lets get existential

People who make horror movies know: if you want to scare someone, use scary music.

Some of the most creative use of music and sound to evoke fear and anxiety is on the TV show Hannibal.

Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder spoke with evolutionary biologist Dan Blumstein, Hannibal executive producer David Slade, and composer Brian Reitzell. 

Bonus: To celebrate the addition of Song Exploder to Radiotopia, we're playing Roman's favorite episode of the program, featuring John Roderick of The Long Winters "exploding" his masterpiece "The Commander Thinks Aloud."

99% Invisible-168- All In Your Head

On the evening of May 31, 2009, 216 passengers, three pilots, and nine flight attendants boarded an Airbus 330 in Rio de Janeiro. This flight, AirFrance 447, was headed across the Atlantic to Paris. The take-off was unremarkable. The plane reached a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. The passengers read and watched movies and slept. Everything proceeded normally for several hours. Then, with no communication to the ground to the ground or air traffic control, flight 447 suddenly disappeared.

99% Invisible-170- Children Of The Magenta (Automation Paradox, Pt. 1)

More than 90% of all automobile accidents are all attributable to human error, for some car industry people, a fully-automated car is a kind of holy grail.

However, as automation makes our lives easier and safer, it also creates more complex systems, and fewer humans who understand those systems. Which means when problems do arise—people can be left unable to deal with them. Human factors engineers call this “the automation paradox.”

99% Invisible-171- Johnnycab (Automation Paradox, Pt. 2)

Who decides that the color this season is “mint green” or that denim jackets are “back?” Of course, there’s top-down fashion, where couture houses and runway shows set a trend that trickles down through the rest of the industry. Then there’s bottom-up - where street photographers hunt down grassroots ways that people are wearing clothes, which then comes to influence popular fashion.
But these two methods are for the relatively cutting-edge. For the mass market,  for retailers, designers, and marketers working in major clothing chains, there’s a middle path to determine what’s “in.” And often times, it is through a  company called WGSN.

229- The Trend Forecast

Debbie talks to writer Tim Ferriss about the strategies he has used to change his life.

lets get existential

djgf