Hearing and Balance – Physics Inside Your Skull

Talking Science · Sep 3, 2026 · 20m · transcript

Walk out of a loud concert and the world sounds muffled, with a faint ring that takes hours to fade — a small, temporary demonstration of just how much delicate mechanical engineering is packed into a space smaller than a coin. This episode follows sound on its journey from vibrating air to nerve signal, through the eardrum, the three smallest bones in the human body, and a fluid-filled spiral called the cochlea, before turning to the inner ear's other job: keeping you balanced.

You'll come away understanding how the ear matches airborne sound to the fluid inside the cochlea, how the cochlea…