Phantom Power
Mack Hagood explores how sound works in the arts, music, and culture. Deep but accessible, each episode features the sounds and ideas of a contemporary artist, musician, or sound scholar. Detailed production makes these more than just interviews–they’re movies for your mind.
Episodes
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 … Continue reading
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A new podcast called Lowlines takes us to a New Orleans 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 for amazing dancing known as footwork. Continue reading
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Dr. Michael Heller examines sonic experiences that go “beyond 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. Continue reading
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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. Continue reading
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Learn how computers learned to speak with computer historian Benjamin Lindquist. Ben tells the the fascinating backstory to HAL 9000 and the strange the analog history of digital computing. Continue reading
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Jane Von Mehren, Senior Partner at Aevitas Creative Management and a former Senior Vice President at Random House, explains how to find a literary agent, how to write a query letter to an agent, and how to craft a book proposal that your agent can shop to publishers. Continue reading
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Ever wonder who's to blame for the noise and distraction of the open office? Architectural historian Joseph L. Clarke has answers! Theories of acoustic communication accidentally inspired the sonic disaster of the open plan. Continue reading
The post Noise and Information in the Office (Joseph L. Clarke) appeared first on Phantom Power.
Today we bring you a master class in audiobook narration and acting with acclaimed actor, casting director, audiobook narrator and audiobook director, Robin Miles. Beyond technique, we talk about the audiobook industry and the politics of vocal representation. Continue reading
The post Robin Miles: Talking Books appeared first on Phantom Power.
Sound and radio scholar Carolyn Birdsall discusses her award-winning book Nazi Soundscapes (AUP, 2012) and her new book, Radiophilia (Bloomsbury, 2023). Continue reading
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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? Continue reading
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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." Cont...
Warren Zanes talks life as a rocker and writer, his new book on Springsteen's Nebraska, how to weave theory into a great story, and why he narrates his own audiobooks. Continue reading
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Elena Razlogova discusses 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. We also talk about Elena’s research strategies as a historian working in the digital age. Continue reading
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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 in literature. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
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Amit Pinchevski challenges the notion that echo is mere repetition. Instead, echo is a generative medium. 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. Continue reading
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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? Continue reading
The post John Cage: Echoes of the Anechoic appea...
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 ...
Musician and sound artist Brian Harnetty breathes new, musical life into the analog meditations of 60s Catholic mystic Thomas Merton. Continue reading
The post Words and Silences: The Thomas Merton Hermitage Tapes appeared first on Phantom Power.
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 … Continue reading
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