MEDIA DIET
By:
July 5, 2026
A weekly series exploring the media “input” of a group of people — HILOBROW’s friends and contributors — whose “output” we admire.
Deb has been a valued HILOBROW contributor since 2011. Her first post was on the topic of KIRBY KRACKLE. Her most recent contributions to this publication include: THE HYPERION CANTOS | EVER FALLEN IN LOVE (WITH SOMEONE YOU SHOULDNT’VE?) | ARKHAM ASYLUM.
East Vancouver…
HILOBROW: What are your reading habits?
DEB CHACHRA: I was the kind of kid (and adult!) who always had my nose in a book, and I mean always. I’d walk to school with most of my attention on the paperback novel in my hand, relying on my peripheral vision to navigate. I remember once repeatedly sidestepping on the sidewalk to avoid another pedestrian who somehow stayed right in front of me until I finally looked up into the laughing face of a friend who was wondering how long it would take me to notice her.
Decades later, it’s become commonplace to walk down the street immersed in your private media stream. I still always have a novel on the go, but now it’s almost always an e-book, usually borrowed from the library using the Libby app, synced to a dedicated e-ink device (the best update to reading since the codex replaced the scroll, at least for fiction) and my phone. Reading is pleasurably monotasking, but the library has audiobooks too, and there are endless podcasts to listen to when I’m on the move, and Taskmaster episodes to stream to my tablet while I’m doing household chores. I’ve recently realized that I need to leave the earbuds in their case a lot more, to consciously hold open some space to hear myself talking to myself and not just other people talking to me.
HILOBROW: What music — genres, particular artists and songs — do you listen to during a typical day?
DEB CHACHRA: I’m a lifelong fan of radio, and we really are in a renaissance for that because of streaming. I’ve lived in the UK and in Seattle and so I often have BBC 6 Music and KEXP on while I’m working at my desk, and then since moving back to Canada, I listen to CBC Music on my emergency weather radio, especially early in the morning while making coffee and getting going with my day. I really love the eclectic mix of new and old songs, across genres, of music-focused public radio. On the first and the fifteenth of the month I read the latest essay and cue up the new Midnight Radio mix from James Reeves, and whenever one appears, I listen to the mixes created and shared by my dear friend Ån Sempere. Plus a regular stream of sets, mixes, and ‘this is great!’ music recos from my assorted Signal chats, which lean towards techno and electronica. What I like about these ways of listening to music is that they have a point of view. It also means I get exposed to new music that relates to what I’m already familiar with, but the connections are individualized and non-obvious, rather than algorithmically steered by weighted averages of listener preferences. Guided saltation rather than incremental steps.
HILOBROW: How do you use social media, these days?
DEB CHACHRA: Social media is tough. Jamie McKelvie said something to the effect of how “the ‘talk to your friends’ app and the ‘witness the horrors’ app being the same app isn’t great for mental health,” and that about sums it up. My friend circle is diasporic so I’ve long leant hard on the ‘ambient awareness’ that social media provides, which means I feel this tension acutely. At least I’ve somehow managed to tune my Instagram feed so that it shows me reels that are almost entirely from watercolor, glass, ceramics, and textile artists, which is usefully self-limiting; after scrolling for a while, the impulse to put down my phone and pick up my own tools is strong.
HILOBROW: Share a media “input” of yours that wasn’t listed above.
DEB CHACHRA: Having recently relocated to a new city, a lot of my ‘media’ input is in the physical world. Some of it is curated spaces, like art galleries, but it’s also just new-to-me neighbourhoods, stores, and restaurants. I’m lucky to have Vancouver arts powerhouse Veda Hille as a friend – not only do I benefit from her local intel but she also invited me to be a consulting scientist for a recent project, Theatre Replacement’s The End of Greatness. It was an unexpected joy to be involved in live performance. A few months ago, I went to the Museum of Anthropology at UBC specifically to see some Pacific Northwest wooden halibut hooks, and I found them in an entire gallery full of pull-out display drawers (there’s a fun online analogue to explore). And last week I finally visited the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, another glorious showcase of the inexhaustible richness and complexity of the world around us.
MEDIA DIET series: MATTHEW BATTLES | ADRIENNE CREW | HOLLY INTERLANDI | CAROLYN KELLOGG | MARK KINGWELL | FLOURISH KLINK | ADAM McGOVERN | CHARLIE MITCHELL | TOM NEALON | ANNIE NOCENTI | GARY PANTER | LYNN PERIL | JONATHAN PINCHERA | NICHOLAS ROMBES | CARLO ROTELLA | LUCY SANTE | SETH | MIKE WATT | JUDITH ZISSMAN | & more to come! Visit the SERIES INDEX.