Phantom Power

10 Episodes
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By: Mack Hagood

Mack Hagood explores the world of sound in the arts, music, and culture. Deep but accessible, each episode features the sounds and ideas of a contemporary artist, musician, or sound scholar. Detailed production makes these more than just interviews--they're movies for your mind.

Publishing for Nonfiction Authors (Jane Von Mehren)
03/15/2024

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Today’s episode provides a thorough walkthrough of the publishing industry for aspiring nonfiction writers. Our guest is Jane Von Mehren, Senior Partner at Aevitas Creative Management and a former Senior Vice President at Random House. Jane explains the structure of the publishing industry, how to take your area of expertise and start thinking about a public-facing book, what agents are for, what agents look for in authors, what you should look for in an agent, how to find an agent, how to wri...


Noise and Information in the Office (Joseph L. Clarke)
03/01/2024

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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 architecture and an associate professor at the University of Toronto. His 2021 book Echo’s Chambers: Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space won a 2022 CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Title. It’s a fascinating history of how architects have conceived of and manipulated the relationship between sound and space. His most recent public...


Robin Miles: Talking Books
02/16/2024

Today we bring you a masterclass in audiobook narration and acting with acclaimed actor, casting director, audiobook narrator and audiobook director, Robin Miles. Miles has narrated over 500 audiobooks, collecting numerous industry awards and, in 2017, was added to the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame. She’s the most recognizable voice in literary Afrofuturism, having interpreted books by Octavia E. Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, N.K. Jemisin, and Nnedi Okorafor. Miles holds a BA and an MFA from Yale. She has taught young actors and narrators at conservatories across the country and she has an amazing talent for doing accents—something we real...


Radiophilia (Carolyn Birdsall)
01/26/2024

Today’s guest is Carolyn Birdsall, Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. If you’re a scholar of sound or radio, you likely know her work, particularly her monograph Nazi Soundscapes (AUP, 2012) which was the recipient of the ASCA Book Award in 2013.  Her new book, Radiophilia (Bloomsbury, 2023), examines the love of radio through history. It will be a great value to anyone–from novice to expert–who wants to understand radio studies and think about where it should go in the future. In this wide-ranging interview, we discuss Carolyn’s career and both of her books. We also get into th...


Cosmic Visions in Sound
01/12/2024

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 really gain when we look at images from space?

Longtime listeners to this show will remember The World According to Sound. As we referred to them two years ago, WATS is a team of two rogue audionauts who rebelled against the NPR mothership: Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett. Tired of sound playing second fiddle to narrative on NPR, they launched a micro podcast that held one unique sound under the mic...


Tinnitus Stories
12/16/2023

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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 people it’s much worse than annoying–but it also has a lot to say of interest, if we’re willing to listen: “Tinnitus has been my guide in sound studies, my Virgil, leading me through a shadow world of sound. It’s taught me how high the stakes can be when it come...


Warren Zanes: Rockstar Biographer
12/01/2023

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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. When Mack first met Warren in New Orleans sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, Zanes was then emerging from the wreckage of meteoric success. He’d been the teenage guitarist in critically acclaimed band The Del Fuegos, who briefly broke into the national popular consciousness—and then just plain br...


Making Radio History (Elena Razlogova)
11/17/2023

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Elena Razlogova is an Associate Professor of History at Concordia University. She is the author of The Listener’s Voice: Early Radio and the American Public (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) and co-editor of “Radical Histories in Digital Culture” issue of the Radical History Review (2013). She has published articles in American Quarterly, Radical History Review, Russian Review, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Radio Journal, Cultural Studies, Social Media Society, and more. 

Elena’s someone I’m always...


The Audiobook’s Century-Long Overnight Success (Matthew Rubery)
11/03/2023

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Today we present the first episode of a miniseries on audiobooks by getting into the history and theory of the medium. Audiobooks are having a moment—and it only took them over a century to get here. Dr. Matthew Rubery, a Harvard PhD and Professor of Modern Literature at Queen Mary University of London, pioneered the study of the audiobook, its history, and its affordances. 

Among his oth...


Going Public
10/19/2023

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In this brief opener for Season Six of Phantom Power, Mack discusses his new project of writing a trade press book, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. What are the implications for the podcast? Why pivot away from traditional scholarship and toward public-facing work? In this “rant” you’ll hear about the challenges and opportunities facing humanities scholars in the current era of funding cuts, legislative challenges, and new platfo...