Language is a uniquely human gift. We have shaped it to our individual and cultural needs, and it has shaped us in return. Professor Lera Boroditsky reveals how the sounds we make with our mouths influence what’s going on inside our brains. And podcaster Helen Zaltzmann shows us how important language can be to our identities, and what happens when those language identities are challenged.

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, and hosted by Dallas Taylor. 
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Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: https://www.20k.org/episodes/historicallyspeaking
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Historically Speaking

A lovingly crafted podcast that reveals the stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds.

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Arts

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Design

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Fashion & Beauty

Visual Arts

Music

TikTok’s sonic logo is one of the fastest growing sonic logos in history. Today, that little sound is being heard millions of times a day on apps like Instagram, Reddit and Youtube… but creating it wasn’t easy. To make it, the creative team went through thousands of iterations, executed a covert marketing strategy, and fought through a final debate about a single note. Featuring Roscoe Williamson and Aifric Lennon from MassiveMusic.

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Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: https://www.20k.org/episodes/tiktoksboombling
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TikTok’s Boom-Bling

The sound of Late Night television is a complex beast with many moving parts. In this episode, we step inside the daily hustle of Broadcast Mixer Fred Hedemark as he and his team bring the sound of Late Night with Seth Meyers to life. Along the way, Fred reveals the highs and lows of working on a high-adrenaline, live-to-tape TV show, and shares some never-heard recordings from his years on the show.

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Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: www.20k.org/episodes/latenight
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Late Night

What do you call it when you’re homesick for a place you’ve never been? Is there a word for letting books pile up in your house without reading them? How about weather that looks beautiful out the window, but that you wouldn’t want to go out in? For this episode, we worked with Babbel to bring you our second annual Untranslatable Words challenge. In it, resident linguist Grace East pits the Twenty Thousand Hertz crew against each other in a hilarious and enlightening multilingual game show.

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Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: https://www.20k.org/episodes/untranslatablewords
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Untranslatable Words

Hans Zimmer is responsible for some of the most iconic film scores of the last 35 years. So how does one person create so much amazing music? It turns out, he doesn’t do it alone. In this episode, Hans Zimmer’s incredible team pulls back the curtain to reveal their extraordinary creative process, and uncover the secrets behind the otherworldly music of Dune. Featuring Raul Vega, Taurees Habib, Suzanne Waters, Tina Guo, and Steve Mazarro.

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Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: https://www.20k.org/episodes/hans-zimmers-remote-control
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Hans Zimmer's Remote Control

All over the world, there are unique and breathtaking sounds that you can only hear in one specific place. In this episode, we travel to two of the most astounding sonic wonders in the United States. The first is a hidden sound installation in Times Square that might be the most visited art exhibit on Earth. The second is an enormous organ built right into the rock of an ancient Virginian cave. These stories originally aired on the Atlas Obscura podcast.

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Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: https://www.20k.org/episodes/auralobscura
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Historically Speaking

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