Was listening to the Ezra Klein podcast. Guest was Cal Newport. He talked about studies showing that people generally need a lot more solitude than they get these days. He defined solitude as the lack of direct input from other minds. In other words, books, music, podcasts, smartphone stuff, other folks, and so on. I think the research he’s surfacing is right. I can’t speak to the efficacy of solitude on the human brain in terms of physiology, but I do know that I, at least, am a lot more calm if I can go for hours without any particular stimulus. This is the case when reading (which is not what he’s talking about) but it’s definitely the case with, say, walking the dog without listening to podcasts at the same time. I’ve often felt distracted walking the dog due to the podcast going one way, the dog going the other. Impatient even. But I’ve never felt any ill-effect from not listening to something while walking the dog. In fact, I remember when I was meditating, when I’d take Jet out for walks at lunch time, especially if it was sunny, or spring or fall, I really enjoyed just looking up at things and I was never impatient with Jet’s need to sniff out this or that thing on the spur of the moment, stopping our progress. In fact, I remember feeling like I did when I was a little kid in a new environment in the early morning. That whole-new-world feeling. Probably what people mean by joy. So, I’m not going to listen to podcasts when walking the dog. So let it be written, so let it be done.