Oh, absolutely, I can't listen to a book on tape and code. I mostly listen to death metal or electronic music with no (intelligible) words. I do think programming engages the language portion of the brain, which is why it can be so rewarding and draining.

But traditional pair programming, like actually sitting next to someone at one computer? I honestly enjoyed it! I might just be old? :) These days IntelliSense is effectively my pair programmer. TypeScript and VSCode allows me to actually enjoy front end dev work for once, fixing the squiggles is fun. But in the old days before Stack Overflow, time spent co-working next to someone who really knew an API or a library or a language was very much worth it.

My current team does do a shared screen pair programming thing a couple of times a week, there's a video call that we can drop in on while we are working on something.

Maybe it's more inspired by Twitch live coding and less like traditional pair programming but I still think it counts? It wasn't even my idea, but I participate because I enjoy it.