Waking up is easy (when you’ve got a voice you know)

There’s an app I enjoy using named Radio Garden, where you spin a virtual globe and wherever it stops, a local radio station from that part of the world plays.

It’s a fun audio trip to parts of the planet I’ll never physically venture to, although for 20 minutes at a time I’m chuckling along to jokes about the traffic in Madisonville, Kentucky, or hearing about a fundraising drive for Mearns FM, which of course, plays the very best local music from St Cyrus all the way up to Aberdeen. Or down to Aberdeen – I never actually learn enough about these strange places I’m eavesdropping into, but I have noticed a trend in my listening habits – the more local the ‘content’, the longer I end up listening for.

This seems counterintuitive: surely the hyper local updates from areas in South Africa have no appeal to anyone outside of that area. Surely I’d prefer a serving of The Eagles followed by J Geils Band courtesy of 101.5 KROCK, Oahu’s destination for classic rock.