The Business of Listening

Podcasters and former public radio reporters Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett are touring business schools to perform their immersive surround sound show and tell the story of how they went from traditional journalists to cofounders of an independent media organization. They are bringing students, faculty, and the general public together to experience an innovative live audio show and discuss media entrepreneurship in an era of increased competition for attention. 

The Show: For 75 minutes you are going to put on an eye mask, sit in the dark, and be taken on a sonic trip that asks you to rethink the world through your ears instead of your eyes. You’ll hear the vibrations of the Golden Gate Bridge, footsteps of ants, the first song sung by a computer, and a sonic representation of outer space. You’ll be transported into a waterfall, up to the ionosphere, and under a sand dune through a mix of audible sounds, ultrasonics, infrasonics, and sonified data. This sonic trip encourages students to question what they think they already know, opening them up to different approaches to solving problems and communicating solutions. It is a communal listening experience that transcends disciplines: it brings together business students and faculty with members of the academic community from across the entire campus. 

Guest Lecture: “Podcasting Pivot: Breaking Through in the Media Industry”

For the last decade, Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett have been pushing the boundaries of the audio medium, from their original 90-second sound pieces on All Things Considered, to their octophonic live shows and ongoing podcast series about academic research. In this talk, the pair explain how they became entrepreneurs in the field of audio to adapt to a rapidly changing media landscape. The ubiquity and saturation of podcasts in the 2020’s created a market that favored celebrities, echo chambers, and formally-limited chatcasts. Instead of trying to compete in a crowded space with content that they didn’t want to make, didn’t believe in, and found socially corrosive, Hoff and Harnett doubled down on their principles. Their journey is a story of doing what others told them not to do, of bucking conventions, and pursuing a counterintuitive approach that allowed them to find success in a highly competitive media industry. This talk chronicles their entire evolution: from public radio reporters, to podcasters, and finally to live event performers.

Who We Are: Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett are co-producers of The World According to Sound, a collection of podcast series and touring sound shows. Their latest podcast project is Ways of Knowing, a series about academic research made in partnership with institutions like Johns Hopkins, University of Chicago, and The University of Washington. The pair are former public radio reporters—Chris covered arts and culture in San Francisco, and Sam was the Silicon Valley reporter for KQED, where he covered the intersection of technology and labor. While working in public radio, their reporting won two Edward R. Murrow Awards for excellence in sound design and was featured regularly on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, The World, Science Friday, and other nationally-syndicated radio programs. They have since published academic papers; spent a semester at Cornell as practitioners-in-residence; and performed their octophonic audio compositions at more than 100 universities, theaters, art spaces, and corporate headquarters.

Book us at: thewatsound@gmail.com