Ever wondered what’s going on in the lives of that family across the road? Listen to Love + Radio’s ‘The Living Room’
In this moving episode, Diane Weipert watches a couple and becomes emotionally invested in the silent movie of their lives
Who in Hong Kong has not looked out of their tower block windows at night to survey the myriad illuminated boxes of life stacked around us? It is a humbling and intriguing experience, one that never fails to blow the minds of foreign visitors, who always seem to invoke The Matrix or George Orwell’s Big Brother at the idea of private spaces being on show, camouflaged only by their sheer number.
It is something you get used to but every now and then, you see a stranger in a lightbox a few hundred metres away and wonder.
Diane Weipert does more than wonder in “The Living Room”, an episode of Love + Radio so celebrated that it is bound to be part of the curriculum when podcasts are analysed in classrooms. She finds herself watching a couple who have just moved in and almost against her will, she becomes emotionally invested in the silent movie of their lives.
Nakedness is involved, which accounts for the initial fascination, but over the weeks and months, the one-sided relationship turns into something else entirely.
After nine sporadic seasons, Love + Radio wrapped last June but its haunting personal stories are the kind that burrow into your mind and surprise you many years later by appearing in your dreams, which makes it sound like something you shouldn’t listen to. But, for a slice of real happiness with all its bittersweet trimmings, you absolutely should.
