LISTEN, can we take a minute? On Monday, as the World Cup started and it was clear that FIFA was going to double down on its anti-LGTBQ+ stance, while Elon Musk seemed keen to get Trump and Kanye and every other rabid ghoul back on Twitter, it did feel like one of those days when it was best to take a step back for a spell. Just switch off from the constant shouting that seems to be the way of modern life and find something a bit calming.

And so my favourite minute of radio this week came on Radio 3 on Monday night. It was just the sound of the wind blowing through trees on Hampstead Heath, accompanied by birdsong and, right at the end, the sound of footsteps. Actually it was more like a minute and a half, which can feel like an eternity on radio, a medium that too often feels the need to fill up every space (talk radio channels, I’m looking at you).

This sylvan 90 seconds came in the middle of Ultimate Calm, Radio 3’s weekly chill-out hour, presented by Icelandic composer (and former drummer in hardcore and metal bands) Olafur Arnalds.

I don’t know how traditional Radio 3 listeners feel about shows like this, but everything about Ultimate Calm is Benylin for the mind, from the choice of music (Monday’s show was film-themed so soundtrack composers Jonny Greenwood, Clint Mansell, Ryuchi Sakamoto and Hans Zimmer all featured) to Arnalds’s soft-spoken words and his musical Icelandic accent.

The reason the programme ended up on Hampstead Heath was because that was the “safe space” chosen by the programme’s guest, composer Isobel Waller-Bridge (yes, Phoebe’s sister). It is where she goes to reboot, she explained. “My brain is going all the time. It's so noisy. And it’s very rare that I can shut it off.

“There’s something about trees that makes me feel very calm,” she continued. “I think it definitely has got to do with how ancient they are. I like being near them. I like occasionally giving them a hug. I like listening to them.

“So much of what I do is about listening. I definitely listen more than I talk. And I find great solace in listening, especially to nature.”

This is hardly an original thought. And yet that doesn’t make it any less true.

Earlier on Monday afternoon, Radio 4 offered a more highbrow take on the same theme. House, Bridge, Gate, Pitcher, Fruit Tree, Window (which first aired the week before) took poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies as its foundation and built an evocative, immersive, at times, challenging, half hour of radio full of shifting textures and thoughts. Arthouse radio, you might say (I use the description approvingly). And another example of the ambition – both thematic and sonic – of producer Phil Smith and makers Falling Tree Radio. If nothing else, it’s worth listening to for the reminder that the German language can sound just as romantic and beautiful on the ear as any other.

Still, it was hard to avoid all the noise and fuss around the World Cup this week. How things have changed. On Monday evening on 5 Live Cliff Jones, one of the survivors of Wales’s last World Cup team back in 1958, recalled an acquaintance of his team-mate Mel Charles asking him on their return: “Aye aye Mel, been on your holidays again?”

“And Mel said, ‘What are you talking about? We’ve just been to the World Cup, got to the quarter finals, got beat by the winners.’ People didn’t know.”

Hard to imagine then. Definitely impossible now.

Listen Out For: Slow Radio: a Moving Home, Radio 3, Sunday, 11.30pm

Continuing the quest for calmness, this programme goes for a journey along London’s Regent Canal. Water, moorhens, engines and repeat.