Twenty Thousand Hertz

There’s a reason we call tourists “sightseers”. As a society, we’re totally obsessed with the way things look. But our world is full of beautiful, fascinating and bizarre sounds. Join us on a sonic ad...

16 Dec 201921min

Language is a uniquely human gift. We have shaped it to our individual and cultural needs, and it has shaped us in return. Professor Lera Boroditsky reveals how the sounds we make with our mouths infl...

2 Dec 201928min

When was the last time you turned off your radio and just listened to your car? What’s really going on under the hood? We chat with our own Nick Spradlin about the simple force at the heart of every g...

18 Nov 201928min

Baby Shark is a mega viral YouTube video, an unstoppable earworm, a top 40 hit, a Eurodance smash, a decades old campfire song, and the center of an international copyright dispute. In this episode fr...

4 Nov 201938min

Singing with others is a powerful form of expression. That's why the composer Eric Whitacre started the Virtual Choir; an experiment that connects singers from every corner of the globe. In this episo...

21 Okt 201927min

As a young composer, Edd Kalehoff was looking for his break. In the early 70s he struck gold, writing the theme song and music cues for The Price Is Right. Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced by Defa...

14 Okt 201921min

In part 2 of the story of mastering, we explore the consequences of the Loudness War and call out some of the worst offenders. We’ll also hear about the artists and mastering engineers who have been f...

7 Okt 201934min

Join us on a musical journey from the Golden Age of analog mastering to the digital methods of today. We’ll find out why the music industry became obsessed with loudness, and learn how the digital era...

23 Sep 201930min