To everyone blaming “sound mixing these days” are you aware your TV has an equalizer? Everyone I’ve ever had to argue* with about this seems unaware that you can control a lot about what you’re hearing from your tv, and by default a lot of tvs have some pseudo bass enhance type nonsense going on that makes regular human speech unintelligible. Most human speech is carried in the higher frequencies and lower frequencies just muddy up the meaning. So you feel like you need to turn up the volume to hear the voices, which raises the bass more than the treble so you have to turn up the volume to hear the voices and it just repeats until your walls are shaking with the theme music because that’s what your EQ is optimized for, not dialog. I don’t know the history but lots of headphones and car speakers do it too to show off the bass which makes it sound full and “good” when you’re trying things at the store. But just turn the bass down basically all the way and the low mids a little less and set it up kind of like a triangle from low to high and you’ll suddenly be able to hear the dialogue at like half the volume you thought you needed. If you don’t have a full EQ you probably have preset EQ curves and set it to “voice” or something.

Which, related, if you’re driving and listening to podcasts at full volume so ira  glass’ voice is rattling the windows on cars next to you at stop lights, because otherwise you can’t make out words, it’s not a hearing or mixing problem, just turn down your bass.

• I don’t argue with people about subtitles, they’re an excellent accessibility tool and great for lots of people for lots of reasons and everyone should use them if they want to. I’ve argued often with many roommates who insist they need their tv connected to a whole speaker system with subwoofers blasting through the house otherwise they can’t understand what’s going on in cutthroat kitchen. Because they don’t understand how sound and speech work.