Today we're joined by Tom Cosm, a New Zealand-born producer, technologist, coder, and educator who's been pushing the boundaries of music and sound for over two decades. He's known for pioneering YouTube tutorials that taught a generation of producers, and for building systems that turn things like tree-disease data and biometric signals into actual music. He's currently Technical Director at Telepathic Instruments, where he built the first prototype of Orchid and now oversees its development.

We start out talking about travel and jet lag recovery, which sounds like small talk but turns into a pretty real conversation about what it actually feels like to be constantly in motion — the post-travel bounce, the crash that follows, and learning to slow down when you get home. Tom just got back from London, Berlin, and Spain, partly for a Telepathic team meetup and a pop-up where people could come play Orchid in person, and partly for Superbooth, which he describes as basically a Vegas casino lobby for modular nerds — in a forest.

From there we get into Telepathic Instruments and how he got involved — Kevin Parker reached out after seeing his work on YouTube — and what the development of Orchid has actually looked like. We talk about what the device is trying to do, how community feedback from their early adopters has shaped the features, and what's coming next. Hope you enjoy it. Please welcome Tom Cosm.

Tom Cosm Links https://www.instagram.com/tomcosm/ https://www.instagram.com/telepathic.instruments/ https://www.youtube.com/@telepathic.instruments https://www.tiktok.com/@telepathic.instruments

Mr. Bill's Links