Why I Stopped Listening To Podcasts

Silence is scary - until you can turn it into your Dreamworld

A few years ago. I was tucking my son into bed. He was about seven or so.

Having raced home from work to get there, I was thinking of myself as a great dad for graciously offering my presence. So I was a little put out when he asked me to leave.

I asked him why.

He said that as soon as everyone left, lying in bed on his own, he went into a Dreamworld. And he said that the story in the Dreamworld was pretty good at the moment and he was keen to get back there.

I asked him what was in the Dreamworld. He wouldn’t say. Fair enough.

I went downstairs to watch telly and fiddle with my phone.

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I’ve now experienced two hours of daily mental quiet for over two months.

For those new to the story: made my daughter cry due to my phone addiction, then after years of trying everything to kick the habit, I became convinced that the best way to stop picking it up all the time was a daily intentional break. And, for me and my routine, it was best to do it on the commute.

It’s been a spectacular success.

First it was very hard. Then, at around the four week mark (when the science of neuroplasticity says my brain rewired) I began to experience enormous benefits across my life.

I’ve come to love my commute. And despite appearances, there’s a lot going on… indeed it’s getting pretty weird (I will write much more about this in coming weeks).

But there’s no-one to talk to. They are all on their phones. They are checking and fixing.

And if they aren’t swiping, they have the little earbuds in. You think for a second, Wait! That person doesn’t have a phone! But then they rearrange their hair and you see the little white things. Even the book readers you occasionally see normally have them.

It has quite a cumulative effect. Someone from Mars would assume these things have a special importance to us, like these little stoppers hold our brains in place.

And I feel like I notice it more out and about. When I’m walking Jumble The Dog nearly all of the other dog walkers have them.

The other day I read an article about how half of American podcast listeners use them to get to sleep. I once downloaded Calm - I was surprised to find it full of sleep stories.

Every little moment of incidental silence is being closed off. And as you have likely already guessed, the science suggests this is bad for us.

Last month, when I experienced all sorts of benefits from my phone free commuting, I asked AI to look at the neuroscience to see if people could get the same result with music and podcasts. It said it reduced the chances by about 70%.

Neuroscience is increasingly clear: the brain does not just want a break from stimulus; it requires one to function.

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THE WALL OF SOUND

People don’t get judgey about listening to the phone in the same way they get judgey about scrolling on TikTok.

It’s hard to argue with someone who’s listening to an opera or a great work of literature while on a dog walk (and they wouldn’t hear you anyway).

But when it’s all the time, you can begin to see where things can go wrong. You can easily imagine that a brain that is constantly stimulated would feel uneasy and unsatisfied when that stimulation is withdrawn.

For me, any silence was quickly filled with negative thoughts, mainly the stupid things I said or did at work. OH MY GOD! Why did I say that to Clive? In a big meeting and everything! I’m such a doofus.

Radio Clive was the last thing I wanted to hear, so when I couldn’t scroll it away, I chose to mask it by listening to something… anything. Often mental health podcasts about the virtue of silence.

But neglected, unaccepted and unheard, those ghosts of Clive were waiting in the wings to haunt me every time I stopped. And they started screaming louder and louder, breaking into my day.

For a kid, Dreamworld is lovely. For an adult, after a few years of failing to accept your worries, silence becomes Nightmareworld. Soon you’ll do anything to avoid it.

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TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING. AGAIN.

Once again, it’s the phone doing its thang: taking something good and making it omnipresent. Listening to stuff is great in moderation, but phones offer an infinite buffet of constant distraction.

I wrote the other week about how I don’t like to differentiate between types of screen use, between buying my son the school trousers he so very badly needs or scrolling on TikTok. You could definitely argue one is worse than the other, or that he really really really needs those trousers now he looks awful, but the problem is endlessly checking and fixing at all hours. It’s not about what you’re doing, it’s that you’re never getting a break.

It’s the same for noise. It used to be only meditatey types who gave silence any thought, but now thanks to stupid 24/7 phones, we are all forced to actively seek it out.

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SILENCE: CRAP AT FIRST, WORTH IT IN THE END

The world is very much waking up to the need for silence. But much of the pro-silence stuff that’s out there is annoying and misleading.

Silence often gets conflated with “rest” or “doing nothing”. But these are all different things. I want to write more about this next week.

And the worst thing is that people pretend silence is immediately pleasant, accompanying it with AI-generated pictures of smug people cradling coffee in a garden.

Silence is properly hard. At least for a month or so. You need to grit your teeth through it. But when you tune into it, it’s a huge prize.

These days, I still scroll. (Away from the commute I mean). But whether walking the dog or driving the car or having a bath, I’ve stopped listening to anything.

At home, if I choose not to scroll, it’s because I shouldn’t. I don’t listen to podcasts because I now genuinely don’t want to.

Given the right conditions, experiencing silence can be quite lovely.

My son was way ahead of me on that.

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P.S. Apologies to any long-time readers (hi, and a heartfelt thank you by the way!) who are disorientated by the title changes. I’ve just realised my name is a neat pun and I couldn’t resist it. Only took me two months to get that.

P.P.S. And also - emails are going out at 11am now on Tuesdays. If you miss it being at 6am, apologies, please let me know.

[Images by AI, words all human]