The newest episode of Radiolab has the highlights from one of their occasional live events. This one revolves around the deliberately contentious premise of television vs. radio.
Seeing as Huffduffer is all about audio rather than video, you can probably guess that I’ve got a soft spot for radio. Not that I have anything against the moving image; it’s just that television, film and video demand more from your senses. Lend me your ears!
and your eyes. With your ears and eyes engaged, it’s pretty hard to do much else. So the default position for enjoying television is sitting down.
A purely audio channel demands only aural attention. That means that radio—and be extension, podcasts—can be enjoyed at the same time as other actions; walking around, working out at the gym. Perhaps it’s this symbiotic, rather than parasitic, arrangement that I find engaging.
Neal Stephenson draws a distinction between vegging out and geeking out:
To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal — and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means.
He expanded on this distinction in a talk at Gresham College on Science Fiction versus Mundane Culture.
I enjoy vegging out in front of the television. I enjoy geeking out with podcasts.