Musical sexual selection? My ill-advised inquiry What role should evolution play in the study of sonic experience? If we want to understand how we hear, listen, and communicate through sound, isn't it necessary to understand where these faculties and abilities came from? Such questions are more vexed than you might think. The appeal of
The Walkman Debate Predicted Our Digital Dilemma Today, we're left with the same questions about our smartphone that we never quite resolved about the Walkman. Is it empowering us? How is it changing our relationship to the physical spaces around us? Is it fooling us with a feeling of "we-ness" while locking us away from the world?
Feed Logic and the Failure to Thrive Two disquieting works of fiction I encountered this spring feature the same menacing figure: a young girl that refuses to eat. In Ben Lerner’s novel Transcription (2026), doctors inform a couple that their waifish, picky-eating daughter is, in fact, “failing to thrive,” suffering from ARFID (avoidant/restrictive food
What exactly was the Walkman? The Walkman afforded a powerful new form of musical communication, but it did so by discouraging other communication--starting a debate that continues to this day.
Media beyond McLuhan There are fresher ways to understand life's digital shit show than through the ideas of Marshall McLuhan. Welcome to the past sixty years of media theory.
Oral Residue: A Zombie Media Theory Rises Again An oral "theory of everything" seems to be everywhere. Most media scholars left it for dead decades ago. Reporters keep giving it new life. What is "the Great Divide" and how does it hold us back from understanding our digital dilemma?
How We Learned to Yearn for Sonic Control How did personalized listening came to feel both possible and necessary? It's a story about how the sonic space around us lost its coherence and meaning.
What has the digital done to our listening? Today, I'm beginning a newsletter series on sound and listening in our digital world.
Phantom Power News | November 2025 In this month's cabinet of curiosities for the sonically obsessed, the director of a weird documentary about the weirdest town in Ohio talks experimental dialogue replacement. We also tune into the earth's low end with "macrophones" and listen to Irv Teibel's classic environments series in app form.
Phantom Power News | October This is the inaugural drop of the Phantom Power Newsletter, a cabinet of curiosities for the sonically obsessed, stocked by your apron-attired floor manager, Mack Hagood. Each month I'll bring you an assortment of thoughts, readings, listenings, news, tools, and events that I couldn't stuff
Coming soon This is Phantom Power, a brand new site by Mack Hagood that's just getting started. Things will be up and running here shortly, but you can subscribe in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published! News
