Remove your headphones!

From 2016 to 2020, when I commuted to downtown Chicago for work, I had an audio routine: Listen to a podcast (usually The Daily) as I walked from my apartment to the Argyle Red Line stop. Once I boarded the train, I’d switch to a playlist or album for the ride. I shifted one final time to my most upbeat tracks for the quick walk from the State/Lake stop to my office a few blocks away.

I can recall almost no individual moments in those four years of commutes, save for the one winter day when I spotted a human turd leaning neatly against the wall of the pedway. It took a startling (and, frankly, impressive) visual and olfactory cue to jolt me out of my earpods-induced stupor. Whatever media I consumed gave my days a rhythmic blur.

When I adopted Dottie a few years ago, I started taking our walks sans headphones — largely because she was (is) a bit unpredictable. The last thing I wanted was to be absorbed in Jason Bateman’s sweet jabs on Smartless (I beg you to watch this clip) while I fail to hear someone using an electric scooter on the sidewalk (straight to jail) that will run us both over.

But my argument for removing your headphones actually has nothing to do with safety; it has everything to do with releasing control and letting the world in. When I walk Dottie without headphones — which is always — we are at the whim of our environment: We’re stopping to look at butterflies, we’re hearing the songs people play while driving or biking, and I’m eavesdropping on conversations. A sampling:

(Two gay men)
“How was dinner at 4 p.m.?”
“Exactly what dinner at 4 p.m. should be… LIQUID!”

(Husband calling to a friend) “Hi, George!”
(Wife, louder) “THAT’S LARRY.”

In 2004, University of Sussex professor Michael Bull published a study in the journal Leisure Studies (how do I become an editor??) called “No Dead Air! The iPod and the Culture of Mobile Listening.” For context: This was the year that Apple released the fourth generation iPod, the first generation iPod mini, and a year before the iPod shuffle. We were still three years from the iPhone. But even at this early stage, Bull was noticing how mobile listening was changing our lives and our perceptions of the world. (Yes, the Walkman and its iterations had been around for a while, but the iPod offered you a whole catalog at your fingertips.)

In the paper, Bull explains how the iPod “creates a form of accompanied solitude for its users in which they feel empowered, in control and self-sufficient” as they move about the city. He offers no judgment of the media’s use, but emphasizes how the devices have changed the way people interact with their shared environments — or, rather, how it allows them to remove themselves and design their own privatized spaces. (Ever tried to get a person’s attention on the bus when they’re mainlining true crime podcasts?? I need to get off at the next stop, please look alive while you ”solve the murder,” nerd!!!)

As Bull writes, “It appears that as users become immersed in their mobile media sound bubbles, so those spaces they habitually pass through in their daily lives may increasingly lose significance for them and progressively turn into the ‘nonspaces’ of daily lives which they try, through those self same technologies, to transcend.”

Bull goes on to explain that using headphones in public spaces is a way to “aestheticize our experience,” or to make things seem more pleasurable or beautiful. This struck me as particularly prescient: 2004 was years before apps like Instagram or TikTok, where people have learned to present carefully curated versions of their lives, preceding the whole obsession with personal brands.

Picking out the “right” song or podcast to listen to on your commute or for a coffee shop sit molds the experience to your preferences, removing you from the (god forbid) natural scene that is unfolding around you. YES, sometimes the goal is avoidance or focus: It is a 5 a.m. flight and the gentleman next to you looks like a talker. HEADPHONES. The cafe is noisy as hell and you need to focus on your work. HEADPHONES. You are bone tired and need to zone out to 23 minutes of 1960s French yé-yé music on your way home from work. HEADPHONES!!!

YET! Do you need to control your environment all the time?

Not only does constant headphone usage keep us from experiencing the world as it happens, it also keeps us from ever being bored — a bad thing, actually! Last year, Ella Glover wrote in the Guardian about experimenting with not using headphones for a month, and she detailed the many, many times she typically popped in her earbuds, including to do “boring” chores.

Glover spoke with neuropsychologist Amber Johnston, who explained that music (and, likely, podcasts) stimulates dopamine and the reward centers in the brain. When people use their headphones to get a dopamine hit during otherwise “boring” tasks, we lower our ability to handle boredom. As Johnston tells her: “[A]ctually, practicing spending time in a state of not seeking dopamine, but instead feeling comfortable with boredom will, over time, reduce the amount of additional stimulus that’s needed to get that same dopamine hit.”

SO, allowing for moments of boredom lowers the amount of stimulus we need to feel pleasure. It’s probably why I will stop dead to notice how almost every letter of a business’ sign was turned into a birds’ nest, or pause to snap a photo of an abnormally large mushroom with the dog next to it (for scale), or make a note about an upcoming garage sale because the commentary on the flier is so good (“Ask me about my magic lamp!”). These are such little things, but because I’m not getting amped listening to a remix of Polo & Pan’s “Dorothy,” I have more than enough bandwidth to peek through a gap in the fence because I heard chatter, only to discover a hidden restaurant patio.

In Glover’s Guardian piece, she also talks to her friend and environmental sound artist Lance Laoyan, who describes removing our headphones as “taking back control of our ears”: “There is an empowering feeling in being able to experience the places we live in through the tactility and senses that we naturally have,” he says. “As much as new technologies can enhance or augment our human bodies, we cannot hide from the fact that we are intricately entangled with this world.”

It’s a messy but great feeling to be really, actively aware of the world around you. I’ll give you one more — albeit unscientific — reason to forgo headphones, particularly when you walk the dog: The opportunity to have a nonsensical conversation with your pup in public. I regularly chat with Dottie on our walks: Commenting on a new stop sign, acknowledging that we see the bunny, asking her why some lady thinks we want to meet her dog (“He’s friendly!” OK???). 

Instead of blocking out unwanted noise, I become the crazy woman in the street that others try to avoid. How beautiful to hear them scoff.