Mack Hagood is a scholar, writer, and creator who specializes in sound and listening. Best known for his research on the cultural origins and social effects of technologies such as noise-canceling headphones, Hagood's writing, media work, and public lectures vividly animate the world of sound. In 2024, he was awarded a Public Scholar grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Innovative artists and thinkers share listening practices, essential recordings, and ideas that open up the world of sound.
Featuring Hildegard Westerkamp, Lawrence English, Kate Carr, Robin Miles, and many more.
Preview what’s insideMack has been interviewed by NBC, BBC, CBC, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and many others.
A Podcast About Sound; Phantom Power is a podcast about sound, technology, and culture. In each episode, Mack Hagood interviews experts in sound studies, sound art, and acoustic ecology.
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Today on a very special pre-Halloween episode of Phantom Power, we try to make contact with the dead using digital audio technology. We are trying Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC) with ITC practitioner Joshua Sean and cultural scholar Leila Taylor, who focuses on the esoteric, horror, and the occult. Join us,
Theodore Gordon is a musician, musicologist, and scholar of science and technologies studies. He’s interested in the mystery of the black box of audio technology. We know that there are inputs and outputs in this now ubiquitous music technology, but whatever happens in between remains mysterious and unseen. In
Best known as Geologist, Animal Collective’s Brian Weitz injects synthesizers, samples, animal sounds, and field recordings into that band's enchantingly strange sound world. Recently, Weitz has been on a creative tear, releasing a solo album and several other projects, including Croz Boyce with Avey Tare. In our
In the early 2010s self-taught guitarist Tashi Dorji was recording improvised guitar explorations in his home near Asheville, North Carolina. These self-released outings drew on his unique mix of musical influences from the Buddhist music of his childhood in Bhutan to the Western music he discovered through shortwave
Mack speaks internationally at venues ranging from music festivals to Ivy League universities. Hire Mack to speak about sound, listening, and communication at your organization.
Contact for Speaking, or See His Speaking History and ScheduleA cultural study of sound and control. What we cancel. What we keep. What we can’t hear anymore.
These newsletters are Mack's space to reflect on sound, listening, and the culture around us—plus share early thoughts, event news, and audio picks. Want in? Join the newsletter to stay in the loop.
Sound stirs us all
Its resonance connects us. Its noise divides. It numbs us with bombast and breaks us with the slightest whisper.
We've built instruments to make it, laws to tame it, walls to contain it, and great halls to sustain it. We've mic' it, amped it, converted and compressed it, broadcast it, mastered it, remastered it... and never mastered it at all.
Because sound is transgressive: a phantom power that refuses to be contained, canceled, or even limited to living in our ears. Sound can blur your vision, move your body, and change the taste of the food in your mouth.
But sound has a secret: It only becomes *sound* in the minds and bodies of those it touches.
Sound needs us as much as we need it.
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