A Month Without Podcasts: How Silence Changed My Brain's Work.

According to Vox: Not long ago, I experienced a very unpleasant situation. One evening, I was walking my dog in a quiet neighborhood in Brooklyn, where I have lived for about a year. Suddenly, I heard something unfamiliar. I stopped and realized: it was the chirping of crickets.

This was my first experience hearing crickets in a new area, as I was walking here for the first time without AirPods in my ears.

There is an explanation for this. Earlier this year, I suddenly realized that I had been listening to too many podcasts and had been doing so for several years. At first, it was a way to entertain myself during long subway rides, but over time it became a habit, especially during the pandemic. I found that I could catch up on The Daily while washing dishes or listen to a few minutes of Radiolab while unloading the trash. As a result, all my quiet moments were filled with the voices of other people, and I felt that I couldn't think my thoughts, even when I was sitting in silence. And so I decided to give up podcasts for a month.

It's quite interesting how giving up something you love can change your perception of the world. But stopping listening to podcasts also affected my brain. As days turned into weeks, I realized that order was returning to my thoughts. Where podcasts had constantly kept my mind occupied, their absence created space for focus. My concentration improved. I read several books, began to interact more with neighbors. And finally, I started noticing crickets.

This can be attributed to the placebo effect. I decided to be more present, and I indeed became so. It resembles the situation with quitting alcohol during 'Dry January', when you feel better the very next day. However, suspecting that something more is going on, I turned to psychologists, neurologists, and other researchers studying cognition. They explained how the brain's default mode network operates, which controls our thoughts and perception, helping us filter information for better understanding the world around us. By turning off one continuous stream of stimuli, I freed up resources in my brain. Not listening to other people's stories allowed me to tell my own more clearly.

Key Takeaways

• The human brain is not capable of multitasking. Every time you think you're multitasking, you are actually quickly switching between tasks, which incurs cognitive costs.
• Silence activates the brain's 'default mode' — and that’s a good thing. Time in silence creates space for self-reflection, planning, and daydreaming.
• Simple sensory actions, like a walk outdoors without headphones, restore cognitive resources much better than podcasts, which serve as a background during downtime.

This conclusion may seem obvious, but it was less obvious to me that listening to podcasts while doing any other task is multitasking, which is not effective. Our brain functions like an analog computer, processing packets of information one by one, and our cognitive resources are very limited, based on data from Earle Miller, a professor of neurology at MIT.

“When you think you're multitasking, you're really just switching tasks,” Miller said. “Your brain is constantly switching from one task to another, but you don't notice it. But it does have a cognitive cost.”

Thanks to smartphones, we have become a society that practices multitasking. Constantly seeing screens — or in my case, constantly having headphones in my ears — we switch between the real and virtual worlds. The same apps on our devices are designed to keep our attention. Podcasts invite you to listen to the next episode. Instagram urges you to scroll further. TikTok wants you to watch even more.

As we increasingly divide our attention, the real world seems somewhat blurred. Our brains haven’t evolved for such a lifestyle.

The Loss of Silent Moments

It would be convenient to blame smartphones for all my distractions, but the roots of the problem go back to the 90s when the Walkman dominated my youth. My family had a restaurant in Tennessee, and I was responsible for washing dishes, hundreds of them, several nights a week. Seeking distraction, I spent those hours listening to mixtapes.

Then I entered university in the early 2000s and got my first iPod, which also heralded the arrival of podcasts. With 10,000 songs in my pocket, I wandered campus plugged into headphones. That's when I realized that music helped me focus — but only if it was familiar and usually without words. Later came life with the iPhone in New York, subway rides with AirPods, and a desire to consume more and more information during my free time.

It turns out that silence is really good for you.

This is not just about me. Between 2015 and 2025, the time Americans spent listening to podcasts increased by 355 percent. About a quarter of listeners spend more than 10 hours a week with podcasts. A few years ago, journalist Sirena Bergman confessed in New York Magazine that she spends 35 hours a week listening to podcasts, wondering what all this content does to her brain.

Listening to podcasts that last an entire workweek deprives the brain of a lot of silence. And it turns out that silence is truly beneficial for you.

There is plenty of scientific evidence to support this. In 2005, medical researcher Luciano Bernardi studied the physiological effects of listening to different styles of music. He found that his most relaxed patients — their blood pressure lowered and heart rate slowed — were during random two-minute periods of silence between songs. Ten years later, neurologist Imke Kirst conducted an experiment with different groups of mice, exposing them to sound stimuli — from Mozart to white noise, and silence, for two hours a day. The experiment showed that the absence of sound really promoted the growth of new neurons in the mice.

Silence also allows your brain to create an internal narrative. Neurologist Marcus Raichle and a team of researchers at Washington University called this state of the unstressed brain the 'default mode.' And even at rest, it is quite active. Self-reflection occurs when the brain is in this default mode network. It is during this time that we create our autobiographical narratives and daydream.

The regions of the brain that are active in the default mode deactivate when another activity is undertaken. When you listen to a podcast, your mind wanders less. As Alexander Huett, a neurologist at the University of California, Berkeley, explained, the external narrative structure dominates your internal one.

“When someone tells you a story, you still have unfinished thoughts, but they are not your own,”

You may try to switch between the podcast and your internal dialogue. But such switches come at a cognitive cost. As I noticed during my distractions on the subway, your mind cannot wander far when it is being pulled in the other direction.

Self-reflection, by the way, is extremely important. It improves everything from workplace productivity to resilience against stress. Positive thinking when the brain is in default mode can even make you happier.

Reflecting on Multitasking

The incident with the crickets occurred in the second week of my experiment, and I didn't need to study neuroscience to understand why. By giving up podcasts, I started to listen to the world around. I heard birds singing, leaves rustling, horns sounding. What was occurring in my head — my mind wandering, reflecting on my day, planning — had a more complex scientific explanation. By leaving my brain in the default mode longer, I renewed opportunities for self-reflection.

Honestly, I also started to get bored. This was a good sign, mostly. I still missed the distraction during household chores. Subway rides felt longer, and driving seemed less fun. I realized that podcasts were a way to fill those free, but uncomfortable moments of my day. It didn't seem like a big loss to listen to a story about medieval bankers while washing dishes or folding laundry. I was learning about how the Medici family influenced the medieval banking system or why the swing dance boom of the 1990s ended so quickly. However, I noticed that I sometimes got distracted and had to go back to re-listen to something I missed.

The problem with trying to do two things at once is that you usually can't.

Again, the issue with attempting to multitask is that you usually can't. Of course, not all tasks are equal. Learning about medieval history requires a lot of attention, as your brain has to consume new information. Washing dishes, on the other hand, is an automated task that does not require the same level of concentration.

“These automated actions do not rely on the same neural network that is important for attention and cognitive control,” explained René Marois, a professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University. “But even during such automated actions, something may happen that requires attention and control, and then everything can go wrong.”

That’s why, when my experiment ended, I didn't go back to the habit of listening to podcasts while driving. Driving is sufficiently automatic not to be overly demanding, but if I got deeply into a good episode, it could prevent me from noticing a turn or even worse.

Human evolution plays a role here. Our brains evolved on the savanna, in an information-poor environment where there wasn't much to be concerned about, Miller, a professor at MIT explained. That’s why we have mechanisms to focus on one thing at a time. At the same time, we've developed a craving for new information, for example, we’re alert to the rustle of bushes, as it may signal a threat, like a tiger about to pounce.

“When our brains first evolved, this was fine,” Miller thinks. “But now, living in an age of screens and a plethora of information sources, we face a perfect storm of cognitive confusion our brain didn't evolve for.”

However, there is also evidence that combining certain tasks can improve attention and focus. In 2005, researchers from Vrije University in Amsterdam demonstrated to participants two targets on a screen, separated by a moment. Most couldn't notice the second due to what's known as 'inattentional blindness.' The researchers hypothesized that people overexert attention on individual tasks. When they turned on background music, however, noticing the second target became easier. A light distracting action, provided by music, resulted in a more diffuse state of attention, thereby improving focus.

This might explain why I can work while listening to minimalist techno but not folk music. Electronic rhythms are calming, while lyrics engage parts of the brain responsible for language processing. Or, going back to ancient times, the rustle of grass in the wind is soothing, while any sudden noise can spark anxiety.

Listening with Intention

In the 21st century, it's difficult to avoid multitasking. Even during the podcast experiment, which culminated in my discovery of the value of silence, I sometimes found myself trying to take my phone during conversations or chatting on Slack while finishing another project. But knowing now how our brains work, I have a newfound respect for downtime.

It's an old piece of advice: when you feel stuck on something, put it down and return later with fresh eyes. But expanding on that idea, during downtime, don’t switch from your computer to TikTok. Step outside and look at a tree.

Listening to podcasts, while relaxing, exhausts your cognitive resources.

“One of the best things people can do is take a break and get out in nature,” says Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, San Diego, and author of Attention Span. “Simply being away from media and utilizing all your senses can help restore our cognitive resources.”

Your brain functions on cognitive resources, and focusing on tasks exhausts these resources throughout the day. Solving a complex math problem requires effort. So does engaging in an intense discussion. Listening to podcasts, while relaxing, also exhausts brain resources. If you try to do two tasks at once, you are switching between tasks, forcing your brain to cope with specific information for each, which leads to exhaustion. As a result, each task takes longer, and you are more likely to make more mistakes. In the process, you feel more strain.

At first, listening to podcasts while doing another task became a way for me to relax. I wasn't too stressed about the podcast's content or absorbing the information. I just let the media wash over me like a river over stones.

Looking back, I see it was a bad way to unwind. Nowadays, I wear headphones much less frequently. I've really reduced the time spent on my phone unless I'm listening to something new from podcasts. When I walk my dog, I go to the park and listen to the sounds of grass and trees. The only thing sweeter than the crickets there is sometimes the silence.