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The year is off to a very disturbing start thanks to ICE’s violent paramilitary incursion in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Minnesota citizens have responded with mass protests and direct action, much of it sonic in nature—with the sound of whistles alerting neighbors and making life harder on ICE.  This episode, we speak with an expert on noise, power, and protest who also happens to live and teach in Minneapolis: Gabriel Saloman Mindel. Gabriel is one half of the Noise band Yellow Swans. Last month, we discussed the aesthetics and politics of noise music. This month, Gabriel discusses settler-colonial ways of treating the land, humans, and the soundscape in service of capital and political power, as well as noise, protest, and political power in the troubling context of current events.  This episode features an interview we did in November and excepts from a follow-up in December, after the ICE incursion began. If you’d like to hear the full conversation about Minneapolis, we’ll be dropping it in our members feed. (If finances are an issue, just drop us a line an we’ll get you access.) Gabriel has an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a PhD in the History of Consciousness from UC, Santa Cruz. He teaches at. Learn about upcoming Yellow Swans shows on their Instagram. Also mentioned: Mack’s launched a new newsletter series, "What has the digital done to our listening?" Media Cited Hildegard Westerkamp - Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989) Prince - 1999 (Official Music Video) Raven Chacon - Voiceless Mass (2021) Hildegard Westerkamp - "The New Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver: An Acoustic Dump" Gabriel Mindel - "Sovereignty, Sonic Limits Music and Spectacle at the Border" in Studies in Social Justice (2025) Chapters: 01:40 Guest Introduction: Gabriel Saloman Mindel 05:16 Gabriel's Academic Journey 09:36 Settler Colonialism and Soundscapes 26:21 Silence and Indigenous Perspectives 27:34 Raven Chacon's Voiceless Mass 30:39 Prince and the End of the World 39:09 Operation Metro Surge 43:42 Direct Action and Protest Click here to read the full transcript Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gabriel Saloman Mindel is a lot more than one half of the United States best known noise bands. He's also an interdisciplinary artist and a scholar whose research studies the interplay between sound and power, as he theorizes how noise can push the limits of the body in struggles over space and political autonomy.  Gabriel has an MFA from Simon Fraser University and a PhD in the History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz. He's also a longtime Phantom Power listener and supporter of the show. We first met a little over a year ago at the Unsound Festival in Poland, where Yellow Swans played a packed reunion show. It's been a lovely thing to get to know him--he's a gentle soul who  makes aggressive sounds tied to some serious ethical and political commitments.  In today's interview, we talk about the history and music of Yellow Swans, the interplay between noise, ethics, aesthetics, and politics. Gabriel even breaks down how he and Pete produced the track we were just listening to. Even if you're not a fan of noise music, I think you're going to love this fascinating conversation. And next month, we'll play part two of the interview, in which Gabriel discusses his scholarship on the work of other artists, including Raven Chacon, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Prince.  You can find Yellow Swans online at Bandcamp and Instagram. They will be performing at GRM's annual Présences Électronique festival on Feb 13. In London, first at the Lexington on Feb 16 and then Corsica on Feb 18, and then finish at Bozar in Brussels. Chapters: 0:00 Intro & Welcome 5:53 Gabriel Saloman Mindel 6:52 What is a Yellow Swans Show? 12:48 Early Influences & Discovering Noise 13:45 DIY, Punk, and the Noise Scene 21:57 Noise, Community, and Spirituality 22:45 Performance, Consent, and Audience Experience 24:00 Paradoxes: Noise, Calm, and Reception 29:17 Crafting the Sound: Gear & Process 41:43 Band Dynamics & Collaboration 45:07 Legacy, Recognition, and Touring 51:04 Art, Politics, and the Noise Scene 53:09 Fascism, Provocation, and Identity in Noise 59:44 Inclusivity and Change in the Scene 60:24 Outro: Thanks & What’s Next Click here to read the full transcript. ⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today host Mack Hagood is joined by three remarkable scholars whose work sits at the intersection of African music, technology, and culture. Dr. Louise Meintjes is Marcello Lotti Professor at Duke University. She's a distinguished ethnomusicologist whose groundbreaking research on South African music has transformed how we understand the recording studio as a site of cultural negotiation and creative production. Media anthropologist Dr. Reginold Royston is an Associate Professor jointly-appointed in the School of Information (formerly SLIS) and the Department of African Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He examines a range of African and African diasporic media and technology, from Black Atlantic audiobooks to African podcasting to viral dance videos emanating from Ghana and Chicago's footwork scene. And Kingsley Okyere is graduate student at Penn whose work on African and Afro-diasporic musical circulation and genres is bringing fresh perspectives on the sounds shaping the continent today. In this episode, we explore the evolution of Afrobeats and Amapiano, two genres that have captured global attention in recent years. We also discuss how technology and diaspora networks have shaped African popular music, examine questions of genre, identity, and global circulation, and consider the social and political contexts that inform music production and reception across the continent and beyond. Chapters: 3:21 Meet the Guests: African Music Scholars 6:03 What Are Afrobeats and Amapiano? 7:56 Afrobeats vs. Afrobeat: History & Identity 11:49 Branding, World Music, and South African Context 14:29 Recording Studios as Sites of Negotiation 17:42 Digital Networks and Diaspora Influence 23:23 Listening Practices: Streaming, Social Media, and Algorithms 29:00 Dance, Timelines, and Global Rhythms 33:13 Economic Realities and Global Music Industry Click here to read the full transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did we humans become so dependent on white noise machines, noise-canceling headphones, lo-fi girl and other technologies that help us privatize and individualize our soundscape? An important character in that cultural history is Irv Teibel, whose environments series helped change how we listen. These records were the first to use recorded natural soundscapes as technologies to change how we feel and function.  My guests this episode are Joel Stern and James Parker, two thirds of the art and research collective known as Machine Listening—a group that shares my fascination with Teibel. With their partner Sean Dockray, James and Joel have released a vinyl record called Environments 12: New Concepts in Acoustic Enrichment. This album reimagines Irv Teibel’s 1970s Environments albums—those “relaxation records” made for stressed-out people—as a set of soundscapes made for the stressed-out environment itself.  The project mixes archival nature recordings, synthetic atmospheres, and AI-generated voices into strange new habitats. Narrators—some human, some machine—tell fables about seashores, reefs, and animal enclosures, where the line between the natural and the artificial dissolves. The result is a haunting, witty, and thought-provoking album that asks what it means to listen when both humans and environments are under pressure.  Machine Listening’s art and research practice is deeply engaged with the politics of datasets, algorithmic systems, surveillance, and the shifting dynamics of power in “listening” technologies. Among other things, they interrogate how voice assistants, smart speakers, and algorithmic audio systems mediate — and often extract data from — human sound.  Their installations and performances have been shown in institutions worldwide, including the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, and at festivals like Unsound.  In short, Machine Listening blends creative and critical strategies to explore and expose the hidden infrastructures of acoustic power. James Parker and Joel Stern are both based in Melbourne Australia, where Parker is Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School and Stern is Research Fellow at RMIT School of Media and Communication. In this conversation we go deep on environments, AI, and recent innovations that surveil and remediate the environment in order to save it--for example playing recordings of healthy ocean reefs to sick ones to improve their vitality. It's some pretty wild shit.  As always, you can join to get the extra long version of this conversation, including our guests recommendations on things to read, listen and do. Just go to mackhagood.com to join.  That's also where you should go to get our free monthly newsletter with all kinds of great links and resources for people obsessed with sound. We just dropped the first edition and I'm telling you, it's brimming with sonic content that I can't squeeze into the podcast. Chapters: 0:00 The Origins of Environments: Irv Teibel’s Ocean Recording 7:14 Introducing Machine Listening: Art, Technology, and Sound 13:08 The Environments Series: Cultural Impact and Reception 18:58 Avant-Garde Meets Commerce: Teibel’s Methods and Influence 24:51 Bell Labs, IBM, and the Birth of Machine Listening 30:53 Simulation, Emulation, and the Legacy of Environments 36:53 Environments 12: Reimagining Soundscapes for the Environment 42:45 Technologies of the Self and Environmentality 47:55 Sound Design for Zoos: From Field Recordings to Animal Welfare 53:39 Closing Thoughts and Future Directions For full transcript visit irv-teibels-environments-ai-audio-and-the-future-of-listening-w-machine-listening Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Graham Reznick is a multifaceted sound designer, screenwriter, director, and musician, best known for his work on indie horror films like Ti West's X and the critically acclaimed video game Until Dawn. In this episode, Reznick discusses Rabbit Trap, a film based on Welsh folklore blending analog synthesis with supernatural soundscapes.  Host Mack Hagood and Reznick begin talking about horror sound design as a technical and creative process, examining how he crafted specific uncanny soundscapes in the film. The conversation then expands to the evolving relationship between sound design and musical scores in horror films, Reznick's limited series on Shudder called "Dead Wax: A Vinyl Hunter's Tale" and a discussion of haunted media, sensory deprivation, brainwave entrainment, self-improvement tapes from the 1970s, and other Halloween-appropriate topics!  Members of Phantom Power can hear our ad-free, extended version, which includes Reznick's world-record breaking work as a writer on the  video game Until Dawn. Last but not least, we find ‘What’s Good?’ according to Graham, where he recommends things to read, do, and listen to!  Join us at phantompod.org or mackhagood.com]! That’s also where you can also sign up for our free Phantom Power newsletter, which will drop on the second Friday of every month and feature news, reviews, and interviews not found on the podcast. Chapters:  00:00 Introduction to Phantom Power 01:19 Meet Graham Reznick: Sound Designer Extraordinaire 01:59 Rabbit Trap: A Sound-Centric Horror Film 02:29 Graham Reznick's Career Highlights 04:00 Phantom Power Membership and Newsletter 04:52 Interview with Graham Reznick Begins 05:00 Rabbit Trap: Plot and Sound Design Insights 10:40 Creating the Uncanny Soundscape 14:11 The Evolution of Sound Design in Horror 20:56 Sound Design Techniques and Tools 26:33 Exploring the Fairy Circle Scene 35:48 Dead Wax: A Vinyl Hunter's Tale 39:58 The Allure of Forbidden Media 43:31 The Evolution of Online Culture 44:34 Magic, Dark Arts, and Haunted Media 46:54 Sensory Deprivation and Inner Worlds 49:25 The Power of Sound and Music 52:45 The Impact of Individualized Media For the full transcript visit: https://www.mackhagood.com/podcast/inside-the-sound-of-the-uncanny-rabbit-trap-sound-design-and-haunted-media-w-graham-reznick/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With movie star looks and a raucous piano style, Maurice Rocco made a splash in the 1940’s, influencing future rock and rollers Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. By the 60s, however, he was a has-been in the U.S., playing lounges in Bangkok, Thailand until his grisly murder by a pair of male sex workers. In his deeply insightful book ⁠Bangkok After Dark, ethnomusicologist Benjamin Tausig reclaims Rocco’s forgotten story and reveals its broader context, exploring the intersection of race, queerness, and transnational music cultures during the cold war era.   Benjamin Tausig is a scholar of music, sound and politics in Southeast Asia teaching at Stony Brook University, New York. Working between music, sound studies, Asian studies, and anthropology, his publications cover topics such as the soundscape of political procest in Thauland, Luk thung and mor lam, and the impact of American military presence on Southeast Asian culture.   In this episode we discuss his two books, Bangkok is Ringing, which provides a lucid and in-depth ethnography of the Thailand’s Red Shirt anti-government protest movement, and Bangkok After Dark. In a wide-ranging conversation, we cover everything from Mack and Ben’s early days in sound studies to the proto-music videos known as “soundies” to the psychedelic roots of Thai music genres like luk thung.   Our Patreons get an extended cut of this interview, including our ‘what’s good?’ section, revealing Ben’s top picks for things to read, do, and listen to! Sign up to listen at Patreon.com/phantompower. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction: Maurice Rocco and the Forgotten Soundies 03:57 Welcome & Meet Benjamin Taussig 08:15 Sound Studies, Graduate School, and Early Interests 13:15 Fieldwork in Thailand: Urban Sound and Space 18:15 Learning Thai and Immersing in Bangkok 22:45 Language, Tonality, and Sonic Culture 27:45 The Red Shirt Movement and Thai Political Soundscapes 36:29 Protest, Democracy, and the Limits of Sound 44:10 Thai Music Genres: Luk Thung, Mor Lam, and Protest 51:00 Sonic Niches, Censorship, and Speaking Out 54:49 Maurice Rocco: From American Jazz Star to Bangkok 1:02:58 The Vietnam War, American Influence, and Thai Psychedelia 1:09:38 Race, Queerness, and Identity in 1960s-70s Thailand 1:14:05 Rocco’s Final Years, Legacy, and Reflections For the full transcript visit https://phantompod.org/benjamin-tausig-bangkok-after-dark/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sound is an invisible force that most people rarely notice and barely understand. Dr. Mack Hagood explores the world of sound studies with the world's most amazing sound researchers, artists, and designers, as well as musicians, writers, voice actors and others. We've broken down how computers learned to talk, Yoko Ono's scream, John Cage's silence, chopped and screwed cassette tapes, the politics of EDM, film soundtracks, field recording, and audio ink blot tests for blind people. Phantom Power is the podcast that both newcomers and experts in sound studies, sound art, and acoustic ecology listen to--combining intellectual rigor and great audio. Mack Hagood is a professor of media and communication who studies audio technologies. His work and words have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Washington Post, the BBC, Freakonomics Radio, Pitchfork, and many other venues. He is the author of Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control and is currently writing a book about sound for Penguin Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month, we have a guest pod in the feed: It’s the debut episode of Critical Listening, music technology criticism from journalist Liz Pelly and composer-educator Max Alper, “two lifers of the Northeast underground and independent scholars of streaming era dystopia.” Liz and Max’s guest is Greg Saunier, drummer and founding member of long-running band Deerhoof. They discuss the release of Deerhoof’s 20th release, as well as the challenges of making art under the hegemonic conditions of information capitalism. To learn more about Critical Listening, check out their Patreon page. This month, we also also share an audio file recorded at April’s Society for Cinema and Media Studies meeting. It’s a special tribute to Jonathan Sterne, providing a space for SCMS members to reflect on what he meant to them and to the field. Thanks to organizer Amy Skjerseth with the help of Neil Verma, Ravi Krishnaswami, Cris Becker, and Maya Reter, the entire session was recorded. In all, some 25 people shared their remembrances, including many past Phantom Power guests and collaborators. You can stream the session here. The post Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier on Critical Listening appeared first on Phantom Power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer and sound artist who creates immersive compositions, drawing on a wide array of genres and life experiences. Her compositions have been commissioned internationally for a variety of mediums. Yvette Jackson often works in a mode she calls radio opera, which combines orchestral composition, modular synthesis, sampling, voice acting, and improvisation. Her work has been commissioned and screened at some of the biggest festivals and events across the globe. Having learned tape splicing, analog synthesis, and computer music at the historic Columbia Computer Music Center in New York. Yvette now works as associate professor at Harvard University.  In the public episode, we talk about her concept of radio opera and we take a deep dive into her album Freedom, and explore the unusual personal history that has informed her unconventional composition style—discussing things like theater sound design and her four years spent 8,000 feet up in the Rocky Mountains, and how that changed the way she listens.  Supporters on Patreon will get another 35 minutes where we get into the technical details of how Yvette puts these multimodal electroacoustic works together. And a discussion of composing for the Carillon, the enormous bell tower instrument. sign up to listen Patreon.com/phantompower. 00:00 Introduction 00:39 Meet Yvette Janine Jackson 02:08 Exploring Radio Opera 04:19 Yvette’s Recent Achievements 05:12 Defining the Artist 06:01 The Concept of Radio Opera 08:25 Creating Immersive Experiences 13:10 Album ‘Freedom’ and Its Themes 13:56 Narratives in ‘Freedom’ 14:16 Invisible People: A Radio Opera 19:54 Destination Freedom: A Journey 24:02 The Art of Sound and Emotion 29:10 Diving into Technical and Biographical Insights 29:51 Early Musical Influences and Education 31:57 College Years and Electronic Music Exploration 35:04 Theater and Radio Drama Experiences 40:17 Living in Colorado and Soundscape Studies 48:40 PhD Journey and Integrative Studies 50:39 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Transcript Yvette Jackson: My work has a lot of things that were presented to me at some point as binaries, like, you know, improvisation, composition, acoustic, electronic, and for me, I guess part of my practice is kind of blurring these lines.  Introduction: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a show about sound. Sound studies. Sound art. All things sound. My name is Mac Hagood, and my guest today is Yvette Janine Jackson. Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer and sound artist who creates immersive compositions drawing on a wide array of genres and life experiences. Her electroacoustic chamber and orchestral compositions have been commissioned internationally for concert. Theater, installation and screen. Yvette Jackson often works in a mode she calls radio opera, which combines orchestral composition, modular synthesis, sampling, voice acting, improvisation, a whole lot of things in order to create what the guardian called immersive non-visual films. Her work has been commissioned by or appeared on the stages and screens of Carnegie Hall Big Years Festival. PBS and the Venice Music Bien Oh and Wave Farm. A lot of listeners will be familiar with Wave Farm, with whom Yvette has had a long history. She is also the only volunteer firefighter that I personally know who learned tape splicing analog synthesis and computer music at the Historic Columbia Computer Music Center in New York. Oh, and did I mention that she’s a professor at Harvard? Yvette and I met at the Residual Noise Festival at Brown a couple months ago, and I so enjoyed talking with her that I wanted to bring you in on the conversation. In this wide ranging chat, we talk about her concept of radio opera and we take a deep dive into her album Freedom, which the wire calls one of the most unique. Releases to chronicle the Black American experience. We then get into her unusual personal history, which has informed her unconventional composition style, and we discuss things like theater, sound design, and the four years she spent 8,000 feet up in the Rocky Mountains and how that changed the way she listens. Supporters on Patreon will get another 35 minutes where we get into the technical details of how Yvette puts together these multimodal electroacoustic works. And then we get to my favorite part of the conversation in which we truly nerd out on the Caron. Which is the enormous Bell Tower instrument that she has actually composed several pieces for. And unless there is some Caron podcast out there, and I suppose there probably is, but I’m pretty sure that this is the deepest Caron conversation you’re ever going to hear. And then. Yvette does her what’s good segment where she suggests something good to read, something good to listen to, something good to do, and her picks are every bit as unconventional as you might expect from this introduction. That is all at Phantom Power’s Patreon page. patreon.com/phantom Power. You can become a member for as little as $3 a month, and we could really use your support. I’m still on this mission to try to cover the production costs for this podcast with your donation, so please consider getting all of the full length interviews at patreon.com/phantom Power. Okay, here it is, my conversation with a one of a kind human being, Yvette, Janine Jackson. Yvette, welcome to the show.  Yvette Jackson: Thanks for inviting me.  Mack Hagood: Yeah, so it’s been a while since we chopped it up over breakfast at the Hampton Inn. Classy, you’ve had, an amazing year. I think we are actually able to sort of break some news on this podcast that you just received a Herb Bert Award , in the arts for 2025, which is like a big $75,000 thing. Yvette Jackson: Yeah, I mean, I’m excited for multiple reasons. I mean, especially, it’s at a time when obviously, you know, arts are being cut and so it’s an honor, but also a responsibility, I think.  Mack Hagood: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, I mean, I think with that was part of the conversation that we had before, it was just about the kinds of challenges and opportunities of, of trying to do creative work in this moment. Um. You also got promoted to associate professor at Harvard. That’s amazing. Yeah. Congrats. Thank you very much. I’m just gonna toot your horn for a minute year. Alright. Yeah. But maybe, maybe, um, we can just sort of start with the basics of why you’re getting these accolades and promotions, which is your work, which I, I think is just truly innovative. Can you maybe just talk a little bit about how you would describe yourself as an artist? What genres do you work in?  Yvette Jackson: All right. Um, I, I feel like I’m not consistent with this answer. I was just asked this question two days ago, so I mean, I think composer and sound artist, but I’ve used different terms. Sound designer, installation artist, the composer has always been a part mm-hmm. Of that definition, and I guess musician. As well. Performer ensemble director. But yeah, I like composer. Simple. One word.  Mack Hagood: Yeah. Your work, I mean, one, one word that I’ve heard you use before to describe your work is radio opera. You have this group, the radio opera workshop. Can you maybe talk a little bit about what you see? That genre as, would you call it a genre radio author?  Yvette Jackson: Um, I mean, I, I think it is. I mean, the term is used in different terms now and I think it also was used. In different ways during the early days of radio because I mean, historically you can find older ads for, you know, we’ve got the first radio opera, and you can see this on ads in the US and in Europe. And usually what was meant by that term, radio opera was an opera that was being broadcast on the radio. Mm-hmm. And then you have pieces like NBC Commission, John Carlo Otti for the Old Mate and the Thief. And I think that commission was specifically for radio. So you know, as a composer, having to think about how to capture that spectacle over the air. In the minds of the listeners. Um, I use the term a little bit differently. So the radio for me is pointing to the golden age of radio drama, which I am a fan of, and then opera. Just because initially when I started using this term about 13 years ago, 14 years ago, I was. Picturing this concept as these series of large works, and so mm-hmm. Yeah. Taking these two ideas and it probably, I, I mean, I think definitely I also was influenced and maybe got this term from Anthony Davis with whom I was studying at the time that I started calling my works radio opera.  Mack Hagood: He started calling your works that  Yvette Jackson: No, I, I, I think the, the term came up in a conversation that we were having uhhuh. I had taken one of his opera classes and he knew about my interest in radio drama. And so, I mean, I think that there’s a connection there. And then someone also, uh, had a conversation two days ago thinking about like violin, Bret. Using radio opera and having like the audience kind of interactive and you know, an interactive component of it and singing along with it, which, I mean, initially I wasn’t thinking of any type of interactivity, which, yeah, now I am. The initial idea was I was creating these electroacoustic compositions to be experienced in the. A darkened theater as dark as the law would permit. You know, you have the exit signs there and you know, the performance instructions were often to be performed at an uncomfortable volume. And so you have people congregated in a theater, you know, black box proscenium space. They may be immediately seated next to someone they know, but. You know, also seated around strangers

Today we present a cassette theory mixtape. Three excellent scholars help us understand consumer-focused magnetic tape and its history as a medium for the masses: Eleanor Patterson, Associate Professor of Media Studies at Auburn, whose new book just won the 2025 Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Book Award and a 2025 International Association for Media and History Book Award. It’s called Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternative Histories of Radio and Television distribution (Illinois Press, 2024).  Rob Drew, Professor of Communication at Saginaw Valley State University and a fantastic interpreter of pop culture like graffiti and karaoke. His new book is Unspooled: How the Cassette Made Music Shareable (Duke, 2024).  Andrew Simon, Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College. We’ve been wanting to talk to him for a while about his 2022 book, Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press).  This conversation winds its way from the early days of radio, through the Anglophone indie rock of the 1980s, and into the streets of Cairo, where cassette tapes represented the first mass medium that Egyptian state power could not control.  03:49 Introducing the Cassette Theory Mixtape 04:06 Meet the Scholars: Eleanor Patterson, Rob S. Drew, and Andrew Simon 06:10 Diving into the Books: A Round Table Discussion 12:24 Exploring the Prehistory of Media Distribution 23:43 The Role of Cassettes in Indie and Hip Hop Culture 31:12 Cassettes in Egypt: A Tool for Revolution and Resistance 40:32 The Intersection of Media and Culture Hear the full 90 minute conversation by joining our Patreon! Please support the show at patreon.com/phantompower Links to Mack’s recent travels: Residual Noise Festival at Brown University Resonance: Sound Across the Disciplines at Rutgers University’s Center for Cultural Analysis Transcript Andrew Simon: [00:00:00] Cassette tapes and players did not simply join other mass mediums like records and radio. They became the media of the masses. Cassettes in many ways were the internet before the internet. They enabled anyone to produce culture, circulate information, challenge ruling regimes, long before social media ever entered all of our daily lives.  PPIntro: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a podcast about sound where I talk to people who make sound and people who study sound. I’m Mack Hagood. I’m a Media professor at Miami University, and I just want to start off by giving a quick shout out to a couple of creative communities that I got to hang out in. I [00:01:00] just got back from the Residual Noise Festival at Brown University, which was this amazing three day event featuring ambisonic sound, art, and music pieces performed both at Brown and at RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design. The lead curator of the festival was Ed Osborne, who is the chair of the Art Department at Brown, and a very accomplished sound artist. And in the middle of the festival there was this one day conference and Ed was kind enough to invite me to be the keynote speaker. And then I had an onstage discussion with Emily I. Dolan, the chair of Brown’s Music Department, and someone whose work I’ve followed for a long time, and it was a real thrill to meet her as well. But really the biggest thrill of all was the sounds, I mean, three days of these immersive ambisonic creations by amazing artists in these amazing facilities, both at Brown and RISD [00:02:00] and most importantly, there is just such a creative and fun and diverse and nurturing community of composers and sound artists at these two schools. I’ll put a link to the festival in the show notes and hopefully. We may also feature some of these artists in coming episodes. And then the week before that I visited the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University, and they’ve been having this two year long sound seminar chaired by Professors Carter Mathes and Xiaojue Wong. And they invited me to come over and talk to their faculty and grad students and postdocs about my work. And I got to learn about all the fascinating sound related stuff that’s happening over there at Rutgers. That was also a blast. So I just want to thank Carter and Xiaojue and Ed for the invitations and thank all of you for listening because so many people at these events came up to me and said how valuable they [00:03:00] found this podcast. And I never anticipated making so many new friends and working relationships through this show. So I feel super fortunate. And that also reminds me, last episode I mentioned trying to get our Patreon sponsorships up so that I can pay an editor and keep this show going during the summer. And we got an unprecedented upsurge in memberships. So thank you so much. We still kind of have quite a ways to go for me to reach the break even point on production costs. So please, if you’ve been thinking about doing it, maybe do it now. Just go to patreon.com/phantompower you’ll get all the bonus content from today’s show and all the previous shows. Speaking of today’s show, let me talk about it. I am calling this a cassette theory mixtape. We have three excellent scholars who have recently published books that help [00:04:00] us understand the medium of magnetic tape and it’s history as a medium for the masses. My guests are Eleanor Patterson, associate Professor of Media Studies at Auburn, whose new book just won the 2025 Broadcast Education Association’s book Award and the 2025 International Association for Media and History Book Award. It’s called Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternative Histories of Radio and Television Distribution Out on Illinois Press.  We also have Rob S. Drew, professor of Communication at Saginaw Valley State University. Rob is a fantastic interpreter of pop culture. He’s done work on graffiti and karaoke, and his new book is called Unspooled: How the Cassette Made Music Shareable out on Duke University Press.  And we also have Andrew Simon, senior lecturer in Middle Eastern [00:05:00] Studies at Dartmouth College, and I’ve been wanting to talk to him for a while about his book, which came out back in 2022. It’s called Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt on Stanford University Press. These three books encounter their subject matter in different historical moments and geographies, and I thought it would be really exciting to sort of bring these great scholars together to discuss the cassette tapes, many purposes and meanings in everyday life. I should say that Eleanor’s book is not exactly about the cassette tape, but she gives us this really amazing prehistory that I think is very helpful in thinking about the cassette tape. This is also the first time that I’ve had three guests on at once to just sort of have a round table discussion. So let me know what you think about this format. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. It’s so hard to get people’s schedules together and I managed to pull it off this time. So, let me know what you think. [00:06:00] Alright, so Cassette Theory: A Mix Tape. Let’s do it. Nora. Rob, Andrew, welcome to the show. Rob Drew: Thank you. Andrew Simon: Thank you. Mack Hagood: I am really excited to have all of you with me, I thought maybe we could just start off with each one of you doing a bit of a self introduction and giving us sort of the short elevator pitch of your book before we really dive in, sort of set the stage for us. And Nora, why don’t we start off with you. Eleanor Patterson: Alright, well thanks for asking. My book is called Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternative Histories of Radio and Television Distribution. It’s really a case study look at, on demand listening and viewing and really peer-to-peer file sharing before the Internet with looking at analog technologies, kind of at the birth of broadcasting and radio through the seventies and eighties. And [00:07:00] think that these are stories about the histories of the audience, of fans and the labor they do in distributing content. I’m really a distribution scholar more than anything else, so I’m thinking about how programs get to people and, in what ways they encounter and how those technological, social assemblages shape, how we make sense of content, but also form relationships and make sense of ourselves. And at a few different case studies. Bootlegging is a really hard thing to study, so, won’t say my book is comprehensive, but I look at communities of radio and television fandoms that were, connecting with each other, doing home recording and sharing content really at a time where the only other way to listen or encounter programs was to tune in on a schedule determined by the industry. That’s [00:08:00] the very small version of my book. So I’ll stop there and let the others have a chance. So I’m really excited to hear about the other books we’re talking about. Mack Hagood: Great. Yeah. Rob, why don’t you go next?  Rob Drew: Okay. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Mack. And it’s a pleasure to be here with y’all. I started this book as a book about mixtapes way back when, ages ago, back in the nineties when people were making a lot of mix tapes, I started finally getting to interview people when I finished my karaoke book. My previous book was about karaoke in the 2000s, and by that time, people weren’t really making tapes anymore. They were making CDs, but I was interviewing people on my campus. They kept referring to them as mixed tapes and kept talking about how much they missed tape, even young people. So I thought, well, I have to look into this, into the history of it, and ended up going kind of down the rabbit hole of [00:09:00] cassette history, which beca

University of Delaware historian David Suisman is known for his research on music and capitalism, particularly his excellent book Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Harvard UP, 2009), which won numerous awards and accolades. Suisman’s new book, Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers (U Chicago Press, 2024), brings that same erudition to the subject of music in the military. It is the most comprehensive look at military music to date, full of fascinating historical anecdotes and insights on what music does for military states and their soldiers. Our conversation explores music as a martial technology, used for purposes of morale, discipline, indoctrination, entertainment, emotional relief, psychological warfare, and torture. In the public episode David and I talk about the military’s use of music from the Civil War through World War Two. Our Patrons will also hear David’s critique of how we think about music in the Vietnam War–he says Hollywood has completely misinformed us on the role of music in that conflict. We’ll also talk about the iPod and our more recent conflicts in the Middle East, and hear a detailed discussion of David’s research and writing methods, plus his reading and listening recommendations.  If you’re not a Patron, you can hear the full version, plus all of our other bonus content for just a few bucks a month–sign up at Patreon.com/phantompower.  00:00 Introduction 04:20 The US Military’s Investment in Music 05:30 Music’s Role in Soldier Training and Discipline 12:32 The Evolution of Military Cadences 23:22 The Civil War: A Turning Point for Military Music 28:21 Forgotten Brass Instruments of the Union Army 29:38 The Role of Drummer Boys in the Civil War 33:32 Music and Morale in World War I 35:48 Group Singing and Community Singing Movement 37:28 The YMCA’s Role in Soldier Recreation 38:41 Racial Dynamics and Minstrel Shows in Military Music 41:47 Music Consumption and the Military in World War II 45:27 The USO and Live Entertainment for Troops 49:56 Vietnam War: Challenging Musical Myths 50:26 Conclusion and Call to Support the Podcast Transcript ​[00:00:00]  David Suisman: I describe music as functioning in some ways as a lubricant in the American War machine. It makes the machine function or allows the machine to function. It enables the machine to function.  Introduction: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a podcast about sound. I’m Mack Hagood. I just noticed that this month makes seven years that we’ve been doing this podcast, which feels like a pretty nice milestone. And in that time, we’ve really tried to keep the focus on sound as opposed to music. There are a lot of fantastic podcasts about music, not nearly as many taking a really deeply nerdy approach to [00:01:00] questions about sound. And so that’s been our lane. That said, no one has managed to build a wall or police the border between sound and music. It’s a pretty fuzzy boundary and we’ve definitely spent a lot of episodes exploring that fuzzy boundary between the two. And I guess the reason I bring this up is that this season has actually been Pretty musical so far. Our first episode this season was with Eric Salvaggio. We were talking about AI and its implications for music and then our second episode, with Liz Pelley, looked into the effects of Spotify on how we listen to music. So two shows about how new sound technologies are reshaping music. Today’s show puts a slightly different spin on the relationship between music and technology. Today, we’re looking at music as a technology. A technology of war. My guest today is [00:02:00] University of Delaware historian, David Suisman. David is probably best known for his research on the history of music and capitalism. Especially his excellent book, “Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music” that’s probably his best known work. Now, he’s bringing that same kind of erudition to the subject of music in the military. His new book is called Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers. Long time listeners will know that I sometimes get a little cranky about music scholars and media scholars and the ways that we often focus on the kind of content that we like. We get a little fannish, we want to think about things like music as a force of self expression and political liberation. Of course, music can be those things, but music can also be a technology of domination, of indoctrination, of disciplinarity, even [00:03:00] torture. And David Suisman’s “Instrument of War” is the most comprehensive look at military music that I’m aware of. If the subject matter sounds a bit grim, you’ll be happy to hear that this book is full of fascinating historical anecdotes. And in the public episode of this show, David and I are going to talk about the military’s use of music from the civil war all the way through World War II. Our patrons will also hear David’s critique of how we think about music in the Vietnam War. He says that Hollywood has completely misinformed us on the way music worked in that war. We’ll also talk about the iPod and our more recent conflicts in the Middle East and hear a detailed discussion of David’s research and writing methods, plus his reading and listening recommendations. If you’re not a patron, you can hear all of that material plus all of our other bonus content for just a few bucks a month. Sign up at [00:04:00] patreon.com/phantompower Okay, so without further ado, here’s my interview with historian David Suisman.  David, welcome to the show.  David Suisman: Thank you Mack. It’s great to be here. Mack Hagood: Your opening sentence concerns a rather staggering figure about the United States military budget. Could you maybe tell us about that.  David Suisman: It stopped me dead in my tracks when I found this little factoid in the course of my research. And that is that in 2015, 10 years ago, the US Congress allocated some $437 million to music by military bands and not just a raw number, but that was about three times the size of the entire budget of the National Endowment for the Arts. Just let that sink in for a second. Like the government was spending almost three times as much on military music as all other support [00:05:00] for the arts combined.  That really knocked me out. Mack Hagood: It’s really incredible, and I love this as a strategy for opening a book because the number just speaks for itself, right? It boldly proclaims the stakes of the book for one thing, right? If music wasn’t perceived as deadly serious by the Pentagon, they really wouldn’t be spending this kind of money and fighting budget hawks on this issue since the Civil War, right? There have been skeptics about the value of music to the military. But it also signals to scholars, to music scholars, that the military should really be front and center in our research agenda as well, right?  David Suisman: Yeah,  Mack Hagood: Why hasn’t it been? David Suisman: Sound studies has done a lot of really creative work. but the state has not been very present in a lot of scholars’ frameworks. And one of the things that I was seeking to do, or one of the things that I was exploring in the course of working on this whole project, was trying to understand the [00:06:00] relationship between sound and the state. I was thinking the state is important in the construction of modern, social formation. And so what is the role of sound in it? And what is, what does sound mean for the state? These were pretty abstract questions that I didn’t know how to answer for a long time. And then I found a few different places where they were manifested, but one of them was in thinking about music in the military. That was one of the places where the military is so important to the constitution of the state and the function of the state. And sound in the form of music being so central I realized, to the military. So that’s how I came to it and why I think it makes sense for the scholarship Mack Hagood: And there’s certainly been some good research done. I’m thinking of Suzaane Cusik’s.. David Suisman: Acoustics work  Mack Hagood: Acoustics work on musical torture, or Martin Daughtry’s work in his book “Listening to War” but in terms of a comprehensive study [00:07:00] of how music has been used by the United States military, I’m not familiar with any other book that really does this work. David Suisman: There is surprisingly little on music in the military that’s not about, particularly songs, when people have written about music in the military, it’s often been song focused. About song lyrics, essentially.  And, as I’m sure we’ll talk about, my book is much broader. More capacious than that. Mack Hagood: Well, in fact that’s really why I thought it was a good fit for a sound studies podcast like this because, you don’t really focus on musical compositions or composers. Like I was really surprised at how little oral estate John Phillips Souza gets,  David Suisman: Of mentions, yeah.  Mack Hagood: But instead you’re really interested in, music as a sonic technology that’s used by the military on one hand, and then also by soldiers themselves or service members themselves on the other hand  David Suisman: Yeah that’s exactly it. I’m [00:08:00] really interested in how music itself works as a technology, not about music technologies, as we usually use the term, but how music is used as a technology by the military to advance the military’s aims in war making. And it does so in this dialectical way, it works as a top down tool of the institution. It fu

The sound studies community is reeling from the death of Jonathan Sterne this past Thursday. Jonathan’s presence and work were–and are–incredibly influential on the intellectual and ethical commitments of our field. He was a generous mentor to so many, including me. Do you know those “WWJD?” bracelets? I’ve been wearing one in my mind for about 15 years: “What Would Jonathan Do?” In this short, impromptu episode, I share a few thoughts about what he meant to me and to sound studies. If you want to spend some time with Jonathan’s voice, we were lucky to feature him in several episodes, but our Dork-o-phonics episode, based on his book Diminished Faculties, is certainly my favorite. The post Remembering Jonathan Sterne (1970-2025) appeared first on Phantom Power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Liz Pelly is our foremost journalist/critic on the Spotify beat. Her byline has appeared at the Baffler, Guardian, NPR, and many other outlets. She is also an adjunct instructor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Liz is also been making the media rounds lately, talking about her new book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (One Signal Publishers). The book is both a history of Spotify and an argument that Spotify is not, in fact, a music company, but rather an advertising company focused on manipulating user behavior to maximize time on platform. As a consequence, Spotify not only pushes musical aesthetics towards banal, “lean-back listening,” it also makes musicians themselves expendable: replaceable by ghost musicians, AI slop, and behavioral algorithms that keep people just barely engaged at the lowest cost. In this show, Liz details how platforms shape listening and music making alike. We also discuss the tension between frictionless music consumption and meaningful cultural engagement. And remember, there’s an extended version of this interview which features a bunch of bonus material including a listener question, a deep dive into Liz’s reporting methods, and the backstory of how she got into journalism and got a major book deal, plus her book and music recommendations. It’s available to our Patrons for a mere $3 a month. Sign up at Patreon.com/phantompower. Transcript Liz Pelly: [00:00:00] When I hear something like the founder of an AI company saying “Making music is too hard. People don’t want to learn how to play instruments,” or even this idea that a streaming platform should help people reduce cognitive work. It’s like, that essentially means we should help people not have to think. And I think that, you know,  Mack Hagood: Yeah.  Liz Pelly: As critics, what we do is encourage people to think, you know, thinking and making decisions is an important part of processing life in the world and information and culture and figuring out how you actually feel about someone’s art. Introduction: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom [00:01:00] Power, a podcast about sound. I’m Mack Hagood. My guest today is journalist Liz Pelly, someone I’ve been reading avidly and having my students read for almost a decade now. Pelly is our foremost journalist and critic on the Spotify beat. Her byline has appeared in the Baffler, the Guardian, NPR, and many other outlets. She’s also an adjunct instructor at NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts. Liz has been making the media rounds lately, talking about her new book Mood Machine, the Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist, out on One Signal Publishers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The book is both a history of Spotify and an argument that Spotify is not in fact a music company, but rather an advertising company focused on manipulating user behavior to maximize time on platform. As a consequence, Spotify not only pushes musical aesthetics towards banal, lean back [00:02:00] listening, it also makes musicians themselves expendable, replaceable by ghost musicians, AI slop, and behavioral algorithms that keep people just barely engaged at the lowest cost. I am super excited to have Liz on the show and get into the weeds of how platforms shape listening and music making alike. And remember, there’s an extended version of this interview that features a bunch of bonus material, including a listener question, a deep dive into Liz’s reporting methods, and the backstory of how she got into journalism and got a major book deal. We’ll also have her book and music recommendations. It’s available to our patrons for a mere $3 a month. Sign up at patreon. com /phantom power. All right, let’s get to it.  All right. Liz, welcome. Liz Pelly: Hey, thank you so much for having me. Mack Hagood: So I [00:03:00] thought we could start off by talking about the title of your book. For those of you folks out there who aren’t familiar with your years of research on Spotify and your journalistic pieces on it, why name a book about Spotify, Mood Machine?  Liz Pelly: That’s a great question. I think when I first started thinking about the book, I was thinking about it in two sections. Actually, the first book proposal that I wrote was a proposal for two books. One was going to be about the impact of the streaming economy on listening. And one was going to be about the impact on artists. I quickly realized that it made much more sense to just write one book, but I shifted to this idea of writing a book in two parts where the first part was going to be about how streaming had reshaped listening and the second part was going to be about the material impact on musicians. That structure didn’t quite hold, by the time I got to the final table of contents, things shifted a little bit, but [00:04:00] when I was thinking about, originally, when I was thinking about mood, to me, that word sort of evoked the way that streaming has impacted listening and the shift from albums to playlists, the championing of playlists that are mood playlists or connected to emotions in some way. And then, when I thought about the word machine, I really thought about the relationship between, like labor and the music industry or labor and capital even. You know, I was thinking about the way  in which the music industry squeezes musicians more and more under this model and, just the trajectory of the music business. Obviously, a lot of this book also covers the shift from the playlist era into the era of streaming curation, being more driven by machine learning and algorithms and personalization. So there’s surely like a point of this all, or there’s a way of interpreting the title that also evokes that, but yeah, it’s really interesting. Like, you know, when I thought of it, I was thinking a lot about the relationship between musicians and this model.  Mack Hagood: Yeah. Well, I love the title and I definitely want to dig into a lot of what you just mentioned there, but I was thinking maybe we could go back to 2007. Is that when Spotify launched?  Liz Pelly: Technically, the company was created in 2006 and it launched in its first markets in 2008.  Mack Hagood: Okay. So back then, what was the state of the music industry? What was Spotify, the alleged solution to? What was the problem? Liz Pelly: So this is still the era where the music industry was trying to figure out how to recover from the impact of file sharing. Around 1999 to 2001 was the time when Napster was, , according to the people in the music business, wreaking havoc on the global recorded music industry. By the time Spotify came along, the music business had already spent years and years trying to figure out solutions that would work in the digital music era, you know, also taking individual fans to court over file sharing. The music business had tried to launch some of its own streaming services as an alternative to piracy. There’s a whole sort of, fumbled strategy, on the behalf of the major record labels and the mainstream music business trying to figure out how to solve this problem. It’s really interesting because the impacts of file sharing, I think , were and continue to be felt differently by different musicians and different corners of music. But something else that was also going on was in the United States by the mid 2000s, the iTunes library model had taken off or taken hold a little bit more here than in other parts of [00:07:00] the world. Spotify was founded in Stockholm, Sweden by two men with backgrounds in the advertising industry, in Sweden, even by 2005, 2006, while the industry was somewhat successfully starting to figure out ways of selling digital music to consumers, piracy was stronger there. Around that time, you still had the Pirate Bay, which is a really big cultural force in Sweden. Sweden had a pirate party. There’s a politicized element of music piracy in Sweden. And yeah, I think the founders of Spotify, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon just saw an opportunity to build on their backgrounds and add tech to try to build a product that would appeal to both consumers that loved music piracy and the music industry that was like, you know, floundering.  Mack Hagood: You know, it’s really fascinating to think about the Sweden piece, why it pops up there specifically, there were so many American companies that [00:08:00] were trying to take a crack at this, I mean, back in the day, if you had forced me to guess, like this concept of just like streaming music, , who would, , be able to do it. Well, I probably would have guessed something like MySpace because there were, that’s where all the indie bands were. And it just seemed like something like band camp could have happened there. But Sweden winds up being the hotbed of it. And as you say, something to do with piracy, the role piracy plays there. And it seemed from what I gleaned from your book that partly the music labels were willing to let Sweden experiment, because they already saw it as a lost cause in terms of everyone was just pirating music. Is that right?  Liz Pelly: Yeah, according to people who were in Sweden at the time, the music industry had started to see Sweden as a lost market, to use the quote, the phrase that came up in some of my interviews. , specifically the [00:09:00] free tier, you know, that was a period of time when the music business, , and the major labels who, , control the rights to so much of what we think of when we think of the history of recorded music, which is its own issue to unpack the major labels were really allergic to anything that had the word free in it that involved, the concept of giving music away for free or providing free access to music. In Sweden, though, which th

In this episode, host Mack Hagood dives into the world of AI-generated music and art with digital artist and theorist Eryk Salvaggio. The conversation explores technical and philosophical aspects of AI art, its impact on culture, and the ‘age of noise’ it has ushered in. AI dissolves sounds and images into literal noise, subsequently reversing the process to create new “hypothetical” sounds and images. The kinds of cultural specificities that archivists struggle to preserve are stripped away when we treat human culture as data in this way.  Eryk also shares insights into his works like ‘Swim’ and ‘Sounds Like Music,’ which test AI’s limitations and forces the machine to reflect on itself in revealing ways. Finally, the episode contemplates how to find meaning and context in an overwhelming sea of information.  Eryk Salvaggio is a researcher and new media artist interested in the social and cultural impacts of artificial intelligence. His work explores the creative misuse of AI and the transformation of archives into datasets for AI training: a practice designed to expose ideologies of tech and to confront the gaps between datasets and the worlds they claim to represent. A blend of hacker, researcher, designer and artist, he has been published in academic journals, spoken at music and film festivals, and consulted on tech policy at the national level. He is a researcher on AI, art and education at the metaLab (at) Harvard University, the Emerging Technology Research Advisor to the Siegel Family Endowment, and a top contributor to Tech Policy Press. He holds an MSc in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and an MSc in Applied Cybernetics from the Australian National University. Works discussed in this podcast:  The Age of Noise (2024) SWIM (2024): A meditation on training data, memory, and archives. Sounds Like Music: Toward a Multi-Modal Media Theory of Gaussian Pop (2024) How to Read an AI Image (2023) You can learn more about Eryk Salvaggio at cyberneticforests.com Learn more about Phantom Power at phantompod.org  Join our Patreon at patreon.com/phantompower Transcription by Katelyn Phan 00:00 Introduction and Podcast News 03:24 Introducing Eryk Salvaggio, AI Artist and Theorist 05:33 Understanding the Information Age and Noise 09:14 The Diffusion Process and AI Bias 33:35 Ethics of AI and Data Curation 39:09 Exploring the Artwork ‘Swim’ 45:16 AI in Music: Platforms and Experiments 01:00:04 Embracing Noise and Context Transcript Eryk Salvaggio: I think as consumers of the music generated by AI, that’s the thing that I want to think about is as a listener, what am I hearing and how do I listen like meaningfully to a piece of AI music that essentially has no meaning.  Introduction: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, the show where we dive deep into sound studies, acoustic ecology, sound art, experimental music, all things sonic. I’m Mack Hagood. Today we’re talking to the digital artist and theorist, Eryk Salvaggio. We’ll be diving into the question of what is AI art and AI music? And we’re going to attack this question on both the technical and the philosophical level. We’re also going to talk about how to live in what Eryk calls, “the age of noise”. It’s a really interesting conversation, so stick around. But first I want to just go over a few quick show notes. For those of you listening in your podcast feed, you will have noticed that after something of a hiatus, We’re back. I am looking forward to bringing you this podcast, once a month in 2025. We have a lot of fascinating interviews on tap next month. Journalist Liz Pelly will be with us to discuss her new book on Spotify. I could not be more excited about that. For those of you joining us on YouTube or maybe Spotify, you’ll notice that you can see me. So it’s taken a lot of work, but we have officially jumped on the video podcast bandwagon. I think today’s episode is going to show the power of that, because we’re going to be talking not only about music, but also about video art made by AI. And it’s going to be helpful to actually see it with your eyes. But no worries to all of our dedicated audio listeners and visually impaired folks. We’re going to be sure to describe anything relevant that’s seen on the screen. So audio or video, feel free to enjoy Phantom Power in the modality of your choice. And if you’re watching or listening for the first time, please do subscribe wherever you’re encountering this flow of waveforms and pixels. And finally for longtime listeners who have been following along with my epic saga of trying to pivot from writing academic works to writing for the public, I’m thrilled to announce that I got a book deal. My next book will be coming out on Penguin Press. And for those of you who have been following along with this saga, you’ll know that I’ve done episodes and Patreon posts about how I found an agent, what it’s like to work with an agent, writing a proposal. and so I’m going to have more bonus content in my Patreon feed where I talk about the final stages of how we crafted the proposal and shopped it to publishers and had meetings and had an auction and all that kind of stuff. So if you want the inside scoop. Just join our Patreon at patreon.com/phantompower. Okay. Onto today’s guest. My guest today is Eryk Salvaggio. Eryk is a researcher and new media artist interested in the social and cultural impacts of artificial intelligence. His work explores the creative misuse of AI and the transformation of archives into datasets for AI training. Eryk is a researcher at the Meta Lab at Harvard. He has advanced degrees in media communications, and applied cybernetics from the London School of Economics and the Australian National University. And you may know Salvaggio from his widely read newsletter on AI, Cybernetic Forests. I met Eryk last year at the Unsound Festival in Cracow, Poland, where we were both speaking and Eryk gave this dynamite performance lecture called the age of noise, which incorporated some of his video experiments with artificial intelligence. And this talk just blew me away. I knew I wanted to bring him to you. So today we’re discussing how AI systems literally dissolve human culture, images, video. ,music, they dissolve them into noise and then use that noise as a starting point to create new objects that look and sound like cultural objects, yet lack human characteristics. So welcome to the age of noise. Here’s my interview with Eryk salvaggio All right, Eryk welcome to the show.  Eryk Salvaggio: Thanks so much. I’m really excited to be here.  Mack Hagood: So I had the pleasure hearing you speak at the Unsound Festival in Krakow. And I was just blown away by your talk, which concerned the role of noise in generative AI. And it also made a larger point about noise and contemporary digital life. And the central claim of that talk was that we have basically finished the information age and we’ve entered this, what you call, “age of noise”.  I think we’ll eventually make our way to AI and the age of noise, but I was thinking maybe we could start off by how would you characterize the information age? It’s certainly a term we’ve heard a lot, but how are you thinking about it? Say in the talk that, you gave.  Eryk Salvaggio: If you look at the early age of computing, if you look at the early age of communication, there was this belief and it’s not necessarily a wrong belief, that the more information we have access to, the more knowledge we have about the world and the more agency we have in the world, the more informed our decisions could be. And so much of technology in that century, starting in the cybernetic era of the forties and the fifties even was around., “How do you get information? And make sense of that information?” And then when we started moving closer to the communication networks, it was more about , “How do you distribute this information so that everybody has access to this information?” And all of it was around this idea that information is super valuable and that if we have information, we could become in a way, better people, better citizens. And then with the internet. It becomes this weird mirror where everyone’s able to access information, but they’re also able to produce it. And the production of information is, measured and it’s weighed and it’s distributed by this sort of other worldly power that we’ve come to call the algorithm. And so everything’s being sorted and we don’t necessarily have access to the information that we need to understand the world. Instead, we have information that is a mess, right? And it’s a fire hose. It’s overwhelming. And so my argument in the age of noise is that this information age piece that was just this access to information has become so overwhelming and so hard to process that it has become essentially noise. Mack Hagood: Yeah. And I loved like there, there’s a point in the talk where you’re talking about the role of noise in the information age. And you’re basically talking about information theory and we should probably have a drinking game for this podcast at time. I mentioned Claude Shannon, cause I always mentioned Claude Shannon.  You talk about, how noise was this thing that sort of crept into circuits and crept into the channel and that noise was this residual energy of the big bang. and our task was to remove any traces of noise from our phone calls. And, then we get to this point where the information age has given us so much high quality signal, so to speak, that in itself becomes noise, right? And, what’s. Really interesting to me is that like all of these pieces of data, they’r

Today we discuss how narrative podcasts work, the role they’ve played in American culture and how they’ve shaped our understanding of podcasting as a genre and an industry. Neil Verma’s new book, Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession, offers a rich analysis of the recent so-called golden age of podcasting. Verma studied around 300 podcasts and listened to several thousand episodes from between the fall of 2014 when Serial became a huge hit to the start of the Covid pandemic and early 2020. It was a period when podcasts—and especially genres like narrative nonfiction and true crime—were one of the biggest media trends going. At the heart of these genres, Verma writes, was obsession–a character obsessed with something, a reporter obsessed with that character, and listeners obsessed with the resulting narrative podcast. Neil Verma is associate professor in Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University and co-founder of its MA program in Sound Arts and Industries. Verma is an expert in the history of audio fiction, sound studies, and media history more broadly. He is best known for his landmark 2012 book, Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama, which won the Best First Book Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Verma has been a consultant for a variety of radio and film projects, including Martin Scorsese’s film Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). In addition to his research, Verma has also created experimental sound recordings for broadcast. His compositions have been selected for several radio art festivals around the world, winning an honorable mention from the Sound of the Year awards in the U.K in 2020. For a fascinating listener Q+A with Neil, visit patreon.com/phantompower and get free access to this bonus episode in our patrons-only feed. Finally, we have big news: This will be the final episode of Phantom Power. But don’t worry, Mack will be launching a new podcast about sound in early 2025. To make sure you hear about the new show, receive our new newsletter, and get bonus podcast content in the coming months, sign up for a free or paid membership at patreon.com/phantompower. Transcript Mack Hagood  00:00 Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power. I’m Mack Hagood. Today we talk with Neil Verma, author of the new book Narrative Podcasting In an Age of Obsession. Neil offers a rich, multifaceted and methodologically creative analysis of the so-called Golden Age of podcasting. And it’s pretty wild how intensively he studied this recent period of history, investigating around 300 podcasts and listening to several 1000 episodes, from between the fall of 2014 when Serial became a huge hit to the start of the COVID pandemic in early 2020. This was a period when podcasts and especially ones in genres like narrative nonfiction and true crime, were really one of the biggest media trends of that moment.  And we’re going to talk about how narrative podcasts work, the role that they played in American culture, and how they shaped the cultural understanding of podcasting as a genre, and an industry. But first, last episode, I promised you some big news about this podcast. And here it is. This episode is not only our 15th, and final episode of the season, it’s also the last episode of Phantom Power. I’ve been producing this show since 2018, we’ve done over 50 episodes, and I’ve loved pretty much every minute of it. It’s been such a privilege to bring you these amazing guests, forge connections, and help foster a community in sound studies and acoustic ecology. It’s truly been one of the most fulfilling things that’s happened in my academic career. So why am I ending the show? Well, I’m starting a new podcast, it’s still going to be about sound, it’s still going to engage with the theories and practices of sound studies and acoustic ecology and sound art. But it’s going to be a more public facing and accessible kind of show.  So you know, I’ve had this NEH grant for this year. And while I’ve been producing this show, and writing a book proposal for a trade press book, and while I’ve been doing that stuff, I’ve also been working about 20 hours a week on developing this new podcast. And just like I’m pivoting from writing an academic book to a mainstream nonfiction book, I want to do the same thing here, I want to present a highly polished narrative podcast for the public. I don’t want to say too much more about it right now. But just know that I’ll still be interviewing experts and artists, but the focus will be on telling stories, not in providing a really, you know, long form interview. So in a way, this is going to be getting back to what we attempted in the very early days of Phantom Power, but with even higher production values. I’m a finalist for a New America Foundation Fellowship. So if that comes through, I’m going to put all of those resources into this new podcast. And the good news is, well, actually, I think there are a few good pieces of news for Phantom Power listeners. The first one is that I’m going to do what’s called “feed jacking”. So the new show is just going to show up right here in the Phantom Power feed. So you’re not going to have to go look for it or do anything to get the new show when it launches in early 2025.  Second, for those folks who are members of the Patreon, I’m going to keep dropping the occasional long form interview. I love Phantom Power for those who want that deeper dive. And I also, I’m going to have a newsletter because I thought I wasn’t enough of a walking cliche by having a podcast, I really needed to add the newsletter component to it. So yes, a newsletter, it’s going to have news about sound original essays, updates on my from my book research, and interviews with sound scholars. And of course, I’ll be updating you on the progress of the new show through that newsletter. If you’re interested in the newsletter, just sign up at patreon.com/Phantom Power for a free membership or a paid membership. And I’ll send that your way. It won’t be too frequent, probably once or twice a month. I’d also love for folks to sign up for a free membership just so that I can reach out this summer with a listener survey.  I’m developing this listener survey to help me as I tried to figure out this new show and what it’s going to be. By the way, I got a Spotify message from a listener who said they couldn’t find the free option on Patreon. If you just go to the Patreon site, it’s a button right there at the top of the page that lets you join for free. And by the way, at the end of this episode, I’m going to thank by name all of our paid subscribers who have helped support the show this season. One other bit of cool news.  Some of you may be familiar with the New Books Network. They are a really important podcast network that is distributing and documenting for posterity 1000s of conversations about new books you in all kinds of academic fields, and two weeks ago, they began rebroadcasting all episodes of Phantom Power in order once a week on the new books in sound studies feed, so this is going to take a year for them to release all the episodes week by week. So if anyone is interested in hearing it all again, or telling a friend, just Google new books and sound studies, or hit the link in the show notes.  And finally, thanks to all of you who got in touch, to let me know how you use the podcast in your classes or in your work as a sound scholar or practitioner, y’all are doing some really cool stuff. And it’s so gratifying to hear how this show plays a tiny part in it. As I go up for full professor, I’m trying to compile a list of how Phantom Power has been used in university settings. So if you’re listening and you haven’t sent me an email, and you have something to add, please let me know. So just email me at [email protected] That is h-a-g-o-o-d-w-m as in Mack. And thank you. Okay. Wow, that was a lot of stuff. Again, thanks to all of you for listening. I hope you’ll stick around for the new show and also take the survey when I put it out so I can get some feedback in developing the new one.  Okay, let’s get to it. Let’s talk about our guests. Neil Verma is one of the most innovative scholars I know of working in radio and podcast studies. He’s an associate professor in Radio, Television and Film and co-founder of the MA program in Sound Arts and Industries at Northwestern University. He co-founded that with past Phantom Power guests, Jacob Smith. Verma is an expert in the history of audio fiction, sound studies and media history more broadly, like a lot of great radio and sound scholars. Neil’s from Canada, he grew up in Burlington, Ontario, a small town 50 miles west of Toronto. He’s the son of a half French Canadian half Anglo Canadian school teacher, mom, and a dad who was a scientist originally from India.  Neil Verma  07:15 He was the only brown skinned paleontologist in Canada in the 60s. And so he spent about 10 years trying to make a go of that and didn’t have a lot of success. So eventually, he kind of quit academia and started a business like a lot of immigrant families do. He started a printing company. And so we had sort of a mom and pop printing company when I was a kid.  Mack Hagood  07:35 Radio wasn’t an obsession for Neil as a kid, but it was a constant companion.  Neil Verma  07:40 I can’t remember a time when a radio wasn’t on in my kitchen. So yeah, part of the background texture of life for me when I was a child, but also so obvious, and so present that you don’t think about it. It’s like air.  Mack Hagood  07:54 Neil got a BA in English from McGill University and a PhD in the history of culture from University of Chicago. He’s best known for his landmark 2012 book Theater of the Mind