Speaking as someone who has suffered his fair share of silent treatment on the Underground, it’s refreshing to hear this rule so flagrantly broken, and with such profoundly moving results, in singer-songwriter Tom Rosenthal’s podcast, Strangers on a Bench.

It’s not an entirely new idea. Alexei Sayle’s Strangers on a Train, Catherine Carr’s Where Are You Going? and This American Life have all done something similar. But it’s an evergreen concept inspired by the fundamental truth that everyday life is filled with the kind of colourful characters and rich drama that you won’t find in a celebrity-on-celebrity interview, or the sensationalised true-crime story of the week.

This is probably because people tend to be candid, even in our stand-offish capital. That’s to take nothing away from Rosenthal. He’s a natural icebreaker, deftly eliciting confidences with gentle, open-ended prompts: “What’s your favourite day of the week?” “What are you most excited about at the moment?”

The latter kicks off a wholesome first episode featuring a young guy (Rosenthal’s subjects remain anonymous) who, we learn, is most excited about his next basketball game. He says he has fallen back in love with the sport, having recently been released from prison. And, surprisingly, he speaks glowingly of his time inside.

“Everyone was really uplifting,” he says. The prisoners’ mantra was: “Just because you’ve done bad things, that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.” In stark contrast, his younger brother was busy studying in California. He had previously won a scholarship to Eton. Yet there is no competition between them. “He inspires me, if anything, to be the best version of myself.”

Asked for any rituals he developed with his cell-mate, he fondly recalls how their evening “bang-up” coincided with The Simpsons at 6pm on Channel 4. It’s often the small things that resonate most. The next conversation, entitled Fruit Sculptures for Breakfast, is full of them.

But even when conversation is more stilted, as in episode three with an older gent who is hard of hearing, it doesn’t take long for Rosenthal to start drawing out some gems. We learn that the man got so fed up with smartphones that he threw his in the Mixed Pond on Hampstead Heath. And his amusingly matter-of-fact approach to his own mortality has him marvelling at John Cleese’s £17,000-a-year stem cell therapy.

I’m only a few episodes in, but smartphones have been a recurring bugbear. This was, perhaps, inevitable as our heads droop ever deeper over our screens, where we sequester ourselves in narrow social networks and bellow into our echo chambers.

Podcasts such as Strangers on a Bench are a timely antidote to this growing alienation and a testament to the power of listening. Strangely for a podcast, I can think of no higher compliment than to say it makes you want to rip out your earphones and speak to that overfamiliar stranger on the Tube. Or, better still, launch your phone into your local bathing pond.