How often do you listen to honest-to-goodness radio anymore? Usually I go to it only if I’m not in the mood for podcasts, audiobooks, or my own music collection. I’ll spin through my station presets to see if I get lucky, though most often I get bad songs and ads.

But not the other day. I was feeling especially jovial after work and wanted to stay in that high, and this lineup (between three different stations) was what started when I turned on the car and ended when I arrived at home:

• “Jet Airliner” by Steve Miller Band
• “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd
• “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham!
• “Always Something There To Remind Me” by Naked Eyes
• “China Grove” by The Doobie Brothers
• “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield

My speakers were cranked. I don’t think I’ve ever hit such a solid streak on the radio before. Not one of these songs are in my own collection, yet they perfectly matched the moment. I could generate a list of six completely different songs that would be just as great and fitting, but that’s the nice thing about radio: call in requests all you want, but you can’t engineer musical serendipity, especially across stations. You just have to get lucky.

Long live synchronicity!