More Hearing Stuff

Apropos of my piece yesterday about how going deaf is like running low on milk, here's writer and public radio producer Jon Kalish's incredibly thorough survey of alternate options for hearing assistance. The piece is titled "Making Low-Cost, Stigma-Free Tech Solutions for Hearing Loss a Reality", but I don't agree that stigma is truly an issue these days, unless someone is terminally locked in the past. As I wrote a couple years ago in "Hearing Aid Adventure",

The days of bulbous beige mushrooms are gone. A stylish sliver hides behind my ear, and you can't spot the filament extending into my ear canal even if you're looking for it. Ear buds are 10,000 times clunkier, and they're stylish; a status symbol.

Why wouldn't I want sleeker, smaller, less intrusive and infinitely higher quality earbuds that also solve my whole, y'know, deafness problem? You can totally stream smartphone audio through hearing aids, offering music and radio and podcasts invisibly. My hearing aids are vastly lighter, more comfortable, and better-sounding than the clunky Air Pods you're so proud of. Everyone's walking around with conspicuous earwear. So where's the stigma?

In fact, when you think about it, the stigma never made much sense. Back to my article again:

I've worn, since childhood, a highly intrusive medical device on the front of my face, revealing to one and all the feeble weakness of my vision; my deficit. Yet not only are my glasses no big deal, but I've been deliriously happy to see that, for example, trees have leaves (and not just blurry green halos).

So I can also put on a far less conspicuous gadget and hear individual leaves blowing in the wind and crunching underfoot? Awesome! More perception-boosting gizmos, please!

Kalish is one of my three favorite radio people. If you're into radio, check out also Sara Fishko and the incomparable Joe Frank. The best radio host who ever interviewed me was Brian Lehrer of WNYC, who's amazing - though people might not realize it because he's so goddamned smart and smooth and transparent that he calls scant attention to himself.