video game Until Dawn. Last but not least, we find ‘What’s Good?’ according to Graham, where he recommends things to read, do, and listen to! Join us at phantompod.org or mackhagood.com]! That’s also where you can also sign up for our free Phantom Power newsletter, which will drop on the second Friday of every month and feature news, reviews, and interviews not found on the podcast. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction to Phantom Power 01:19 Meet Graham Reznick: Sound Designer Extraordinaire 01:59 Rabbit Trap: A Sound-Centric Horror Film 02:29 Graham Reznick's Career Highlights 04:00 Phantom Power Membership and Newsletter 04:52 Interview with Graham Reznick Begins 05:00 Rabbit Trap: Plot and Sound Design Insights 10:40 Creating the Uncanny Soundscape 14:11 The Evolution of Sound Design in Horror 20:56 Sound Design Techniques and Tools 26:33 Exploring the Fairy Circle Scene 35:48 Dead Wax: A Vinyl Hunter's Tale 39:58 The Allure of Forbidden Media 43:31 The Evolution of Online Culture 44:34 Magic, Dark Arts, and Haunted Media 46:54 Sensory Deprivation and Inner Worlds 49:25 The Power of Sound and Music 52:45 The Impact of Individualized Media For the full transcript visit: https://www.mackhagood.com/podcast/inside-the-sound-of-the-uncanny-rabbit-trap-sound-design-and-haunted-media-w-graham-reznick/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With movie star looks and a raucous piano style, Maurice Rocco made a splash in the 1940’s, influencing future rock and rollers Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. By the 60s, however, he was a has-been in the U.S., playing lounges in Bangkok, Thailand until his grisly murder by a pair of male sex workers. In his deeply insightful book ⁠Bangkok After Dark, ethnomusicologist Benjamin Tausig reclaims Rocco’s forgotten story and reveals its broader context, exploring the intersection of race, queerness, and transnational music cultures during the cold war era. Benjamin Tausig is a scholar of music, sound and politics in Southeast Asia teaching at Stony Brook University, New York. Working between music, sound studies, Asian studies, and anthropology, his publications cover topics such as the soundscape of political procest in Thauland, Luk thung and mor lam, and the impact of American military presence on Southeast Asian culture. In this episode we discuss his two books, Bangkok is Ringing, which provides a lucid and in-depth ethnography of the Thailand’s Red Shirt anti-government protest movement, and Bangkok After Dark. In a wide-ranging conversation, we cover everything from Mack and Ben’s early days in sound studies to the proto-music videos known as “soundies” to the psychedelic roots of Thai music genres like luk thung. Our Patreons get an extended cut of this interview, including our ‘what’s good?’ section, revealing Ben’s top picks for things to read, do, and listen to! Sign up to listen at Patreon.com/phantompower. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction: Maurice Rocco and the Forgotten Soundies 03:57 Welcome & Meet Benjamin Taussig 08:15 Sound Studies, Graduate School, and Early Interests 13:15 Fieldwork in Thailand: Urban Sound and Space 18:15 Learning Thai and Immersing in Bangkok 22:45 Language, Tonality, and Sonic Culture 27:45 The Red Shirt Movement and Thai Political Soundscapes 36:29 Protest, Democracy, and the Limits of Sound 44:10 Thai Music Genres: Luk Thung, Mor Lam, and Protest 51:00 Sonic Niches, Censorship, and Speaking Out 54:49 Maurice Rocco: From American Jazz Star to Bangkok 1:02:58 The Vietnam War, American Influence, and Thai Psychedelia 1:09:38 Race, Queerness, and Identity in 1960s-70s Thailand 1:14:05 Rocco’s Final Years, Legacy, and Reflections For the full transcript visit https://phantompod.org/benjamin-tausig-bangkok-after-dark/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sound is an invisible force that most people rarely notice and barely understand. Dr. Mack Hagood explores the world of sound studies with the world's most amazing sound researchers, artists, and designers, as well as musicians, writers, voice actors and others. We've broken down how computers learned to talk, Yoko Ono's scream, John Cage's silence, chopped and screwed cassette tapes, the politics of EDM, film soundtracks, field recording, and audio ink blot tests for blind people. Phantom Power is the podcast that both newcomers and experts in sound studies, sound art, and acoustic ecology listen to--combining intellectual rigor and great audio. Mack Hagood is a professor of media and communication who studies audio technologies. His work and words have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Washington Post, the BBC, Freakonomics Radio, Pitchfork, and many other venues. He is the author of Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control and is currently writing a book about sound for Penguin Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month, we have a guest pod in the feed: It’s the debut episode of Critical Listening, music technology criticism from journalist Liz Pelly and composer-educator Max Alper, “two lifers of the Northeast underground and independent scholars of streaming era dystopia.” Liz and Max’s guest is Greg Saunier, drummer and founding member of long-running band Deerhoof. They discuss the release of Deerhoof’s 20th release, as well as the challenges of making art under the hegemonic conditions of information capitalism. To learn more about Critical Listening, check out their Patreon page. This month, we also also share an audio file recorded at April’s Society for Cinema and Media Studies meeting. It’s a special tribute to Jonathan Sterne, providing a space for SCMS members to reflect on what he meant to them and to the field. Thanks to organizer Amy Skjerseth with the help of Neil Verma, Ravi Krishnaswami, Cris Becker, and Maya Reter, the entire session was recorded. In all, some 25 people shared their remembrances, including many past Phantom Power guests and collaborators. You can stream the session here. The post Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier on Critical Listening appeared first on Phantom Power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer and sound artist who creates immersive compositions, drawing on a wide array of genres and life experiences. Her compositions have been commissioned internationally for a variety of mediums. Yvette Jackson often works in a mode she calls radio opera, which combines orchestral composition, modular synthesis, sampling, voice acting, and improvisation. Her work has been commissioned and screened at some of the biggest festivals and events across the globe. Having learned tape splicing, analog synthesis, and computer music at the historic Columbia Computer Music Center in New York. Yvette now works as associate professor at Harvard University. In the public episode, we talk about her concept of radio opera and we take a deep dive into her album Freedom, and explore the unusual personal history that has informed her unconventional composition style—discussing things like theater sound design and her four years spent 8,000 feet up in the Rocky Mountains, and how that changed the way she listens. Supporters on Patreon will get another 35 minutes where we get into the technical details of how Yvette puts these multimodal electroacoustic works together. And a discussion of composing for the Carillon, the enormous bell tower instrument. sign up to listen Patreon.com/phantompower. 00:00 Introduction 00:39 Meet Yvette Janine Jackson 02:08 Exploring Radio Opera 04:19 Yvette’s Recent Achievements 05:12 Defining the Artist 06:01 The Concept of Radio Opera 08:25 Creating Immersive Experiences 13:10 Album ‘Freedom’ and Its Themes 13:56 Narratives in ‘Freedom’ 14:16 Invisible People: A Radio Opera 19:54 Destination Freedom: A Journey 24:02 The Art of Sound and Emotion 29:10 Diving into Technical and Biographical Insights 29:51 Early Musical Influences and Education 31:57 College Years and Electronic Music Exploration 35:04 Theater and Radio Drama Experiences 40:17 Living in Colorado and Soundscape Studies 48:40 PhD Journey and Integrative Studies 50:39 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Transcript Yvette Jackson: My work has a lot of things that were presented to me at some point as binaries, like, you know, improvisation, composition, acoustic, electronic, and for me, I guess part of my practice is kind of blurring these lines. Introduction: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a show about sound. Sound studies. Sound art. All things sound. My name is Mac Hagood, and my guest today is Yvette Janine Jackson. Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer and sound artist who creates immersive compositions drawing on a wide array of genres and life experiences. Her electroacoustic chamber and orchestral compositions have been commissioned internationally for concert. Theater, installation and screen. Yvette Jackson often works in a mode she calls radio opera, which combines orchestral composition, modular synthesis, sampling, voice acting, improvisation, a whole lot of things in order to create what the guardian called immersive non-visual films. Her work has been commissioned by or appeared on the stages and screens of Carnegie Hall Big Years Festival. PBS and the Venice Music Bien Oh and Wave Farm. A lot of listeners will be familiar with Wave Farm, with whom Yvette has had a long history. She is also the only volunteer firefighter that I personally know who learned tape splicing analog synthesis and computer music at the Historic Columbia Computer Music Center in New York. Oh, and did I mention that she’s a professor at Harvard? Yvette and I met at the Residual Noise Festival at Brown a couple months ago, and I so enjoyed talking with her that I wanted to bring you in on the conversation. In this wide ranging chat, we talk about her concept of radio opera and we take a deep dive into her album Freedom, which the wire calls one of the most unique. Releases to chronicle the Black American experience. We then get into her unusual personal history, which has informed her unconventional composition style, and we discuss things like theater, sound design, and the four years she spent 8,000 feet up in the Rocky Mountains and how that changed the way she listens. Supporters on Patreon will get another 35 minutes where we get into the technical details of how Yvette puts together these multimodal electroacoustic works. And then we get to my favorite part of the conversation in which we truly nerd out on the Caron. Which is the enormous Bell Tower instrument that she has actually composed several pieces for. And unless there is some Caron podcast out there, and I suppose there probably is, but I’m pretty sure that this is the deepest Caron conversation you’re ever going to hear. And then. Yvette does her what’s good segment where she suggests something good to read, something good to listen to, something good to do, and her picks are every bit as unconventional as you might expect from this introduction. That is all at Phantom Power’s Patreon page. patreon.com/phantom P

Today we present a cassette theory mixtape. Three excellent scholars help us understand consumer-focused magnetic tape and its history as a medium for the masses: Eleanor Patterson, Associate Professor of Media Studies at Auburn, whose new book just won the 2025 Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Book Award and a 2025 International Association for Media and History Book Award. It’s called Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternative Histories of Radio and Television distribution (Illinois Press, 2024). Rob Drew, Professor of Communication at Saginaw Valley State University and a fantastic interpreter of pop culture like graffiti and karaoke. His new book is Unspooled: How the Cassette Made Music Shareable (Duke, 2024). Andrew Simon, Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College. We’ve been wanting to talk to him for a while about his 2022 book, Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press). This conversation winds its way from the early days of radio, through the Anglophone indie rock of the 1980s, and into the streets of Cairo, where cassette tapes represented the first mass medium that Egyptian state power could not control. 03:49 Introducing the Cassette Theory Mixtape 04:06 Meet the Scholars: Eleanor Patterson, Rob S. Drew, and Andrew Simon 06:10 Diving into the Books: A Round Table Discussion 12:24 Exploring the Prehistory of Media Distribution 23:43 The Role of Cassettes in Indie and Hip Hop Culture 31:12 Cassettes in Egypt: A Tool for Revolution and Resistance 40:32 The Intersection of Media and Culture Hear the full 90 minute conversation by joining our Patreon! Please support the show at patreon.com/phantompower Links to Mack’s recent travels: Residual Noise Festival at Brown University Resonance: Sound Across the Disciplines at Rutgers University’s Center for Cultural Analysis Transcript Andrew Simon: [00:00:00] Cassette tapes and players did not simply join other mass mediums like records and radio. They became the media of the masses. Cassettes in many ways were the internet before the internet. They enabled anyone to produce culture, circulate information, challenge ruling regimes, long before social media ever entered all of our daily lives. PPIntro: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a podcast about sound where I talk to people who make sound and people who study sound. I’m Mack Hagood. I’m a Media professor at Miami University, and I just want to start off by giving a quick shout out to a couple of creative communities that I got to hang out in. I [00:01:00] just got back from the Residual Noise Festival at Brown University, which was this amazing three day event featuring ambisonic sound, art, and music pieces performed both at Brown and at RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design. The lead curator of the festival was Ed Osborne, who is the chair of the Art Department at Brown, and a very accomplished sound artist. And in the middle of the festival there was this one day conference and Ed was kind enough to invite me to be the keynote speaker. And then I had an onstage discussion with Emily I. Dolan, the chair of Brown’s Music Department, and someone whose work I’ve followed for a long time, and it was a real thrill to meet her as well. But really the biggest thrill of all was the sounds, I mean, three days of these immersive ambisonic creations by amazing artists in these amazing facilities, both at Brown and RISD [00:02:00] and most importantly, there is just such a creative and fun and diverse and nurturing community of composers and sound artists at these two schools. I’ll put a link to the festival in the show notes and hopefully. We may also feature some of these artists in coming episodes. And then the week before that I visited the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University, and they’ve been having this two year long sound seminar chaired by Professors Carter Mathes and Xiaojue Wong. And they invited me to come over and talk to their faculty and grad students and postdocs about my work. And I got to learn about all the fascinating sound related stuff that’s happening over there at Rutgers. That was also a blast. So I just want to thank Carter and Xiaojue and Ed for the invitations and thank all of you for listening because so many people at these events came up to me and said how valuable they [00:03:00] found this podcast. And I never anticipated making so many new friends and working relationships through this show. So I feel super fortunate. And that also reminds me, last episode I mentioned trying to get our Patreon sponsorships up so that I can pay an editor and keep this show going during the summer. And we got an unprecedented upsurge in memberships. So thank you so much. We still kind of have quite a ways to go for me to reach the break even point on production costs. So please, if you’ve been thinking about doing it, maybe do it now. Just go to patreon.com/phantompower you’

University of Delaware historian David Suisman is known for his research on music and capitalism, particularly his excellent book Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Harvard UP, 2009), which won numerous awards and accolades. Suisman’s new book, Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers (U Chicago Press, 2024), brings that same erudition to the subject of music in the military. It is the most comprehensive look at military music to date, full of fascinating historical anecdotes and insights on what music does for military states and their soldiers. Our conversation explores music as a martial technology, used for purposes of morale, discipline, indoctrination, entertainment, emotional relief, psychological warfare, and torture. In the public episode David and I talk about the military’s use of music from the Civil War through World War Two. Our Patrons will also hear David’s critique of how we think about music in the Vietnam War–he says Hollywood has completely misinformed us on the role of music in that conflict. We’ll also talk about the iPod and our more recent conflicts in the Middle East, and hear a detailed discussion of David’s research and writing methods, plus his reading and listening recommendations. If you’re not a Patron, you can hear the full version, plus all of our other bonus content for just a few bucks a month–sign up at Patreon.com/phantompower. 00:00 Introduction 04:20 The US Military’s Investment in Music 05:30 Music’s Role in Soldier Training and Discipline 12:32 The Evolution of Military Cadences 23:22 The Civil War: A Turning Point for Military Music 28:21 Forgotten Brass Instruments of the Union Army 29:38 The Role of Drummer Boys in the Civil War 33:32 Music and Morale in World War I 35:48 Group Singing and Community Singing Movement 37:28 The YMCA’s Role in Soldier Recreation 38:41 Racial Dynamics and Minstrel Shows in Military Music 41:47 Music Consumption and the Military in World War II 45:27 The USO and Live Entertainment for Troops 49:56 Vietnam War: Challenging Musical Myths 50:26 Conclusion and Call to Support the Podcast Transcript ​[00:00:00] David Suisman: I describe music as functioning in some ways as a lubricant in the American War machine. It makes the machine function or allows the machine to function. It enables the machine to function. Introduction: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a podcast about sound. I’m Mack Hagood. I just noticed that this month makes seven years that we’ve been doing this podcast, which feels like a pretty nice milestone. And in that time, we’ve really tried to keep the focus on sound as opposed to music. There are a lot of fantastic podcasts about music, not nearly as many taking a really deeply nerdy approach to [00:01:00] questions about sound. And so that’s been our lane. That said, no one has managed to build a wall or police the border between sound and music. It’s a pretty fuzzy boundary and we’ve definitely spent a lot of episodes exploring that fuzzy boundary between the two. And I guess the reason I bring this up is that this season has actually been Pretty musical so far. Our first episode this season was with Eric Salvaggio. We were talking about AI and its implications for music and then our second episode, with Liz Pelley, looked into the effects of Spotify on how we listen to music. So two shows about how new sound technologies are reshaping music. Today’s show puts a slightly different spin on the relationship between music and technology. Today, we’re looking at music as a technology. A technology of war. My guest today is [00:02:00] University of Delaware historian, David Suisman. David is probably best known for his research on the history of music and capitalism. Especially his excellent book, “Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music” that’s probably his best known work. Now, he’s bringing that same kind of erudition to the subject of music in the military. His new book is called Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers. Long time listeners will know that I sometimes get a little cranky about music scholars and media scholars and the ways that we often focus on the kind of content that we like. We get a little fannish, we want to think about things like music as a force of self expression and political liberation. Of course, music can be those things, but music can also be a technology of domination, of indoctrination, of disciplinarity, even [00:03:00] torture. And David Suisman’s “Instrument of War” is the most comprehensive look at military music that I’m aware of. If the subject matter sounds a bit grim, you’ll be happy to hear that this book is full of fascinating historical anecdotes. And in the public episode of this show, David and I are going to talk about the military’s use of music from the civil war all the way through World War II. Our patrons will also hear David’s critique

The sound studies community is reeling from the death of Jonathan Sterne this past Thursday. Jonathan’s presence and work were–and are–incredibly influential on the intellectual and ethical commitments of our field. He was a generous mentor to so many, including me. Do you know those “WWJD?” bracelets? I’ve been wearing one in my mind for about 15 years: “What Would Jonathan Do?” In this short, impromptu episode, I share a few thoughts about what he meant to me and to sound studies. If you want to spend some time with Jonathan’s voice, we were lucky to feature him in several episodes, but our Dork-o-phonics episode, based on his book Diminished Faculties, is certainly my favorite. The post Remembering Jonathan Sterne (1970-2025) appeared first on Phantom Power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Liz Pelly is our foremost journalist/critic on the Spotify beat. Her byline has appeared at the Baffler, Guardian, NPR, and many other outlets. She is also an adjunct instructor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Liz is also been making the media rounds lately, talking about her new book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (One Signal Publishers). The book is both a history of Spotify and an argument that Spotify is not, in fact, a music company, but rather an advertising company focused on manipulating user behavior to maximize time on platform. As a consequence, Spotify not only pushes musical aesthetics towards banal, “lean-back listening,” it also makes musicians themselves expendable: replaceable by ghost musicians, AI slop, and behavioral algorithms that keep people just barely engaged at the lowest cost. In this show, Liz details how platforms shape listening and music making alike. We also discuss the tension between frictionless music consumption and meaningful cultural engagement. And remember, there’s an extended version of this interview which features a bunch of bonus material including a listener question, a deep dive into Liz’s reporting methods, and the backstory of how she got into journalism and got a major book deal, plus her book and music recommendations. It’s available to our Patrons for a mere $3 a month. Sign up at Patreon.com/phantompower. Transcript Liz Pelly: [00:00:00] When I hear something like the founder of an AI company saying “Making music is too hard. People don’t want to learn how to play instruments,” or even this idea that a streaming platform should help people reduce cognitive work. It’s like, that essentially means we should help people not have to think. And I think that, you know, Mack Hagood: Yeah. Liz Pelly: As critics, what we do is encourage people to think, you know, thinking and making decisions is an important part of processing life in the world and information and culture and figuring out how you actually feel about someone’s art. Introduction: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom [00:01:00] Power, a podcast about sound. I’m Mack Hagood. My guest today is journalist Liz Pelly, someone I’ve been reading avidly and having my students read for almost a decade now. Pelly is our foremost journalist and critic on the Spotify beat. Her byline has appeared in the Baffler, the Guardian, NPR, and many other outlets. She’s also an adjunct instructor at NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts. Liz has been making the media rounds lately, talking about her new book Mood Machine, the Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist, out on One Signal Publishers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The book is both a history of Spotify and an argument that Spotify is not in fact a music company, but rather an advertising company focused on manipulating user behavior to maximize time on platform. As a consequence, Spotify not only pushes musical aesthetics towards banal, lean back [00:02:00] listening, it also makes musicians themselves expendable, replaceable by ghost musicians, AI slop, and behavioral algorithms that keep people just barely engaged at the lowest cost. I am super excited to have Liz on the show and get into the weeds of how platforms shape listening and music making alike. And remember, there’s an extended version of this interview that features a bunch of bonus material, including a listener question, a deep dive into Liz’s reporting methods, and the backstory of how she got into journalism and got a major book deal. We’ll also have her book and music recommendations. It’s available to our patrons for a mere $3 a month. Sign up at patreon. com /phantom power. All right, let’s get to it. All right. Liz, welcome. Liz Pelly: Hey, thank you so much for having me. Mack Hagood: So I [00:03:00] thought we could start off by talking about the title of your book. For those of you folks out there who aren’t familiar with your years of research on Spotify and your journalistic pieces on it, why name a book about Spotify, Mood Machine? Liz Pelly: That’s a great question. I think when I first started thinking about the book, I was thinking about it in two sections. Actually, the first book proposal that I wrote was a proposal for two books. One was going to be about the impact of the streaming economy on listening. And one was going to be about the impact on artists. I quickly realized that it made much more sense to just write one book, but I shifted to this idea of writing a book in two parts where the first part was going to be about how streaming had reshaped listening and the second part was going to be about the material impact on musicians. That structure didn’t quite hold, by the time I got to the final table of contents, things shifted a little bit, but [00:04:00] when I was thinking about, originally, when I was thinking about mood, to me, that word sort of evoked the way that streaming has

In this episode, host Mack Hagood dives into the world of AI-generated music and art with digital artist and theorist Eryk Salvaggio. The conversation explores technical and philosophical aspects of AI art, its impact on culture, and the ‘age of noise’ it has ushered in. AI dissolves sounds and images into literal noise, subsequently reversing the process to create new “hypothetical” sounds and images. The kinds of cultural specificities that archivists struggle to preserve are stripped away when we treat human culture as data in this way. Eryk also shares insights into his works like ‘Swim’ and ‘Sounds Like Music,’ which test AI’s limitations and forces the machine to reflect on itself in revealing ways. Finally, the episode contemplates how to find meaning and context in an overwhelming sea of information. Eryk Salvaggio is a researcher and new media artist interested in the social and cultural impacts of artificial intelligence. His work explores the creative misuse of AI and the transformation of archives into datasets for AI training: a practice designed to expose ideologies of tech and to confront the gaps between datasets and the worlds they claim to represent. A blend of hacker, researcher, designer and artist, he has been published in academic journals, spoken at music and film festivals, and consulted on tech policy at the national level. He is a researcher on AI, art and education at the metaLab (at) Harvard University, the Emerging Technology Research Advisor to the Siegel Family Endowment, and a top contributor to Tech Policy Press. He holds an MSc in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and an MSc in Applied Cybernetics from the Australian National University. Works discussed in this podcast: The Age of Noise (2024) SWIM (2024): A meditation on training data, memory, and archives. Sounds Like Music: Toward a Multi-Modal Media Theory of Gaussian Pop (2024) How to Read an AI Image (2023) You can learn more about Eryk Salvaggio at cyberneticforests.com Learn more about Phantom Power at phantompod.org Join our Patreon at patreon.com/phantompower Transcription by Katelyn Phan 00:00 Introduction and Podcast News 03:24 Introducing Eryk Salvaggio, AI Artist and Theorist 05:33 Understanding the Information Age and Noise 09:14 The Diffusion Process and AI Bias 33:35 Ethics of AI and Data Curation 39:09 Exploring the Artwork ‘Swim’ 45:16 AI in Music: Platforms and Experiments 01:00:04 Embracing Noise and Context Transcript Eryk Salvaggio: I think as consumers of the music generated by AI, that’s the thing that I want to think about is as a listener, what am I hearing and how do I listen like meaningfully to a piece of AI music that essentially has no meaning. Introduction: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, the show where we dive deep into sound studies, acoustic ecology, sound art, experimental music, all things sonic. I’m Mack Hagood. Today we’re talking to the digital artist and theorist, Eryk Salvaggio. We’ll be diving into the question of what is AI art and AI music? And we’re going to attack this question on both the technical and the philosophical level. We’re also going to talk about how to live in what Eryk calls, “the age of noise”. It’s a really interesting conversation, so stick around. But first I want to just go over a few quick show notes. For those of you listening in your podcast feed, you will have noticed that after something of a hiatus, We’re back. I am looking forward to bringing you this podcast, once a month in 2025. We have a lot of fascinating interviews on tap next month. Journalist Liz Pelly will be with us to discuss her new book on Spotify. I could not be more excited about that. For those of you joining us on YouTube or maybe Spotify, you’ll notice that you can see me. So it’s taken a lot of work, but we have officially jumped on the video podcast bandwagon. I think today’s episode is going to show the power of that, because we’re going to be talking not only about music, but also about video art made by AI. And it’s going to be helpful to actually see it with your eyes. But no worries to all of our dedicated audio listeners and visually impaired folks. We’re going to be sure to describe anything relevant that’s seen on the screen. So audio or video, feel free to enjoy Phantom Power in the modality of your choice. And if you’re watching or listening for the first time, please do subscribe wherever you’re encountering this flow of waveforms and pixels. And finally for longtime listeners who have been following along with my epic saga of trying to pivot from writing academic works to writing for the public, I’m thrilled to announce that I got a book deal. My next book will be coming out on Penguin Press. And for those of you who have been following along with this saga, you’ll know that I’ve done episodes and Patreon posts about how I found an agent, what it’s like to work with an agent, writing a proposal.