Immersive Listening: Mythic Heroes, Memories & Podcasts
By: Piyush Shinde
Tags: Podcasting, Storytelling, Podcast, Audio, Listening

What Do We Hear When We Truly Listen?

Recently, a dear friend called to share some happy news with me — the stork’s going to visit her soon!

So, off I headed to congratulate her and her husband. I was greeted at the door by the expectant father with a bottle of hand sanitizer (so necessary these days) and face masks (a tad overkill!). Freshly scrubbed and properly covered up, I entered the living room to find my friend resplendent on the sofa, eyes closed as soft music wafted through the air.

As I opened my mouth to blurt out my excited congratulatory words, the husband sidled up to me and whispered, “Wait! Let her finish her Garbha Sanskar (Garbha sanskar essentially means educating the mind of the foetus in the womb). It’ll only take a minute.”

Noticing my curious expression, the husband felt obliged to explain. Apparently, my friend had read somewhere that a baby in a mother’s womb is able to hear and feel everything that the mother experiences. Wanting the best for her child, my friend had decided that from now on till the delivery, she would listen to soothing music for at least a few hours every day.

This reminded me of the story of Abhimanyu from The Mahabharata. The son of Arjuna and Subhadra, he heard dialogue on Warcraft between his parents while he was still in his mother’s womb. Of course, that’s mythology but I couldn’t help but wonder — was my friend on to something?

Does audio really have that kind of power?

Music — The Food of Love (And Life!)

It should come as no surprise that music deeply impacts us. At the very least, it is a pleasant experience. But for many of us, the music evokes strong emotions or memories. Speaking for myself, one of my earliest childhood memories is of my mother putting me down for my afternoon nap whilst rocking me gently to the sound of ABBA’s “Super Trouper” playing on the tape recorder. The memory is deeply engraved in my psyche and I believe the music has a big hand in that.

Research has found that music, especially highly emotional music, stimulates the amygdala. Shaped like twin almonds, these clusters of dense nuclei located in our brains have been linked to some of our strongest emotions — fear, anger, and nostalgia.

Have you ever heard a soaring piece of music that gets your heart pounding? A chill rapidly runs through your spine and it makes your eyes well up — that’s the amygdala acting up.

I remember reading somewhere that this emotion running through your being is called the “Holy Shiver” — that nerve-tingling chill that runs up your spine, into the head and down again, over and over till you’re left buzzing in your skin. That’s the visceral impact of music.

But this feeling isn’t just restricted to a great piece of music — the spoken word can be used to create a similar effect. Children tell their parents to read them bedtime stories precisely for this reason. Even in the minutes leading to a nightly slumber, the child feels warm and loved and protected in the cocoon of their parents’ voice.

The Warm Embrace Of A Podcast

A great podcast tries to achieve this same effect. A warm, soothing voice that’s talking to you as if you’re the only person who mattered — it’s intimate and it involves you, setting the mind free to wander and wonder in a way that makes you feel liberated from the everyday.

Imagine you’re meeting this friend after a long time. You’re excited to meet him, eager to know what he’s been up to but most importantly, you want to relive old memories and make new ones. How would the conversation flow? There’s an ease and camaraderie when you’ve known someone for ages. That’s what we were aiming for with all podcasts — a mix of the familiar and safe with something new and exciting.

On our newest podcast “The Whisky Advisor Show”, the host Uday Balaji while tasting whiskies talks about how a certain scent or flavour reminds him of things from his childhood.

Since we are talking about The Whisky Advisor Show (TWA), let me tell you that one of the best ways to enjoy the TWA experience is to actually sit with a dram of whisky. It’s like recreating your favourite watering hole –the atmosphere is filled with mirth and there’s an exchange of ideas and stories and lots of back and forth between friends and strangers alike. One of my favourite activities while post-production work for TWA was to open a bottle of whisky and listen to the episodes. Just me and my team, sipping whisky while we listen to Uday talk about the very whisky we were drinking — the experience felt surreal. Bedtime stories for adults, you might say!

Immersive Listening

Saregama recently came on board as the Presenting Partner for “The Whisky Advisor Show”. Now, this is a company that understands what makes for an immersive listening experience and naturally, we were stoked to partner with them. I’ve been a fan of their Carvaan range of digital audio players since they were first launched. That old-style transistor design evokes such memories of my childhood. My father is a huge Dev Anand fan and whenever a song from “Jewel Thief” or “Asli Naqli” would start playing on the radio, he’d rush and turn up the volume. He’d snap his fingers and hum along, and his usually serious face would have a big smile. Naturally, I have gifted my dad his very own Carvaan device and as soon as he hits play, that same smile comes back on his face every single time.

Honestly, I am equally in love with the device and own it myself. I can’t wait to sit down and listen to my favourite podcast on Carvaan 2.0 with my imagination mingling with the voice of the narrator and forming a rich tapestry of mental visuals. Well, that’s what a podcast does to me every time I plugin!

Listening to a podcast can feel a lot like Garbha Sanskar, I reckon. There’s no one else, just you and that voice in your head. The voice could be a stranger, but it sounds oddly familiar, and soothing, just like home. You’re enveloped in the sound and the words, you trust it, you feel a connection that you can’t really explain. The voice teaches you and soothes you, it shows you things you didn’t know, or it could even make you feel as if you’re experiencing the known for the first time.