Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right.

Learn more at RWJF.org.

When When I was younger, probably about 10 or 11 years old, my grandmother actually gifted me a cassette player for my birthday. At that age, I didn't own CDs or MP3 player or something. I definitely didn't own any cassette tapes.

My mom decided to drive me to this store that's called Media Play. It doesn't exist anymore.

And I knew that I wanted Daft Punk's 2001 album called Discovery, and so we bought it.

This was around September, going into October,

and I just listened to it all the time, religiously, constantly.

So it was this really crucial moment in my life where a few things converged,

like my introduction into music that I really loved

and enjoying a change of season and being a young person and having that freedom. And to this day,

I still listen to that record. It's in my car. My car, I have an older car. It has a tape deck,

and so I can, uh, pop it in and throat kind of feeling, but it's not sadness.

You know, it's not something that I necessarily mourn.

Like, I don't want to go back to being 10 years old.

You know, I like being an adult. But it's almost just like a visceral feeling that lump in my throat and the misty-eyed kind of feeling that I get and my face gets a little red.

My brain kind of shuts down and my body's response to sort of take over.

It's more than just a tradition. It literally is like an embodied experience.

Every year the tape sounds a little bit more worn down.

It's a little bit more warped.

One of these days I'm kind of afraid that I'm going to pop it in

and it's just going to be so degraded that I won't be able to make any sense out of it anymore.

...