Long-time “You Are Listening To…” listeners may have noticed that there have been a lot fewer NTS shows with police scanner audio since mid-2020, and more that are based on air-traffic control, public transit radio, fire departments, and things like that. There are some technical reasons for this, as many police departments have increased their use of encrypted radio signals, and also personal ones, like not wanting to glamorize or make exploitative content out of so many disturbing instances of police overreach and brutality.

But even when I started mixing scanners and ambient music back in 2011, I never thought the most dramatic moments in the life of a city made for the best complement to the music on the site. Sure it could be compelling to listen in on a high-speed chase, or the response to a natural disaster, but for me the times that worked best were the ones where the police and dispatchers were just calmly and competently working through hundreds of different calls, checking in on false burglar alarms and responding to reports of abandoned vehicles.

And while the voices you hear on the scanner from most dispatchers and officers still remain incredibly calm, even in the most hectic situations, I think it’s fair to say that the overall vibe has been off for a while, which is why I’ve been looking for that sense of competence in other places.

January’s NTS show listens in to air-traffic control at the St. Louis Lambert International Airport on the night of January 5th, 2026. And speaking of extreme competence, check out the mandolin playing on this video from the sessions for the final track on the show! 🤯

You can listen back to all the shows on the NTS site, and premium subscribers also get links to download the latest shows as high-quality MP3s. I recently added some more shows from the archives to the audio player on the youarelistening.to site as well, including a French-language one from Montreal in 2024.

(BTW, for the best listening experience on mobile, try adding the youarelistening.to site to your home screen as a web app. It makes it easier to play audio in the background, pause, etc.)

Here’s the playlist for January’s show:

Marcus Fischer - Twenty-Four
Hirotaka Shirotsubaki - Solitude
Sigur Rós - Mílanó (The Tape Variations)
Saapato - 6am Rainforest Drone
Schmidt + Würden - RAUSCHKASSETTE (Side B)
half-life souvenir - twenty-six
loscil - Cholla
Andrew Tasselmyer - Signal (ft. Naal)
Marc Elsner - solari
Misleading Structures - No Other Choice But Venture
Chris Thile - J.S. Bach Partita No. 2 in D minor (Ciaccona)

And don’t forget to check out the archive of (almost) all the music from the show in my Bandcamp collection.