New Books in Sound Studies
Episodes
The World According to Sound: Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett on Audio Art, Wonder, and Humanistic Reasoning
04 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and special guest host, Melanie Kiechle (Associate Professor of History, Virginia Tech), chat with radio producers ...
Deirdre Loughridge & Thomas Patteson, "The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments" (Reaktion, 2026)
30 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments (Reaktion, 2026) by Dr. Deirdre Loughridge & Dr. Thomas Patteson is a guided tour through centuries of in...
Philip Abbott, "Sounds for a New World: The Christianizing Soundscapes of Late Antiquity" (Oxford UP, 2026)
29 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the Greco-Roman world, gods were known to tame soundscapes, or acoustic landscapes. Zeus, Apollo, Orpheus, and other Classical deities demonstrated...
Christina Schwenkel, "Sonic Socialism: Crisis and Care in Pandemic Hanoi" (U California Press, 2025)
31 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In an era dominated by visual information, what can the sounds of a pandemic reveal about crisis and care? How might attuning to sonic atmospheres unc...
P. Thirumal and K. A. Nuaiman eds., "Inhabiting Technologies/Modernities: Media and Cultural Practices in South Asia" (Orient BlackSwan, 2025)
17 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Studies of forms of media have focused on either political or cultural histories of media. Political histories study media growth and literacy, and th...
Podcast Intellectuals Panel #3 with Joy Connolly, Barry Lam, and Aurora Hutchinson
14 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On October 10, 2025, NYU’s Journalism Institute hosted a d...
Podcast Intellectuals Panel #2 with Ellen Horne, Chenjerai Kumanyika, Barry Lam, and Julia Barton
13 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On October 10, 2025, NYU’s Journalism Institute hosted a da...
Podcast Intellectuals Podcast Panel #1 with Benjamen Walker and Fanny Gribenski
12 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On October 10, 2025, NYU’s Journalism Institute hosted a da...
S2. E10. Sharon White Rewires Disco
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the center of 1970s New York's most iconic clubs—from the celebrity-studded Studio 54 to the premiere lesbian discotheque Sahara—stood a queer ...
James Brown's War on Disco
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the penultimate episode of season 2 of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares sit down with acclaimed historian Alice Echols, autho...
Eduardo Mercado III, "Why Whales Sing" (JHU Press, 2025)
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With breathtaking complexity and haunting beauty, the songs of whales have long fascinated scientists. Whales are the only mammals that can sing conti...
Mattin, "Social Dissonance" (MIT Press, 2022)
08 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We are not what we think we are. Our self-image as natural individuated subjects is determined behind our backs: historically by political forces, cog...
Birgit Abels and Patrick Eisenlohr, "Atmospheric Knowledge: Environmentality, Latency, and Sonic Multimodality" (U California Press, 2025)
07 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do we know through atmospheres? How can being affected by an atmosphere give rise to knowledge? What role does somatic, nonverbal knowledge play i...
Anand, "The Notbook of Kabir: Thinner than Water, Fiercer than Fire" (India Viking, 2025)
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kabir is the most alive of all dead poets. He is a fabric without stitches. No centres, no edges. Anand threads his way in. Over the years, as a publi...
Disco's Revenge
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of Disco Demolition Night in 1979—a cultural bonfire that seemed to signal the end of disco—something unexpected began to rise from Ch...
Disco Sucks
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On July 12, 1979, Chicago’s Comiskey Park erupted into chaos during what was supposed to be a quirky baseball promotion. Shock radio jock Steve Dahl...
From Stonewall to Studio 54
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the fifth episode of Season Two of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares sit down with the legendary DJ Nicky Siano. The history ...
Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen, "The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds Across Landscapes and Imagination" (Reaktion, 2025)
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds across Landscapes and Imagination (Reaktion, 2025), nature writers Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen set ...
Disco's "Latin Tinge"
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1930s, musical Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton identified the influence of Latin American rhythms like the habanera in jazz, as a sonic “ti...
Kate Herrity, "Sound, Order and Survival in Prison: The Rhythms and Routines of HMP Midtown" (Bristol UP, 2024)
16 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The soundscape of prison life is that of constant clangs, bangs and jangles. What is the significance of this cacophonous din to those who live and wo...
A Spatial History of Disco
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the third episode of Season Two of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares take you on an immersive journey through the hot nights a...
S1.E7. Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce Springsteen was keenly aware and excited by the sounds of the CBGBs scene during the Seventies. With his own bands, the Boss performed in the sa...
Sounds of the City Collapsing
04 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the fourth episode of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell and music historian Jesse Rifkin tour a constellation of seedy bars and venues in the 1970...
Simon Stjernholm, "Sensing Islam: Engaging and Contesting the Senses in Muslim Religiosity" (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025)
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Simon Stjernholm's new book Sensing Islam: Engaging and Contesting the Senses in Muslim Religiosity (Bloomsbury Press, 2025) considers specific cas...
Colleen Renihan, John Spilker, and Trudi Wright eds., "Sound Pedagogy: Radical Care in Music" (University of Illinois Press, 2024)
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sound Pedagogy: Radical Care in Music (University of Illinois Press, 2024) is a collected edition about Pedagogies of Care edited by Colleen Renihan,...
Pooja Rangan, Akshya Saxena, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Pavitra Sundar eds., "Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice" (UC Press, 2023)
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone speaks with an accent, but what is an accent? Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (UC Press, 2023) introduce...
Noise and Affect Theory
26 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Feminist sound scholar and musician Marie Thompson is a theorist of noise. She has also been one of the key thinkers in integrating the study of sou...
From Hal to Siri: How Computers Learned to Speak
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we learn how computers learned to talk with Benjamin Lindquist, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University’s Science in Human Cul...
Noise and Information in the Office
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ever wonder who’s to blame for the noise and distraction of the open office? Our guest has answers. Joseph L. Clarke is a historian of art and arch...
Robin Miles: Talking Books
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we bring you a masterclass in audiobook narration and acting with acclaimed actor, casting director, audiobook narrator and audiobook director, ...
Radiophilia
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Carolyn Birdsall, Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. If you’re a scholar of sound or radio, you like...
Cosmic Visions in Sound
21 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we share a podcast episode on the visual epistemology of astronomy by our friends at The World According to Sound. What kind of knowledge do we...
Your Devotee in Rags
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with cultural icons, Anne Waldman (The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment) and Andrew Whiteman (Brok...
Tinnitus Stories
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today Mack talks about one of his oldest companions, the tinnitus that lives rent-free in his head. Tinnitus can be annoying, for sure–and for some ...
Warren Zanes: Rockstar Biographer
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Warren Zanes is a “rockstar biographer” in more ways than one: he has experienced life as a rockstar, a biographer, and a biographer of rockstars...
Making Radio History
31 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Elena Razlogova is an Associate Professor of History at Concordia University. She is the author of The Listener’s Voice: Early Radio and the Ameri...
The Audiobook's Century-Long Overnight Success
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we present the first episode of a miniseries on audiobooks by getting into the history and theory of the medium. Audiobooks are having a moment—...
Radha Kapuria and Vebhuti Duggal, "Punjab Sounds: In and Beyond the Region" (Routledge, 2024)
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Punjab Sounds (Routledge, 2024) nuances our understanding of the region's imbrications with sound. It argues that rather than being territorially bo...
A Philosophy of Echoes
17 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We spend our 50th episode (the last of this season) with communication theorist Amit Pinchevski. Amit’s recent book Echo (MIT Press) explores its...
Lauren E. Osborne, "Hearing Islam: The Sounds of a Global Religious Tradition" (Routledge, 2024)
15 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Hearing Islam: The Sounds of a Global Religious Tradition, Lauren Osborne delves into the sonic dimensions of Islam, exploring how the tradition’...
Karl Berglund, "Reading Audio Readers: Book Consumption in the Streaming Age" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is the future of reading? In Reading Audio Readers: Book Consumption in the Digital Age (Bloombury, 2024), Karl Berglund, Assistant Professor ...
John Cage: Echoes of the Anechoic
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we explore the mythology around John Cage’s visit to the anechoic chamber. The chamber was designed to completely eliminate echoes. Ironically...
Eric Dienstfrey, "Making Stereo Fit: The History of a Disquieting Film Technology" (U California Press, 2024)
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fi...
Sonic AI
03 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we hear two scholars reading their recent work on artificial intelligence. Steph Ceraso studies the technology of “voice donation,” which pr...
Tiziano Manca, "Before Sound: Re-Composing Material, Time, and Bodies in Music" (Transcript Verlag, 2023)
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Before Sound: Re-Composing Material, Time, and Bodies in Music (Transcript Verlag, 2023), composer Tiziano Manca investigates the premises for an...
Words and Silences: The Thomas Merton Hermitage Tapes
24 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Harnetty’s recent record, Words and Silences, takes voice recordings made by the famed American Trappist monk Thomas Merton and sets them wit...
The Soundworld of Harriet Tubman
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Just in time for Black History Month, we share an episode we’ve been excitedly working on for a number of months now. Ethnomusicologist Maya Cunning...
Hildegard Westerkamp: A Life in Soundscape Composition
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we speak to Hildegard Westerkamp, the pioneering composer, radio artist and sound ecologist. The centerpiece of all of her work is a close atte...
Carola Lorea and Rosalind Hackett, "Religious Sounds Beyond the Global North: Senses, Media and Power" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)
09 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What makes sounds “religious”? How are communities shaped by the things they hear, play, or listen to? This book foregrounds connections between s...
Spacing Out with Dallas Taylor of 20,000 HZ
27 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talk to Dallas Taylor, host of the most popular sound podcast on the planet, Twenty Thousand Hertz. I like to think our show sounds pretty g...
Listening in the Afterlife of Data
20 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you walk into David Cecchetto‘s classroom, you might find people wearing audio devices that simulate hearing with a thousand-foot wide head. Or ...
(Re)Making Radio with the Shortwave Collective
13 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Shortwave Collective describe themselves as “an international feminist group using the radio spectrum as artistic material.” I was first int...
Rebecca Charbonneau, "Mixed Signals: Alien Communication Across the Iron Curtain" (Polity, 2024)
08 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the shadow of the Cold War, whispers from the cosmos fueled an unlikely alliance between the US and USSR. The search for extraterrestrial intellige...
In One Ear, Out The Other
06 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s show, we address a performer’s nightmare—the nightmare of not being able to hear yourself onstage. My guest is ethnomusicologist Jaco...
Fela Kuti and the Black Atlantic
30 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This summer, sound artist and “guerrilla academic” Ben Coleman got in touch to say how much he enjoys Phantom Power. He also suggested we check ...
Awfully Viral
23 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s summer and we are busy working on episodes for our fourth season. We’ve also rebuilt our website–check out the the fabulous new phantompod....
Voices Part 3: Dork-O-Phonics
16 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Sterne is one of the most influential scholars working on sound and listening. His 2003 book, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound R...
Voices Part 2: The Sound of My Voice
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In part two of our three-part series “Voices,” we feature an exciting new voice in the world of sound studies, Stacey Copeland. In part one l...
Voices Part 1: Hut-Hut-Hike
02 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this first episode of a three-part series called Voices, we’re listening to the sound of American football—specifically the role of voices in ...
How Our Sonic Sausage Gets Made
25 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode, we take you behind the scenes of Phantom Power. Producer/host Mack Hagood was invited by Dario Llinares and Lori Beckstead to be a g...
Fiona Smyth, "Pistols in St Paul's: Science, Music, and Architecture in the Twentieth Century" (Manchester UP, 2024)
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On a winter's night in 1951, shortly after Evensong, the interior of St Paul's Cathedral echoed with gunfire. This was no act of violence but a scient...
The World According to Sound
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The World According to Sound is the brainchild of two rogue audionauts who rebelled against the NPR mothership: Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett. It beg...
R. Murray Schaffer (1933-2021), Part 2
11 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How to think about the contradictory figure of R. Murray Schafer? A renegade scholar who used sound technology to create an entirely new field of stu...
Anette Hoffmann, "Knowing by Ear: Listening to Voice Recordings with African Prisoners of War in German Camps (1915–1918)" (Duke UP, 2024)
09 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During World War I, thousands of young African men conscripted to fight for France and Britain were captured and held as prisoners of war in Germany, ...
R. Murray Schafer (1933-2021), Part 1
04 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
R. Murray Schafer recently passed away on August 14th 2021. If you’re someone who works with sound or enjoys sound art or experimental music–or ...
On Listening In
28 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, in honor of World Listening Day, we rebroadcast our story on renowned Australian sound composer, media artist and curator Lawrence English. Th...
Emotional Rescue
21 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What can sound technologies tell us about our relationship to media as a whole? This is one of the central questions in the research of Phantom Power...
Lightning Birds
14 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today we present the first episode of Jacob Smith’s new eco-critical audiobook, Lightning Birds: An Aeroecology of the Airwaves. In this audio-only...
For Some Odd Reason
07 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest, Kate Carr, is an accomplished sound artist and field recordist whose recent work grapples with issues of communication and longing—...
Voice of Yoko
30 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, Phantom Power‘s Amy Skjerseth brings us the story of perhaps the most famous vocal performance artist and avant-garde musician whose actual ...
Jason Weiss, "Listenings" (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023)
29 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Listenings (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023) is a collection of meditations on the art of experiencing sound. The writings reflect Jason Weiss's passion for il...
Forest Listening Rooms
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What would happen if you took red state rural voters on a walk into the woods with left-wing environmental activists and experimental music fans? Our ...
Hey, Robot!
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we’re playing with voice assistants and thinking about the role of voices in gaming with our guest, game designer and NYU professor Frank La...
A Life Based on an Experiment
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 21 presents a portrait of Iranian experimental composer Siavash Amini. His music, which moves seamlessly between contemplative ambience, mena...
What is Radio Art?
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is radio art? It’s a rather unfamiliar term in the United States, but in other countries, it’s a something of an artistic tradition. Today’...
The Sounds of Silents
19 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What did going to the movies sound like back in the “silent film” era? The answer takes us on a strange journey through Vaudeville, roaming Chauta...
Soar and Chill
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why do certain musical sounds move us while others leave us cold? Are musical trends simply that—or do they contain insights into the culture at lar...
Gavin Steingo, "Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music Beyond Humanity" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
10 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music Beyond Humanity (U Chicago Press, 2024), music scholar Gavin Steingo examines significant cases of at...
Goth Diss
05 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With My Gothic Dissertation, University of Iowa PhD Anna M. Williams has transformed the dreary diss into a This American Life-style podcast. Wil...
Resonant Grains
29 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1950s, a schoolteacher named Carleen Hutchins attempted a revolution in how concert violins are made. In this episode, Craig Eley of the F...
Jams Bond
22 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In an unusual episode, we listen back to field recordings that co-host cris cheek made in 1987 and 1993 on the island of Madagascar. It’s a rich so...
Emily Wilbourne, "Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence" (Oxford UP, 2023)
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Grounded in new archival research documenting a significant presence of foreign and racially-marked individuals in Medici Florence, Voice, Slavery, a...
A Book Unbound
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What would it be like if scholars presented their research in sound rather than in print? Better yet, what if we could hear them in the act of their r...
Breathing Together
08 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Working across and among languages, media, and art forms, Caroline Bergvall’s writing takes form as published poetic works and performance, frequen...
Animal Control
01 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we examine the sounds humans make in order to monitor, repel, and control beasts. Author Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s Listen, We All Bleed is...
A Drummer's Tale
24 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Charles Hayward is one of the most propulsive, resourceful and generative rock-plus drummers of the past half-century. An influential percussionist,...
Test Subjects
17 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Season Two erupts in our ears with a film-noir soundscape—an eerie voice utters strange and disjointed phrases and echoing footsteps lead to sirens ...
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, "Sound in Indian Film and Audiovisual Media: History, Practices and Production" (Amsterdam UP, 2023)
17 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay’s book Sound in Indian Film and Audiovisual Media: History, Practices and Production (Amsterdam UP, 2023) is an exhausti...
Screwed and Chopped
10 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the 1990s, many of Houston’s African American residents have customized cars and customized the sound of hip hop. Cars called “slabs” swer...
Corey J. Miles, "Vibe: The Sound and Feeling of Black Life in the American South" (U Mississippi Press, 2024)
07 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Vibe: The Sound and Feeling of Black Life in the American South (University of Mississippi Press, 2023), Corey J. Miles narrates how southern Bl...
Matthew D. Morrison, "Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States" (U California Press, 2024)
05 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States (U California Press, 2024) explores the sonic history of blackface minstrelsy and the ...
Data Streams
03 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On July 18th this year, Teresa Barrozo‘s question — What might the Future sound like? — will be opened to global participation. We bring news o...
Ears Racing
27 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode, we talk with Jennifer Lynn Stoever–editor of the influential sound studies blog Sounding Out!–about her new book, The Sonic Color...
Dirty Rat
20 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This time we talk with a fascinating sound artist and composer Mack met at a recent meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. As...
City of Voices
13 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode we have a single longform interview with a media scholar of note–The New School’s Shannon Mattern. We have teamed up with Mediapoli...
Dead Air
06 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On our first episode of Phantom Power, we ponder those moments when the air remains unmoved. Whether fostered by design or meteorological conditions...
Richard Beaudoin, "Sounds As They Are: The unwritten music in classical recordings" (Oxford UP, 2024)
02 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In a recording, what sounds count as music? Sounds made by a musician's body--including inhales, finger taps, and grunts--have for decades been dismis...
Steve Ferzacca, "Sonic City: Making Rock Music and Urban Life in Singapore" (NUS Press, 2021)
29 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The basement of a veteran shopping mall located in the central business district of Singapore affords opportunities to a group of amateur and semi-pro...
Chen-Pang Yeang, "Transforming Noise. A History of Its Science and Technology from Disturbing Sounds to Informational Errors, 1900-1955" (2023)
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, the concept of noise is employed to characterize random fluctuations in general. Before the twentieth century, however, noise only meant distur...
Carolyn Birdsall, "Radiophilia" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A century ago, the emergence of radio, along with organized systems of broadcasting, sparked a global fascination with the 'wonder' of sound transmiss...