What does listening to a podcast do to you?

 

When was the last time you smiled while listening to someone talk? Someone you couldn't see, only hear? When was last time you reacted to the speaker with all your heart and weren't preoccupied with scrolling through your phone or cooking or the latest added to the list of activities: working from home.

There is some talking and there is some great storytelling that takes over your chores, makes you drop that cooking- spatula and gets you lost in a world that takes you through somebody's legendary past, present and future (The Michelle Obama Podcast) or a horrific end (Truth and Lies: Jeffery Epstein ) or an end that was rather due (Dirty John) or a cute little love story, where you can't help but compare your life to the characters of the story and wish you'd meet them and even decide what you'd say to their silliness (in love). It doesn't leave you calm when the narrations get dark about sexual assault in the '70s and '80s and you sit there gritting your teeth.

Overall, this is a beautiful mind-game that audio plays with your brain. And if there is something about that voice, that narrative that doesn't make sense to you, you are out. Yes, it takes a little longer than the right and left Tinder swipe.

Coming back: much like books, it opens up those imaginary plots and lets you breathe and live them. Here, the sounds and voices streaming from the apps talk to the voice in your head. They pause when they want you to think, they blabber when they want you to get the chaos, they cry when they want you to weep just like when you watch films. Here, the sounds and voices are carefully amplified. You might end up responding and saying out what you feel towards the podcast, just like I did. It's okay to be in that bubble. I feel like the audio medium is like a teacher asking you to not get too distracted and listen more and carefully, to grasp and to give yourself to the material, to the hard work of the producers and presenters and the distributors. All they are asking you is, "Are you listening?" It is hard work. A study reported in 2017 by The Cut, states that a neuroscientist who was involved in a study found that subjects who were put in an MRI with a podcast episode playing - concluded to have increased brain activity and the brain possibly found this content exciting simply because of the stories. Storytelling is everything, the narrative is everything. With interviews, with fiction and even non-fiction content. The anecdotal, the dramatized versions, the songs embellished mid-way; they all added to this exciting cumulative experience, for the brain to look forward to a new piece of information. I'd like to compare this new-information processing to having a shot of espresso or even better, biting into 90% dark chocolate because all that energy is stimulating and overwhelming.

I remember I wasn't a fast reader so watching news and documentaries and gradually listening to them became my bible. Infotainment takes itself very seriously on audio: with audiobooks and documentaries. It's personal, again, it is like someone talking to you. And in the post lockdown world, this is a blessing. You have someone talking to you and teaching you lessons that others learnt, now passed on to you. It lets you grow in your own cocoon. Does that mean it makes you a little hostile towards the outside world? Maybe.

I think I first listened to online radio on BBC Radio 1 with Nick Grimshaw and I'd listen to it every day through TuneIn, sitting on a bus on my way to an internship in Bombay (Sorry! I'd like to call it that). It opened up a plethora of shows: news, documentaries, although I am and will always be a blind radio lover - where curiosity and intrigue are the basic virtues. Where all it takes is the first three seconds to engage or lose the listener. But authentically, I was mesmerized by listener-calls on-air and how they sounded. Those people behind the mic came alive and whomever they spoke to was all a reality. The telephonic layer stuck to my head. That it was so plain jane, it was good! And stays on. It's moved on to the digital world, like everything else.

Cheers to more listening!