I have distinct memories of my mother singing from the kitchen along with the tunes of Lata Mangeshkar songs playing on our old Philips radio. The sound of food being made somehow mixed perfectly with the songs and my mother singing immaculately. Not that I was ever paying attention to it intently, it just got ingrained. The songs, the RJ’s sleepish voice, my mother’s voice and the core emotionality of Lata Mangeshkar songs got imbibed and nurtured the person that I am today. All because of our radio, my mother’s device to achieve her fleeting dreams. 

In the 1920s when the radio was first introduced, it was met with a lot of resentment, with the common fear being that it would diminish family values, pave way for immoral content and of course distract the youth. We all know how it transitioned to being one of the most potent parts of our lives, shaping culture, influencing music choices, sometimes helping us form political opinions and what not. 

Cut to today, every morning or when I’m working out or when I can't sleep or when I’m feeling anxious, I turn on a podcast and just let it play while I carry on. This is exactly when I realize how podcasts have become the new radio. 

With constant stimulation from all corners through social media, OTT, music streaming platforms etc., there was one void that was yet to be filled and that was, people talking, not with you but with a feeling that someone is talking and you can just listen and not really participate. Podcasts replaced by RJs are providing just that.

We are in a loneliness epidemic, where social experiences have significantly gone down, there are young people leaving their homes in their early 20s to live in a new, bigger city, intimidating. Sometimes you are lying on your bed and you can hear the silence cutting through you, its comforting at times but you also miss your mother’s voice coming from the kitchen, so you turn on a nonsense podcast where two people are talking about how shitty their dating life is, it's no valuable information but you find an impostor home in it.

Here’s a list of a few podcasts that I listen to: 

- Simple Ken Podcast by Kenny Sebastian 

- Broke Studio Podcast

- Andrew Hubermann 

- Untriggered Podcast

- Lex Fridman

- Raj Shamani

- Nikhil Kamath 

- Moment of Silence

- KB