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The Gray Area with Sean Illing

How we standardized music

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, News Commentary, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.511.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2026

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Gray Area is taking a short break this week — but we’ve got something special for you. We’re dropping an episode from one of our favorite podcasts, Unexplainable. In it, host Emily Siner explores deceptively simple questions: What is a musical note? And how did something as fundamental as the note A become standardized across the world? It’s a story about science, history, and the hidden complexity behind the sounds we listen to every day.We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show.And you can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. Listen to The Gray Area ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same.

0:04.6

I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater.

0:07.7

We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app.

0:11.8

It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are,

0:16.4

and serves up smarter search results just for you.

0:19.6

You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City.

0:24.2

And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. Download the eater app at eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users.

0:35.4

Hi, I'm Jorge Just, editorial director of the gray area, and close personal friend of your host, Sean

0:43.3

sent me here with a mission to introduce you to another show that I work on.

0:48.3

Unexplainable.

0:49.3

It's a show about all the things we don't yet know, and about the people who are trying to figure it all

0:54.3

out. Unexplainable in the gray area have a lot in common. They both take open-hearted, open-minded

1:00.6

approaches to new ideas, hard questions, and the mysteries of life. They just do it in different

1:06.4

ways, but it's the same project, honestly. And the episode I'm about to play for you is a perfect example.

1:11.6

It asks the question, what is a musical note?

1:15.6

Seriously. In this case, the note A, the note that orchestras around the world tune to before they play.

1:22.6

How did we all, all of us, collectively decide that that very particular number of vibrations

1:30.2

per second would be the thing that we call A.

1:34.2

Turns out, it's not easy to standardize a sound, especially a sound that's central to the making

1:39.5

of Western music, a sound upon which we hang so much emotion, so much memory, so much feeling.

1:46.7

It's not easy, but we didn't. But did we? I mean, even now, there's a lot of people who are

1:53.4

not on board. It feels like nothing in this universe is universal. Here's what say from Unexplainable.

...

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