In Shafir’s The Zen of Listening, one quote really stood out to me: “Listening.. is centripetal; it it pulls you into the world. Looking is centrifugal; it separates you from the world.”

When I first read this line I was quick to disagree. But as I thought about it more, and read Shafir’s reflection upon it, I thought more about what that means. “We can close our eyes, but not our ears,” Shafir says.

The author discusses how sounds envelop you and can integrate us into our environments. She romanticizes the nostalgia for radio and how it has connected communities and nationalities, even so far as to reference Benedict Anderson’s imaginary communities.

But I think there’s something to be said about how auditory forms of media can also create a disconnect – people walking around listening to podcasts and music and totally tuned out to to what’s happening around them. And as Shafir notes, after its conception, localized radio shows often created a disconnect culturally or politically based on what the shows were about.

Obviously there’s a lot of proof for how radio has united us, but I’d be interested in going deeper into how it’s potentially created discord as well.