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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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Musician and sound artist Brian Harnetty breathes new, musical life into the analog meditations of 60s Catholic mystic Thomas Merton. Continue reading →

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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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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.  Continue reading →

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Hildegard Westerkamp is a pioneering composer, radio artist and sound ecologist. Today we speak to her about her career and listen to excerpts of six soundscape compositions. Continue reading →

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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. Continue reading →

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