Twenty Thousand Hertz

By Dallas Taylor

Arts Music Design

What's Twenty Thousand Hertz about?

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

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Synth War II: Digital Doom

11.16.2022

In the 1960s, Bob Moog and Don Buchla built synthesizers that changed the world. But by the early 80s, they faced a new challenger who threatened to bring it all crumbling down: the digital synthesizer. To defeat this opponent, they’d ...

Twenty Thousand Hertz episodes:

11.16.2022 Synth War II: Digital Doom In the 1960s, Bob Moog and Don Buchla built synthesizers that changed the world. But by the early 80s, they faced a new challenger who threatened to bring it all crumbling down: the digital synthesizer. To defeat this opponent, they’d ...
11.02.2022 Synth War In the United States, the East Coast and West Coast have rivalries across food, sports, music and more. But there’s another rivalry that’s less well known, but just as important. This standoff created sounds that were unlike anything that had ...
10.19.2022 A Thousand Words Audio description allows you to enjoy a movie or TV show without the need for any visuals. But how do these narrators strike the right tone for a scene? How do the writers decide what needs to be described? And ...
10.05.2022 The Booj Strikes Back In the 80s and 90s, movie trailers were ruled by “voice-of-God” narrators who used stock phrases like, “In a world…” Today, movie studios have a different trick up their sleeves: epic sound design. In this episode, Professor James Deaville explains ...
09.21.2022 1-900-20K-HRTZ In the late 80s and early 90s, 900 numbers were all the rage. For a couple bucks a minute, you could call and hear from Hulk Hogan and Freddy Kreuger, have a psychic predict your future, and even find true ...
09.07.2022 Tokyo Rose In World War II, the Japanese military operated a propaganda station called Radio Tokyo. Along with jazz music, the station featured several English-speaking female announcers, who became collectively known as Tokyo Rose. But who was Tokyo Rose? And was she ...
08.24.2022 TikTalk In 2018, voiceover artist Bev Standing recorded 10,000 sentences for the Chinese Institute of Acoustics. Bev was told the recordings would be used for a translation app, but three years later, she was shocked to discover that she had become ...
08.10.2022 Ted Lasso's Dark Forest Ted Lasso is about more than just an incompetent soccer coach—it’s about overcoming challenges by working together. And that’s exactly what the show’s sound team had to do when the pandemic hit just two episodes in. From creating crowds of ...
07.27.2022 Handbook for Sonic Happiness We spend a lot of time curating for taste, touch, smell, and vision. But too often, sound gets overlooked. We forget that we can get rid of sounds that annoy us, and surround ourselves with sounds that we love. When ...
07.13.2022 Shock Horror (A) There’s a certain musical phrase that you’ve probably heard hundreds of times. It’s used to emphasize dramatic moments in movies, cartoons, commercials and musicals, most often as a gag. But while this little melody is everywhere today, the question is: ...
07.06.2022 Sleight of Ear What does a sound designer do all day? How do noise canceling headphones really work? And why do modern movie trailers all sound the same? In this follow-up to our 150th episode, Dallas shares the secrets of sound design with ...
06.29.2022 Introducing MicroHertz We’re thrilled to announce the launch of MicroHertz, a brand new bonus series available exclusively to our premium subscribers. MicroHertz will feature mini stories, Q&As, sound news, and much more. The first episode is available now. In it, Dallas gives ...
06.22.2022 Breathe What if you woke up one day, and found that you could no longer do the thing that gave you the most joy in your life? The thing that gave you purpose? The thing that defined your past, and was ...
06.08.2022 Relearning Boléro In the same way that optical illusions can trick our eyes, auditory illusions can trick our ears. This raises a serious question: what is hearing, and how much of it is actually made up by our brains? In this story ...
05.25.2022 Ghosts in the (Hit) Machine Many of today’s biggest songs are written and produced by people whose names don’t appear anywhere in the credits. They’re called ghostwriters and ghost producers, and they’re a huge part of the music industry. So what’s it like to watch ...
05.11.2022 Windows_Logon.wav Part 2 of our series on the Windows startup sounds picks up when Microsoft made the radical decision to kill the startup sound in Windows 8. In this episode, we explore the forces that led to that decision, unpack how ...
04.27.2022 Ta-da! It’s Windows Over the years, Microsoft has made at least ten iconic startup sounds for Windows—from the triumphant “Ta-da!” of Windows 3.1, to the ambient chime that Brian Eno crafted for Windows 95, to the orchestral sweep of Windows XP. In this ...
04.13.2022 Liquid Terror For nearly half a century, one eerie sound has been showing up again and again in movies and TV shows. It’s typically used when something spooky or mysterious happens—and it can be heard in Poltergeist, The Matrix, Let the Right ...
03.30.2022 Mind the Gap The voices of subway and train announcements are deeply ingrained in peoples’ lives. Many of us hear them every day, for years on end. And yet, hardly anyone knows who those voices belong to. In this episode, we uncover the ...
03.16.2022 Hidden Hitmakers The names of pop and rock stars are known by millions of people around the world, but the people who actually write their music often stay in the shadows. In this episode, we peel back the curtain on the songwriters ...
03.02.2022 Happy Little Episode In the forty years since The Joy of Painting first started airing, Bob Ross has become a cultural icon. His gentle, soothing voice is instantly recognizable, and still gives comfort to millions of people around the world. But despite his ...
02.16.2022 Pirate Radio In the 1960s, the BBC had a vise grip on British radio, and rarely played the pop and rock music that was all the rage. So a group of rebellious radio DJs decided to give the people what they wanted, ...
02.02.2022 Being Dallas Taylor Your name is so much more than the sound that people call you by. It’s an entire human identity, distilled into a few syllables. So what do six people who share the exact same name have in common? It turns ...
01.19.2022 Sul Sul When The Sims was first being developed, the creators faced a problem. They knew they wanted these characters to talk and interact, but they were worried that using a real language would quickly get repetitive and annoying. So, they decided ...
01.07.2022 Welcome to Twenty Thousand Hertz A lovingly crafted podcast that reveals the stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. Subscribe now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
12.15.2021 Aural Exam For our second annual Mystery Sound competition, we’ve rounded up the 20 best sounds from the past year, and invited the hosts of Underunderstood to test their ears in a competitive guessing game. So bust out those Q-tips, turn up ...
12.01.2021 HBO 2.0 In part 2 of our series on HBO, we explore the tough questions that the company faced in the digital era: Are people still willing to sit through a 90-second theme song before they watch a movie? Does the sound ...
11.17.2021 It's Not TV. It's HBO. In the 1980s, every movie that aired on HBO began with a truly epic theme song—a sweeping orchestral piece that triggers instant nostalgia for anyone who grew up with it. Then in the 90s, HBO introduced a 5-second audio logo ...
11.10.2021 Zzzzzzzzzzzrr... If you’re a human being, chances are, you know someone who is a big time snorer. You're falling asleep to the gentle sounds of crickets, and then BAM, you hear a snore that sounds like an angry troll. So who ...
10.27.2021 Creature Speakers To give voices to the frightening monsters in movies, TV shows, and video games, sound designers often start with animal noises, then apply all kinds of creative processing. But other times, these sounds begin with human voice actors, who absolutely ...
10.13.2021 Video(less) Games In the past, video games were largely inaccessible to people with visual impairments. But these days, game makers are adding all kinds of innovative options to make their games more accessible. And some developers are creating entire virtual worlds using ...
09.29.2021 Blind Sports Playing a sport without sight might sound impossible. But it turns out, there are blind athletes all around the world doing exactly that. Instead of using their eyes, these players rely on their ears to hit a pitch, block a ...
09.15.2021 Listening to the Movies When Matthew Shifrin was growing up, his blindness meant that trying to enjoy a movie or TV show was often a confusing and frustrating experience. But then, Matthew discovered something called video description—an extra audio track where a narrator describes ...
09.01.2021 Sonic Bubbles For over a century, humans have been using technology to shape our sonic environment. White noise machines, nature recordings, noise canceling headphones and high-tech hearables all allow us to create an auditory safe space we can escape into. But is ...
08.18.2021 Domestic Symphony Not long ago, our home appliances made nothing but abrasive beeps and harsh buzzes. In recent years though, these devices have started to chirp and sing with carefully designed tones and melodies. But crafting the "perfect" device sound takes skill, ...
08.04.2021 The Windsor Hum In 2011, residents of Windsor, Ontario started experiencing a strange rumbling hum that rattled dishes and kept people awake at night. Then, after years of getting nowhere, the mystery of the Windsor Hum was finally solved... Or was it? This ...
07.21.2021 The Buzzer Since World War I, countries around the world have been broadcasting mysterious numerical messages via shortwave radio. Though concrete evidence is hard to come by, the general consensus is that these coded messages are meant for undercover agents operating abroad. ...
07.07.2021 Stay Tuned Nearly a century after they first appeared, the Looney Tunes are back in an all-new series. To bring this iconic franchise into the present, the creators are looking to its past, taking it back to the look and feel of ...
06.23.2021 Prop 'til You Drop In part 2 of our exploration of Foley, the Warner Brothers Foley team takes us into the all-important prop room. Along the way, they demonstrate how they make the sounds for flapping birds, breaking bones, cracking ice, handling guns, and ...
06.09.2021 Foley Artists When it comes to film sound, "Foley Artist" might be the most important job you've never heard of. These performers record custom, synchronized sound effects to create the sounds for characters' footsteps, movements, and much more. It's exhausting and delicate ...
05.26.2021 The Leaky Pipeline In the late 80s, a small French company found a way to pair analog film with pristine digital audio. But getting their system into theaters would involve a long legal battle, hiding out in a Vegas bathroom, and a last-ditch ...
05.19.2021 Auditory Icons We live in a designed world, and alert tones are no exception. Every beep and ping that your phone or laptop makes probably went through multiple rounds of revisions and approvals. So what separates a good device sound from a ...
05.12.2021 Progression Obsession There are a few specific chord progressions that show up again and again in popular music. Across hundreds of hit songs, the same basic musical formulas have been used by artists ranging from Lynyrd Skynyrd to Lady Gaga, and from ...
04.28.2021 SM7 Since their founding almost a century ago, Shure has created some of the most iconic microphones ever made. In this episode, we worked with Shure to tell the story of the SM7 dynamic microphone: from its humble beginnings in voiceover ...
04.14.2021 Minecraft Since its official release in 2011, Minecraft has grown from a small, experimental indie game into the best-selling video game of all time. Today, the game's haunting music and quirky sound effects are just as iconic as its blocky visuals. ...
03.24.2021 20th Century Fox The melodic fanfare that introduces every 20th Century Fox movie was first composed almost a hundred years ago. Since then, it's become one of the most enduring and recognizable pieces of music in modern history. It's survived company acquisitions, competition ...
03.10.2021 The Deterrent Tone The Long-Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, was developed for the military for long-range communication at sea. But this ear-splitting device has also been fired on protesters across America, resulting in lawsuits and permanent hearing loss. In this episode, we explore ...
02.24.2021 I'm Lovin' It Since its introduction in 2003, the McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle has become one of the most recognizable melodies in the world. This is the story of how a catchy five-note jingle conquered the planet, from its humble beginnings at ...
01.27.2021 Sound 101 with Bill Nye What is sound, on a fundamental level? How did animals evolve to hear? And what happens when you go faster than sound itself? In this episode, we explore the physics of sound with the legendary Bill Nye. Follow the show ...
01.13.2021 Synesthesia Synesthesia is a neurological condition where one sensory experience gets combined with another, meaning someone might hear sounds when they eat, or see colors when they listen to music. So what exactly is synesthesia? And what’s it like to go ...

Older episodes

Twenty Thousand Hertz

What's Twenty Thousand Hertz about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Twenty Thousand Hertz episodes:

Synth War II: Digital Doom

Synth War

A Thousand Words

The Booj Strikes Back

1-900-20K-HRTZ

Tokyo Rose

TikTalk

Ted Lasso's Dark Forest

Handbook for Sonic Happiness

Shock Horror (A)

Sleight of Ear

Introducing MicroHertz

Breathe

Relearning Boléro

Ghosts in the (Hit) Machine

Windows_Logon.wav

Ta-da! It’s Windows

Liquid Terror

Mind the Gap

Hidden Hitmakers

Happy Little Episode

Pirate Radio

Being Dallas Taylor

Sul Sul

Welcome to Twenty Thousand Hertz

Aural Exam

HBO 2.0

It's Not TV. It's HBO.

Zzzzzzzzzzzrr...

Creature Speakers

Video(less) Games

Blind Sports

Listening to the Movies

Sonic Bubbles

Domestic Symphony

The Windsor Hum

The Buzzer

Stay Tuned

Prop 'til You Drop

Foley Artists

The Leaky Pipeline

Auditory Icons

Progression Obsession

SM7

Minecraft

20th Century Fox

The Deterrent Tone

I'm Lovin' It

Sound 101 with Bill Nye

Synesthesia