Best Samantha Cusick Podcasts (2025)

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From YouTube to the United Nations: Nikki Lilly on Facing Difference, Finding Confidence and Changing the World. 58:56

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4d ago58:56

58:56

This week on The Silly Little Girls Club, host Samantha Cusick speaks with Nikki Lilly, BAFTA-winning presenter, Junior Bake Off champion, author, YouTuber and fearless advocate for people with facial differences. At just 20, Nikki has built a global platform for representation and face equality. In this powerful conversation, she shares her journe…

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From Beauty Exec to Founder: Amy Liu on Tower 28’s Global Success 40:25

11d ago40:25

40:25

Welcome to Season 3 of The Silly Little Girls Club 🚀 This week on The Silly Little Girls Club, Samantha sits down with Amy Liu, founder of Tower 28 Beauty, the cult clean beauty brand built for sensitive skin. After years in the beauty industry — and struggling with chronic eczema — Amy created Tower 28 to prove that sensitive skin deserves fun, in…

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We’re Back: Business Chaos, Gin Tears & Vet Bills That Cost More Than the Maldives 26:51

2M ago26:51

26:51

Welcome to Season 2 of Out of Office, the unfiltered spin-off of The Silly Little Girls Club where work life gets messy and the gin is stronger than the WiFi. We’re back—blotchy, borderline feral, and more out of office than ever. In this chaotic but cathartic catch-up, Samantha and Hollie reunite to debrief on everything from mental breakdowns on …

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Workplace Dilemmas, Crystal Curses & Bed Frame Red Flags 29:31

2M ago29:31

29:31

Welcome back to Out of Office! Season 2, Episode 2 is an unfiltered, feral delight — featuring real listener dilemmas, even realer oversharing, and a few life lessons snuck in between cocktails. This week, Samantha and Hollie take on the problems filling your inbox and your brain—from cursed crystals and ChatGPT shame to sleeping with the enemy (ak…

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Wellness but Make It Unhinged: We Got Ice-Bathed, Towel-Wafted & Emotionally Recharged at Arc 17:10

2M ago17:10

17:10

Welcome to one of our most unhinged but healing episodes of Out of Office yet — the wellness edition no one asked for but everyone absolutely needed. In this episode, Samantha and Hollie head to ARC, the next-gen wellness space founded by Silly Little Girls Club guest Alanna Kit. The goal? Try contrast therapy, slow down, and finally relax. The res…

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How Rosie Fortescue Went From Reality Star to Serial Entrepreneur 39:57

3M ago39:57

39:57

Welcome back to The Silly Little Girls Club — where the glow-up is mental, emotional, entrepreneurial, and sometimes, very sparkly. This week’s guest? Rosie Fortescue. You may know her from the OG days of Made in Chelsea, but reality TV was just the prologue. Rosie is now the powerhouse behind not one, but two thriving brands — Rosie Fortescue Jewe…

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Mikai McDermott on Beauty Standards, Burnout & Building a Real-Life Community 46:24

3M ago46:24

46:24

Welcome back to The Silly Little Girls Club, where we turn big conversations into power moves—one unapologetic woman at a time. This week, I’m joined by Mikai McDermott—beauty theorist, content creator, founder of The Linen Service, and the sharpest voice redefining what it means to work, create, and show up online with purpose. Once a top-tier hai…

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From Barrister to Birkins: How Hanushka Toni Built a Luxury Resale Empire 37:13

4M ago37:13

37:13

🎙️ Episode Introduction What do you do when you realise the career you’ve worked your whole life for… isn’t your dream? For Hanushka Toni, the answer was simple: leave law and build a luxury resale empire instead. This episode of The Silly Little Girls Club is a true movie script moment—from being a high-flying solicitor to launching Sellier London…

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What It's Really Like Writing for Vogue, Refinery29 & Grazia – with Humeara Mohamed 55:58

4M ago55:58

55:58

From writing poems about bees in Year One to writing for Vogue, Refinery29, and Dazed—journalist and copywriter Humeara Mohamed has one hell of a story. In this raw, warm, and wildly funny episode of The Silly Little Girls Club, she opens up about what it really took to break into the fashion and beauty media industry—from unpaid internships to lau…

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Healing Starts with Discomfort: Alanna Kit on ARC & Human Potential 47:11

5M ago47:11

47:11

What do ice baths, neuroscience, and ancient rituals have in common? According to Alanna Kit—everything. In this episode of The Silly Little Girls Club, Samantha Cusick sits down with Alanna Kit, neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and founder of ARK—London’s cutting-edge wellness sanctuary that merges science, spirituality, and ritual into one transform…

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Trans, Talented & Tired of Explaining – Bel Priestley on Reclaiming Her Narrative 48:10

5M ago48:10

48:10

In this powerful and timely episode, Samantha sits down with actress, advocate, and internet icon Bel Priestley—best known for her role as Naomi in Netflix’s Heartstopper—to talk about life, identity, and what it really means to step into your power as a trans woman in the UK right now. As the UK High Court ruling on trans women in single-sex space…

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The Viral Haircare Queen: How Anisa Sojka Became a Beauty Powerhouse 43:07

5M ago43:07

43:07

Have you ever posted something online just for fun—only to have it completely change your life? That’s exactly what happened to Anisa Sojka, today’s guest on The Silly Little Girls Club. You might know her for her flawless, Rapunzel-worthy hair, but what you might not know is how she took a single social media post and turned it into a multi-brand …

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How to Work Smarter, Not Harder – Emily Austen’s Success Secrets 1:02:20

5M ago1:02:20

1:02:20

🎙️ How to Work Smarter, Not Harder – Emily Austen’s Success Secrets Ever feel like you're running on a treadmill of hustle culture, sprinting toward success but never quite getting there? We’ve all been there—rewarding ourselves for late nights, glorifying burnout, and measuring our worth by how busy we are. But what if I told you that working hard…

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Sephora x The Silly Little Girls Club: Behind the Beauty Counter: Is Inclusivity in Beauty Just a Trend? 42:17

7M ago42:17

42:17

Podcast Episode Summary/Intro: Sephora x The Silly Little Girls Club – Redefining Beauty, One Conversation at a Time Welcome back to The Silly Little Girls Club! Today, we’re coming to you live from Sephora, where we’re diving deep into the beauty industry’s most important conversation—true inclusivity. This episode is all about breaking down barri…

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The Secret to Viral Content Creation: Chloe Swift’s Winning Formula! 50:56

9M ago50:56

50:56

This week, I’m joined by the one and only Chloe Swift, a hairstyling expert turned social media sensation. Chloe’s story is one of hard work, passion, and breaking boundaries in the digital world. From her early days in a salon to becoming a full-time content creator, Chloe has redefined what it means to blend creativity with business savvy. 💇‍♀️ W…

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Musicology and Repair with William Cheng 1:00:07

9M ago1:00:07

1:00:07

Well, it's our final episode, and we have the exact right guest to help say goodbye to a podcast that focuses on music scholarship, and why it matters: William Cheng, whose work fundamentally reconsiders what musicology can be, by laying out a philosophy of care and repair. This conversation covers a large swath of Dr. Cheng's scholarship, includin…

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Silly Little Girls Club: Hump for Justice in Dubai! 23:55

9M ago23:55

23:55

🎙️ Welcome back to the Silly Little Girls Club: Out of Office! 🎙️ This week, Hollie and I are taking you on a wild ride through our hilariously chaotic lives as women balancing business, travel, and a whole lot of unexpected moments. From Dubai's golden sands to camel justice campaigns and awkward family holidays, this episode has it all! 💼 What’s …

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From Wall Street to Wellness: How Rosie Built a Game-Changing Brand 45:18

9M ago45:18

45:18

This week, I’m joined by Rosie Speight, co-founder of the game-changing wellness brand, Equi London. Rosie’s journey from the trading room floor to launching a pioneering supplement brand is nothing short of extraordinary. 💼 From thriving in the high-stakes world of finance to redefining women’s wellness, Rosie shares the highs, lows, and laugh-out…

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Sound Expertise Reflections with Will Robin and D. Edward Davis 46:30

9M ago46:30

46:30

Well, we're almost done: this is the penultimate episode of our fourth and final season. In our final weeks, host Will and producer Eddie take some time to reflect back on what it's meant: the origins of the podcast, the community we've built, and the legacy of Sound Expertise. Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org! Questions? Thoughts? Em…

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Real Talk on Networking: The Good, The Bad, and The Ick 28:21

9M ago28:21

28:21

We’re back with another Out of Office episode! It’s me, Samantha, and PR Queen Hollie, talking all things work, business, and those why-does-this-always-happen-to-us moments. Grab your mug of Prosecco (because why not?) and settle in for an unfiltered, laugh-out-loud chat about the realities of life as working women. 🍸 What’s Inside This Episode? -…

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It’s Not You, It’s Your Water: How Karlee Built Hello Klean to Solve Hidden Beauty Problems! 38:05

10M ago38:05

38:05

In this episode of The Silly Little Girls Club, we sit down with Karlee Ozener, the visionary founder of Hello Klean—a brand transforming the way we approach beauty by tackling an often-overlooked culprit: hard water. With their iconic tagline, “It’s not you, it’s your water,” Hello Klean has become a game-changer for those struggling with hair and…

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A Feminist Musicological Life with Suzanne Cusick 1:08:51

10M ago1:08:51

1:08:51

Musicology today could not exist without feminist musicology, and feminist musicology could not exist without Suzanne Cusick. Dr. Cusick's revolutionary work has scrutinized gender and sexuality in musical life for decades, and is foundational to musicology as we know it today. In this profound conversation, she reflects on her arc through the fiel…

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Out of Office: Prosecco, PR Fails, and the Chaos of Women in Business 24:36

10M ago24:36

24:36

🎙️ Welcome to the Silly Little Girls Club: Out of Office! 🎙️ In this debut episode of our new "Out of Office" series, join me, Samantha, and my fabulous friend Hollie as we dive into the rollercoaster world of being women in business. This isn’t your average business chat—it’s raw, real, and oh-so-relatable. We’re spilling the tea (or Prosecco, in …

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Starting Over at 38: Mimi's Journey from Hair Salon to Million-Dollar Brand 43:41

10M ago43:41

43:41

Mimi Kone, the powerhouse behind Mimi at Mina, takes us on an incredible journey of reinvention and resilience. Starting as a salon owner in Notting Hill, she made it her mission to provide quality services for women of color—a passion sparked by her own experiences. Imagine this: moving to London without speaking English, armed with nothing but de…

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Music and Eugenics with Alexander Cowan 48:59

10M ago48:59

48:59

From its beginnings, the eugenics movement has looked to music: for foundational figures like Francis Galton and contemporaries like Charles Murray, the child-prodigy composer or violinist could serve to demonstrate that talent was innate and inherited, and thus could be bred. The horrendously racist implications of such a vision have long been und…

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Balancing Act: Tanya Burr on Motherhood, YouTube, and Finding Your Voice 40:38

10M ago40:38

40:38

Get ready for a candid and inspiring chat with the incredible Tanya Burr! In this episode, Tanya takes us through her journey—from her early days as one of YouTube’s OG stars to building a thriving career as an actress, influencer, and UNHCR goodwill ambassador. She doesn’t hold back, sharing what it’s really like to juggle motherhood with a demand…

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Sound Expertise LIVE with Jonathan Bailey Holland 1:01:12

10M ago1:01:12

1:01:12

We did it! Sound Expertise recorded its first-ever live episode at the American Musicological Society conference in Chicago. It was a super-fun event with a raucous crowd. Please enjoy this thoughtful conversation with Jonathan Bailey Holland, dean of Northwestern's Bienen School of Music, about his path as a composer and what it means to oversee a…

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Crying and Creating: Lisa Potter-Dixon Discusses Health, Hustle, and Happiness 48:31

10M ago48:31

48:31

Join me, Samantha Cusick, for a heart-to-heart with the incredible Lisa Potter-Dixon—a makeup artist, author, and entrepreneur whose journey in the beauty industry is as inspiring as it is real. We dive deep into the power of authenticity, both personally and professionally, and how staying true to ourselves shapes our relationships and success. Li…

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From Dismissed to Empowered: The Silly Little Girls Club Trailer 2:48

10M ago2:48

2:48

Hey there, and welcome to The Silly Little Girls Club! This podcast is all about real talk, resilience, and proving that no dream is “too silly” or “too big” for any woman. In this space, I’ll be sharing stories of incredible women who’ve faced challenges head-on and redefined what’s possible in the business world and beyond. It all started with a …

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Mel C gets real on Girl Power: Fame, Feminism and the true story behind the Spice Girl 47:06

10M ago47:06

47:06

I’m SO excited to kick off The Silly Little Girls Club podcast with our very first episode featuring the one and only Mel C, aka Sporty Spice! 🎉 It’s honestly a dream to have such an iconic guest to launch this journey, and I can’t wait for you to hear what she has to say! In this episode, we dive deep into Mel’s incredible journey with the Spice G…

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Engaging Black Opera with Naomi André 49:55

10M ago49:55

49:55

Naomi André is one of the most important scholars of opera today, best known for her landmark 2018 book Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement. But the study of opera and race is not where Professor Andre’s career began: her path through musicology has been incredibly fraught, because of who she is, and what she wanted to do as a scholar. This wee…

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Taylor Swift Studies with Christa Bentley, Kate Galloway, and Paula Harper 1:00:41

11M ago1:00:41

1:00:41

Everybody's studying Taylor Swift these days, from Swifties decoding her vault to YouTubers decoding her harmonies to right-wing conspiracists decoding her plot against America. But what does it mean to study Taylor Swift as a musicologist? Christa Bentley, Kate Galloway, and Paula Harper know: they're co-editing Taylor Swift: The Star, the Songs, …

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Listening to the 2024 Election with Dana Gorzelany-Mostak 50:41

11M ago50:41

50:41

Election Day is approaching, and both presidential candidates have been foregrounding music, from Kamala Harris walking out Beyoncé's "Freedom" to Donald Trump...dancing for 30 minutes to "Memory" from Cats. It's been a weird, and terrifying, campaign season. But music can help us make sense of it, according to musicologist Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, w…

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Florence Price's Chicago with Samantha Ege 45:14

11M ago45:14

45:14

Florence Price was exceptional, but she was not singular. In the fascinating new book "South Side Impresarios," musicologist Samantha Ege situates Price amidst multiple generations of Black women who transformed Chicago into a Black classical metropolis. In this conversation, we discuss the city and community that built Price, including the pivotal…

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The Future of Opera with Yuval Sharon 48:45

11M ago48:45

48:45

Welcome to Season 4 of Sound Expertise! Opera is a four-hundred-year-old genre, and it often looks and sounds that way: despite opera's revolutionary merging of artistic disciplines, its administrators and musicians are often stuck in the past. But in his visionary productions, the director Yuval Sharon has imagined many potential futures for the a…

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Season 4 Trailer!! 2:37

12M ago2:37

2:37

WE'RE SO BACK. Our fourth and final season begins October 15. Seeya then! soundexpertise.orgBy Will Robin

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Music Theory's Racism Problem with Philip Ewell 58:22

2y ago58:22

58:22

Philip Ewell has, in recent years, become the most controversial music scholar on the planet. After his incisive work on music theory's white racial frame was unfairly attacked by fellow academics, he was suddenly thrust into the national spotlight, as right-wing news outlets targeted him as part of a broader backlash. A discussion about what it me…

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The Science of Silence with Chaz Firestone 35:58

2y ago35:58

35:58

Do we hear silence? John Cage certainly thought so, and so does Chaz Firestone, a scientist whose laboratory's recent study revealed that yes, we do hear silence. In this conversation, we discuss his new findings, what they mean for the fields of perception studies and philosophy, and how science and the humanities can work together to provide new …

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Curating Black Musical History with Dwandalyn Reece 43:40

2y ago43:40

43:40

In curating music and the performing arts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Dwandalyn Reece has one of the most important jobs one can have as a music scholar: providing a framework for the public to understand African-American culture, at a moment in which Black history is under a nationwide assault. In …

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Hip-Hop and Friendship on Death Row with Alim Braxton and Mark Katz 55:12

2y ago55:12

55:12

Mark Katz is John P. Barker Distinguished Professor of Music at UNC Chapel Hill; Alim Braxton is a rapper on death row, who has been incarcerated in Central Prison in North Carolina since 1993. In 2019, they struck up a correspondence, and then a friendship, and are now writing a book. This is their story. Show notes and more over at soundexpertise…

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Reviving Julius Eastman with Mary Jane Leach 38:53

2y ago38:53

38:53

The revival of Julius Eastman's work has transformed the world of avant-garde music, and in many ways can be attributed to a single individual. Since the late 1990s, the composer and performer Mary Jane Leach has collected manuscripts and recordings of Eastman's music, and helped bring about the current wave of "Eastmania." But the politics of East…

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Doing Public Musicology with Douglas Shadle 51:13

2y ago51:13

51:13

In 2018, Douglas Shadle tweeted about systemic discrimination in American orchestral programming. His thread went viral, and he soon found himself doing what became known, around then, as public musicology. In this conversation, he talks about presenting his work outside the academy through advocating for marginalized composers, and what the Floren…

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Bach Scandals, Jug Bands, and Vexations with Joshua Rifkin 1:16:24

2y ago1:16:24

1:16:24

In his long career as a scholar and conductor, Joshua Rifkin has done a lot: arranged for Judy Collins, performed in the first-ever marathon of "Vexations," helped lead the ragtime revival and, perhaps most importantly, totally upended the conventional wisdom about Bach's choral music. This is a conversation about all of that, and more: rich, insig…

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What Bossa Nova Means with Kaleb Goldschmitt 49:03

2y ago49:03

49:03

Bossa nova is everywhere –– from a dance craze in the '60s to elevator music today -- but it's also from somewhere. Kaleb Goldschmitt studies how bossa nova moved from a specific musical tradition grounded in Brazilian culture to an international phenomenon, and what that means for how we understand jazz history. A conversation about all that and m…

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Appropriation and Indigenous Music with Dylan Robinson 48:27

2y ago48:27

48:27

When classical composers incorporate indigenous music into their work, it's more than just cultural appropriation, because indigenous songs are more than just songs: they serve as medicine, law, and history. So what would it mean to redress such misuses, and to bring an indigenous worldview into Western art music? A conversation with Dylan Robinson…

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Philosophy and Vibes with Robin James 43:53

2y ago43:53

43:53

"Music and philosophy" is often about Nietzsche and Wagner, or Kant and Mozart. But, in Robin James's work, it can also be about pop, and feminist theory, and Peloton playlists. A conversation about Dr. James's approach towards philosophy, with a focus on her new project on the musical and cultural implications of our contemporary focus on "vibes."…

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Retelling Beethoven's Story with Laura Tunbridge 39:24

2y ago39:24

39:24

There are approximately one bajillion biographies of Beethoven: do we need really another one? In fact, we do, because Laura Tunbridge has written an engrossing, provocative, and genuinely fresh book about Beethoven's life and times. A conversation about what it means to write about one of the most well-trodden composers in music history, and the r…

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Music in Slavery's Archives with Maria Ryan 49:49

2+ y ago49:49

49:49

What does it mean to search for music-making in the archives of slavery? Maria Ryan studies African-descended musicians and listeners in the colonial Caribbean, and her research is fraught with ethical and logistical challenges. A conversation about fully imagining the lives of enslaved musicians, when the evidence of those lives is documented almo…

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Music, War, and Ukraine with Maria Sonevytsky and Oksana Nesterenko 56:43

2+ y ago56:43

56:43

What does it mean to be a scholar when the culture you study is under attack? Maria Sonevytsky and Oksana Nesterenko work on Ukrainian music, and their lives have changed profoundly in the last year. A conversation about the Ukrainian avant-garde and pop worlds, how wartime changes research agendas, and much more. Maria Sonevytsky is Associate Prof…

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Soviet Sounds (But Not Shostakovich) with Gabrielle Cornish 52:05

2+ y ago52:05

52:05

The story of music in the Soviet Union isn't just about Shostakovich and Stalin -- sometimes, it's not about composers at all. Gabrielle Cornish writes about a different kind of socialist sound: noise abatement policy, pop music, and even an aborted plan to put a synthesizer in every Soviet home. A conversation about socialist noise, studying abroa…