There’s an uncomfortable genre of bootleg classical music recordings floating around the internet. They’re big, public bloopers by professional musicians. They’re somewhat rare, and in many cases they’re posted anonymously. They’re sort of myst

7: The Music Genome Project Hasn’t Failed Yet

Jan 11th, 2017 22m 56s

From the beginning, Pandora has banked on a proprietary music rating system called the Music Genome Project. It involves rating songs on hundreds of attributes, from “aggressive drumming” and “jazz influences” to “angry lyrics” and “ambiguous s

6: Scenes From an Italian Astronaut

Jan 4th, 2017 13m 38s

Back in October 2016, researchers at George Mason University published a report on the peculiar distribution of airport noise complaints. The most lopsided figures came out of Reagan International Airport in Washington, DC, where authorities sa

5: Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?

Dec 28th, 2016 17m 58s

You can barely hear it, but it's there; each year on "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve," amid the ruckus of Times Square in the moments after midnight, a gentle, plaintive big-band version of "Auld Lang Syne" hums along softly. It's the soun

4: It's All In Your Head

Dec 21st, 2016 27m 44s

This week we're messing with your head. We've all seen optical illusions, but it turns out there are auditory illusions, as well: sounds that exploit the way we process audio and make us perceive it in unexpected ways. On today's episode, we pi

3: The Audience Is Listening

Dec 14th, 2016 15m 32s

Today, we bring you two stories about movie sounds. First, the story behind Deep Note, the iconic audio logo for THX, and how it was almost lost forever. Then, things get a little personal as one producer with an axe to grind embarks on a journ

2: Hear People Die

Dec 7th, 2016 8m 41s

Hearpeopledie is an offshoot of a subreddit called watchpeopledie, which is for videos of graphic violence. Audio, however, is a little more hardcore.The clips on r/hearpeopledie range from quiet moments of legal assisted suicide to the violen

1: What Comes After Hamilton?

Dec 5th, 2016 18m 36s

The hip-hop theater scene has been around for a while, but it’s been launched into the spotlight by the recent success of the musical Hamilton. In its wake, a workshop called #BARS was created to mix the worlds of hip hop, theater, and verse. T