This morning I was listening to a podcast, the Ezra Klein Show. I received a message that I wanted to reply to quickly. I was looking for Fozzie to bring him in after his two minutes in the bushes. I was also listening to a raucous band of chickadees and other little birds, excited about something. Then I became aware that I was trying to pay attention to four things at once, and I was tracking how well I was doing. It was interesting trying to type a message saying one thing while trying to listen to a podcast and not miss the thread of the conversation. It was like my attention was jumping around, and my short term memory was recording these five streams of input and rewinding each spool and playing it forward at double speed. I did not manage all five tasks well, but I caught bits of each. It would be good to have a chip in my brain so I could go back and replay the songs of the birds. Were they just chatting with each other? Or was there an owl near by and they were pointing out and scolding a predator? I’m leaning toward it being just excited chatter because is was a nice morning. I couldn’t tell you right now what they were saying on the Ezra Klein Show, but at the moment I felt like I halfway followed it. It appears my reply to the message was intelligible somewhat. I did find Fozzie in the expected timespan.