“We love radio, but it’s become so dependent on information and story,” says Chris Hoff, who, with Sam Harnett, produces The World According to Sound, a podcast comprising minutes-long episodes that tell tales with sounds in lieu of language. “There’s not a lot of space to just listen.” A few years ago, Hoff and Harnett took their show on the road. “People sat in the dark, disconnected from their phones, and listened to the sounds on big speakers,” Hoff says. “The whole idea was to listen intently to things you’d never think to try and listen to, like a bridge, or an ant, or an athlete’s grunt.”

The pandemic prompted the duo to reinvent the podcast’s in-person component as Outside In, a communal listening series they launched in December. In this version, which takes place on Thursday evenings, listeners purchase tickets online and, in their snail-mailboxes, receive an eye mask and instructions for how to tune in. Attendees from around the world hear the show—made by radio producers, musicians, and sound artists—at the same time; a conversation with the program’s featured artist concludes each event.

We’re looking forward to the performance slated for February 4, headlined by the San Francisco–based Kronos Quartet. “It’s going to be a trip through the collection of Kronos’s work, and the music and sounds that influence it,” Hoff says. “The performance will begin with a chord that the quartet’s leader, David Harrington, heard when he was a boy. Then it will trace how all the group’s music built on, and unfolds from, that single chord.” For those missing in-person events and the company of others, the series provides a welcome way to spend a night in.