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Twenty Thousand Hertz
Twenty Thousand Hertz
Dallas Taylor

A lovingly crafted podcast that reveals the stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds.

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Episodes

Tune Tech

From electric guitars to samplers to drum machines and beyond, the music we love is only possible thanks to the... more

29 Nov 2023 · 27 minutes
Headphone Handbook

The world of headphones is a deep rabbit hole. With thousands of options and endless technical jargon, it’s hard to... more

15 Nov 2023 · 25 minutes
Sounds That Sell

Since the earliest days of commercial radio, companies have been using sound to worm their way into our brains. And... more

01 Nov 2023 · 23 minutes
Auto-Tone

The sound of a roaring combustion engine is a fixture of modern life. But as electric vehicles become more and... more

18 Oct 2023 · 25 minutes
Wilhelm Scream Remix

For more than seventy years now, filmmakers have been using and reusing a particular scream. Without a doubt, this is... more

04 Oct 2023 · 21 minutes
Subtitles: On

In recent years, the dialogue in movies and TV shows has gotten harder and harder to understand. No one seems... more

20 Sep 2023 · 29 minutes
Mangini's Moments

Mark Mangini is one of the most prolific sound designers of all time. He’s been credited on over 150 films,... more

06 Sep 2023 · 25 minutes
The Voice Inside

Many of us talk to ourselves in our heads pretty much all day long. But it turns out that there... more

23 Aug 2023 · 28 minutes
Zelda: Tones of the Kingdom

The original Zelda game featured three melodies that would come to define the franchise: the Secret Unlocked Sound, the Treasure... more

09 Aug 2023 · 30 minutes
Zelda: A Beep to the Past

Music is a quintessential part of the Zelda series. And some of Zelda’s most iconic melodies go all the way... more

26 Jul 2023 · 24 minutes
From Cylinders to Streaming

The history of recorded sound stretches back over a hundred and fifty years, starting with a device that could “record”... more

21 Jun 2023 · 30 minutes
Seventh-Inning Stretch

Baseball fan or not, there’s one song that virtually every American knows… or at least, we think we do. “Take... more

07 Jun 2023 · 33 minutes
Vocal Stratosphere

Our vocal system is incredibly complex. What we call “the voice” starts with very precise movements of our vocal cords,... more

24 May 2023 · 37 minutes
Songbugs

Why do bugs make the sounds they do? And how do they make them? In this episode, we explore the... more

10 May 2023 · 27 minutes
Breathe Deep

In honor of Mental Health Awareness month, we’ve revamped one of the most personal episodes we’ve ever worked on. To... more

28 Apr 2023 · 45 minutes
The Spatial Race

In the 1960s, stereo sound revolutionized the music industry. But it turns out, a pioneering engineer named Alan Blumlein had... more

19 Apr 2023 · 32 minutes
Found In Translation

Have you ever seen something so cute that you just wanted to squeeze it? Have you ever felt sleepy after... more

12 Apr 2023 · 24 minutes
Insurance Jingles... Why?

For decades, the jingle was king. But in the last twenty years, jingles have nearly gone extinct. Many brands have... more

22 Mar 2023 · 38 minutes
Soundalikes

“Soundalikes,” also called “voice doubles,” are voice actors who perform as characters that were originally played by someone else. They’re... more

08 Mar 2023 · 32 minutes
Golden

In a noisy, tumultuous world, how can we find inner peace? This episode features two stories about the transformative power... more

22 Feb 2023 · 36 minutes
Recalculating

The voices inside our navigation systems are with us nearly every day. They frustrate us when they lead us astray,... more

25 Jan 2023 · 33 minutes
Endless Hertz

In our third annual Mystery Sound Game Show, the crew from Endless Thread compete to guess the most sounds from... more

14 Dec 2022 · 55 minutes
Synth War II: Digital Doom

In the 1960s, Bob Moog and Don Buchla built synthesizers that changed the world. But by the early 80s, they... more

16 Nov 2022 · 26 minutes
Synth War

In the United States, the East Coast and West Coast have rivalries across food, sports, music and more. But there’s... more

02 Nov 2022 · 28 minutes
A Thousand Words

Audio description allows you to enjoy a movie or TV show without the need for any visuals. But how do... more

19 Oct 2022 · 31 minutes
The Booj Strikes Back

In the 80s and 90s, movie trailers were ruled by “voice-of-God” narrators who used stock phrases like, “In a world…”... more

05 Oct 2022 · 26 minutes
1-900-20K-HRTZ

In the late 80s and early 90s, 900 numbers were all the rage. For a couple bucks a minute, you... more

21 Sep 2022 · 38 minutes
Tokyo Rose

In World War II, the Japanese military operated a propaganda station called Radio Tokyo. Along with jazz music, the station... more

07 Sep 2022 · 26 minutes
TikTalk

In 2018, voiceover artist Bev Standing recorded 10,000 sentences for the Chinese Institute of Acoustics. Bev was told the recordings... more

24 Aug 2022 · 32 minutes
Ted Lasso's Dark Forest

Ted Lasso is about more than just an incompetent soccer coach—it’s about overcoming challenges by working together. And that’s exactly... more

10 Aug 2022 · 32 minutes
Handbook for Sonic Happiness

We spend a lot of time curating for taste, touch, smell, and vision. But too often, sound gets overlooked. We... more

27 Jul 2022 · 48 minutes
Shock Horror (A)

There’s a certain musical phrase that you’ve probably heard hundreds of times. It’s used to emphasize dramatic moments in movies,... more

13 Jul 2022 · 31 minutes
Sleight of Ear

What does a sound designer do all day? How do noise canceling headphones really work? And why do modern movie... more

06 Jul 2022 · 27 minutes
Breathe

What if you woke up one day, and found that you could no longer do the thing that gave you... more

22 Jun 2022 · 36 minutes
Relearning Boléro

In the same way that optical illusions can trick our eyes, auditory illusions can trick our ears. This raises a... more

08 Jun 2022 · 42 minutes
Ghosts in the (Hit) Machine

Many of today’s biggest songs are written and produced by people whose names don’t appear anywhere in the credits. They’re... more

25 May 2022 · 31 minutes
Windows_Logon.wav

Part 2 of our series on the Windows startup sounds picks up when Microsoft made the radical decision to kill... more

11 May 2022 · 36 minutes
Ta-da! It’s Windows

Over the years, Microsoft has made at least ten iconic startup sounds for Windows—from the triumphant “Ta-da!” of Windows 3.1,... more

27 Apr 2022 · 30 minutes
Liquid Terror

For nearly half a century, one eerie sound has been showing up again and again in movies and TV shows.... more

13 Apr 2022 · 28 minutes
Mind the Gap

The voices of subway and train announcements are deeply ingrained in peoples’ lives. Many of us hear them every day,... more

30 Mar 2022 · 36 minutes
Twenty Thousand Hertz
Relearning Boléro
Twenty Thousand Hertz
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Listen now on

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Google Podcasts
Overcast
Podcast Addict
Pocket Casts
Castbox
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iHeartRadio
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Podcast Republic
Castro
RadioPublic
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Description

In the same way that optical illusions can trick our eyes, auditory illusions can trick our ears. This raises a serious question:... more