{"id":22527,"date":"2026-03-30T10:37:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T08:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/30\/i-took-off-my-headphones-and-noticed-a-stranger-in-peril\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T10:37:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T08:37:22","slug":"i-took-off-my-headphones-and-noticed-a-stranger-in-peril","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/30\/i-took-off-my-headphones-and-noticed-a-stranger-in-peril\/","title":{"rendered":"I took off my headphones \u2013 and noticed a stranger in peril"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slumped on the pavement, she wasn\u2019t breathing \u2013 and I wouldn\u2019t have realised if I\u2019d been listening to music as usual. Time to stop blotting out the world \u2026<\/p>\n

For years I walked the streets of London wearing noise-cancelling headphones, absorbed in playlists, politics podcasts or long voice notes from friends, and a million miles away from wherever I was. One damp January evening last year, I was walking home from my parents\u2019 house, headphones dead in my bag, when I noticed a small figure slumped on the pavement with her eyes closed.<\/strong> I might not have noticed her had I been in my own world, fixated on what was playing in my ears.<\/p>\n

I asked for her name. \u201cCan you hear me?\u201d I tried several times, my voice tightening. She didn\u2019t respond, and worse, she didn\u2019t seem to be breathing. My mind raced back to the one first aid class I took in school, but drawing a blank and worried that I might get it wrong, I dialled 999 and frantically tried to figure out if I could feel her pulse.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nSlumped on the pavement, she wasn\u2019t breathing \u2013 and I wouldn\u2019t have realised if I\u2019d been listening to music as usual. Time to stop blotting out the world \u2026
\nFor years I walked the streets of London wearing noise-cancelling headphones, absorbed in playlists, politics podcasts or long voice notes from friends, and a million miles away from wherever I was. One damp January evening last year, I was walking home from my parents\u2019 house, headphones dead in my bag, when I noticed a small figure slumped on the pavement with her eyes closed. I might not have noticed her had I been in my own world, fixated on what was playing in my ears.
\nI asked for her name. \u201cCan you hear me?\u201d I tried several times, my voice tightening. She didn\u2019t respond, and worse, she didn\u2019t seem to be breathing. My mind raced back to the one first aid class I took in school, but drawing a blank and worried that I might get it wrong, I dialled 999 and frantically tried to figure out if I could feel her pulse. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slumped on the pavement, she wasn\u2019t breathing \u2013 and I wouldn\u2019t have realised if I\u2019d been listening to music as usual. Time to stop blotting out the world \u2026 For years I walked the streets of London wearing noise-cancelling headphones, absorbed in playlists, politics podcasts or long voice notes from friends, and a million miles …<\/p>\n

I took off my headphones \u2013 and noticed a stranger in peril<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":22528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22527"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}