I had an epiphany about why I know so much random history, why I love to tell stories and explain things the way I do, and why I believe that education is everywhere.
It wasn’t school or reading, and The History Channel had not been invented yet.
It was the radio.
Back then, you didn’t get to curate your own soundtrack. No Spotify or Apple Music. No skipping a song because you’re not feeling it. You listened to whatever came on… which meant you also listened to whatever came on.
And just about daily, what came on was Paul Harvey.
If you grew up with that voice in the background, you know the feeling. You’re halfway paying attention, halfway doing something else, and suddenly you’re locked in because he’s telling you a story like he’s letting you in on a secret. You think you know where it’s going. Then he turns the corner, and you are hooked until the end.
People think learning has to be intentional, like you need a course, a podcast playlist, or a reading list 25 books deep.
But there’s another kind of learning. The kind that sneaks in without you being overtly aware of it.
It’s like the difference between a packed lunch and grabbing handfuls from the pantry. One is planned. The other is opportunistic. Both can feed you.
Paul Harvey was accidental education.
I remember hearing him in the car on KHAK when your legs stuck to the blazing hot vinyl seats in the summer, and the radio had a dial you had to turn by hand. I’d be staring out the window, thinking about absolutely nothing, and then he’d drop some knowledge that would live rent-free in my brain for decades.
And it still shows up when I am finishing up something I am writing, that signature sign-off, just to myself in my own head.
There’s something ironic about how we’ve traded shared airwaves for perfectly tailored feeds with curated recommendations, and then we wonder what happened to our shared cultural touchpoints. We all know collective experiences are not nearly as common as they used to be, even 15-20 years ago. In my opinion, that is a real loss.
So, when you hear me use old-fashioned sayings, explanations come with historical metaphors, and stories are laid out with old-school references and analogies, that’s decades of that accidental education showing up. I have entered my Paul Harvey era.
Now you know the rest of the story.