Hearing Is Free. Listening Costs.
Effort, Exhaustion, and the Hearing Change No Test FindsBy Cora Bendt
Length6h 16m
About this audiobook
You are at a table with five other people. The room is full. Somebody makes a
joke and you laugh half a beat late, because you assembled the sentence from
three of its words and the shape of the face that said it. You have not missed
a word all evening. What you have done, without noticing, is work.
Hearing does not begin to fail when you stop hearing. It begins when listening
becomes work, and that work is paid for out of the same supply your brain uses
for memory, attention and patience. The bill arrives every evening. Nobody
itemises it.
The standard hearing test cannot find it. It measures four frequencies in
silence and stops at eight kilohertz, a limit set by what was affordable to
build in 1926. A 2026 analysis of 526 ears found the tested range explains
sixteen per cent of how hearing changes with age. The untested range explains
sixty-four.
Not a programme. Not a cure. An explanation, for people whose hearing test came
back normal and whose difficulty is real.
Audiobook details
GenreHealth and Wellness, Science and Nature
Length6 hrs 16 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateSep 13, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Opening
2Introduction
3Part One. The Wrong Explanation
4Chapter one. The Restaurant
5Chapter two. How the Rooms Got Loud
Show all chaptersShow less
6Chapter three. Hearing Is Work
7Chapter four. The Account
8Chapter five. It Reads as Tiredness
9Part Two. Why the Test Finds Nothing
10Chapter six. A Machine on Wheels
11Chapter seven. Tones in Quiet
12Chapter eight. What Else Is Not Measured
13Chapter nine. Above Eight
14Chapter ten. The Explanation That Came Apart
15Chapter eleven. Your Results Are Normal
16Part Three. What the Bill Comes To
17Chapter twelve. The Number Everyone Quotes
18Chapter thirteen. What Survived the Test
19Chapter fourteen. Cause, Catalyst or Consequence
20Chapter fifteen. What Each One Would Mean
21Chapter sixteen. The Withdrawal
22Chapter seventeen. The Meeting
23Chapter eighteen. The Noise You Choose
24Chapter nineteen. The Noise You Are Given
25Chapter twenty. The Ringing
26Part Four. What Changed
27Chapter twenty-one. The Year the Prescription Went
28Chapter twenty-two. Four Minutes
29Chapter twenty-three. What It Costs
30Chapter twenty-four. What It Does Not Repair
31Part Five. What Follows
32Chapter twenty-five. Change the Room
33Chapter twenty-six. The Conversation
34Chapter twenty-seven. The Ledger
35Appendix A. Three Questions
36Appendix B. When Not to Self-Assess
37Appendix C. Glossary
38Appendix D. Sources
39Closing
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