Three ways your fellow commuters are broadcasting their private lives into shared public space, whether you consented or not.

Number one: loud music on public transport. Headphones exist, they're cheap, and yet every journey someone's got their phone speaker facing the carriage, playing the same 30-second clip on loop while an entire train quietly dies inside.

Number two: speaker phone calls. Full conversations, both sides, completely audible — relationship problems, salary negotiations, dental appointments broadcast to sixty strangers who never asked to know any of it.

Number three: notification sounds. Ding, ping, buzz - every single alert, at maximum volume, because muting a phone apparently takes more effort than subjecting an entire carriage to it, all day, every day.

From a TikTok on full volume at 8:47am to the impossible social contract that says you can't ask someone to turn it down without becoming the villain — this episode is a plea for basic respect in shared space. Your convenience is not more important than everyone else's peace. There is a mute button. Use it.

Featuring a bonus mini-rant on loud conversations on trains — the most innocent-seeming, hardest-to-call-out form of audio pollution of them all.

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