Love at first... hearing?

It has long been debated how the current configuration of the internet ends up feeding us with more of the same entertainment products that we are already consuming. This results, on the one side, in a kind of shortsightedness, where we do not see anything beyond our circle, and in a lack of innovation on the other side, as the algorithm try to make almost exclusively suggestion that have a high chance of being accepted. Luckily, there are also human schedulers that occasionally force new items into our streams and, sometimes, with great success, as it has been the case today.

Photo: Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

It all started with the fact that both boys were staying for lunch at school today, which only happens every now and then. Trevor stays for lunch only Tuesdays and Jason Thursdays plus every second Tuesday, so every second week they are both out for lunch. Today Karen had an appointment in the afternoon, so I had to pass on the PhD group meeting, but I did not want to force her to cook lunch for the two of us, so I went to the office right after dropping the kids at school and signed up for lunch there.

In the morning I managed to finally close up a couple of software bugs that had been hanging for weeks, attended the team meeting and made good progress on the presentation I have to give next week for the PhD group. Shortly before lunch Karen texted me that her appointment has been delayed so I was enough if I was back home by 15:30, which gave me yet another stretch of undisturbed work.

By the time I got home I fell so accomplished with my progress that I decided to "reward" myself taking care of the hedge around our garden, which I had not trimmed this year yet. The weather has been fresh all day, so hard physical work felt satisfying and made up for the relatively cold temperature. Still, it was two hours and a half of hard labor, and I only managed to take care of the street side of the hedge. Unfortunately, we are limited by the capacity of the trashcans, so the garden side and the top will have to wait, probably, another week.

But the point that I wanted to share with you is that, all along, I was listening to my usual stream of podcasts. Half-way through the trimming itself, I ran into one of these "cross-feeds", where a podcast actually includes an episode of a different, but somehow related, podcast for the listeners to know. The cross-feed was narrated by a soft-spoken Englishman, which instantly felt refreshing amidst of the mostly American English narrators, but it was barely audible with the electric hedge trimmer, so I postponed it for a quieter time and did not give it another thought. About half an hour later, when I was done with the cutting and was already sweeping the clippings, the current episode finished and the British guy came back through my headphones. I can only say that it was delightful. The show gives a very intense feeling of intimacy, as if the narrator, Hari Kunzru, were speaking directly to me, not over the waves or through the internet, but sitting next to me in an armchair telling his story. The episode is fairly long, at over 50 minutes in length, but the narrative is carefully woven, stays interesting throughout, but with a certain countenance as if not to overwhelm the listener. I have yet to listen to the other four episodes (yes, it is a very short "season"), but they look very appealing to me.