National Network for Equitable Library Service

Hearing, the first of our senses to develop in the womb, is also the most recent of our senses to appear in evolutionary terms. This episode explores how sound is produced and transmitted, how the human ear is designed to receive certain frequencies, and whether the physics of relative frequencies, together with the physical structure of the human ear, makes us hear some combinations of sounds more ‘deeply’ than others. We investigate how the brain interprets music, and why we hear some sounds as music; other sounds as noise.