Hearing is a privilege

Hearing Is a Privilege

I’ve been on the receiving end of a Steven Levy “What?” too many times to count. Usually it’s because I’ve said something stupid—but sometimes it’s because he literally can’t hear me. Steven’s had hearing loss for years. He blames a rock concert in the 1960s.

So I wasn’t surprised when Steven pitched a story about a new hearing aid. Write what you know and all that. I was surprised, however, by the product itself. AI was involved. So was Steve Martin? 

It’s the iPhone of hearing aids, apparently—but even more exclusive than that. You don’t have to be Martin-level famous to snag one, but it’s close. Here’s my favorite quote from the piece: “This product has become a major flex for the post-70 set.”

Does Fortell’s device actually work? You’ll have to read the piece to find out. As usual, there’s an audio version too. 

 READ THE BIG STORY ➔ 

Big Ideas, Big Interviews

There’s a reason we crave really good interviews. They bring us as close as we can ever hope to be to total strangers of immense intrigue—people who run the world, people who make art about the world, people who make the world better. And because an interview captures one person, at one point in their life, the resulting story serves as a sort of particularly informative polaroid. This Friday, WIRED captured many such polaroids at our annual Big Interview event.

Inspired by Friday’s conversations between WIRED journalists and such leaders of our moment as AMD CEO Lisa Su and Wicked: For Good director Jon M. Chu, I’m sharing an older WIRED interview and a different sort of snapshot. In 2012, WIRED editor Chris Anderson sat down with Elon Musk, who was then just a visionary running an underdog aerospace company, with dreams of going to Mars. Photos are important, as we well know, because of how much things change after they are taken. What are some of your favorite WIRED interviews from over the years? Send your top picks to samantha_spengler@wired.com or comment below the article.

Two weeks ago I shared Megan Molteni’s award-winning investigation into the deadly misapprehension that helped Covid kill. Her feature looks at how scientists became wedded to a belief about aerosol particles that was based on an outdated, misunderstood study, and chronicles the fight a group of researchers launched to get the establishment to change its mind. WIRED reader Doug wrote in to tell me about another misguided theory with deadly implications. A traffic safety expert, Doug pointed to another commonly cited claim that’s also based on a misapplied study from the 1950s—that it’s safer to keep up with speeding traffic than it is to drive the speed limit. “The Solomon Curve shows that slower vehicles get in more crashes,” he says, “but Solomon wasn't studying freeway traffic. Many of those crashes were vehicles slowing down in intersections. But now we apply Solomon’s results to driving on freeways and justify speeding as a protective measure (it’s not).”

Tell us about your favorite WIRED stories and magazine-related memories. Write to samantha_spengler@wired.com, and include “CLASSICS” in the subject line.