Inside the St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany, sandbags rest on the pedals of a custom-built organ, holding a chord that has been sounding since 2001 as part of a performance scheduled to end in the year 2640. This episode traces how John Cage's Organ2/ASLSP, an eight-page score written in 1987 for a Maryland piano competition with the instruction as slow as possible, became a 639-year mechanical and civic experiment.

The hosts explain why a 1997 German conference seized on the pipe organ's ability to sustain a note indefinitely, how the 639-year span was derived from the first documented organ in Halberstadt Cathedral around 1361, and how the piece began with a year and a half of silence before the first chord in February 2003. They also cover the acrylic case built in 2011 to muffle the drone, the August 5, 2026 addition of an A ...