Technology

We are very reliant on our technology. Not only that, we feel entitled to it, without stopping to realize how amazing it is today. Sure it's great to hear about the newest technology or think of ways it can make our lives easier in the future, but if we don't also appreciate how amazing it is today, what's the point? With that attitude, we will never be satisfied with what we already have. Watch this youtube clip of Louis CK explain this concept in a much funnier way than I just did. He makes some good points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGYx35ypus

Energy Crisis

Before I get into the bulk of my post, there are a few items of business to attend to. First, sincere apologies for the long breaks between posts. For 10 of the 20-some days between posts I was on a road trip and was unable to post. However, it is our intention to post closer to once a week as opposed to once every three weeks, so an apology is in order. The second item of business is the issue of reformatting. At the onset of this blog, Alex and I discussed a desire to have it be less a one way conversation and more an open dialogue, with our readers responding to our posts, challenging our assumptions and offering counterpoints. Thank you for all the comments we have received so far. However, there is some concern that we are still approaching each new subject as a diagnosis and prescription for problems we perceive to be important. We'd like to shy away from that, promoting more of a question and answer format. We hope that all our readers will offer their own answers and critique the answers we offer in our posts. An exchange of ideas and opinions will help us come to better solutions, as opposed to Alex or me decreeing them from our couches and keyboards. So, here it goes.

The question for this post was inspired by my aforementioned road trip, where we woke up most mornings at 5:30am for the days drive, and ran on drinks and foods we perceived would deliver quick cheap energy. So my question has to do with our expectations of our diet, and the energy it provides us with, as well as the marketing that surrounds the food we buy. The question is as follows; are we all more tired than we should be, and is it because of our diet or something else?

If you look at food marketing these days it seems to all be focused on energy. At least food marketing on the road. Energy drinks seem to be ubiquitous at this point, and if you haven't had one today you've probably had one at some point. I don't even need to mention how popular coffee is these days. And beyond that, you have foods from Quaker Oats to candy bars such as Snickers to vitamin waters to water itself claiming that each product will give you "more energy." Where did this concept of "more energy" come from and why do we feel we have such a deficit? When talking to someone a couple of months ago about the fact that I was a vegetarian his immediate reaction was "oh so you must have loads of energy, eating all those veggies." Do I have more energy? What is this baseline that everyone seems to be comparing their current lack of energy to.

I think one obvious answer for whatever lack of energy one may perceive would be lack of sleep. But of course that's not marketable. If pillows were disposable and you needed a new one every night then maybe marketers in gas stations and supermarkets would be targeting sleep as a factor for energy. But then again, with our culture of overworking and overscheduling, it isn't popular for any of us in our own calculations to look at the time spent horizontal last night as a reason why we are fighting sleep today, because hey, I'm busy, I can't sleep 8 hours every night. However, if we are being honest with ourselves and really don't have as much energy as we should, I would put a lot of weight on sleep.

If diet does play a factor, which I think it certainly does, then the products marketed to give you energy are probably not ultimately the key. At least that's how it felt on the road trip. If you've ever been on a road trip you know how easy it is to eat horrendous food. When the majority of your contact with food becomes rest stops, with a plethora of gas stations and fast food chains, then you are bound to make some questionable choices about food. But the worst part is that you actually start to believe the marketers, buying drinks and candy bars "designed" to give you more energy and keep you up when driving. Yeah I felt more comfortable sipping a green tea drink while driving, putting my faith in the caffeine to keep me alert, when really I was plenty alert before my shift, I just wanted the drink as an insurance policy, a "just in case." I think all of this energy marketing, including moderate amounts of caffeine, become placebo. I think we trick ourselves into thinking we could have even more energy, and if we could have more energy, it must mean we currently don't have enough. And if we don't have enough, we simply need these products to keep us alert and give us elevated energy levels, when really the whole time we have stayed at an even level, with our perceptions of our energy level fluctuating below and above the line based on our consumption of whatever foods we convince ourselves will affect this level.

It seems like such a recent trend to re-frame our food in terms of energy. Don't we get energy from anything we eat? That's the nature of calories - ultimately a unit of energy content of food. So couldn't we say that a twinkie is an energy bar, because it has a lot of calories in it? No one would buy that, of course, because it is refined sugar and carbohydrates that provides quick energy but offers a crash just as sure. But Quaker Oats, whole grains, offer longer lasting energy, and also nutritional benefits beyond simple energy. Yet a new ad campaign, at least in NYC, frames these oats as units for delivering energy to propel humans through life. I think we miss something by looking for food solely for energy. We are not cars and food is not gasoline. We get more from food than just its caloric content. Otherwise the "ice cream diet" would be perfectly acceptable.

Next time you are in a supermarket, pay attention to food marketing. The next time you stop for coffee, consider if you are actually getting more energy than you would have had if you hadn't relied on coffee for energy for so long. I don't drink coffee so I can't answer that question. If you do really get more energy, maybe I will have to get to know my local barista. But ultimately I would like to know what you all think. Do we have a personal energy crisis? Do foods and drinks help us acheive a level of energy we wouldn't already be at if we didn't choose foods based on energy claims? Are there other factors to our energy level (like maybe drinking high fructose corn syrup and consuming nutritionally deficient foods actually lower our energy level, and fresh produce instead will deliver more energy)? You know what I think, but I want to know what you think. After all, this is just my opinion, hashed out during a Celtics game, as tenuous and as open to revision as any other argument I could make.

Touch

Now, even though it has been over three weeks since my last entry, some of you might remember that I was talking about media and communication. Throughout that entry I was holding to the ideal that there is no substitute for direct, physical human interaction. In this age of widespread 'enlightenment', we pride ourselves on knowing better than to consider ourselves purely physical beings. We have learned to pay lots of attention to our thoughts and emotions because we have discovered the important roles they play in life. I don't know if this is really a new thing, I have only been around for about 23 years myself, but I am noticing a tendency to overlook the importance of our physicality whether it be in communication, relationships, religion etc. Health issues aside (but certainly to be addressed in a later entry), we need to start giving our physical nature more credit. To that end, I will share a little thought I had this week.

I was listening to public radio and an astrophysicist from the University of Chicago was talking about her book Einstein's Telescope, about how the gravitational pull of dark matter creates curves in space-time that act as lenses to magnify objects much further away than we used to be able to look. Interesting stuff, but to jump to the relevant portion, she mentioned how we can see stars that are 14 billion lightyears away from earth. That means when we look at these stars, we are seeing them as they were 14 billion years ago. That is very interesting to scientists because that is around the time the universe seems to have started expanding, give or take a billion years maybe. As much as there is to be learned from such sights, and as cool as it is to look back in time, they are so old I can't help but feel like they are a little irrelevant. If we want to know anything about what those stars are doing right now, we will have to wait a long time. But by then, it will have become very old news once again.

This sense of disappointment, like we can't see the real star as it actually is right now, applies to other things as well. Our own sun for example. We always see it as it was about 8 minutes ago, never how it actually is right now. And when light is used to transmit data through fiberoptic cables or between satellites, well, we all know how awkward it is when someone being interviewed in Iraq pauses for 5 seconds before answering Matt Lauer's questions. Even over much shorter distances, like when you see your own little image in the corner of a videochat screen, there is very visible delay. And if you haven't ever thought of this before, the images you see of yourself in real mirrors even have a delay so slight you could never perceive it. Not only mirrors, but light and sound from the person across the table from you. We may be three feet from each other, but I am still interacting with a person who existed some fraction of a nanosecond ago. All this made me think that the closest I will ever come to interacting with someone completely in the present is to be physically touching them. Nerve signaling and brain function speeds may be circumvented someday, but until then physical contact is the most effective way to engage with someone in the present moment.

Physical contact is relatively rare in daily life and has a lot of mystique about it. What is more personal and private than touch? What is more comforting in the right context? Few things can send a louder message than how you touch someone. Or how you don't touch them.

So hug someone you care about today. And maybe kiss them too.

Combined Action

So for no apparent reason, at the beginning of last year I decided that I would do something almost no one does - stick to a New Year's resolution. It's always such a funny thing. People are so hopeful, so eager to identify the areas of their lives that need improving. Maybe its the euphoria of the holiday season still wearing off, but everyone believes that this year will be the year they do it. Then winter drags on too long and they forget about it as easily as the idea came. I am not claiming to be better than these people because I stuck with mine. It was actually sort of a fluke. I somehow picked something I ended up finding an incredible passion for. My resolution was to learn how to cook, and a year later I think I have succeeded, at least to the extent I had hoped (at the very least I've moved beyond mac and cheese and chicken nuggets).

With my recent success I was a bit more ambitious this year with three resolutions. I have dropped one, I hate to say, but I am chugging along with the other two. They take on the form of a strategy that is the subject for this post - combined, sustained action. But let me first tell you why I think many resolutions fail so quickly. Let's take one goal people strive for all the time (especially come resolution time); to exercise more. But what does that really mean? I think many people fail because "more" just simply isn't an easy concept to manifest. For example, if you go from never exercising to doing it once a month, technically you are exercising more, but I'd wager your goal was a bit loftier than that. Likewise, exercising 6 hours a day is more than anyone currently exercises (I hope), but that's because it isn't feasible, and also not what you were going for. Thus, setting an easily divisible, daily goal creates a digestible target focus on.

In light of this approach, the two resolutions I have stuck with have come in this form. They are as follows; 1. to exercise daily, and 2. to read 10 pages daily. This has given me very attainable and easily targeted goals. For example, when I go to bed at night an ambiguous answer is not possible to the question of whether or not I exercised or read 10 pages. I can't argue with myself about whether or not I did it, I simply know, throwing vague concepts of "more" or "less" out the window. I have to make a concerted effort to accomplish each task. Because of this daily sense of accomplishment, I also get daily reinforcement, and have ultimately looked forward to both activities.

Now, I think the ultimate concern when identifying a useful New Year's resolution is its effectiveness. And with my resolutions, effectiveness ultimately comes from scope. If you look at my day's activities, reading 10 pages takes me maybe 20-30 minutes, and exercising takes me less than that (so far it has been sit-ups and push-ups before bed). What is the impact of these actions? Not much. "Oooh, big deal, 10 whopping pages," right? Well, that depends on your scope, and is ultimately what makes each goal so attainable. In the course of a day, each activity doesn't take much extra effort and ultimately doesn't accomplish all that much on its own. But combined, well, there is your proper scope, for over the course of the month I will have read an average length book and done somewhere around 2000 sit-ups and 500 push-ups. Over a year that's at least 12 books and a meaningless number of sit-ups and push-ups. Now there's your impact. And I actually stick with it because again, on their own, each activity is not particularly challenging. But they are all part of a larger strategy. Combining small, repetitive actions to reach a larger goal.

I think this concept of combined action applies to many other aspects of life. For an individual, combined action involves the aggregation of these daily choices that add up to something meaningful (eating one extra serving of fruit on any given day is a good choice, but ultimately wont cure cancer. But, done every day for the rest of your life, well, now we're talking. Small, simple, positive choices - added). Likewise, for a society, the combined actions of its citizens add up to something impactful. For example, when faced with an opportunity to help, maybe volunteer, you may find yourself asking "what difference can I really make, I am only one person." Or you've heard the argument against voting; "what's my one vote really gonna matter?" Baad attitudes, right? (though I cannot exempt myself from thinking along these lines from time to time) Because we all know that the combined effect of voting is an election, with winners and losers, and progress. But the combined effects of lending a helping hand, in any way you can, are no less obvious, no less important. If all of us chip in more, we all start to make a difference, with our combined action. It's like those refer-a-friend programs. Bring someone along and you've doubled your impact. So, just like reading 10 pages or doing a few sit-ups, the task itself is relatively easy on its own, the result relatively limited in its impact. But over time, my abs get rock hard, and more people get a warm meal, clothes for their back, or maybe the neighborhood gets a little cleaner, or you take a car off of the road for a day when you bike to work, or more waste gets recycled, or simply more smiles and genuine connections are spread throughout the world. It ALL adds up.

So maybe Gandhi was right after all, with his seemingly oversimplified answer to how to make a difference. In the end, we all simply must "be the change we wish to see in the world."

Waking the Watch Dog

One of my favorite parts of managing my Facebook profile is the section where I can list my favorite quotations. Some of them are funny, others rather serious, and some you wouldn't understand unless you were there. There is one quotation that I think has a lot to of depth to it, worth unpacking for you here.

I first heard this quote in a sermon about a year ago, and it is from the man who brought us the familiar phrase "The Medium is the Message", Marshall Mcclune. The quote of his that I have on my profile is basically a more interesting way of saying that:

"The content of all media is merely the juicy piece of meat held by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind"

It is quite the claim. There is so much fun, educational and useful content conveyed through media, how could it all just be a distraction? And what is it a distraction from? How is media like a burglar? What a negative metaphor for him to choose. What I usually think about media is something more along the lines of "There is nothing inherently wrong with [insert media], its just how you use it that can be good or bad." Marshall Mcclune heard people saying this and he thought that sort of thinking was "the numb stance of the technological idiot." Harsh.

So what's his deal?

One answer to this question is found way back in human history. All the way back when we had languages, but no formal writing system had been developed yet. Human relationships and the preservation of societal knowledge could only take place when people were physically in the same place. Then the medium of writing was introduced. It was no longer necessary to interact with another person to exchange information with them. Communication could take place over much greater distances in time and space. When telephones, radio and television each arrived, they brought with them the ability to exchange more and more information while allowing each individual communicator to stay closer and closer to their own living room. Now the internet, combined with cell phones and the 3G network, has time, space, and our own bodies playing less of a role in communication than ever.

Comparing the early state of human communication to its present state reveals a paradox. Long ago, human communication required physical presence, and so demanded full attention and a considerable amount of time to carry out, thereby limiting the number of events one could participate in during a given day. Today we have an abundance of communication events in our lives every day, each requiring very little time, and therefore less of our attention, and usually no physical presence at all. The paradox here is that as human communication grew, human interactions shrank.

I don't personally find this paradoxical trend to be appealing, but I have a hard time denying it is there. So how did it develop? Mcclune would say that while news stories, phone conversations, TV programs and wikipedia articles captivated us, the media that conveyed them went about the business of changing the way we live. The content of our media distracted our minds while part of our humanity was burgled away.

Now, Mcclune didn't mean to say that media are purely a negative force in society. There is no denying the incredible benefits of our communication technology. There are probably even many human relationships that are stronger today only because modern technology exists. The convenience of typing a short message to someone lengthens the list of people I am keeping up with, but every time I post on someone's Facebook wall, it also comes with the message "this is the way I relate to you." I have to admit that in my life I let these hidden messages be sent far too often. A may not see a friend who lives 20 minutes away from me for months at a time, even though I send them regular messages online, usually about how we should 'totally hang out soon'. The pressure to actually show up at their door and spend some of my time and energy enjoying our relationship is diminished by the soft, perpetual message from Facebook telling me "you are already staying close to them, thanks to me." I disappoint myself, but even worse, I have alreadt passed up several opportunities to make my life richer.

You can probably imagine other messages various forms of media are sending beneath the surface of their content. Most of them encouraging us to do more things, and to do them alone. And media are not only the obvious forms of communication that I have been discussing so far.
Clothing, furniture, buildings, food...they are all media, and they are all messages. What does a frozen dinner say? A glass skyscraper? A compact fluorescent light bulb? We do not acknowledge these messages very often, but it doesn't mean we aren't responding to them.

I think all we can hope to about this is be more aware of what we may unintentionally hear or say with media. We can keep the benefits without letting ourselves wander into the pitfalls. And this awareness can even be expanded into all areas of life, because after all, it is impossible to ever be doing just one thing. Which is actually another one of my favorite Facebook quotes...



P.S. I borrowed heavily from the sermon I mentioned earlier. Its awesome, so if you want it, let me know and I will send it to you.

Uncertainty

I think I know what we're after. And I think we are misguided. After reading and rereading some of our posts, and more importantly the comments left (thank you all!), I think Alex and I are after something specific, something that needs reconsideration. I shouldn't speak for Alex. But based on conversations with him and with many of my other friends, all in the same position as I find myself (with that daunting question of "what do you want to do with your life" hanging over our heads), I think we are all desperately seeking an answer to that question. I mean, how great would it be, if someone asked you, a relative, a coworker, a classmate or friend, what you wanted to do with your life, and you actually had an answer! How incredible! And what if you not only had an answer, but you had a plan. Well then you are going places in life. Right?

Wrong. I am generally in favor of listening to our elders, and usually do it with great respect. After all, they've been through some things, and have a better grasp on how life works than I do (even if I build myself up from time to time thinking otherwise). On top of that, they have no reason to mislead me, and instead have a strong desire to advise me. I know I enjoy advising my younger brother on college and how it all works. We all want to help. However, there is a huge piece of advice that I have neglected. It came in many forms over the past couple of months, from many sources. From my commencement speaker, from my parents, from books I've read and stories I've heard. The nugget I've avoided, with faulty reasoning, is the virtue of going with the flow of life, that you never know where it will take you and no matter how much you plan, life will carry you where you never expected it would. As my Dad said in a comment, and Alex alluded to in his post on our generation, the decisions we make today will not affect our lives as profoundly as we think. To put it another way, if we can't answer that question tomorrow or even in a year, we are not destined for unhappiness.

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves, to choose correctly, and more importantly to have it all figured out. I have this misconception about careers that once you choose one you are stuck with it. That if I want to work in environmental policy then I am stuck on that track for the rest of my life and I can never deviate, that I have to pick an organization and work my way up. That if I want to be successful, I have to lay out my goals for my career now. I think its easy for us to look at someone who is very successful and think, "Oh, that must have been their goal. They must have planned on writing that book at this point in their career, and they must have planned on that speech at that point." We think this because it is very easy to look at the past events of their career and see how it lead them to where they are today (success, prestige, influence). But how hard would it have been for them, 20 years ago, to pinpoint where they'd be today, and more importantly how they'd get there? Impossible, for most. There are the exceptions, long-term careers that people can be quite content with; doctors, teachers, etc, where they may very well be in one hospital or school the rest of their lives. But for the rest of us, we will move, change companies or even fields. How boring would it be if we didn't? I think it's questions like "what do you want to do with your life" or "where do you see yourself in 10 years" that imply an answer is necessary. What is wrong with a simple "I don't know?"

I am reading "Dreams From My Father," by Barack Obama right now. This book has really been the final kick to get me to come to the other side, to jump in the river, or at least not view the river with such disdain. In the introduction to his book, Obama speaks about how it was some friends in Chicago who convinced him to run for State Senator. About a hundred pages in, he talks about how he slacked off his last few years in high school and even experimented with drugs. To hear his voice as a young man (written when he was 33) talking about himself as an even younger man, it sounds like a very different person. I think the ultimate delusion that is so easy to fall into, at least for me, is the notion that if nothing else, the Presidents of the United States simply must have had that as their goal. They must have been working their whole careers toward that. And even if not all of them did, Barack Obama, possibly the most driven and hard working person on the face of the earth (sorry for the hyperbole) simply must have been working hard since he was born to get to this point in his life, right? Wrong! A friend convinced him to get into politics. And look where he is now! When he was 22, do you think he knew where he'd be at age 48? No. Life took him to where he is. Instead of working toward the presidency as a goal, he did something better. He prepared himself for opportunity. When his friend urged him to run for State Senate, he was prepared, through his education and past experience, to seize that opportunity. Same for his US Senate run, and finally his latest achievement. And he said "yes" when presented with that opportunity.

So instead of grasping for something we can't have, something we ultimately don't want, let us prepare ourselves for opportunity, and be ready to say "yes!" when it comes. Let us embrace the uncertainty of life, and honor it for the joy that it brings. How boring would life be, if we knew where we were going to be when we were 40, or even in 10 years! Would it really be worth living, if we saw it coming so clearly? I'd rather not know. Instead, I'd rather be prepared for the next stage of my life and take opportunity when I see it. I can't answer what I want to do with my life, but I can answer what I want to do in the next year. Let's start there. The fear is that it will lead to unhappiness, to go with the flow without control. But happiness is ultimately much more about your perspective on life and much less about the things you actually do. And the most beautiful thing of all is the ability to change your circumstances. If the flow of life leaves you unsatisfied, you can change it! So maybe, insead of attempting to re-route the course of the river by diverting its flow to fit your plan (nature always wins, anyway), AND, instead of jumping in with nothing, lets bring a paddle, just in case. But in the meantime, enjoy the ride.

The next time someone asks me "what do you want to do with your life?" or any variation on that question, I think I will smile, and say "I don't know; and isn't that great?!"

Two Old Characters Address Happiness

I love public radio. If you didn't already know this about me that makes me kinda sad because it means we probably don't talk to each other enough. Its like there is an army of curious people out there who have made it their full-time job to bring the most incredible, inspiring, bizarre and newsworthy stories from around the world into your life.

I love retelling my favorite stories from the radio to those unfortunate enough to spend time with me right after I get out of the car (the only place actual radios are used anymore.*) Sadly, I have heard too many good stories on the radio to retell them all right now, but one good one is standing out in my mind. It was on the program called Speaking of Faith, and it was all about the concept of 'Doubt'. Doubt is a long conversation waiting to happen, so to keep it (a bit) shorter I will just tell you about two doubting characters that I found fascinating: Diogenes of Sinope and Epicurus.

Diogenes was one of the original cynics. In my own words, a philosophical cynic is someone who doubts that society is constructed in the way it was meant to be. You have probably heard of a few people influenced by cynicism even today. They reject wealth, power, fame, possessions, and even devalue their own health and hygiene. They teach equality of all humans and a return to the rhythms of nature. They do not criticize absolutely everything, as the modern use of the word 'cynic' connotes today, they are only critical of those things which are not an essential part of a truly happy life. A beautiful way to encapsulate all these views is to boil them down to the idea that all suffering is caused by false judgments of what is valuable. An excessively general idea, but one you would have quite a bit of trouble refuting.

My favorite story about Diogenes is a legend passed on about an encounter he had with Alexander the Great. Alexander admired Diogenes, as they both shared incredible ambition, though one man applied his externally, and the other internally. During one meeting of the two...

Diogenes asked Alexander what his plans were.
Alexander: To conquer and subjugate Greece.
Diogenes: Then what?
Alexander: To conquer and subjugate Asia Minor.
Diogenes: And then?
Alexander: To conquer and subjugate the entire world.
Diogenes: And what next?
Alexander: Then I will relax, and enjoy myself.
Diogenes: Why not save yourself a lot of trouble, by relaxing and enjoying yourself now?


Now, Epicurus was not a cynic, but a materialist. Sounds like the opposite of a cynic at first, but materialism as an ideology does not value shopping and money, but rather suggests that physical matter is the only thing that can be proven to exist, and therefore calls into doubt all things non-physical. What Epicurus derived from this philosophy was the belief that the goal of life was to achieve tranquility and freedom from fear or pain through a life filled with modest physical pleasures. A key to finding happiness through physical pleasure was developing control of your physical desires so they would not run rampant and possibly lead to physical harm.

I personally find materialism to be a bad explanation of the way all thing work, but I do enjoy some of the smaller ideas that were born out of it. Namely, that of learning to control your appetites. Whether we hold physical pleasure as the ultimate good in life or not, we all understand the role hunger plays in the human experience. Food, sex and habit-forming drugs like caffeine, nicotine and alcohol are the easiest to identify. But there are some obsessions that are less physiological, though I would argue no less physical, that can be equally consuming. Pride, or ego, power, leisure, possessions...vague ideas that we never feel like we have enough of and are therefore always hungry for more of. Epicurus basically said we must realize that the cycle of desire and fulfillment is endless. Cycling through it faster and faster will not get you anywhere new, but more likely destroy a person. The trick to slowing down the cycle is to learn to enjoy the craving within you as much as the fulfillment of it. Both are equally important to the delivery of satisfaction, but the average person obsesses over only one of them.

After all, when you are truly thirsty, nothing is as pleasurable as a simple glass of water.

You have probably heard the term 'epicure' used in modern language to describe someone who is picky about food or art because of their expensive tastes. This word does come from Epicurus, but ironically has a meaning almost entirely opposed to his views. Epicurus wanted to put so much emphasis on the control of human desire that he recommended abstaining from rich food and drink, sex and lavish possessions. Not exactly what you picture when you think of an epicure, but now you can see why he came up in the same radio program as Diogenes.

I enjoy seeing how ancient ideas about happiness and "the way things are supposed to be" have not changed much over time. Unfortunately, neither have they been implemented very effectively. There is much more to all of this than I have laid out here, so please research these characters and their ideas more on your own. In fact, in my efforts to only relay my favorite tidbits I have misrepresented them a bit here and there, so please don't consider this a philosophy lesson.

Also, check out Public Radio. Some of my favorite programs include:

To the Best of Our Knowledge
The Story
Speaking of Faith
This American Life


*Please note that live online broadcasts and archived podcasts now allow you to listen to radio programming almost anywhere, anytime. This means you can be listening even if you don't spend much time in your car.