An iPod, by contrast, keeps no secrets. The iPod records what songs have been played both most recently and most often, so it quickly becomes a record of the owner's internal aural landscape. Listening to someone else's iPod is thus an intimate, almost invasive activity. On the scale of personal exposure, it's not exactly trading diaries, but it's much more revealing than a mix tape—for example, I never would have expected the boyfriend to have an ethereal cover version of 'Leaving on a Jet Plane,' mislabeled 'Björk,' as his most recently played track. It also quickly gets self-referential: When I got my iPod back, I put on the 'Recently Played' list to see what bands he'd checked out. My iPod then dutifully recorded me listening to the songs he'd heard.