New podcast

We listen to what we already know and call it interest. Half an hour on someone else's subject reminds you what it is like to understand nothing and keep going anyway.

Open a podcast app and go into the category you normally scroll past: beekeeping, antiquity, shipbuilding, finance, birdwatching. Pick an episode whose title you do not even understand and start it from the beginning, not the middle. Listen all the way through while doing something simple — dishes, a walk — a foreign subject lands easier that way. Keep notes handy and write down two or three words you had to look up. At the end, say one idea from the episode out loud in your own words: if that works, you were really listening.

When did I last allow myself to be a beginner?