Is it rude to keep listening to my podcast while my partner is talking to me?

Q: Is it rude to keep listening to my podcast while my partner is talking to me about his day? I can listen to both, even with earbuds in. A.M., Clayfield, QLD

A: For about two minutes, I was standing in the kitchen, telling my wife about how I went to the supermarket to buy regular taco shells, but they didn’t have any and I was too embarrassed to buy the ones called “Stand N Stuff” so I came home with no taco shells at all. She was making a cup of tea with her back to me, hanging on my every word, going, “Hmm … ooh … wow!” Then she turned around and said, “Oh! Didn’t know you were there.” Turns out, she was wearing AirPods the whole time, listening to a podcast about the bizarre sex life of eels: how they swim to the Sargasso Sea, mate once, then die. She said, “Were you saying something?” I said, “Nah, not important.”

In our ear-budded, double-screened, tech-distracted lives, we’re only taking in a fraction of the world around us. I can’t get through a TV show without grabbing my phone to read critics’ reviews, then I accidentally find out the ending, then I don’t need to watch anymore, so I start sending funny YouTube clips to friends, distracting them from their TV shows.