James Rule

speaker

92 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 31 Jul

James Rule’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Science Show · Looking inside cells, and how seals hear so well underwater · 31 Jul 2026 podcast

So they only vibrate to specific frequencies.

And then once they do this, they communicate the sounds to the inner ear.

And the inner ear is a snail-shaped spiral organ that we have in our ear.

And that essentially, the shape, the length of that also filters out specific frequencies.

So by the time the sound signal reaches our brain, our brain and our ears have essentially filtered out all the useless sounds and we're only hearing the sounds that we need to hear.

The reason why is because of the air in our ears.

So essentially when sound tries to cross between two different densities, so when it's travelling through water and it hits air, the difference in density, that contrast basically results in most sound signal getting reflected.

But we do hear something and the reason why we hear something is because of bone conduction.

So that's essentially when a sound wave is traveling through water, it hits your body tissues and it travels through your muscles and your bones and it skips your middle ear

goes straight to your inner ear.

And that's why you can hear something.

However, that sound that you may hear might sound a bit muddled and the middle ear is not filtering out useless sounds.

So we're hearing a little bit of everything all at once.

And our brain is also not used to perceiving information in this way.

So it's also a little bit confused.

Seals have a special little tissue in their ear canals and middle ear cavity.

And me and my colleagues think this is what helps them hear underwater.

So when they're in the air, their ears work normally, just like ours.

When they dive underwater, this tissue fills with blood.

And the reason why it does this

Showing 41–60 of 92 · page 3 of 5