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Sound Studies
High Theory September 21, 2022

Echo

A Discussion with Amit Pinchevski

Amit Pinchevski

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu
In this episode of High Theory, Amit Pinchevski tells us about echoes. An echo is a sonic reflection of an emission bouncing back to its origin, which if delayed long …

Sound Studies

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Interviews with scholars of Sound Studies about their new books.

Music September 15, 2022

Earworm and Event

Music, Daydreams, and Other Imaginary Refrains

Eldritch Priest

Hosted by Nathan Smith
In Earworm and Event: Music, Daydreams, and Other Imaginary Refrains (Duke UP, 2022) Eldritch Priest questions the nature of the imagination in contemporary culture through the phenomenon of the earworm …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast August 8, 2022

Sonorous Desert

What Deep Listening Taught Early Christian Monks—and What It Can Teach Us

Kim Haines-Eitzen

Hosted by Mark Klobas
For the hermits and communal monks of antiquity, the desert was a place to flee the cacophony of ordinary life in order to hear and contemplate the voice of God …
Art July 5, 2022

Social Dissonance

Mattin

Hosted by Pierre d'Alancaisez
We are not what we think we are. Our self-image as natural individuated subjects is determined behind our backs: historically by political forces, cognitively by the language we use, and …
Middle Eastern Studies June 16, 2022

Media of the Masses

Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt

Andrew Simon

Hosted by Avery Weinman
Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford UP, 2022) investigates the social life of an everyday technology—the cassette tape—to offer a multisensory history of modern Egypt. Over …
Music June 10, 2022

Sound and Affect

Voice, Music, World

Judith Lochhead, Eduardo Mendieta, and Stephen Decatur Smith

Hosted by Frances Sacks
Sound and Affect: Voice, Music, World (U Chicago Press, 2021) maps a new territory for inquiry at the intersection of music, philosophy, affect theory, and sound studies. The essays in …
High Theory June 6, 2022

Resonance

An Discussion with Julie Beth Napolin

Julie Beth Napolin

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu
Kim speaks with Julie Beth Napolin about Resonance. Julie Beth’s book The Fact of Resonance: Modernist Acoustics and Narrative Form (Fordham UP, 2020) explores resonance and sound in modern literature …
Music June 3, 2022

Virtual Music

Sound, Music, and Image in the Digital Era

Shara Rambarran

Hosted by Bradley Morgan
Virtuality has entered our lives making anything we desire possible. We are, as Gorillaz once sang, in an exciting age where 'the digital won't let [us] go…' Technology has revolutionized …
Biology and Evolution June 3, 2022

Sounds Wild and Broken

Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction

David George Haskell

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rain forests shimmering with insect sound and swamps pulsing …
Dan Hill's EQ Spotlight May 26, 2022

Music, Lyrics, and Life

A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter

Mike Errico

Hosted by Dan Hill
Today I talked to Mike Errico about his new book Music, Lyrics, and Life: A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter (Backbeat Books, 2022). Brain teasers invite you; brain embarrassers are …
General History March 29, 2022

The Art of Appreciation

Music and Middlebrow Culture in Modern Britain

Kate Guthrie

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
From the BBC Proms to Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, initiatives to promote classical music have been a pervasive feature of twentieth-century musical life. The goal of these initiatives was rarely …
Psychology January 4, 2022

Havana Syndrome

Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria

Robert W. Baloh and Robert E. Bartholomew

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
It is one of the most extraordinary cases in the history of science: the mating calls of insects were mistaken for a “sonic weapon” that led to a major diplomatic …
Science November 26, 2021

Of Sound Mind

How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World

Nina Kraus

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
Making sense of sound is one of the hardest jobs we ask our brains to do. In Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World (MIT Press …
Science, Technology, and Society November 16, 2021

Alien Listening

Voyager's Golden Record and Music from Earth

Daniel K. L. Chua and Alexander Rehding

Hosted by Sarah Kearns
In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space, and it remains the only human-made object to have left the solar system. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecrafts contained world …
Latino Studies October 21, 2021

Sounds of Crossing

Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño

Alex E. Chávez

Hosted by David-James Gonzales
In Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño (Duke UP, 2017), Alex E. Chávez explores the contemporary politics of Mexican migrant cultural expression manifest in the …
Architecture October 19, 2021

Echo's Chambers

Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space

Joseph L. Clarke

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
A room’s acoustic character seems at once the most technical and the most mystical of concerns. Since the early Enlightenment, European architects have systematically endeavored to represent and control the …
Critical Theory August 4, 2021

Sonic Intimacy

Reggae Sound Systems, Jungle Pirate Radio and Grime YouTube Music Videos

Malcolm James

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
How can music change the world? In Sonic Intimacy: Reggae Sound Systems, Jungle Pirate Radio and Grime YouTube Music Videos (Bloomsbury, 2020), Malcolm James, Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies …
Ideas Roadshow Podcast July 30, 2021

The Science of Siren Songs

Stradivari Unveiled

Joseph Curtin

Hosted by Howard Burton
The Science of Siren Songs: Stradivari Unveiled is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and master violinmaker and acoustician Joseph Curtin, recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship …
Dan Hill's EQ Spotlight May 27, 2021

My Robot Gets Me

How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human

Carla Diana

Hosted by Dan Hill
Today I talked to Carla Diana about her new book My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021). Carla Diana is …
Music May 21, 2021

From Music to Sound

The Emergence of Sound in 20th and 21st-century Music

Makis Solomos

Hosted by Eamonn Bell
In From Music to Sound: The Emergence of Sound in 20th and 21st-century Music (Routledge, 2019), Makis Solomos (Professor of Musicology, University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis “Paris 8”) argues that …