An episode from 9/27/21: In what may be my favorite episode, I talk about loneliness: is it really so bad, and is easy sociability really so much better?

I also look at where my own experience of loneliness began, as a four year-old who suddenly found himself with hearing problems. For the next eight years I underwent a handful of surgeries, which were always preceded by periods of deterioration in my hearing, and where I must have lived in near-total silence.

I also locate my loneliness as a creative person, and what I have always done to fill it: rather than seeking out rooms filled with friends, I’ve been drawn towards interviews, anecdotes on nearly any subject, autobiographies, collections of voices and snippets from history and culture and society: what was life like in ancient Rome, how do parents today deal with “gifted” or “different/difficult” children, how did a certain band make a great album?

It is all a part, as is my penchant for narrative poetry: the desire not to escape from people but to reach them, to bridge the silence of loneliness, even if it is “only” through listeners and readers.