Recommended Listening: Tweet of the Day

Trust me — its not what it sounds like.

From Antonio Valli da Todi’s 1601 book on aviculture.

If you’ve ever known the dread of potentially missing out on the best of the internet’s daily churn, prepare to lay your FOMO to rest. The wonderful Brits over at BBC Radio 4 have you covered with Tweet of the Day, a brilliant 90 second audio clip to ensure you never miss that one treasure among an otherwise incessant and indiscernible chorus of quotidian noise.

Take for example a recent day’s highlight: the Linnet. You could easily forego the remaining chaff of the day’s online opining and outrage having winnowed out all but the Linnet’s “sweet and very musical babble,” as the episodes presenter, Mr. Martin Hughes-Games would put it.

In addition to the tweeting itself, the commentary provided by the program’s presenters is equally rich. Mr. Hughes-Games’ soliloquy on the Linnet goes beyond the type of ornithological jargon you can use to impress at the proverbial water cooler. At the segment’s halfway point, the piece creeps toward a moment of terrible surprise (that element which T.S. Eliot rightly judged essential to successful poetry alongside “the restraint and quietness of tone which make the surprise possible”).

Not to mention, all the presenters appear to have such adorably posh names as Mr. Martin Hughes-Games. One of the show’s flagship presenters, the renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough, is an actual knight! Those cheeky Brits.

Once you start tuning into Tweet of the Day, you’ll slowly begin to wonder why you previously wasted so many hours refreshing Twitter at all. And rightly so. Another of Mr. Hughes-Games’ recent finds — an absolutely unmissable segment on the Pied Wagtail — is case in point. “I was at Heathrow airport one winter’s evening,” begins his recollection on a holiday airport luggage struggle — how relatable, right? But then, we hear he’s “suddenly becoming aware of a light twittering” all around him. The source, amidst all the concrete and glass, was in the trees. “Dozens and dozens of roosting Pied Wagtails like noisy Christmas decorations, all chattering merrily away.”

“A wonderful reminder,” he concludes, “of our natural world in a most unexpected setting.” Touché, Mr. Hughes-Games.

Those of us with the misfortune to have been born outside Her Majesty’s Dominions may only know the BBC from Sherlock or Dr. Who. But for some 90 years, they’ve been putting out great stuff unbeholden to the kind of commercial profiteering that defines so much of what we’re typically subjected to. Turns out when sharing content for the “public benefit” is right there in its Royal Charter, it’s not actually all that hard. God Save the Queen for putting them up to it, eh?

Tweet of the Day is broadcast every weekday morning at 5:58 GMT on the dot, and each day’s episode is available online. That means no matter where you live in the world, after adding this 90 seconds of bliss into your morning routine you’re essentially set on digital content for the remainder of the day. Nothing else you’re going to find online is going to top this unassailable refuge of birdsong. You might as well close your laptop and turn off your phone having read this and be on your merry way.