modern phenomena; we die in it. But we don’t always have to put up with it, do we? There are things we can – no, must – resist. This week Emma is resisting podcasts all day long.
This week a colleague proudly showed me a kind of open headset with which you can listen to podcasts and hear the outside world. I was in two minds while testing the device: 1. This coworker is probably going to burn out soon and 2. I need this immediately. Like seven million other Dutch people, I have been an avid podcast listener for some years now, but even if I would listen to all unsolicited podcast tips day and night with this device at double speed, I would still not cut a hole in the listening list.
At the beginning of the podcast revolution, it all seemed so beautiful. In every waking moment that I had to be physically present, but mentally preferred not to be, I was skipping audio. While sorting the laundry, I learned about the tragic existence of Marilyn Monroe, while vacuuming, I lay in the trenches of World War I, and while running, I learned about the horrors of the Bolsonaro regime. I told myself I was getting wiser by the minute, a trivia queen in the making. Just hope that The smartest person would call me soon.
Listening time doesn’t carry the guilt of its evil cousins scroll time and screen time. Podcasts have an unmistakable intellectual aura, you picture yuppies wearing sophisticated headphones on matte black e-bikes. We all act like the podcast is the granola bar of the media. If you can choose from the newspaper (sourdough bread, extra coarse-grained), Instagram (bag of Hamka’s), TikTok (fried Snickers) or a podcast, then you choose the podcast. But why actually? Because it’s not about looking, it’s just about listening? Podcasts are of course not necessarily superior in content. At the peak of the podcast revolution, there were also plenty of plofcasts: hatseflats put together, watery, low nutritional value.
In addition: all your commute, every household chore, every hour on the stairmaster with audio must have dark sides, right? In the 1950s, people were terrified of the devastating effects TV would have on our lives. They then put thousands of children in front of televisions for thousands of hours to prove that those children were destroyed by it. I am not in favor of a moral panic about technological developments, but we know very little about audio – probably because it is not ethical to let test subjects listen to Marcel van Roosmalen, Gijs Groenteman, Maarten van Rossem and Jort Kelder for thousands of hours.
While we know from numerous studies, if you do two things at the same time, you do them both poorly. For example, many people listen to podcasts while exercising. Now one of the great things about sports is that it brings the head and body together. But if you turn on a podcast, your head leaves and your body continues, like a worm that has been cut through. Podcast time is split time.
What makes podcasts so intimate, such an excellent escape from mundane tasks, makes them insidious at the same time. Suddenly I am in the supermarket. Why are there frozen sandwiches in my shopping basket? Did I steal this celery from the self-scan? What is that cashier trying to tell me? If only I had special headphones that would allow me to hear her and listen to this podcast about a murder mystery in rural America. A bad idea, but someone has to prove how bad exactly.