Sound and radio scholar Carolyn Birdsall discusses her award-winning book Nazi Soundscapes (AUP, 2012) and her new book, Radiophilia (Bloomsbury, 2023). Continue reading →

The post Radiophilia (Carolyn Birdsall) appeared first on Phantom Power.

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 →

The post Cosmic Visions in Sound appeared first on Phantom Power.

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." Continue reading →

The post Tinnitus Stories appeared first on Phantom Power.

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 →

The post Warren Zanes: Rockstar Biographer appeared first on Phantom Power.

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 →

The post Making Radio History (Elena Razlogova) appeared first on Phantom Power.

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 →

The post The Audiobook’s Century-Long Overnight Success (Matthew Rubery) appeared first on Phantom Power.

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 →

The post Going Public appeared first on Phantom Power.

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 →

The post A Philosophy of Echoes with Amit Pinchevski appeared first on Phantom Power.

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 appeared first on Phantom Power.

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. Continue reading →

The post Sonic AI: Steph Ceraso & Hussein Boon appeared first on Phantom Power.