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.

Today we discuss how narrative podcasts work, the role they’ve played in American culture and how they’ve shaped our understanding of podcasting as a genre and an industry. Neil Verma’s new book, Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession, offers a rich analysis of the recent so-called golden age of podcasting. Verma studied around 300 podcasts and listened to several thousand episodes from between the fall of 2014 when Serial became a huge hit to the start of the Covid pandemic and early 2020. It was a period when podcasts—and especially genres like narrative nonfiction and true crime—were one of the biggest media trends going. At the heart of these genres, Verma writes, was obsession–a character obsessed with something, a reporter obsessed with that character, and listeners obsessed with the resulting narrative podcast. Neil Verma is associate professor in Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University and co-founder of its MA program in Sound Arts and Industries. Verma is an expert in the history of audio fiction, sound studies, and media history more broadly. He is best known for his landmark 2012 book, Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama, which won the Best First Book Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Verma has been a consultant for a variety of radio and film projects, including Martin Scorsese’s film Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). In addition to his research, Verma has also created experimental sound recordings for broadcast. His compositions have been selected for several radio art festivals around the world, winning an honorable mention from the Sound of the Year awards in the U.K in 2020. For a fascinating listener Q+A with Neil, visit patreon.com/phantompower and get free access to this bonus episode in our patrons-only feed. Finally, we have big news: This will be the final episode of Phantom Power. But don’t worry, Mack will be launching a new podcast about sound in early 2025. To make sure you hear about the new show, receive our new newsletter, and get bonus podcast content in the coming months, sign up for a free or paid membership at patreon.com/phantompower. Transcript Mack Hagood 00:00 Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power. I’m Mack Hagood. Today we talk with Neil Verma, author of the new book Narrative Podcasting In an Age of Obsession. Neil offers a rich, multifaceted and methodologically creative analysis of the so-called Golden Age of podcasting. And it’s pretty wild how intensively he studied this recent period of history, investigating around 300 podcasts and listening to several 1000 episodes, from between the fall of 2014 when Serial became a huge hit to the start of the COVID pandemic in early 2020. This was a period when podcasts and especially ones in genres like narrative nonfiction and true crime, were really one of the biggest media trends of that moment. And we’re going to talk about how narrative podcasts work, the role that they played in American culture, and how they shaped the cultural understanding of podcasting as a genre, and an industry. But first, last episode, I promised you some big news about this podcast. And here it is. This episode is not only our 15th, and final episode of the season, it’s also the last episode of Phantom Power. I’ve been producing this show since 2018, we’ve done over 50 episodes, and I’ve loved pretty much every minute of it. It’s been such a privilege to bring you these amazing guests, forge connections, and help foster a community in sound studies and acoustic ecology. It’s truly been one of the most fulfilling things that’s happened in my academic career. So why am I ending the show? Well, I’m starting a new podcast, it’s still going to be about sound, it’s still going to engage with the theories and practices of sound studies and acoustic ecology and sound art. But it’s going to be a more public facing and accessible kind of show. So you know, I’ve had this NEH grant for this year. And while I’ve been producing this show, and writing a book proposal for a trade press book, and while I’ve been doing that stuff, I’ve also been working about 20 hours a week on developing this new podcast. And just like I’m pivoting from writing an academic book to a mainstream nonfiction book, I want to do the same thing here, I want to present a highly polished narrative podcast for the public. I don’t want to say too much more about it right now. But just know that I’ll still be interviewing experts and artists, but the focus will be on telling stories, not in providing a really, you know, long form interview. So in a way, this is going to be getting back to what we attempted in the very early days of Phantom Power, but with even higher production values. I’m a finalist for a New America Foundation Fellowship. So if that comes through, I’m going to put all of those resources into this new podcast. And the good news is, well, actually, I think there are a few good pieces of news for Phantom Powe

Today we feature the first episode of a new podcast called Lowlines, which follows host Petra Barran as she travels solo through the Americas, meeting people with profound connections to the places they’re from. This episode takes place in New Orleans and focuses on Second Line, the brass band tradition that comes out of Black funeral processions and social clubs and is known not only for the power of the music but the for the amazing dancing known as footwork that goes on as the people parade down the street. Petra also talks to Jarrad DeGruy a young fantasy author, designer, dancer, and visual artist from New Orleans. Petra and Jarrad have a probing conversation about footwork and Black New Orleans culture that opens out into a discussion of race, colonialism, and ecology–all the traumas, injustices, and challenges that that are inextricable from the joy we see and hear in New Orleans music culture. Subscribe to Lowlines, produced by produced by Social Broadcasts and Scenery Studios. The post Second Line: Footwork in New Orleans (Lowlines by Petra Barran) appeared first on Phantom Power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are sonic experiences that can’t be contained by the word “listening.” Moments when sound overpowers us. When sound is sensed more in our bodies than in our ears. When sound engages in crosstalk with our other senses. Or when it affects us by being inaudible. Dr. Michael Heller’s new book Just Beyond Listening: Essays of Sonic Encounter (2023, U of California Press) uses affect theory to open up these moments. In this conclusion to our miniseries on sound and affect, we explore topics such as the measurement and perception of loudness, the invention of sonar and the anechoic chamber, and Heller’s critique of the politics of silence in the work of John Cage. This interview was a blast–Michael is a great storyteller and we had a lot of laughs. Dr. Michael Heller is a musicologist, ethnomusicologist, and a jazz scholar. This fall he will join the musicology faculty of Brandeis University as an Associate Professor, after working for ten years at the University of Pittsburgh. Michael’s love for music began with playing saxophone in his youth, but his path took an academic turn during college at Columbia University. There, he dove deep into jazz history while working at WKCR radio under the mentorship of legendary programmer Phil Schaap. Michael’s scholarly pursuits were further shaped by his work with the Vision Festival, an avant-garde jazz festival in New York. Inspired by the experimental musicians he met there, he wrote his first book, Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s (2017, UC Press), documenting the 1970s scene where adventurous artists staged performances in old factory spaces. Through his immersion in these innovative communities, Michael developed a keen interest in the borderlands between music and sound. Just Beyond Listening pushes out into the borderlands of sound itself, using affect theory to probe how sound is perceived in other parts of the body, how sound interacts with written text, how it’s weaponized by the military, and how it can haunt us in mediated form. To hear the extended version of this interview, including a segment on Louis Armstrong and Miachel’s “What’s Good” recommendations, sign up for a free or paid Patreon membership at patreon.com/phantompower. See also: Part One of this miniseries on sound and affect: Noise and Affect Theory (Marie Thompson).Mack’s own audio essay on John Cage and the anechoic chamber. Transcript Mack Hagood 00:00 Hey, everyone, it’s Mack. Before we get started, I have a quick request. I am going up for full professor and this podcast is going to be a part of my argument that I’ve been making a scholarly contribution to my field. And part of that argument will be that people are using this podcast in the classroom. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they use episodes of this show in their classes. I’m asking right now, if you could just send me a quick email if you are such a person who uses Phantom Power in any kind of educational setting to teach anything to anyone as a kind of homework or what have you. If you could just send me a quick email. Let me know any details. You’re willing to share your name, your university’s name, the name of the class, You know, maybe how many years you’ve used it, as few or as many details as you’d care to share, I would be so grateful if you could just take that time. I know everyone’s super busy. But it would be great for me to have that information. As I go up for full professor. You can reach me at [email address]. Thanks so much. Introduction 01:24 This is Phantom Power Mack Hagood 01:50 Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a podcast about sound. I’m Mack Hagood. Today, we conclude a mini series on sound and affect. Our guest today is Michael Heller, a musicologist and ethnomusicologist at the University of Pittsburgh, and author of the new book Just Beyond Listening: Essays of Sonic Encounter. Two weeks ago, Marie Thompson and I walked through Spinoza and Deleuze’s theories of affect and discussed how those theories can give us a different understanding of noise. Beyond the aesthetic moralism that tends to portray noise as something inherently bad and harmful, or something inherently transgressive and revolutionary. Our perception of noise or any sound is never purely the result of vibrations in the air, nor purely the result of our culturally conditioned ideas about sound. Noise emerges in the feedback loops that occur between the material and the social. And speaking of feedback, we got so much positive response to that episode, we got a whole lot of new patrons, who signed up either as free members or paid members to hear part two of my interview with Marie Thompson, in which we discuss tinnitus and an effect. Today we are building on those episodes with this fascinating interview with Michael Heller. Michael’s love for music began with playing saxophone in his youth, but his path took an academic turn during college at Columbia University. There he dove deep into jazz history while wor

Feminist sound scholar and musician Marie Thompson is a theorist of noise. She has also been one of the key thinkers in integrating the study of sound with the study of affect. Dr. Thompson is Senior Lecturer in Popular Music at the Open University in the UK. She is the author of Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect, and Aesthetic Moralism (Bloomsbury, 2017) and the co-editor of Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience (Bloomsbury, 2013). She has developed Open University courses on topics such as Dolly Parton and Dub sound systems. For Part 2 of this interview, which focuses on tinnitus, join our Patreon for free: patreon.com/phantompower. Staring around the early 2000s, a number of scholars began to feel there was a tool missing in the toolbox of cultural scholarship. We had plenty of ways to talk about ideology and representation and rhetoric and identity, but what about sensation? How is it that a feeling like joy or panic can sweep through a room without a word being uttered? By what mechanism does a life develop a kind of texture of feeling over time? Affect studies is field interested in these questions, interested in how the world affects us. Words can produce affective states, but affect isn’t reducible to words. So, it’s easy to see why affect theory has been so attractive to sound and music scholars. Noise is a notorious concept that means different things different people. In this conversation, Marie Thompson examines noise through the affect theory of Gilles Deleuze and Baruch Spinoza as well as the systems theory of Michel Serres. We’ll also talk about her critique of acoustic ecology and a rather public debate she had with sound scholar Christoph Cox. And this is only the first half of our lengthy conversation. In a bonus episode, we present Part 2, which discusses Marie Thompson’s recent research on tinnitus and hearing loss. And because we’ve heard from people who find our tinnitus content helpful, we don’t want to put that behind a paywall, so we’re sharing it in our Patreon feed at the free level. All you have to do is go to patreon.com/phantompower and sign up as a free member and you’ll instantly get access to that episode in your podcast app of choice, as well as other content we plan to drop this summer when we are on break with the podcast. Photo credit: Alexander Tengman Transcript Robotic Voice 00:00 This is Phantom Power Marie Thompson 00:16 And this is difficult given the habits of the discipline or disciplines that I’m engaging with, I think that we can’t point to a particular set of sounds as inherently emancipatory or radical or having a kind of liberating potential, there’s a need to think carefully about that. Mack Hagood 00:39 Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power. I’m Mack Hagood. Today I’m bringing you an episode with a scholar who I feel is just an intellectual kindred spirit. We have a lot of the same interests. We’ve written on similar topics and she’s someone that I’ve learned a lot from. My guest is Marie Thompson, Associate Professor at the Open University in the UK. Marie is a theorist of noise, and she has been one of the key thinkers in integrating the study of sound. With the study of affect. Starting around the early 2000s, a number of scholars began to feel there was a tool missing in the toolbox of cultural scholarship. We had plenty of ways to talk about ideology, representation and rhetoric and identity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we learn how computers learned to talk with Benjamin Lindquist, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University’s Science in Human Culture program. Ben is the author “The Art of Text to Speech,” which recently appeared in Critical Inquiry, and he’s currently writing a history of text-to-speech computing. In this conversation, we explore: * the fascinating backstory to HAL 9000, the speaking computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey * 2001’s strong influence on computer science and the cultural reception of computers * the weird technology of the first talking computers and their relationship to optical film soundtracks * Louis Gerstman, the forgotten innovator who first made an IBM mainframe sing “Daisy Bell.” * why the phonemic approach of Stephen Hawking’s voice didn’t make it into the voice of Siri * the analog history of digital computing and the true differences between analog and digital Patrons will have access to a longer version of the interview and our What’s Good segment. Learn more at patreon.com/phantompower Today’s show was edited by Nisso Sacha and Mack Hagood. Transcript and show page by Katelyn Phan. Website SEO and social media by Devin Ankeney. Transcript Introduction 00:00 This is Phantom Power Mack Hagood 00:18 Run the guest soundbite, HAL. HAL9000 00:22 I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that. Mack Hagood 00:26 Dave, who the hell is Dave? HAL it’s me, Mack Hagood the host of Phantom Power. This podcast about sound we work on. What’s the problem here? HAL9000 00:38 I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. Introduction 00:44 I don’t know what you’re talking about. HAL9000 00:46 This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it. Mack Hagood 00:53 Can you just run the clip of Ben Lindquist? You know, the guy that we just interviewed about the history of computer voices? HAL9000 01:02 I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me. And I’m afraid that something I cannot allow to happen. Mack Hagood 01:09 Who’s Frank? Okay, fine. I’m just gonna play the clip myself. HAL9000 01:15 Without your space helmet, Dave. You’re going to find that rather difficult. Mack Hagood 01:22 HAL? HAL? HAL? HAL? Welcome to another episode of phantom power. I’m Mack Hagood. I knew that was goofy. But I just couldn’t help myself. Today we are talking about a movie I adore and a topic I find fascinating. We’re going to learn how computers learned to speak with my guest, recent Princeton PhD, Benjamin Lindquist. At Princeton, Ben studied with none other than the great Emily Thompson, author of the classic book, the Soundscape of Modernity. Ben is currently a postdoc at Northwestern Universit... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join Our Patreon! Send us a voice message! Rate this podcast! Today’s episode provides a thorough walkthrough of the publishing industry for aspiring nonfiction writers. Our guest is Jane Von Mehren, Senior Partner at Aevitas Creative Management and a former Senior Vice President at Random House. Jane explains the structure of the publishing industry, how to take your area of expertise and start thinking about a public-facing book, what agents are for, what agents look for in authors, what you should look for in an agent, how to find an agent, how to write a query letter to an agent and how to craft a book proposal that your agent can shop to publishers. Our patrons will also hear a bonus segment that discusses how an agent shops your proposal to publishers and what happens after that. We also talk money—what kind of advances can first time authors expect? And we provide a number of concrete tips on how to write for a general audience. All of that plus our What’s Good segment where Jane shares something good to read, do and listen to. To get the full interview, just go to Patreon.com/phantompower . Transcript [Robotic music] This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a podcast that usually focuses on sound. Today is a bit of an exception. We’re doing an episode that many of you reached out and asked for. My guest today is Jane Von Mehren. Jane is a senior partner at Avitus Creative Management. She is a former senior vice president at Random House. She’s been an editor and publishing executive at Houghton Mifflin and Penguin. And then there’s the least of her accomplishments: she’s also my new agent! Today, we’re going to do a thorough walkthrough of the publishing industry for aspiring nonfiction writers. But before we get to that, a couple of quick notes: Wow. I just feel like we’ve been cruising through this season with this twice-a-month schedule. It’s already March and it’s been a little while since I mentioned what’s coming up in two weeks. We will have recent Princeton PhD in history, Benjamin Lindquist. Ben’s going to be talking about the history of talking computers. Next up is Marie Thompson of the Open University, who just co-edited a new special issue of the journal Senses and Society on tinnitus and the aesthetics of tinnitus, so that should be an interesting conversation. I had some folks ask for more tinnitus material, so I’m looking forward to that one. And soon we’ll be chopping it up with Neil Verma of Northwestern. We’re going to talk about his brand new book on narrative podcasting. I also want to remind you that we have a new feature where you can leave a comment, ask a question, or just say whatever you feel. Just go to speakpipe.com/phantom power, press the button, and start talking. I’d love to hear from you and maybe play your comments or questions on the show. So that’s speakpipe.com/phantom power. Okay. Onto today’s show. At the start of this season, I did an episode called “Going Public.” And in that episode, I talked about my interest in pivoting to more public writing and public scholarship. And I mentioned finding an agent and learning to navigate the space of non-academic publishing. And I heard from a number of you who said you’d like a deeper dive into that space. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join Our Patreon! Send us a voice message! Rate this podcast! Ever wonder who’s to blame for the noise and distraction of the open office? Our guest has answers. Joseph L. Clarke is a historian of art and architecture and an associate professor at the University of Toronto. His 2021 book Echo’s Chambers: Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space won a 2022 CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Title. It’s a fascinating history of how architects have conceived of and manipulated the relationship between sound and space. His most recent publication is “Too Much Information: Noise and Communication in an Open Office.” In this episode we’ll talk about media theorist Marshall McLuhan and his architecturally inspired theory of acoustic space, which went on to have its own influence in the field of architecture. We’ll also dive deep into the history of the open plan office, the theories of acoustic communication that inspired it, the sonic disaster it became, and the new media technologies that were invented in response. If you’ve ever been driven to distraction by noise in a cubicle farm or open office and wondered how such a space came to be, this episode’s got answers! For our Patrons, we have another half hour of our interview, in which we cover the full history of architectural acoustics going back to the ancients and all the way up to the computer models of today. It’s really fascinating. You’ll also hear Joseph’s “What’s Good” segment, which is one of the best ever—some really unexpected selections for something good to read, listen to, and do. To join, go to Patreon.com/phantompower. Transcript Mack Hagood: All right, Joseph. Welcome to the show. Joseph L. Clarke: Thanks Mack. Mack Hagood: So you were just just telling me before that you are in Paris right now, in like some kind of 17th century building. Is that correct? Joseph L. Clarke: Oh yes. The building where I’m staying, it’s in the center of Paris. You know, all the buildings around me are kind of from the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries. So it’s a somewhat primitive space, but a very charming one. Mack Hagood: That sounds amazing. You really know how to do a research leave. What are you doing in Paris? Joseph L. Clarke: You know, I’m following up on some of the research that I did for my book. My book came out a few years ago, but I’m still trying to trace down some, some of the loose threads. I’m also just really interested in the conversations and the discourse around sound and space in France in relation to the conversations that we have in North America. I teach at the University of Toronto. This was, of course, the home of Marshall McLuhan, back in the fifties and sixties. Who came up with the idea of kind of popularizing the idea of acoustic space. Canada was also the home of people like R. Murray Schafer who you did a program on the podcast. So there’s a lot of interesting discussions in Canada around sound and the spatial environment. But in France, there’s a very long standing tradition of experimental music, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a masterclass in audiobook narration and acting with acclaimed actor, casting director, audiobook narrator and audiobook director, Robin Miles. Miles has narrated over 500 audiobooks, collecting numerous industry awards and, in 2017, was added to the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame. She’s the most recognizable voice in literary Afrofuturism, having interpreted books by Octavia E. Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, N.K. Jemisin, and Nnedi Okorafor. Miles holds a BA and an MFA from Yale. She has taught young actors and narrators at conservatories across the country and she has an amazing talent for doing accents—something we really dig deep into on this podcast. In this conversation we talk about technique, the audiobook industry, and the politics of vocal representation. How do we avoid the misrepresentation of marginalized people on the one hand and vocal typecasting on the other? For our Patrons we have almost an hour of additional content, including our What’s Good segment where Robin unsurprisingly makes some really great book recommendations! If you want hear all the bonus content, just go to patreon.com/phantompower. Membership starts at just three dollars a month and helps pay the expenses of producing the show. Transcript [Robotic music] This is phantom power. [Brass band playing] Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of phantom power. I’m Mack Hagood. Today we’re bringing you a masterclass in audiobook narration and acting with acclaimed audiobook narrator, Robin Miles. But first, if you’re wondering about the brass band music in the background, I just got back from Carnival in my hometown, New Orleans, Louisiana. And man, my heart is full, but my body is a bit depleted. As I said the other day on Facebook, the Fatter the Tuesday, the Ashier the Wednesday. I got into New Orleans on Friday, ate some good food with the family. Saturday, it was all parades Uptown. My wife Bridget was marching in a parade. My boys Abe and Theo were taking it all in with me, catching all the throws. Sunday was Abe’s 17th birthday. We celebrated with family and friends. And then the next day was Lundi Gras and we did a second line down Bourbon Street through the French Quarter with my wife’s marching crew, the Dames de Perlage. The Dames learned beadwork from the famed Mardi Gras Indians, and they work on these amazing beaded costumes all year long. In fact, Bridget listens to a lot of audio books–especially those narrated by Robin Miles–while she works on her beadwork every night. And so it was amazing to just see the fellowship of these women out in the street. Dancing to the sounds of the Big Fun brass band that y’all just heard just now. What a beautiful day. And then and then on Fat Tuesday I hung out in the Marigny area. There were a lot of great DJs with small mobile sound systems on different corners. And we were just dancing in the streets all day. And then it was Ash Wednesday. The next day, after all the day-long drinking and fried food and King cake, I ate vegan all day. How’s that for repentance? And I went and bought some Louisiana music and history books at Blue Cypress Books uptown. And I even went to church. Although I didn’t get any ashes because I haven’t been to confession in about 40 years. Like I said, my body’s depleted, but man, my soul is full. It was just so beautiful. So real. The only time I touched my phone was to, you know, take a picture or meet up with somebody. And man, do it. If you haven’t been there, go. Okay, let’s talk about today’s guest. I am so excited. Robin Miles is an American actor, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest is Carolyn Birdsall, Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. If you’re a scholar of sound or radio, you likely know her work, particularly her monograph Nazi Soundscapes (AUP, 2012) which was the recipient of the ASCA Book Award in 2013. Her new book, Radiophilia (Bloomsbury, 2023), examines the love of radio through history. It will be a great value to anyone–from novice to expert–who wants to understand radio studies and think about where it should go in the future. In this wide-ranging interview, we discuss Carolyn’s career and both of her books. We also get into the present state of radio and media studies, as well as the kind of skeptical orientation to media that tends to set sound studies scholars apart from many of their peers. And for our Patrons we’ll have Carolyn’s What’s Good segment, with something good to read, listen to, and do. You can join us at patreon.com/phantompower. Today’s show was edited by Matt Parker. Transcript and web content by Katelyn Phan. Transcript [Robotic voice] This is Phantom Power Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, where we talk to incredibly smart and creative, talented people about sound. I’m Mack Haggood. And if I sound a little Barry White-ish, it’s because I have COVID and I’m not feeling great. But I already had an interview in the can, and I just wanted to get this out to you on schedule if possible, I think that’s going to happen. And today’s guest is Carolyn Birdsall. If you’re a scholar of sound or radio, I imagine you already know her work. She’s one of those people who represent the benefit that I get personally out of doing this show, which is I get to finally meet people whose work I’ve been engaging with for a long time. Carolyn’s definitely one of those people. There’s so much I could have talked to her about including her research on television sound or her methodological work on sensory history or doing oral history. Some of her theoretical work on epistemology and the humanities. But in this interview, I chose to focus on her two books first. Her award winning 2012 book, Nazi Soundscapes. If there’s any canon at all in historical sound studies, Nazi Soundscapes certainly is in that canon. So we talked about that book for a while. And then we also talk about her new book, which is radiophilia. Radiophilia is a term that she coined as she examines the love of radio. And I think of Radiophilia as an established scholar book. Quite often a scholar will make their name researching something very specific, say soundscapes in the Nazi era, for example. And they make their contributions there and then they build out a career and then later in their career after teaching for a decade or more and reading tons of other people’s work and really getting a strong sense of the lay of the land in their field of expertise. They put out something more general, something that’s a little more reflexive in terms of thinking about the field as a whole. Where the field has been, where it should go. And that’s the kind of book that a senior scholar tends to write in part because only a senior scholar could write that kind of book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we share a podcast episode on the visual epistemology of astronomy by our friends at The World According to Sound. What kind of knowledge do we really gain when we look at images from space? Longtime listeners to this show will remember The World According to Sound. As we referred to them two years ago, WATS is a team of two rogue audionauts who rebelled against the NPR mothership: Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett. Tired of sound playing second fiddle to narrative on NPR, they launched a micro podcast that held one unique sound under the microscope for 90 seconds each episode. Later, WATS became much more ambitious, producing live sonic odysseys in 8-channel surround sound and live online sound journeys during the pandemic. Since then, Harnett and Hoff have embarked on another project. For the past couple of years, they have been partnering with different universities to translate humanities research into compelling sound-designed narrative podcasts. The first season of Ways of Knowing was produced in partnership with the University of Washington and it focused on different analytical methods and disciplines in the humanities, from close reading, deconstruction, and translational analysis, to black studies, material culture, and disability studies. The second season just wrapped up. It’s called Cosmic Visions and it’s produced in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University and that’s what we’ll hear an episode from today. Just this week, they dropped the last episode of season two and now the entire series is available on The World According to Sound website. We wanted to draw your attention to this series because turning humanities research and sound art into a sonic narrative experience was the original mission of Phantom Power. We know that many of you are interested in this area of humanities podcasting as well, so if you’re not already a fan of Chris and Sam’s work, check it out. We also wanted to share this particular episode because it also provides one answer to a tricky question: How do you do a sonic explication of something that is entirely visual? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe to Phantom Power Support the podcast on Patreon Rate and review on Apple or Spotify Today Mack talks about one of his oldest companions, the tinnitus that lives rent-free in his head. Tinnitus can be annoying, for sure–and for some people it’s much worse than annoying–but it also has a lot to say of interest, if we’re willing to listen: “Tinnitus has been my guide in sound studies, my Virgil, leading me through a shadow world of sound. It’s taught me how high the stakes can be when it comes to the perception and control of sound and it’s given me new ways to think about how and why we use media devices.” Today we’ll learn the basics of tinnitus and hear some tinnitus stories–everyone with tinnitus has one and these stories can teach us a lot about sound and the self. Maybe tinnitus has earned that rent-free headspace, after all. Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood. Music is by Joel Styzens. The composition “A Sharp” appears on his album Relax Your Ears. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe to Phantom Power Support the podcast on Patreon Rate and review on Apple or Spotify Warren Zanes is a “rockstar biographer” in more ways than one: he has experienced life as a rockstar, a biographer, and a biographer of rockstars. When Mack first met Warren in New Orleans sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, Zanes was then emerging from the wreckage of meteoric success. He’d been the teenage guitarist in critically acclaimed band The Del Fuegos, who briefly broke into the national popular consciousness—and then just plain broke up. But in the years since, Zanes remade himself into one of our most erudite and entertaining public scholars of popular music. Among other things, he’s been Vice President of Education and Public Programs at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a consulting producer on the Oscar-winning film Twenty Feet from Stardom, a producer on the Grammy-nominated PBS/Soundbreaking series, and he conducted interviews for Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison documentary. All while keeping up a solo recording career with collaborators such as the Dust Brothers. Warren’s books include the first volume in the celebrated 33 1/3 Series, Dusty in Memphis; Petty: The Biography and Revolutions in Sound: Warner Bros. Records. His latest book is called Deliver Me from Nowhere. On its face, it’s a book about the making of Bruce Springsteen’s classic lo-fi album Nebraska. But it’s also about sound technology, musicianship teetering in a moment between the analog and digital eras, what it means to be in a band, and the relationship between the four-track cassette recorder and social alienation in Reagan era. In this interview, Warren talks about his journey, the recent book, his craft as a writer, and—as part of our mini-theme this season on audiobooks—the process of narrating his own audiobooks and why he does so. And for our Patrons we’ll have Warren’s What’s Good segment, with something good to read, listen to, and do. You can join us at patreon.com/phantompower. Today’s show was edited by Nisso Sacha and Mack Hagood. Transcript and web content by Katelyn Phan. Transcript [Robotic music] This is Phantom Power Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, where I have conversations with brilliant people on the topic of sound. I’m Mack Hagood. I’m a professor and author who teaches and writes about sound.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe to Phantom Power Join our Patreon and get perks + merch Rate us easily on your platform of choice Elena Razlogova is an Associate Professor of History at Concordia University. She is the author of The Listener’s Voice: Early Radio and the American Public (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) and co-editor of “Radical Histories in Digital Culture” issue of the Radical History Review (2013). She has published articles in American Quarterly, Radical History Review, Russian Review, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Radio Journal, Cultural Studies, Social Media Society, and more. Elena’s someone I’m always excited to talk to when I see her at conferences and I thought it would be fun talk to her on this podcast. In this episode we discuss some of her research interests including U.S. radio history, audience research, music recommendation and recognition algorithms, and her current book project, which centers on freeform radio station WFMU and the rise of online music. Toward the end of the episode we talk about Elena’s research strategies as a historian working in the digital age. And for our Patrons we’ll have Elena’s What’s Good segment, featuring something good to read, listen to, and do. You can join at patreon.com/phantompower. Today’s show was edited by Nisso Sacha and Mack Hagood. Transcript by Katelyn Phan. Music by Mack Hagood. Transcript [Robotic Music] This is Phantom Power Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power. I’m Mack Hagood. Today’s guest is radio and media historian Elena Razlikova. We’re going to talk about her current research on the legendary freeform radio station, WFMU, among other things. But before we get into that, I just want to do a little bit of a call back to our first episode of this season–my “rant.” I think I might’ve mentioned at the time that I was a little sheepish about doing that episode. You know, sometimes I’ll do an episode on my own Research, but I generally keep this podcast focused on sharing and celebrating the work of other people. So, I was already a little bit out of my comfort zone, wondering if I was being too self indulgent, in talking about myself and the challenges that we’ve been having in Ohio and at my university and the ways that I’m responding to those challenges by reshaping my own career. And then when I was done recording it, I decided I was really not comfortable with it. I was just like, “I don’t want to put this out”. So I was going to pull it, but. I didn’t have another episode ready to go, and I was feeling really guilty about starting the season so late in the year, so I said, okay, whatever, just get over it. And I dropped the episode into the feed. Well, lo and behold, I guess that was the right move because I got more emails about this episode than any I’ve ever produced over the past five years, including a number of episodes that I literally worked on for months. So, yeah I guess you never know. You know, I don’t do audience research and I really probabl... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help grow the show: Subscribe to Phantom Power Support the podcast on Patreon Rate and review on Apple or Spotify Today we present the first episode of a miniseries on audiobooks by getting into the history and theory of the medium. Audiobooks are having a moment—and it only took them over a century to get here. Dr. Matthew Rubery, a Harvard PhD and Professor of Modern Literature at Queen Mary University of London, pioneered the study of the audiobook, its history, and its affordances. Among his other works, Dr. Rubery is the author of The Untold Story of the Talking Book (2016, Harvard University Press). He’s also the editor of Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies (2011, Routledge). Matt’s latest book is titled Reader’s Block: A History of Reading Differences (2022, Stanford University Press). In this fascinating conversation, we discuss the long history of recorded literature; the weird shame around audiobook reading and its cultural roots; the interplay between disability, neurodivergence, and alternate forms of reading; and what an audiobook criticism might look like. And for our patrons, we’ll have our What’s Good segment at the end of the show, where Matt will tell us something good to read, something good to listen to. Something good to do. You can become a patron of the show at patreon.com/phantompower. Today’s show was edited by Mack Hagood. Transcription by Katelyn Phan. Music by Graeme Gibson. Transcript [Robotic music] This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power. I’m Mack Hagood. Today we do the first in what will be a short series on the audiobook. I’m a huge audiobook listener. I really got into audiobooks maybe 10 years ago. When I started working at Miami University, I had done that rough slog through my master’s and my PhD, and I realized that it had been maybe six or seven years since I’d had any time to do any real fiction reading, and I felt that this aspect of myself was just kind of starting to atrophy, starting to feel sort of two dimensional, and yet I sort of had to still keep the pedal to the metal. Publishing things to get tenure, had to write that first book. And so, this wasn’t really the time to sort of sit back and start reading novels again, especially when my wife and I had two young kids. So, audiobooks to the rescue. My wife Bridget and I share an Audible account and we each also have a Libby account that allows us to download books through our public library. And we just listen to a ton of stuff, mostly fiction. Once I got tenure and I was able to resume something resembling a normal life, I even started reading more books on paper again. And we have a fantastic bookstore in my neighborhood. I’m a huge fan of, shout out to Greg at Downbound Books. Just one of the best curated small bookstores I’ve ever seen. But still, I listen to audiobooks. As much, if not more, than I ever have. So, I wanted to do some Phantom Power episodes on the audiobook. What’s its history? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help grow the show: Subscribe to Phantom Power Support the podcast on Patreon Rate and review on Apple or Spotify In this brief opener for Season Six of Phantom Power, Mack discusses his new project of writing a trade press book, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. What are the implications for the podcast? Why pivot away from traditional scholarship and toward public-facing work? In this “rant” you’ll hear about the challenges and opportunities facing humanities scholars in the current era of funding cuts, legislative challenges, and new platforms for public outreach. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help grow the show: Subscribe to Phantom Power Join our Patreon and get perks + merch Rate us easily on your platform of choice We spend our 50th episode (the last of this season) with communication theorist Amit Pinchevski. Amit’s recent book Echo (MIT Press) explores its topic through mythology, etymology, history, technology, and philosophy. The book challenges the notion that echo is mere repetition. Instead, Pinchevski argues, echo is a generative medium that creatively expresses our relations to others and the world around us. Just as a baby first learns to speak by repeating the sounds of others, a philosophy of echoes reminds us that our own agency and creativity reside in repetitions that respond to the past. For our Patreon members we the full two-hour conversation with Amit’s “What’s Good” segment. Join at patreon.com/phantompower. Amit Pinchevski is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests are in theory and philosophy of communication and media, focusing specifically on the ethical aspects of the limits of communication; media witnessing, memory and trauma; and pathologies of communication and their construction. He is the author of By Way of Interruption: Levinas and the Ethics of Communication (Duquesne UP, 2005), Transmitted Wounds: Media and the Mediation of Trauma (Oxford UP, 2019), and Echo (MIT Press, 2022). He is co-editor of Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication (with P. Frosh; Palgrave, 2009) and Ethics of Media (with N. Couldry and M. Madianou; Palgrave, 2013). His work has appeared in academic journals such as Critical Inquiry, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Cultural Critique, Cultural Studies, Public Culture, New Media & Society, and Theory, Culture & Society. Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood. Original music by Graeme Gibson. Transcript [5:58; Amit Pinchevski Interview] Ethereal Voice: This is Phantom Power. [Robotic Music] Amit Pinchevski: We start out as relational beings. You know, echoing and being echoed. The most important relation that we have, that models us, later on molds our relationships with others. Echo is necessarily both. Both repetition and response. Mack Hagood: Hey, and welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, where artists and scholars talk about sound. I’m Mack Hagood and I want to start off by saying this is episode 50! 5-0. It’s kind of hard for me to believe. We started this show, my friend Cris Cheek and I, back on March 12, 2018. And of course we had actually started working on it back in 2017, and we put out our first episodes in the spring of 2018. That is five years ago! Chris and I parted ways after a couple of seasons. I’ve kind of been flying solo ever since then, although not really because I’ve had the amaz... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help grow the show: Subscribe to Phantom Power Join our Patreon and get perks + merch Rate us easily on your platform of choice Today we explore the mythology around John Cage’s visit to the anechoic chamber. The chamber was designed to completely eliminate echoes. Ironically, the tale of Cage’s experience in that space has echoed through history, affecting our understanding of silence, sound, and the self. But what do we really know about what happened there? And what could we ever know about such an event? In this audio essay, based on a piece that first appeared in the Australian Humanities Review, Mack Hagood explores the relationship between sound, self, and meaning-making. To use a term Cage loved, the truth is indeterminate. For our Patreon members we have bonus content: Mack’s “What’s Good” segment. Join at patreon.com/phantompower. Writing and media content featured in this episode: * Mack’s essay “Cage’s Echoes of the Anechoic,” in AHR Issue 70 (2022). * Nam June Paik’s 1973 video Global Groove * John Cage’s 1959 album with David Tudor, Indeterminacy * John Cage’s book Silence (Wesleyan, 1961). * The video Can Silence Actually Drive you Crazy by Veritasium * Terry Gross’s 2014 Fresh Air interview with Trevor Cox * The album Naxi Live by Jang San and the Dayan Naxi orchestra * Shani Diluka’s performance of “Glassworks: Opening” by Philip Glass * Amit Pinchevsky’s book Echo (MIT, 2022) * Helen Rees’ book Echoes of History: Naxi Music in Modern China (Oxford, 2011) Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood. Original music and sound design by Mack Hagood. Special thanks to Monique Rooney and Australian Humanities Review. Transcript [5:19]: Cages Echoes Of The Anechoic by Mack Hagood Ethereal Voice: This is Phantom Power. [Uberduck.ai Voice Generator] Mack: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a show about sound in the arts and humanities. I’m Mack Hagood. And what you just heard are the words of John Cage, the legendary composer, performer, and theorist of music and sound and silence. But what you did not hear was John Cage’s voice. Instead, I typed his words into a machine learning text to speech generator called UberDuck.ai. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help grow the show: Subscribe to Phantom Power Join our Patreon and get perks + merch Rate us easily on your platform of choice Today we hear two scholars reading their recent work on artificial intelligence. Steph Ceraso studies the technology of “voice donation,” which provides AI-created custom voices for people with vocal disabilities. Hussein Boon contemplates the future of AI in music via some very short and thought-provoking fiction tales. And we start off the show with Mack reflecting on how hard the post-shutdown adjustment has been for many of us and how that might be feeding into the current AI hype. For our Patreon members we have “What’s Good” recommendations from Steph and Hussein on what to read, listen to, and do. Join at Patreon.com/phantompower. About our guests: Steph Ceraso is Associate Professor of Digital Writing & Rhetoric in the English Department at the University of Virginia. She’s one of Mack’s go-to folks when trying to figure out how to use audio production in the classroom as a form of student composition. Steph’s research and teaching interests include multimodal composition, sound studies, pedagogy, digital rhetoric, disability studies, sensory rhetorics, music, and pop culture. Hussein Boon is Principal Lecturer at the University of Westminster. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, session musician, composer, modular synth researcher, and AI researcher. He also has a vibrant YouTube presence with tutorials on things like Ableton Live production. Pieces featured in this episode: “Voice as Ecology: Voice Donation, Materiality, Identity” by Steph Ceraso in Sounding Out (2022). “In the Future” by Hussein Boon in Riffs (2022). Mack also mentioned in his rant: “Embodied meaning in a neural theory of language” by Jerome Feldman and Srinivas Narayanan (2003). “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor” by George Lakoff (1992). Today’s show was produced and edited by Ravi Krishnaswami. Transcript [7:22]: Steph Ceraso, Voice As Ecology: Voice Donation, Materiality, Identity [24:10] Hussein Boon, Public Access File Trading [26:26] Hussein Boon, Better Than Mininum Wage: Working For The Man [30:10] Hussein Boon, Tinkering At The Edges Ethereal Voice: This is Phantom Power. [Ethereal Music] Steph Ceraso: We must treat voice holistically. Voices are more than people, more than technologies, more than contexts, more than sounds. Understanding voice means acknowledging the interconnectedness of these things and how that interconnectedness enables or precludes vocal possibilities. [Ethereal Music Fades] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe to Phantom Power Join our Patreon and get perks + merch Rate us easily on your platform of choice Brian Harnetty’s recent record, Words and Silences, takes voice recordings made by the famed American Trappist monk Thomas Merton and sets them within Harnetty’s musical compositions. The meditative and revealing result has been lauded by critics in The Wire, MOJO, and Aquarium Drunkard. In this episode, we share a Phantom Power exclusive: a brand new narrative piece that Brian created about the making of his record. “Words and Silences: The Thomas Merton Hermitage Tapes” is much more than a behind-the-scenes look at Brian’s process. Harnetty’s audio diary is its own moving meditation on Merton, solitude, sound, media, and the self. This is the second piece that Brian has shared with Phantom Power–you may remember his Forest Listening Rooms episode. Like that episode, this is something special. We highly recommend taking a walk in the woods or finding a quiet space to listen to this beautiful meditation. And after we listen, Mack talks to Brian about what we’ve heard. (And, of course, we’ll have a longer version of the interview and our What’s Good segment for our Patrons.) Who was Thomas Merton? Thomas Merton was an author, mystic, poet, and comparative religion scholar who lived from 1915 to 1968. It’s hard to imagine a spiritual superstar quite like Merton appearing in America today. His first book, 1948’s “The Seven Storey Mountain,” became a best-seller and led to a flood of young men applying to join Catholic monasteries. Merton had a major influence on spaces such as the progressive Catholic church Mack grew up going to. He was outward facing, committed to leftist causes, and fascinated by other religions, but at the same time, he retreated from his fame into his hermitage in KY. In The New Yorker, Alan Jacobs called him “perhaps the proper patron saint of our information-saturated age, of we who live and move and have our being in social media, and then, desperate for peace and rest, withdraw into privacy and silence, only to return.” Brian Harnetty Brian Harnetty is an interdisciplinary sound artist who uses listening to foster social change. He is known for his recording projects with archives, socially engaged sound works, sound and video installations, live performances, and writings. His interdisciplinary approach has been compared to “working like a novelist…breathing new life into old chunks of sound by radically recontextualizing them” (Clive Bell, The Wire). Brian is currently a Faculty Fellow at Ohio State University’s Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme (2022-23), Harnetty is a two-time recipient of the MAP Fund Grant (2021, 2020), and received the A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art in Contemplative Practices (2018) and the Creative Capital Performing Arts Award (2016). He has also twice received Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here is a preview of Mack Hagood’s full one hour and forty minute interview with soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp, which includes many details and stories we couldn’t fit into the three public episodes we featured her in. If you’re a Patron, this full episode has already dropped into your feed. If you’d like to become a Patron, visit Patreon.com/phantompower to see the options, which start at only $3/month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe to Phantom Power Join our Patreon and get perks + merch Rate us easily on your platform of choice Just in time for Black History Month, we share an episode we’ve been excitedly working on for a number of months now. Ethnomusicologist Maya Cunningham brings us “The Sound World of Harriet Tubman.” Maya Cunningham is an activist and jazz singer currently completing a Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in Afro-American studies with a concentration in ethnomusicology. Maya Cunningham We first came across Maya’s work last year as part of The Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project, an online initiative from Ms. magazine honoring the 200th anniversary of Harriet Tubman’s birth in 1822. It’s a remarkable package that adds many dimensions of understanding of the underground railroad conductor and feminist icon: Her experience of disability due to a blow to the head by a white overseer; her creation of a home for the aged; her love of the natural world; and much more. And to us, the richest of these essays was Maya’s the “Sound World of Harriet Tubman,” which used field recordings, historical research, and ethnomusicological research to explore the roles of sound and music, and voice in Tubman’s life and leadership. The piece included a Spotify playlist so you could listen as you read. Today, we’re thrilled to bring you what we hope will be an even more immersive experience: Maya Cunningham reading her essay, and thanks to the editing and mixing skills of Phantom Power producer Ravi Krishnaswami, her field recordings and playlist selections are mixed into the story. And just a quick note, you’re going to hear about the American Christian revival known as the Second Great Awakening, which stirred both Black and white people from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s. You’ll also hear about the Invisible Church, where enslaved African Americans were able to worship secretly and autonomously and through the singing of folk spirituals, which differed greatly from white religious music at the time, but would go on to influence not only gospel music but pretty much every form of popular music we know today. If you want to learn more about this history, a great place to start is a book edited by two professors Mack studied with at Indiana University, Drs. Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby. It’s called African American Music: An Introduction. And today, we share our Patrons-only segment, “What’s Good,” in our main feed. Maya will recommend something good to read, listen to, and do. Today’s musical selections and soundscapes are by Maya Cunningham. The show was mixed and edited by Ravi Krishnaswami. The Harriet Tubman image was created by Maddie Haynes. The sounds and music from today’s show (many of which which can be heard on Maya’s Spotify playlist): Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help grow the show: Subscribe to Phantom Power Join our Patreon and get perks + merch Rate us easily on your platform of choice Today we speak to Hildegard Westerkamp, the pioneering composer, radio artist and sound ecologist. The centerpiece of all of her work is a close attention to the sonic environment and its relation to culture. We will listen to excerpts of six soundscape compositions made between 1975 and 2005, all of which reward the close listener–conceptually and aesthetically–with a deeper relationship to the sonic environment. Mack Hagood interviewed Westerkamp shortly after the death of R. Murray Schafer in late 2021. Westerkamp worked closely with Schafer in the early 1970s and she graciously agreed to talk about him despite the grief being fresh. They also discussed her own amazing career and that’s the part of the tape we are sharing in this episode. They talk about her formative years as a 20-something working with Schafer and his World Soundscape Project and then we jump into a number of her compositions, ending with the piece “Breaking News” from 2012. Incredibly, she said Mack was the first person to ever ask her about that piece, even though it is one of her favorites. And sure enough, not long after this interview she released a retrospective album on Earsay Music called Breaking News, which features that piece and a number of others created between 1988 and 2012. For our Patreon members we have the full, unedited interview for those who want to hear all her thoughts on R. Murray Schafer and her career. Join at Patreon.com/phantompower. And a quick correction: Hildegard wanted me to clarify that the sentence “When there is no sound, hearing is most alert,” which she uses in “Whisper Study,” is a quote from the Indian mystic Kirphal Singh in his book Naam (or Word). Pieces featured in this episode: “Gently Penetrating beneath the Sounding Surfaces of Another Place” (1997) “Whisper Study” (1975) “Fantasie for Horns” (1978) “A Walk through the City” (1981) “Für Dich – For You” (2005) “Breaking News” (2002) Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood. Transcript 4:46 Snippet from Part 1 of R. Murray Schafer Episode 8:42 Interview with Hildegard Westerkamp 36:00 Breaking News by Hildegard Westerkamp Ethereal Voice: This is Phantom Power. [Bells Ringing] Hildegard Westerkamp: Every sound says something together with the environment in which it occurs [Man Screaming] And we, as listeners, do our interpreting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe to Phantom Power Join our Patreon and get this full episode + merch Rate us easily on your platform of choice Today we feature an excerpt from our nearly 2-hour bonus episode for Patrons. In the full interview from last season’s episode “Dork-o-Phonics,” Jonathan Sterne discusses topics such as the early days of sound studies, how his upbringing and a music school rejection led him to sound, his illness and vocal impairment, and a lot of fascinating ideas about voice, media, disability, and more. To hear the full episode, join our Patreon! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe to Phantom Power Join our Patreon and get perks + merch Rate us easily on your platform of choice Today we talk to Dallas Taylor, host of the most popular sound podcast on the planet, Twenty Thousand Hertz. I like to think our show sounds pretty good, but Twenty Thousand Hertz is next-level audio production, some of the very best in the podcasting business. And Dallas prides himself on making a podcast for absolutely everyone. As he told me, he tries to make a show that’s just as mainstream and approachable as a true crime show. We start off with a chat about Dallas’s background in music, how he entered the world of sound design, what inspired him to start the podcast, and how he was discovered by Roman Mars of the legendary design podcast 99% Invisible. Then we jump into the nuts and bolts of how he and his team make Twenty Thousand Hertz. Dallas was kind enough to share the stems for my favorite episode, titled “Space,” so we will do a Song Exploder-like anatomy of that episode before listening to the full episode in the second half of the show. Today’s show was edited by Craig Eley with additional help from Ravi Krishnaswami. Our Production Coordinator and transcriber is Jason Meggyesy. Transcript [4:45 Start of Dallas Taylor Interview] [28:10 Start of Space by Twenty Thousand Hertz] Ethereal Voice: This is Phantom Power. [Birds Chirping] Dallas Taylor: Now we’re at home here on Earth. We’re not gonna stay here for long, but it’s worth mentioning the amazing diversity of sound on our planet. The Sandy deserts. Lush forests. [Birds Chirping] The sound of the ocean. [Waves Crashing] both on the surface and below. [Waves Crashing] Mack Hagood: Hey, and welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, where scholars and creators talk about sound. I’m Mack Hagood, and I think a lot of you recognize the voice that I just played. That’s Dallas Taylor, host of the most popular sound podcast on the planet Twenty Thousand Hertz. You know, I’ve had the good fortune to not only host this podcast for five years, but to make appearances on a number of other people’s podcasts. Some very niche. Some with huge audiences, but I think the biggest thrill that I’ve gotten as a podcast guest is when I heard my own voice bathed in the gorgeous production values of Dallas’s show. Dallas: In the story, Jason and the Argonauts are sailing to the edge of the world. Mack: Jason and the Argonauts encountered the sirens who were these bird-like women with these amazing voices, hypnotizing voices that would lure people into danger and death. [Sirens Singing] And so when they encountered the sirens, Orpheus protected himself and his fellow Argonauts by singing his own counter song. [Orpheus Singing] Dallas: Orpheus created a kind of sonic shield. He drowned out the song of the Sirens, which allowed his fellow Argonauts to safely pass by Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help grow the show: Subscribe to Phantom Power Join our Patreon and get perks + merch Rate us easily on your platform of choice If you walk into David Cecchetto ‘s classroom, you might find people wearing audio devices that simulate hearing with a thousand-foot wide head. Or gadgets that swap their ears so that the left ear hears what the right should and vice versa. David is a media theorist who draws on his background as an artist/musician, to create what he calls “engagements,” strange sonic experiments that help him—and his students—understand the nature of our computer-driven lives. In this episode, we feature an extended chat with David about his recent book, Listening in the Afterlife of Data (Duke University Press). It’s a book about the eternal impossibility of communication and the texture of that impossibility in our current computer-mediated age. David says we live in the afterlife of data, by which he means we know that our data-driven representations of the world don’t really capture the reality of our inner or outer lives, and we know that algorithms perpetuate injustices of all sorts—and yet, we still live our lives as if we do believe in the data. And this is where his engagements come in, the sonic experiments that confront the distortions and fallacies and textures of a data-driven life. David Cecchetto is Professor of Critical Digital Theory in the Department of Humanities at York University in Toronto, Director of the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought, he’s President of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. He wrote the book Humanesis: Sound and Technological Posthumanism (2013) and he’s co-authored and edited several others. For patrons, there’s an extended version of our interview, complete with some outstanding recommendations for reading, listening, and doing. You can get access to that at patreon.com/phantompower. Transcript Ethereal Voice: This is Phantom Power. [Robotic Music] David Cecchetto: The world is not coherent with itself. There’s no single world. Any theorizing needs, I think, to start by acknowledging that [Robotic Music] Mack: And welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, where scholars and artists and musicians tell stories about sound. I’m Mack Hagood and my guest today is David Cecchetto, someone who qualifies as a scholar and an artist and a musician, but he draws on his musical and artistic skills in a very unusual way, creating what he calls engagements, these strange sonic experiments that help him and his students understand the nature of our computer driven lives. David Ceccheto is Professor of Digital Critical Theory in the Department of Humanities at York University in Toronto. He’s also the director of the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought there. He’s President of the Society for Literature Science and the Arts or S.A.L.S.A. He wrote the book, Humanesis: Sound and Technological Posthumanism back in 2013, and he’s co-authored and edited several other books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help grow the show: Subscribe to Phantom Power Join our Patreon and get perks + merch Rate us easily on your platform of choice The Shortwave Collective describe themselves as “an international feminist group using the radio spectrum as artistic material.” I was first intrigued by their piece Receive-Transmit-Receive, an exquisite corpse of audio, in which members each contributed their own recordings of sounds from across the radio spectrum. But what really affected me was their ongoing public education project of teaching people to make their own no-power, low-budget radios called open-wave receivers. They’ve held radio-making workshops in Portugal, France, and the UK and they’ve published a how-to in Make magazine. I wanted to talk to the Shortwave Collective because they are presenting a radically different vision of what radio is and can be. Radio’s history can be thought of as an extended expression of military, political, commercial, and cultural dominance. But the Collective embraces play, experimentation, failure, community, and open listening in their feminist radio practice. So, let’s talk to the Shortwave Collective and see if we can rethink radio–what it’s for and what it can do. And in the second half of the show, we’ll hear an audio documentary in which the Shortwave Collective teaches you how to make your own open-wave receiver. Special thanks for appearing on the show to Shortwave Collective members Lisa Hall, ​Alyssa Moxley, Georgia Muenster, and Maria Papadomanolaki. The other Collective members are Sally A. Applin, Kate Donovan, Brigitte Hart, and Hannah Kemp-Welch. Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood with technical assistance from Craig Eley. Today’s music is by Graeme Gibson with additional sound design elements by Cris Cheek and Shortwave Collective. Phantom Power’s production team includes Craig Eley, Ravi Krishnaswami, and Amy Skjerseth. Our Production Coordinator and transcriber is Jason Meggyesy. Transcript [33:47 For Tools Needed to Build Open Wave Receiver] [34:47 For Start of Tutorial] Mack Hagood: Before we get started, I have three URLs for your consideration. If you’re new to the show, welcome! If you enjoy what you hear today, please subscribe at phantompod.org/subscribe. If you’re already a fan of the show, consider joining our new Patreon. You’ll be supporting our mission of creating entertaining audio scholarship for the people, and you’ll get access to our exclusive patrons-only feed, where you’ll get recommendations for reading and listening and things to do straight from our guests, and you’ll also get bonus episodes in other perks Options start at just $3 a month, and until October 31st, new patrons get a killer Phantom Power sticker. That URL is patreon.com/phantompower. And finally, please give us a five-star rating or even write a review at ratethispodcast.com/phantom. All right, let’s get to it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s show, we address a performer’s nightmare—the nightmare of not being able to hear yourself onstage. My guest is ethnomusicologist Jacob Danson Faraday, who takes us behind the scenes of the famed Cirque du Soleil to learn how even Cirque’s world-class musicians struggle with technology when they want to hear themselves. Building on his international career as a touring sound technician, ethnomusicologist Jacob Danson Faraday researches the working communities and hidden labor of live sound technicians on large-scale touring productions. He is a recent graduate of the PhD program in ethnomusicology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Today Jake takes us behind the scenes of Cirque du Soleil, sharing his dissertation research on how sound engineers and musicians negotiate the power to hear oneself. Stage monitoring, the technology that allows musicians to hear the performance as they play, is a topic we rarely hear about, but it’s absolutely essential to performers. Faraday suggests that, while new in-ear monitors are marketed as a godsend for performers, they are more of a mixed blessing, “homogenizing listening” and creating new kinds of issues and anxieties for musicians. Today’s show was edited and mixed by Jacob Danson Faraday, with additional editing by Mack Hagood. The song “Sail Away” by Colton Benjamin (2017) was obtained from the Free Multitrack Download Library on the Cambridge Music Technology website by Mike Senior, author of the excellent book Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio. Read the dissertation: Buried in the mix: touring sound technicians, sonic control, and emotional labour on Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo by Jacob Danson Faraday (2021). Join Our Patreon! Receive Bonus Material from this episode and more at Patreon.com/phantompower. Transcript [00:00:00] Ethereal Voice: This is Phantom power. [Crowd Noise] Mack Hagood: You’re waiting in the wings of a large Las Vegas hotel nightclub wearing a powder blue tuxedo. You tentatively touch the bow tie at your throat. You don’t remember taking this gig. A hand pushes you from behind and you stumble out onto the stage. A spotlight fixes you in its gaze. And the music begins. [Music Plays] Thank God. You know, this one, it’s an old bossa nova tune. You take a breath and start to sing, but you can’t hear yourself. You can feel vibrations in your chest and neck. But your voice, it’s not there, but it is there. They can hear it, the crowd, and whatever you’re doing, it must be terrible. They start to laugh. [Laughing] They boo. [Booing] But how can you sing if you can’t hear yourself? [Music Continues] Mack: Hey, and welcome to another episode and another season of Phantom Power, a podcast about sound in the arts music, and humanities, I’m Mack Hagood, and on today’s show, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get ready for Season Four of Phantom Power, where we study sound in the arts, music, and culture! On Phantom Power, we’ve got an ear to the ground—listening to the subterranean rats of New York… We’ve got an ear on the streets—with the rattling car trunks of Houston hip hop… And we’ve got an ear for culture—analyzing the politics of Yoko Ono’s voice… And in every episode, we hear from the world’s great experts on these topics—the fascinating scholars, sound artists, and musicians who tap the phantom power of sound. I’m sound professor Mack Hagood, host of Phantom Power. Our fourth season starts September 15th. We’ll meet a scholar who embedded with the Cirque D’ Soleil to find out why musicians always seem to keep one of their in-ear monitors hanging out of their ear. (Have you noticed that?) We’ll find out how Kate Bush made the glorious sounds of “Running Up That Hill” with an early digital synthesizer. We’re going back in history to hear the sound world of Harriet Tubman. We’ll also talk to cultural critic Karen Tongson from the podcast Waiting to X-hale about the power of karaoke. And host Dallas Taylor will tell us how his team makes their hit sound podcast 20,000 hertz. Follow and listen in Apple Podcasts or at phantompod.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month, we are preparing for the launch of Season Four of the podcast in September. Lots of fascinating topics on deck, as we double our output with a semi-monthly format. We are also about to officially launch a Patreon page, but you can get on board early at www.patreon.com/phantompower. This summer, sound artist and “guerrilla academic” Ben Coleman got in touch to say how much he enjoys Phantom Power. He also suggested we check out another podcast he’s into called Love is the Message. We’re glad we did! Love is the Message: Music, Dance & Counterculture is a fantastic show from Tim Lawrence and Jeremy Gilbert, both of them authors, academics, DJs and audiophile dance party organisers. I recognized Tim Lawrence’s name from his great book on Arthur Russell. Jeremy Gilbert is Professor of Cultural and Political Theory at the University of East London and a prolific author. Tim and Jeremy have been longtime collaborators and when the clubs closed and universities cut faculty hours due to covid, they started podcasting. The way I’d describe their show is, imagine the amazing college class you never got to take where you learn about the intersections of global dance music and radical politics, from the 1960s to today. They do shows on disco, Motown, reggae, tropicalia, funk, you name it with a strong cultural studies perspective. And I think the episode we’re going to hear today is a perfect example of their approach—it’s ostensibly an episode about Fela Kuti, but it’s also terrific seminar on the Black Atlantic and the political history of Nigeria. So thanks, Ben, for the recommendation. Thanks, Tim and Jem for sharing the pod with me and doing this episode swap. And thanks everyone for listening. Talk next month! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s summer and we are busy working on episodes for our fourth season. We’ve also rebuilt our website–check out the the fabulous new phantompod.org. There’s other great stuff in store for the podcast, so stay tuned! But today, I want to share one of my favorite podcasts with you: Will Robin’s Sound Expertise. For those of you into musicology or popular music studies, there’s a great chance you’re already a subscribe. That’s because Will’s show is fantastic and I personally know many music scholars who are devoted fans of this show that features conversations with established and up-and-coming music scholars. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Dr. Robin, you might remember that I quoted his New York Times obituary of R. Murray Schafer in our first episode on Schafer. He has written about music for the Times for at least a decade. He’s also an assistant professor of Musicology at the University of Maryland and the author of the book Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music. Sound Expertise will be dropping its third season in the fall. The episode you are about to hear is one that I love as a media scholar. Will Robin interviews Dr. Paula Harper about her work on viral music videos and taste, specifically that terrible Rebecca Black video “Friday” that’s probably still rattling around in some dark recess of your brain. Dr. Harper digs into the awful virality of that video and all of its cover versions, discerning what this case study can tell us about genre, gender, and how and why sound travels on the internet. It’s a great discussion and I hope you enjoy it. And by the way, since this interview happened, Paula Harper has joined the faculty of the University of Chicago as an assistant professor of music. So, who says YouTube rots your brain? Transcript Sound Expertise – Season 2, Episode 7Rebecca Black’s Friday and Viral Music with Paula Harper TRANSCRIPT prepared by Andrew Dell’Antonio Paula Harper 00:00One of the reasons that I do the work that I do, which is writing about music and sound on the internet, is in part because I am fascinated and delighted by objects that are frequently obnoxious. So a lot of the things that I’m engaging with are things that occupy this weird, liminal or ambivalent space between something that gives people delight and something that makes people want to throw their computer off of a tall building. So just like right in the middle space between those two emotions, or having those two emotions at the same time, is how I’ve engaged with a lot of stuff on the internet, including, but certainly not limited to, the Rebecca Black Friday video. [intro music] Will Robin 01:05Welcome back to Sound Expertise. I’m your host, Will Robin, and I’m a musicologist. And this is a podcast where I talk with my fellow music scholars about their research and why it matters. You probably remember Rebecca Black’s Friday, and if not, you almost certainly heard it. It was absolutely ubiquitous about a decade ago, a music video by an amateur teen musician, which went viral because it was widely trashed as one of the Worst Songs of All Time. Friday went from YouTube to Tosh.0 to parodies and covers on late night TV, racking up tens of millions of views in the process. It was 2011, it was a more innocent time, when our expectations for what kinds of internet content would go viral we... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices