The Grammar of Want

I was seven years old, sitting on red shag carpeting in Nebraska, in front of a wood-grain television cabinet heavy enough that two adults would struggle to move it. It was a Saturday morning in October 1972. My mother was somewhere else in the house, or she was not home. Curtains were drawn. A rotary dial on the front of the cabinet clicked through thirteen VHF positions, though only three of them produced a signal. The rest produced static, a white hiss I associated with emptiness. I turned on the set myself. No one helped me. No one told me to. I did not know I was being trained.

You can listen to The Grammar of Want online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Grammar of Want is an episode from David Boles: Human Meme by David Boles.

This episode is 10:14 long.

This episode was published on Apr 10, 2026.

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