Adam Curry on Hacking His High-Tech Hearing Aids

Tell me about the hearing aids because you took them out when you got in to put the headphones on and this is from listening to music too loud. No. You'd think. You'd think. You'd think. No. I have a genetic problem that I didn't know about until three years ago. And so it's not, and I went to an audiologist. Well, here's what happened. I started noticing, Tina and I had been together for a couple of years. I started noticing, I was saying, excuse me, what? I wouldn't hear stuff or she would say something that I couldn't remember hearing and I brought it up to her and I said, do you think I ask you to repeat something a lot? She says, no, it doesn't really bother me. And then she says, but the TV is very loud. I said, really? The TV is very loud. I said, oh, I don't even realize that. So I went to an audiologist and lo and behold, my grandmother, my dad's a big fan of music. Dad's side was completely deaf, almost from her teens. So I have some of this, but it's been okay. Only as you get older, everything, the levels, you know, just see like here's a level where you can hear everything. And I was already kind of there. So now it's just due to age, just everything goes down a bit. And so I'm missing 1K and 1 kilohertz, missing different tones. And so I went to an audiologist and said, well, it's very mild, but yeah, this can make you repeat stuff and it will get worse over time. And what actually happens to a lot of men in particular is they become very isolated from the world. They don't even realize that they have a hearing problem. And now the difference between having them in and taking them out is massive. Just I can hear how much less it is. Another clue was that I have a, for all my podcast radio work, I have a headphone, but I put an extra amplifier on it. You can still hear it today. Sometimes I'm talking and it'll leak just a little bit because I have it so loud. Now that's not going to damage my ears, but the problem with anything you put in your ears, you can't hear the sounds anymore. And I like that our processing, our EQ, it's very important to me. So I can hear that without the hearing aids, but not with the hearing aids. Oh, that's interesting. So the hearing aids give you a different kind of sound? Well, so today's hearing aid is not your grandpa's, you know, geriatric brown, goopy looking piece of shit that makes you look like just a total moron. How dare you? You did the face. I did the face. Hey, I have disability here. I get a victim card. You can get probably a plate. Boundaries Adam, boundaries. So these are the Widex Evoque. These have 35 channels of compressor limiter, multiple settings. It's an in ear, so it goes right into my ear. I still have a little bleed through from the outside world, but so usually an audiologist sticks this thing in your ears and makes you do all the tests. And then they'll sit there and they'll sit across from you and they're going to program it so that you can then hear a normal sound, which is very, it's a very, you have to be a trained professional. It's very hard to fix someone who has never heard what is proper. Okay. Now I'm a little different and I'm also way into sound. And so it's a whole rack. These things are $3,500. It's a huge racket. And the way they do it is the manufacturer, you can't buy it from the directly or from retail. You can only buy it through an audiologist. So they're already getting half the money, the $1,500 at least, and you have to have an appointment. So it's all this money that goes on top. And then you come back after a couple months and they tweak it and you come back again. So I said, look, see who I am. I've told you what I do. Give me the fucking software. She said, oh, no, no, I was going to give it to you. I just wanted to do one session with you. So you have to have this. So I have pre-programmed like six different programs. So I can do one just for music. I can do one for television, one for social situations. And I have one that, and so I did it all myself, all these 35 different channels of compressor limiter. So when I'm walking around, what I hear on my ears is like a radio show, like the sound like when I'm talking right now, I hear my own voice. It all resonates because I've jacked all that up. So I've made my own sound reality of sound. But I also have one, I can set it to a setting in the mall. I can hear a conversation from 50 feet away. Whoa. It was my eavesdropping setting. The only thing that doesn't work is you can't have headphones because that doesn't work having the hearing aids in with the headphones. With the sound. Yeah, because you're blasting into the microphone. It really doesn't work. That's crazy though that you could hear people having a conversation 50 feet away. Can you focus in on people? By turning my head, yeah. By turning my head. Wow. I mean, there's a lot you can focus. You can have it automatic. But the problem is the way I've set it up, you can drop a pen there if I don't see it. I might hear it over there. Now that's always going to be a problem. They have an algorithm that will try to guess where the sound is from and tell your ears that. So basically I'm not the guy you want in the battlefield. I'm just like, tell you where the shots are leading fire from. Oh my God, that's hilarious. I just can't hear it. Wow. But just for, yeah, so it just doesn't work with headphones. That's why I take them out. It's amazing though. They sound incredibly potent. Oh yeah. You remember, I mean, you know what real sound sounds like. Yes. Does everything sound real to you? Yes. Or is there a... Well, what you automatically do, because I was able to do it, is from having a conversation. I have different settings for different situations. So if I'm at home, it's relatively quiet or we have some music on or TV or whatever. Now I have the TINA frequency, which is kind of like one kilohertz and that's where I hear her better. And so that's jacked up a little bit. And then if I hear you talk, I can hear it's not exactly you. It's a little too tinny maybe. Wow. So, but that's just me. I mean, that's not everyone's experience, of course, but to me, the disability has become incredible joy because I have like virtual reality on my head all the time. Yeah, I was just saying that. You could probably fuck with someone's voice like a Snapchat filter. Well, you know, you can... You can make them sound like a cartoon. It's really advanced. I mean, you can connect to an iPhone, so you can stream wirelessly. You can do like, if you're driving with directions with the maps, then you can just be talking and in your ear, all of a sudden it's like, let the light turn right. No one else hears it. There's no wires, no nothing. I got, you know... I wouldn't even know I had them in, unless you look. We're becoming cyborgs. Oh yeah, that's, although I'm against it, that is a part of the road to transhumanism. Right, but how can you say you're against it where you're enjoying this thing? This to me is more, it's not a replacement, it's an enhancement. Yes, but that's how they're going to get us. When the first dude gets his legs removed for artificial carbon fiber legs that you could feel, but that can run 60 miles an hour, when the first guy gets his legs removed in favor of new legs, that's when we're going to go, holy shit. Whenever I tell my radio buddies about my hearing aids, they're always like, oh, that's fucking cool. It's cool. I want that too, like I want that. Don't get me wrong, I'm just looking at the bleak landscape ahead of us. By the way, beware, I just want to say something, because there's a lot of, they're not called hearing aids, they're called hearing amplifiers. They have some fuzzy legal language that are coming on the market that you put all the way in your ear, the rechargeables. They've got a whole bunch of them, they're much, much cheaper. From an audio standpoint, I've done it for 40 years, that's not the way you want to go if you seriously want to know how to, if you want to hear properly again. So see an audiologist is what I'm saying. And there's lots of different, it's not all $3,500, it's more expensive, but I just recommend that self-testing is not a good idea. One of the best pool players in the world is a guy named Shane Van Boning. And Shane is deaf, he was born deaf. And when he plays, he shuts his hearing aids off. And it's a world of silence. And he's just playing in complete total silence. And when he does that, when he shuts his hearing aid off, he feels like he's got super concentration. Like it doesn't matter what else is going on, all he's doing is just focusing on the balls. That sense doesn't exist. So he's hyper focused on other things. I notice that sometimes when I walk with noise canceling headsets on... Same thing, it'll do similar... I'll smell things more. Well, that's kind of well known, is that different parts of your body compensate for something missing. You're more tuned in. You're more tuned in. Like, let's pay attention here, the ears are offline, a mountain lion can be running behind you and you're listening to fucking all things considered. Exactly. Think about it, if you can't hear the mountain lion frequencies anymore. And today's mountain lion is car engines, all kinds of stuff. You can't hear it, it's dangerous. It is. And you don't know it, you just slip into it. I had no idea until we have a new relationship. So we've been living together for a couple of years and luckily we're completely open and honest like, hey, is this fucked up? Yeah, it's pretty fucked up. It's so cool that that exists though. That's an elegant solution. And for someone like you, it actually gives you a chance to tinker with shit. And I'm sure you really enjoy that aspect of it. Oh my god. Yeah, you love that. I really do. I can tell when you talk about it. It's a small thing, but if you... Even when you talk about the apps on your phone, you're so excited about that.