Yeah this kinda mirrors my experience but I stopped listening to him quickly because I have hangups about doing the “background noise” thing, except with more entertainment-focused content that I don’t feel like I have to take at all seriously. I usually really want to get something out of the things I listen to, and Varn’s output has been… very low density on that front, to the point of boredom? Idk. Maybe I’m too judgemental but I don’t want to spend oodles of time listening to “just some guy who reads a lot” talk about stuff, I want them to be able to condense it, synthesize it in novel ways, or at least just regurgitate the content in another form without losing comprehensibility and meaning (so that I can choose to listen rather than read for example, when the occasion calls for it)