Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 7,000+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trial
Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
An Intimate Journey Through the Science of Sound and Language
I Can Hear You Whisper by Lydia Denworth is a remarkable journey of a mother studying science to better understand and engage with her deaf son. It is a moving story about the importance of sound, language, and connection in human life.
Most people take their ability to hear for granted. Hearing, like so many other physiological functions, is a highly complex process.
So how is sound created and how do our ears process it?
Noise is made when molecules in the air vibrate and create a sound wave. Our outer ear catches sound waves and works like a funnel, sending them into the ear canal. The ear canal then amplifies them and sends them onto the eardrum.
When a sound hits the eardrum, it vibrates and changes from acoustic energy into mechanical energy. The mechanical energy then moves through three tiny bones called the hammer, anvil and stirrup, and enters the inner ear.
Once in the inner ear, the sound enters the fluid-filled cochlea, where it changes into hydro-energy. Tiny hairs in the cochlea detect movements in the fluid and generate electrical impulses in the brain, causing you to “hear” the sound.
But this process doesn’t function properly for everyone: while most people can hear sounds within a range of 20 to 20,000 Hertz (Hz), other people’s range is much smaller or nonexistent.
Life is very different for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. If you can’t hear people speak, for instance, you have to rely on completely different methods of communication.
That’s why such a vibrant culture has developed around deafness. The deaf community has had to come up with alternative ways for a lot of things hearing people rely on their hearing for. Deafness shouldn’t necessarily be considered a lack of something: it’s an identity in its own right.
I Can Hear You Whisper (2014) is about human communication, and the phenomenon and culture of deafness. Hearing is a complex process that doesn’t function the same way for everyone, and those who are deaf or hard of hearing have developed alternative methods of communication, around which a special culture has grown. These blinks give an overview of that culture and show that it’s just as rich as any other.
Helen Keller famously said that being blind cut you off from things, but being deaf cut you off from people.
It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.
Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.
Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.
Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.
Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 7,000+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trialBlink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma