0:00

Over the last twenty five years the world

0:02

has witnessed incredible progress from dialup modem survive

0:04

G connectivity from massive Pc towers to a

0:06

I enabled Microchips innovators, a rethinking possibilities every

0:08

day through it all in West Coast Qq

0:10

each yeah has provided investors access to the

0:12

world of innovation. Be a part of the

0:14

next twenty five years of new ideas by

0:16

supporting the find that gives you access to

0:18

innovative companies Invesco, Kinky Kill Let's rethink possibility

0:20

there was one of getting any just including

0:22

possible. Lots of money it has risks are

0:25

similar to those of stocks investors in the

0:27

tech sector or some Twitter, as can relativity

0:29

the more diversified investments. Before investing, heavily beaten

0:31

consider fun investment Doctors risk started expenses and more

0:33

in perspective that invesco.com invesco distributors and. I'm

0:49

Kevin or is a tech congress to New York Times

0:51

like cheating on from platform or and this is hard

0:53

fork. This week that music show the

0:56

mega mix of hard. Fork songs that

0:58

you've been asking for has arrived plus will

1:00

go behind the scenes. I talked to start

1:02

with the composer's that make music for the

1:04

show. Okay,

1:21

See I Kevin We're going to do something

1:24

weird today. I'm excited about it. So excited

1:26

about this! So today instead of our normal

1:28

shall we talk about the tech news? We

1:30

have got a very special episode. This is

1:32

one we've been wanting to do for months

1:34

now and we have finally gotten their act

1:36

together to do it. We're going to tell

1:38

you how to talk to your kids about

1:40

drugs. Know

1:42

so this. This episode is the Hard

1:44

Fork Music episode and it is a

1:47

direct response to one of the questions

1:49

that we get asked the most which

1:51

is where. Can I find the amazing music that

1:53

plays in your episode? Every week we give you the

1:55

email address for the show. At every week you email

1:57

I say where can we listen to that. The

2:00

verdict is in people don't like the talking, but

2:02

they do like the music. They said, what if

2:04

these two guys just didn't talk at all? Would

2:07

the show maybe be better? And we're going to

2:09

find out this week. And I think something that

2:11

people don't realize is that we actually have at

2:13

the New York Times a team of in-house composers

2:15

who make custom music for every podcast, including ours.

2:18

This is not the norm in the podcast industry.

2:20

Usually people go onto music libraries or they find

2:22

songs that are sort of out there on the

2:24

internet and they pull those into their podcast, but

2:27

not us. We are artisanal and we make our

2:29

music from scratch. Yeah. And you know, as

2:31

somebody who does not work at the New York Times,

2:33

when I joined to make this show and they said

2:35

that they had a team of composers, I mean, it

2:38

was like, they told me that they had a team

2:40

of astronomers. I was like, wait, wait, what do you

2:42

mean? But it was true. There was a whole team

2:44

of people and they are insanely talented. They work on

2:46

incredibly short deadlines. And I'm not exaggerating when I say

2:48

truly everything they've ever made for the show. I'm in

2:50

love with it. It's so good. And

2:53

so today we are going to give

2:55

you the very special Hard Fork music

2:57

episode. We will be back next week

2:59

with the regular episodes where we talk

3:01

about the news, but this week I thought

3:03

we should just grant our listeners most frequent

3:05

request and just play for them all

3:07

of the music on the show. That's right. This

3:10

show wants to be in service of its listeners.

3:12

And so look, if there's something you want asked

3:14

for it, maybe we'll do it. So we're going

3:16

to do this in two ways. We'll do an

3:18

interview with two of the composers, Dan Powell and

3:21

Alicia, but YouTube who helped make the music that

3:23

goes on our show. And then we'll just play

3:25

what they have essentially termed a hard fork mega

3:27

mix, which is all of the music that they've

3:29

made just sort of blended together in a seamless

3:32

or DJ style mega mix. If

3:34

you just want to hear the music, you can

3:37

also find all of the songs we're about to

3:39

play on a special playlist on our YouTube channel.

3:41

And you can find that at youtube.com/hard for. So

3:43

if you just wish hard fork was essentially chill,

3:46

low five beats to study to it is now

3:48

there available for you on youtube.com. All

3:50

Right.? Let's bring in Dan and Alicia. And

4:01

always ready to welcome to fork. Pay.

4:04

The Examiner. They guys were out.

4:06

Where are you right now? I'm I'm just

4:09

lucky you're You've got like instruments behind you.

4:11

I looks very cool. A musical. Yeah.

4:14

I'm in my home studio in Brooklyn

4:16

New York so behind me is the

4:18

mode other I've used on a lot

4:21

of hard for cues and then various

4:23

guitar isn't acoustic panels so. I'm

4:26

in, but I call it the home studio but

4:28

it's a bedroom. Pacifica radio is a

4:30

state of mind isn't for. You

4:33

you to it as and your team of

4:35

composers at the New York Times are some

4:38

of my favorite parts about making this podcast.

4:40

And you know frankly, you don't get enough

4:42

love for the work that you do and

4:44

I would include myself in that. like sometimes

4:47

we just have amazing sound that plays on

4:49

the show and I'm like where did that

4:51

come from Who made that in The answer

4:53

is always I that you and your team

4:56

I has have put together just some amazing

4:58

original composition. For us of stuff, I want to

5:00

start by just thinking you because I think a

5:02

large part of what we hear from listeners is

5:04

that they just love the music of the south.

5:07

It it's so true. I feel like when people

5:09

listen to a podcast like ours which is essentially

5:11

yeah now people talking about the news maybe the

5:13

last thing that they expect as they're going to

5:15

hear incredible music's and you have a hard fork.

5:17

They've been here in it since the beginning so

5:19

we we, oh that's you and your team and.

5:22

Thank. You so much. Days you know

5:24

they get it. So much fun to

5:26

make. this is I'm in that we.

5:28

We do. we do a lot at

5:30

the time. Some hard fork islam, a

5:32

silly work on. that's like. I

5:35

don't know. Assist Assist linked to a

5:37

constantly at a constant July. So

5:39

much wonder what to make things

5:41

for? Hard Fork: So. One.

5:43

thing i do know about how the

5:46

music gets made for new york times

5:48

podcast is that every show kind of

5:50

has a sound or a vocabulary of

5:53

sounds like when i made rabbit holes

5:55

the podcast they did a few years

5:57

ago dan you and i and our

5:59

production team spent a bunch of time talking about

6:02

what the sound of that show should be. So

6:04

maybe just describe briefly what

6:06

the sound of Hard Fork is

6:08

to you. Yeah,

6:11

there was a great creative brief from Davis,

6:13

the producer. I think one thing we

6:15

really liked is he gave us a

6:17

lot of great references of sounds

6:19

he liked and songs he liked, but also things to

6:21

avoid. And I think one reason this

6:24

show is really fun to write for is although it's a tech

6:26

show, when we were developing the

6:28

sound with Davis, he was very

6:30

thoughtful about let's not just do your

6:32

stereotypical beep boop thing.

6:35

That's obviously still a part of it, but it's not the

6:37

primary thing. Yeah. I'm

6:40

actually looking at it right now because like, what did he

6:42

say? It was so inspirational. Yeah, what did he say?

6:44

What did Davis say? He said the

6:46

aesthetic of the show, light, smart,

6:48

funny, fun, knowing but accessible, skeptical

6:51

but open-minded, sitting around drinking white

6:53

cloths with your buds, a good

6:56

hang. And from

6:58

there, he said some even

7:00

more inspirational things. I remember opening

7:03

up that brief and being like, what? Yes.

7:07

Like the New York Times is making what? So

7:10

that answers your question. I

7:14

think musically, we don't

7:17

take things too seriously. I

7:20

think we try to embrace joy as much

7:22

as possible. There's definitely

7:24

like, you can turn in music where we might be

7:26

like, oh, it doesn't have the hard fork sound just

7:28

yet. It needs a little digital something,

7:30

a little glitchy something. I think glitches

7:32

are very important in this world. And

7:37

yeah. Because of all the mistakes we make. Yeah,

7:39

absolutely. Yeah. Just want to really

7:41

highlight it. Yeah, joyful and

7:43

glitchy is how we are typically described.

7:45

So I think that fits. I

7:48

think one term we throw around a

7:50

lot is hard fork is the show

7:52

you can write music for where you can let your freak

7:55

flag fly. It's

7:57

the show and we love working on all the shows at

7:59

the New York Times. equally of course, but Hard

8:01

Fork is if you have had an unhinged

8:03

idea about doing something crazy with sound, it's

8:06

generally the show that is most open to

8:08

that happening on. Do you feel that way?

8:10

Because Kevin and I are freaks. No

8:13

comment. Okay. That's

8:16

fair. I want to ask about what might be

8:18

my favorite piece of music on Hard Fork, which

8:20

is our theme song and Dan, am I right

8:22

that you took the lead on the theme song?

8:24

Yeah, that's right. We actually did not compose

8:27

that thinking this is the theme. We

8:29

were kind of composing, we sort of

8:31

let themes emerge democratically when we're spinning up a

8:33

new show where we'll all jam out on a

8:35

bunch of ideas and then there tends to be

8:37

one cue that the team will just be like,

8:39

yeah, I think this feels like the one that

8:41

feels steamy enough. But yeah, it was originally written

8:43

just as a idea and then it sort of

8:46

gradually became the theme. Do you

8:48

remember like what you were thinking or how did the

8:50

Hard Fork theme come about? The

8:52

theme came together really, I'll

8:54

be completely honest, the horn arrangement for the theme,

8:56

which I think was something one of you as

8:59

the hosts requested. I know either Kevin or Casey

9:01

said, oh, we want to hear the theme. I

9:03

think I did say that I thought horns would

9:05

be cool. This is 100%

9:07

true, but I was in the office

9:09

on a Friday afternoon when it was totally dead

9:12

and I was walking to the men's room

9:14

and all of a sudden the pop into

9:16

my head as I was walking through all

9:18

the cubicles. And I immediately was

9:20

like, oh, I got to run back to my desk and get this down. This feels

9:23

like a hard work. So

9:26

we almost lost, if you had not run back to your

9:28

desk, we might not have the hard for horns. Yes.

9:32

You know, and it was worth it was worth holding

9:34

it another two and a half minutes. I

9:37

don't know if that's OK to say. No,

9:40

it's very OK to say. I

9:42

mean, the thing that I love about

9:44

it is that it conveys a sense

9:46

of fun and optimism. And we always

9:48

have known on the show that we

9:50

are going to talk about some of

9:52

the most challenging and upsetting things that

9:54

happen in the world. But from

9:57

the start, it was important to Kevin and I that when

9:59

people listen to it. At least in some

10:01

moments they had a good time. And

10:03

I feel like every week when

10:05

I hear the hard-fork horns, I'm

10:07

like, okay, let's enjoy something about

10:10

this life, you know? And

10:12

it just, anyway, from the first moment I

10:14

heard it, I was in Slack saying, can

10:16

this please be the theme? Oh,

10:19

well, that's glad to hear that. And

10:21

yeah, I mean, I think the optimism

10:23

and sense of, you know,

10:25

okay, it's not all doom and gloom. Yeah. It's

10:28

about doom and gloom, and it's also not

10:30

about, you know, totally mindless optimism either. It's

10:33

more about things are changing, things are spontaneous. I

10:37

think the theme integrates a lot of different

10:39

styles of music that is also intentional because

10:41

you have some electronic

10:43

music tropes where there's a breakbeat in

10:45

there, you have a sort of 808-type

10:47

drum machine. And then there's some synths,

10:49

but the synths also have a sort of almost, you

10:52

know, like 90s jock

10:54

jam almost feel to them. So it's all meant

10:56

to be a little bit cheeky in the way

10:58

that it comes across. And it's meant

11:00

to be something that's fun and you can kind of

11:03

bop around to, but also, you know, there's a sense

11:05

of levity there that I do think was very much

11:07

informed by the two of your respective

11:09

energy as hosts of the show. So yeah.

11:11

So tell us about the playlist that we're

11:13

about to hear. Yeah.

11:15

So the playlist we're about to hear is

11:17

a sort of continuous mix of most of

11:19

the music that has been composed for the

11:22

Hard Fork podcast. It starts with

11:24

a selection of the earliest days where

11:26

Alicia and myself, Marianne

11:29

and Diane are sort of core composition team. We're

11:31

kind of finding the sound of the show. It

11:34

then goes into an extended mix where when

11:36

we brought in all of our colleagues from

11:38

across the engineering team who also have, you

11:40

know, music backgrounds of their own. And

11:42

then Alicia, do you want to talk about the sound

11:45

cue mix that comes in? Yeah. And

11:48

then it goes into a sound cue mix, which

11:50

is these are the

11:52

cues, the stingers that we make for

11:54

episodes of sometimes they're recurring. Sometimes

11:57

they just live in the moment. But

11:59

put together A. A few minutes of of

12:01

the sound use of the show and then

12:03

the sound you makes was gonna go into

12:05

us or what we affectionately called a freak

12:08

Flag mix which is. It's

12:10

wild. is lot of drum and bass, maybe

12:12

damn few. I thought more about that. He

12:14

has everything over one hundred fifty bpm that we

12:16

couldn't make certain the other parts of the mix

12:18

has been suffering from in it. Yeah it's everything

12:21

at a very fast tempo we could not make

12:23

sit in. The other parts of the mix are

12:25

that was left on the cutting room floor the

12:27

but that we felt like I the should still

12:29

haven't Nice little last hurrah moment. any and you

12:31

may want to set with your doctor the mixer.

12:33

It's okay to listen to a hundred fifty beats

12:35

a minute for second. Really know get it or

12:38

your heart ago and he had. This is the

12:40

part of the mix that will make you wanna

12:42

get up and dance. Thank you so much From.

12:44

The bottom of our hearts. We love

12:46

working with a team of such talented

12:48

composers and musicians. It's the bus You

12:50

guys are the best! Thank you thank

12:52

you so much. When

12:56

we go back everybody refer to the death for

12:59

favour the Africa. Managing.

13:13

The requirements for modern security programs

13:16

is increasingly challenging. Xantus Trust Management

13:18

platform helps you quickly assess risk,

13:20

secure the trust of your customers,

13:22

and automate compliance for sock to

13:25

I So, Twenty Seven, Oh, One

13:27

Hippa, and More. Plus. Save

13:29

time by completing security questionnaires with

13:32

Van to a I. Thousands of

13:34

global companies use Vantage to automate

13:36

evidence collection and unify risk management.

13:39

Get one thousand dollars off the

13:41

into a going event A.com/heard fear

13:43

that vanta.com/hard fork for thousand dollars

13:46

off. I'm. Emily

13:48

Badger I'm a reporter with the New York

13:50

Times. Since the pandemic, empty

13:52

office buildings have become much more common

13:54

in many cities. Like yet we just

13:56

turn them into something. It's actually

13:58

a really complicated. question. To

14:01

answer this question, you have to find

14:03

a developer trying to turn an office

14:05

building into apartments, ride a

14:07

rickety elevator to the 30th floor of

14:09

a construction site to see the interior

14:11

boats of a building, finds an

14:14

expert in incandescent light bulbs who can explain

14:16

to you how they fundamentally change office buildings.

14:18

And that's just the beginning of what you

14:20

have to do. When you

14:23

subscribe to the New York Times, you

14:25

are sending reporters like me out into

14:27

the world to ask questions of dozens

14:29

of different experts to go and visit

14:31

places most people don't get to go, to

14:33

try to come back with answers, and then

14:35

turn all of that into something that anyone

14:37

can understand. If you'd

14:39

like to become a subscriber,

14:42

head to nytimes.com/subscribe. You

14:44

need to see the animated floor plans in this

14:46

piece. Kevin,

14:48

you ready to drop those beats? Let's do it. Hit

14:50

it. www.nytimes.com

16:30

You You

17:30

You. It.

19:30

The. No.

22:28

oh thought

25:42

everybody This

27:31

is a show for

27:33

you. He.

28:32

He even. He.

29:29

Ha ha.

30:32

Are. You.

31:03

Know need. That.

33:30

for having been Oh.

35:34

The. You.

38:18

I. You. in

40:30

You You

41:30

You. the

44:00

You You

45:00

You You.

46:58

all Welcome

49:31

for today's

49:35

exam! You

53:30

You. right?

54:32

andrew Wow,

57:57

that was truly incredible. Casey, are you ready to go to

57:59

the club? I mean, I feel like we've been at

58:01

the club. I need

58:03

some water and some electrolytes.

58:05

Yeah. So when we come

58:07

back, we're going to do a little bit more

58:09

music, but we're also going to talk with our

58:11

composers again about the outro to the show. This

58:19

podcast is supported by the Freedom from

58:21

Religion Foundation. I'm Ron Reagan, an unabashed

58:24

atheist, and I'm alarmed by the intrusions

58:26

of religion into our secular government. That's

58:28

why I'm asking you to join the

58:30

Freedom from Religion Foundation, the nation's largest

58:32

and most effective organization of atheists and

58:35

agnostics, working to keep state and church

58:37

separate. Phone 1-800-335-4021, 1-800-335-4021, or visit the

58:39

Freedom from Religion Foundation at

58:47

ffrf.org. Ron Reagan,

58:49

lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning

58:51

in hell. So

58:54

here's my question. If we gave

58:56

you one year, could you do a club mix

58:58

of the hard fork theme song? Yeah, I would

59:00

say if you gave us one year, we would

59:03

focus on let's actually open a

59:05

club together. Like we build a light show.

59:10

I really do think we have a great team

59:12

because you two have never had the pleasure of

59:14

going to karaoke with Alicia Beaux, but she's the

59:16

ultimate hype woman. And I

59:18

feel like she and Casey could really just

59:21

get a crowd in and hype everyone up.

59:23

Kevin, you're very level headed. You could, I

59:25

think, keep things managed and under control. I

59:27

could do the sound DJ booth. If

59:30

we're thinking big year long moonshot, like let's go

59:32

all the way. Let's make this an institution. All

59:34

right. Well, you heard it here at Hard Fork Club

59:36

opening 2025. Get your tickets

59:38

now. All right. Well, before

59:40

we let you guys go, can you just tell us

59:42

about the outro? This is the version of the theme

59:45

song that plays at the end of the show that

59:47

is slightly different than the intro. Yeah.

59:51

So the outro, here's a fun fact. The

59:53

outro was written first and the intro theme

59:55

is a remix of the outro. The

59:58

horns you hear in the intro. theme are

1:00:00

actually chopped up versions of the horns in

1:00:02

the outro. You'll notice that in the outro

1:00:05

theme when the horns come in they feel

1:00:07

a little more natural, whereas in the intro

1:00:09

theme when the horns come in they feel

1:00:11

kind of clipped and jaunty. That's because it

1:00:13

is literally just taking the audio of the

1:00:15

horns from the outro, putting it through a

1:00:18

sampler in Ableton, reworking it. It's basically two

1:00:20

variations on the same theme just

1:00:22

via remix. The other difference is the intro

1:00:25

theme has drums going through a vocoder which

1:00:27

gives things a nice little melodic pulse. The

1:00:30

outro theme does not have that. As

1:00:32

far as the doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo

1:00:34

doo doo, for the longest time I thought

1:00:36

to be a legitimate composer you

1:00:38

had to play everything yourself and perform

1:00:41

everything in real time. I can proudly say

1:00:43

that that melody you're referring to, Casey, I

1:00:46

point and clicked one mouse note at a

1:00:48

time in Ableton just over

1:00:50

and over again. Just because it felt

1:00:52

right. I might have been dumb and

1:00:54

forgotten to bring a keyboard to the

1:00:56

office that day. I

1:00:58

don't know what the reasoning for it was but it

1:01:00

just felt right to make life

1:01:03

difficult and point and click it

1:01:05

to glory. That's fascinating. I

1:01:07

didn't know any of that. One of the places,

1:01:09

again, I usually just do not

1:01:11

weigh in on any of this at all. I just

1:01:13

hear what you make and I think that sounds fantastic.

1:01:15

When we were talking about the theme song, I do

1:01:17

remember having the discussion with our producer, Davis, like, can

1:01:20

we please put the horns in the theme? The horns

1:01:22

are the money here.

1:01:24

That's what gets the people going. That's what gets the

1:01:26

people going. I didn't actually

1:01:28

know that you had to remix the outro to turn

1:01:30

it into our intro. That's very cool. Yeah, they are

1:01:32

two. Both spawned from the same cell and evolved in

1:01:35

their own. The

1:01:39

same bathroom break. The same bathroom break. Well,

1:01:42

thank God for you and your bathroom

1:01:45

break. Remind us before we play this

1:01:47

outro to take us out of this episode. Remind us

1:01:49

what this outro is called. This

1:01:51

outro is called No, It's Fine. The

1:01:54

intro, a remix of it, is

1:01:56

called I Said It's Fine, Really. So

1:02:00

let's take this episode out by hearing, No, It's

1:02:02

Fine. And Dan and Alicia, thank you so much.

1:02:05

Awesome. Thank you. Bye, guys. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

1:03:00

Thank you. This

1:03:54

podcast is supported by Tenderfoot TV. Imagine

1:03:57

you're a fly on the wall at a dinner between the

1:03:59

mop- the CIA, and the KGB. That's

1:04:03

where the new podcast To Die For begins. Hosted

1:04:06

by Neil Strauss, To Die For takes

1:04:08

listeners inside the dark and dangerous world

1:04:10

of Russian sexpionage, where

1:04:12

targets are seduced for their secrets, and

1:04:15

sometimes their lives. From

1:04:17

Tenderfoot TV, the producers of To Live and

1:04:19

Die in LA, binge To Die

1:04:21

For now on all podcast platforms. To

1:04:27

Die For is produced by Davis Land, Rachel Cohn,

1:04:29

and Whitney Jones. We're edited

1:04:31

by Jen Poyan. We're fact-checked

1:04:34

by Kaitlyn Love. Today's show

1:04:36

was engineered by Dan Powell.

1:04:38

Original music by Alicia Baetube,

1:04:40

Marian Lozano, Sophia Landman, Diane

1:04:42

Wong, Pat McCusker, Rowan

1:04:44

Nemesto, and Darren Powell. Our

1:04:47

audience editor is Nelga Loegli. Video

1:04:50

production by Ryan Manning and Dylan Bergeson. Go

1:04:52

check us out on YouTube at youtube.com slash

1:04:55

hardfork. Special thanks to Paula

1:04:57

Schumann, Pui Wing Tam, Kayla Presti,

1:04:59

and Jeffrey Miranda. You can email

1:05:01

us at hardfork at nytimes.com. You

1:05:04

can email us at hardfork at nytimes.com. Something.

1:05:46

Which is no. It's easy to get all

1:05:48

states best price on line. They.

1:05:51

Also know where your have

1:05:53

four pieces online days, courtside

1:05:55

seats, a nosebleed. prices. Am

1:05:58

A know you can easily they all states

1:06:00

and I'm price on auto insurance at all.

1:06:03

Say that com. Prices

1:06:07

vary including based on how you by soda

1:06:10

to terms, conditions and availability. Allstate burn catch

1:06:12

the insurance company and affiliates. Notebook: Illinois.