This is the story of a river. Not just any river, but a very special river. One that has been given the same legal status as a living, breathing human being. In this episode of Bang & Olufsen’s Sound Matters podcast we meet the documentary film

29 – The Sounds Inside Your Brain

May 10th, 2020 23m 45s

“Making sense of sound is a biological triumph,” says Nina Kraus, professor at Northwestern University and a specialist in the biology of auditory learning. “What’s auditory learning?” you may well ask Nina. Well, you could boil it down to a si

27 – Bad Vibrations

Dec 19th, 2019 25m 57s

Music. Oh, beautiful, uplifting, inspiring music. We all love music. Thing is, we all love different types of music, and generally can’t bear to listen to the music we don’t like. But can certain types of music be so bad that they can actually

26 – Audio Forensics

Dec 19th, 2019 22m 1s

True crime podcasts are almost a cliche nowadays. But in terms of niches, there’s still some cache in the sound of true crime, or more specifically in the field of forensic audio analysis. What’s forensic audio analysis, you may ask? It’s “the

25 – A Novel Sound

Dec 19th, 2019 20m 32s

“It’s a description of the next record that I will never make,” so relates UK based composer, DJ and artist Matthew Herbert, telling us about his new book, The Music – now Herbert can add writer to his CV of creative activities. But, true to hi

24 – Paris, Potentially

Dec 10th, 2018 28m 59s

Ah, Paris. Unmistakeable, beautiful Paris. Paris: a place so unique – so authentic, so essentially itself – that it is truly irreplaceable. The eighth and final instalment in our Sound of the Cities mini-series – a sonic exploration of our urba

23 – L.A. Transcendental with David Lynch

Oct 9th, 2018 25m 2s

In part seven of our Sound of the Cities mini-series – a sonic exploration of our urban environments and their cultural soundscapes – Sound Matters podcast travels to the Hollywood Hills. Peacefully perched up above the sprawling noise emitter

22 – Tick Tock Tokyo

Sep 21st, 2018 24m 32s

Us humans preserve our experiences in recordings. And when we revisit these texts, images and sounds, it can feel like a small form of time travel. In part six of our Sound of the Cities mini-series – a sonic exploration of our urban environmen

21 – Resonating In Reykjavik

Aug 30th, 2018 32m 6s

In part five of our Sound Of The Cities mini-series – a sonic exploration of our urban environments and their cultural soundscapes – we’re moving away from the noisy sensory overload of megacities. We’re still visiting a capital city, it’s just

20 – Learning To Listen To London

Jul 19th, 2018 28m 4s

For millennia our hearing has acted as our early warning system. It worked well out in the relative silence of nature: a bird calling out against a predator; the snap of a twig in a deep forest, and so on. But what about in our noisy cities? In

19 – Decibels Of New Delhi

Jun 22nd, 2018 22m 26s

Can listening be a creative act? In the third instalment of our Sound Of The Cities series – a sonic exploration of our urban environments and their cultural soundscapes – Sound Matters podcast immerses itself into the hubbub of the Indian cap

18 – Untitled Noises Of New York

Apr 20th, 2018 27m 3s

In the second instalment of our Sound Of The Cities series – a sonic exploration of our urban environments and their cultural soundscapes – Sound Matters podcast jumps into the deepest of the deep ends of art and culture: New York. Host Tim Hi

17 – Invisible Music Of Copenhagen

Mar 19th, 2018 23m 33s

So many of us live in the hustle and bustle of cities – vibrant, lively but noisy and distracting soundscapes. How do we exist among this noise? How do we listen through it to the smaller sounds, the delicate and subtle sounds that bring us pea

16 – The Bass, The Colour, The Mystery Of Synesthesia

Dec 8th, 2017 29m 24s

“Monday’s yellow, Tuesday’s brown, Wednesday’s blue, Thursday’s light brown… If you ask people where lemons are on a piano, they will all put their hands at the top of the keyboard…” That’s Nick Ryan, sound artist and composer – but what on Ear

15 – In Search Of The Missing Sound

Oct 20th, 2017 31m 42s

If you’re under thirty then you’ve probably listened to more music in a compressed digital format than anything else – and that’s fine, right? It’s never gotten in the way of the music that moves you. Well, actually, there are audiophiles out t

14 – The Voice Of Cod

Jun 30th, 2017 30m 23s

Sounds behave very differently underwater than they do back on land – it’s a whole other kettle of fish down there you might say. What’s an earthquake sound like underwater? Do whales like music? What sounds make fishes’ hearts beat faster, and

13 – Back To Nature (Recording)

Jun 6th, 2017 27m 33s

“We bombard ourselves with sound and music… it’s everywhere.” So says musician, artist and nature recordist Chris Watson who has captured sounds for numerous wildlife TV shows, including Sir David Attenborough’s Planet Earth series on the BBC a

12 – New Tunes From Old Bones

Apr 12th, 2017 34m 42s

Some sounds go back… way back. In this edition of Sound Matters, we travel to a time before music was music, when man-made sounds allowed us mere mortals to hear the voices of the gods – when the line between making music and making magic meant

11 - Big Science & Little Creatures

Mar 17th, 2017 28m 44s

“I’ve spent a lot of time recently doing concerts for dogs… They’re the perfect audience.” So claimed musician, multimedia artist and film maker, Laurie Anderson when we interviewed her recently. And, if YouTube is anything to go by, millions o

10 - Sounds from Outer Space

Jan 27th, 2017 33m 45s

Outer space is a vacuum – it’s full of a whole lot of nothing – so it’s pretty quiet out there. Or is it? Sit back, strap yourself in and lift off into the great beyond. This episode of Sound Matters features Professor Tim O’Brien of Jodrell Ba

09 – Songs For Your Brain, Lungs And Legs

Dec 22nd, 2016 27m 54s

How is it possible that listening to music can make your legs, heart and lungs work better? Our podcast series Sound Matters returns for another eight episodes through 2017. In this brand spanking new episode, our intrepid sound guide Tim Hinma

08 – The Good, The Bad And The Smelly

May 27th, 2016 19m 11s

How can you tell the difference between a good sound and a bad sound? There’s not much that’s more annoying than to be forced to listen to a bad sound – but what do we mean when we call something a bad sound, and is that bad sound heard and und

07 - The Animals Outside Your Window

May 6th, 2016 24m 37s

Have a listen to the sounds going on outside your window. What can you hear? A car passing by, maybe an airplane flying overhead, a few birds chirping away in a tree in front of your house, a couple of dogs play fighting in next door’s garden?

06 - Snowflakes And Metal Hammers

1 Apr 14th, 2016 21m 20s

What’s the sound of snow falling? The question might sound like a riddle or the start of some joke but for composer and sound designer Yann Coppier snow and ice are rich materials for making sounds and art. In this episode of our Sound Matters

05 – New Ears And Strange Rooms

Apr 1st, 2016 22m 55s

What we hear and the way we hear it has everything to do with who we are, where we are, what we are, what we can see and feel and what we know about the world around us, because we grew up in it. We take hearing for granted unless, of course, y