Fantasy

Fantasy is the genre audio was made for. Nothing has a budget. A city can be described in one line and built entirely behind your eyes, furnished with whatever you happen to bring to it. No two listeners hear the same place.

That is why a well-told fantasy story can feel larger than a film. The storyteller supplies the outline and trusts you to fill it, which is a kind of collaboration you do not get from watching.

Much of the fantasy here grows out of older traditions rather than borrowed ones. Shape-shifters, bargains with things that should not be bargained with, gifts that turn out to be debts. These ideas are far older than the genre that now houses them.

The stories are told in Spanish, English, Hindi and Marathi, and the folklore each language carries shows through. A trickster behaves differently depending on which tradition raised it.

If you are new to listening rather than reading, fantasy is a forgiving place to start. The stories tend to announce their rules early and stick to them.

Try one on a walk, where there is nothing to look at that competes. The wandering attention that ruins some listening tends to help here.