I spent two years trying to explain quantitative easing in writing. I wrote blog posts. I drafted explainers. I laboured over analogies. Nothing felt quite right.

Then I listened to a five-minute podcast episode and understood it in a completely different way.

The host did not use the phrase “asset purchase programme.” He did not explain the transmission mechanism in three steps. He told a story about a pensioner whose savings account was paying almost nothing, and asked: whose decision was that? Then he answered it.

This is what audio does that text often cannot. It creates intimacy. You hear a voice, and something in your brain responds to it as if you are in conversation. The barriers come down.

Economics is full of concepts that are genuinely hard to visualise on a page but become obvious when someone talks you through them. The circular flow of income. Compound interest. Why trade makes both countries better off even when one is more productive at everything.

If you have never tried a podcast, or think your research is too technical for audio, I would challenge you to record a five-minute version of your best paper — just talking, no script — and play it back. You will be surprised how much clarity you find when you have to say it out loud.