Hack Your Hearing: Use ‘Auditory AI’ To Unlock Superhuman Hearing! Brandon Sawalich

One in seven teenagers have hearing loss.

How far are we out from translation?

If I'm in Germany or wherever, somebody's talking to me, it's translating instantly into my ear. If I have a family member or myself that I want to know, are they depressed? What's their state of mind? The hearing aid can pick up the voice and get a trend on. Is this person depressed?

How long until my star keys are listening to the people talking to me and telling me who's lying? You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today we're going to talk about hearing in the world of biohacking. I say you change the environment around you and inside of you so you have full control over your own biology. With that control, it means you can choose whatever you want. And one of the biggest variables for how your brain functions, even for how you age, it's your hearing. Because we receive light and we receive vibrations on our skin, and we receive vibrations in our ears as sound. And you've probably heard some of the music that I've made for 40 years of Zen that I've played for you on different episodes where we're using music to change your brain. And we've all heard of drumming and Tibetan bells and light sound goggles and all the different ways that, oh, my gosh, hearing is foundational to consciousness. Well, I wanted to do an episode about hearing because I've had some hearing problems that I haven't talked much about, if ever. You might know that I had Asperger's syndrome growing up. And one of the things that happens with that is the way you perceive reality with your ears, with your eyes, with your whole nervous system. It's maladaptive. It's not normal, which could be good or it could be bad, because being normal just means being average. But what I found was that I had to work really, really hard to hear what someone was saying in a loud environment. And if you're listening to this, that might be you as well. Or you may say, it doesn't really bother me, it's hard, or whatever. It just took 10 times more effort for me. And through my path of rewiring my biology, I figured out that I had gaps in my hearing. So I could hear very high pitch and very low pitch. But in the middle, there were just little narrow windows, like potholes in my hearing, and that didn't match in each ear. And it was a major undertaking, many months of intense work to do, just teach my brain to sort of overcome that. And I became familiar with the research that shows as you age, as your hearing goes down, that's one of the biggest risks of dementia. And I've also been influenced by, well, all the superhero books and movies and science fiction and the thoughts of having way better than human hearing. And is there a way to do that? So I found a guest for you, someone you're going to want to hear from. His name is Brandon Sawalich, and he has hired only 5,000 people to work on the problem of hearing for a very long time. And he works with a company you may not have heard of called Starkey. He's the CEO. And this is a guy who's going to teach us what's possible, including science fiction stuff like being able to hear 75 different languages and have them translated in real time for you, so you actually are the smartest person in the room and you'll have a brain that works better than everyone else as well. Brandon, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. And thank you for this important topic because it's not something that people get excited about or think about, but you just framed it up exactly where I'm taking Starkey and what we're doing.

Starkey makes hearing assistive devices, or what some people would call hearing aids. And growing up, my grandparents had a big bulky thing and I remember my grandfather got his goes, this is great, I can hear again. And we're thinking, this is great. He stopped shouting. But it feels like the industry is different now because, oh, maybe six months or so, Daymond John handed me a Starkey and I said, all right, I'll give this a try. And I don't have hearing problems now, but I still wired into my phone, I got it all set up without having it properly fitted. And I just realized, oh, my gosh, there's a whole world around me that I do not perceive. And when I had those in and I'm actually going to get fitted for Starkey's properly after this episode, I just realized I am filtering out a huge amount of reality in my ears that I could be tuning into. And is it beneficial for people to hear more than they do today?

Absolutely. Hearing is essential. Hearing is healthcare. And you mentioned your grandparents. And I've grown up in the industry. I've been around it. My grandmother started in 1959 and helping people. So the technology and innovation isn't even close to what it was 10 years ago. Because you look at today's media, movies, the movie up I always go to, right? Or others. You bet you it's like the big piece of bubble gum in your hands. Whistling. That's not today's technology, that's not what we're doing. But that's the stigma and why people don't want to improve their hearing health or have that superpower. Stigma is the number one issue because they don't know what they don't know.

And when I look at what happens with an AI powered assistive device or I don't really even think hearing aid's the right word for it, because something that lets you hear things in the room that you couldn't otherwise hear even with normal hearing, and something that does translation for you and something that even tracks your health. I'm thinking that this is really useful. Oh, it also lets me listen to things on my phone when I don't want to hear all the whatever's going on around me. So it's to me, a way of having a fine grained lens on my reality using technology so I can get more or less of what's in the sound environment, which means I control my consciousness better. Do you see it that way?

Absolutely. People want to hear better. That's job one. They want to hear better noise. That's job one. Don't get me wrong, but since 2017, I wanted to take a, you know, a swing at it, moonshot idea, big thinking, how do we redefine hearing aids? Because it's not. It's hear tech, you know, it's wearable. And I'm a Marvel fan. Think of it as Jarvis in the Air. You know, that personal assistant, whether you have a hearing loss or not, it helps you just a little bit better if you don't even have a hearing loss. Perform better each and every day.

It's interesting, as people age, the brain gets less inputs, so it starts to shrink. And when people get cataract surgery, their dementia goes down and their IQ can even go up and they are less depressed because there's more signal coming into the brain. More signal coming into the brain. It's like more exercise for it and then more vibrancy, more neural connections and more awareness. And if the two primordial senses are sound and hearing, and we do that for sound, well, one thing is, okay, let's say you're old and you've experienced hearing loss, or maybe you have a genetic thing, or maybe you just went to a lot of concerts. A lot of young people have hearing loss like I did, and you just don't know it. So if it's not one of those situations and you just have Normal hearing. But you turn up the amount of auditory information. What does it do to your brain?

Exercises. It makes us more fit because you mentioned in your opening, you mentioned spaces, gaps. And that's what it doesn't matter if you're 55, 75, 85, 25, your brain, if you have hearing loss, your brain has the gaps. And what we're doing, we talk about hearing, we're exercising the brain. You have five senses. Five. You know this better than I do. And you can talk circles around me on each one. Sight is vital. Hearing feeds and feeds your brain, connects you with people and life and what you're doing. And people don't correlate the two per se. So what we're doing is filling those gaps and not just going back to, you know, going back to the stigma. It's not just elderly, you know, the 65 plus, one in seven teenagers have hearing loss. One in seven right now. Because why? Gaming, headphones, music, you name it. And people, you know, don't take action on it because I'm not going to die from it. There's, you know, usually there's about a seven year, you know, journey that, you know, okay, now I need to do something about it.

You won't know you have hearing loss until it's pretty far gone because you.

Forget about the things you miss that you're not, you're not hearing.

How far are we out from translation just to be able to hear?

The goal is, and has been since the beginning, instantaneous. Where if I'm in Germany or wherever, somebody's talking to me, it's translating instantly into my ear. I think we are less than five years out.

Wow. So it's happening.

It's happening. Starkey is limited by the technology that is available because it's not about a money thing. It's about what can technology do.

I was CTO and co founder of the first company get heart rate from the wrist. And funny enough, we sold them to intel, where your CTOs from?

There you go.

And it was really challenging then. And I remember thinking, man, the wrist kind of sucks. It's not as good as even as a fingertip for getting biological data, but it's a nice form factor. So now we have rings that can do that, which are better. But the inner part of the ear is so transparent, it's almost an untapped area for getting vital information about how not just hearing works, but how blood flow works, how heart rate works. Are you guys detecting blood, oxygen?

A lot of different things. Because as I showed you Here, we can put a sensor right in here. And I can measure heart rate also. The other thing kind of getting ahead of myself on innovation because it gets me excited is, you know, think about where the world is, especially post Covid and everything else. Mental health. If I have a family member or myself that I want to know, are they depressed? What's their state of mind? Voice. The hearing aid can pick up the voice and get a trend on, is this person depressed? What kind of mood? And then get, you know, for that week, that month. So if somebody has a grandparent, family member, whatever it might be, and if they're okay with sharing, we can know. Not us, but the family member can know what state of mind that person is in based on their voice.

Is it based on the inflection of their voice or is it okay, this is really important. So if you're listening to the show, you might have heard the episode with Stephen Porges, who's the father of polyvagal theory, understands how the vagal nerve works. And he's using voice inflection to determine the state of your nervous system. So this is not about having a surveillance thing listening to what you say. It's about how you said whatever it is you said. So you're not recording what they said. You're recording how their voice changed as they said things.

The patient has it, we don't have it. They have to give access to a family member. Because for me personally, that's one thing I don't want. You go back to Sigma. We're not Big Brother. But if you think about what that inflection in that voice, if we could help one person and it costs us billion dollars to develop, it's worth it. Just like fall detection. I mean, and I can go down the list. You know, you can't put price on the quality of life. You know, somebody that has hearing loss, they don't do anything about it. What happens? They draw inward. They're not going to talk about it. I'm not going to say, huh, you know, so they draw inward. Social. Exactly. Loneliness. And I've seen it. I've heard stories. And I can say this. For instance, Bob Hope, who had a horrible hearing loss until he passed. And we took care of him, tried to take care of him, but he was, for whatever reason, inward. And he would have the parties at Palm Springs. He would stay up in his room. I could go down the list. And I'm not, you know, I say that not to name drop, but to say that it's real because people Want to be engaged. And if you can't hear, right, Helen Keller, blind and deaf. And she said if she had a choice, she would want to hear because that connects you with life, that connects you with people. And we have seen that over and over and over. You just. You're isolated.

The amount of freedom that creates for thinking and innovation and creativity and connection, it's hard to put words on that. And it's something that I really struggled with in my 20s, and I would say I've got about 80% of that problem handled through hundreds and hundreds of hours of retraining my brain. And I know that I still get more tired and I still have a harder time. You know, if there's a bunch of fans on and someone says something a little quietly, I'm like, what? And I think other people would be able to hear it, but I don't have any shame over that because it's not a big problem. But if you're in that Bob Hope situation where you're overwhelmed because you're just taking all of your energy to try and hear what people are saying, and then you're saying, what?

Huh? What?

And then you don't like how it makes people, of course you're going to be isolated. Social isolation makes your brain shrink and leads to dementia and Alzheimer's risk. So, number one, do something so you don't have to say what all the time. And number two, do something so that even if you're not saying what, your cognitive load goes down. And people might have noticed that I'm wearing these Funky glasses, the TrueDark glasses. This is a company that does circadian biology and light filtering because it's similar with your eyes. The amount of visual stress from LED lights, it reduces willpower and cognitive function. So for my brain, if I'm in a super noisy environment with crappy lighting, my willpower will be less. I have several companies in my portfolio. I write books, I do podcasts. In fact, Forbes named Bulletproof as one of the top 20 most innovative countries in the country when I was running Bulletproof. So where does my innovation energy come from? I promise you it's not from filtering out blue light and static in the background. I want to get rid of those in my life so that I can be present and focused. And I'm actually really excited to get my star key and to be able to use it, in part because I can listen to an audiobook and no one's going to know it, but also because the amount of free energy for.

Thinking and being will Go up and you touched on a thread there. Where my thinking is, that is people get a hearing aid because of the reactive. Right. And we need to be proactive. What you're doing with your glasses. Right. And I came to your conference six months ago and walked the floor with David and got a lot of nice stuff. I got a pair of glasses and I think, okay, I'll try them. I sit in my office at home or work, like, yeah, I can. I don't know how to explain it. And I'm not just saying this because you brought it up. I feel just like with hearing, I want hearing ease for the patient. My eyes are easier, it's easier and I could feel it. I don't feel like I'm straining and you know, for hearing it's the same thing. You don't want to strain. So we need to get. The stigma is going down. But let's get reactive. Where my goal is, I want to eliminate the stigma to the majority because there's 455 people in the world that have any loss. 40 some on 455 million, excuse me, 44 million in the US and there's so many more that's not identified. Help them up front where people can be the best they can be each and every day for their family, for their job, for society. Think about everybody that had hearing loss. One more idea, one more thought, one more contribution. That's what hearing health is. Because it's not the ear and the eardrum, it's the brain.

Yeah. It's funny, I've oftentimes said that the truedark glasses are like noise canceling headphones for your eyes. And everyone knows what I'm talking about.

They really are. I don't know how to. I mean, I was impressed, Sorry. But I was just. This was like my eyes felt easier, it just felt lighter.

It's the easier. That's why I'm bringing it up again is that sense of ease. Like, it's like you're walking around carrying a 50 pound bag and you don't know it. And one day someone comes in and takes the bag off and wow, I can move better. So most people have turned on noise cancelings over your ear bulky headphones one time ago. Wow. It just got quiet and you feel the body relax.

Right.

And the idea here with Starkey is that even if you don't have hearing loss, if you have the ability to create that kind of peace in your auditory environment, in a loud environment, that's going to improve your performance today. And it's going to keep your brain from aging as quickly. It's going lower physiological stress. It's going to free up willpower. So I use glasses to control my visual environment. And my plan is to use Starkey to control my auditory environment.

And a good one, two punch. Well, there you go.

Changing the environment around you and inside of you to have control of your biology is the definition of biohacking. Now I can use technology to change my auditory environment in a way that wasn't possible until today. That's why I'm really stoked on this.

And we're not done, because if we can help, you know, more and more people understand. And again, I appreciate you having a podcast on this topic. Because it's not sexy, right? I mean, people like hearing aids, hearing.

Loss, like super hearing powers are kind of sexy to me because I really do want to be superhuman. If my glasses let me have x ray vision, I would do it.

Yes.

And if my hearing lets me hear stuff in the next room that I'm not supposed to hear, probably could make money with that.

This isn't for somebody retired. Think about somebody that is in the prime of their career, in their 40s and 50s, that they. They want that edge, they want that boost, they want that superpower in their career that could help them. And just hear one little thing a little bit clearer and have a leg up, because you can hear crispr, as I mentioned. But it's the syllables. It's your feet on the ground. It's everything. You would be surprised. You know, there's a lot of famous people, a lot of they can get, you know, wealthy, you name it, that perform musicians, world leaders, when they're hearing, or they're hearing it or their starkie starts to go out, it's almost a steady, but it's a panic. And they want to. They call us and they need to get fixed because you can't hear that piano key. You can't hear that sound. You know, this was 10 to 15 years ago, before technology, what it is today. And similar to Bob Hope, Arnold Palmer told me, because we took care of his hearing for decades, but he told me that once he was fit, he could then hear how his club hit the ball. Exactly what you're talking about, the games. And this is before the advanced superpower technology. He could tell how his swing was, was he slicing, hooking, he could hear that ping. And he remembered back in his prime what that sounded like, even a different type of clubhead. But he could tell how he was hitting the ball and Striking the ball. And he told me that personally.

You know, my favorite sport is table tennis or ping pong. And I bought a table when Dr. Daniel Amen, who's a dear friend and is scanned. I'm on Dr. Daniel Amen's board of directors. His work profoundly showed me about 25 years ago. Oh, my gosh. My brain is a piece of hardware, and I can manage that. It's not a moral failing. It's not that I'm trying to hear and I can't. It's like something's wrong and we fix it. So the reason I bring him up is he said, dave, you should play ping pong because it's going to make the left, right hemispheres go. So my son's maybe 5, and I started playing with him and we've played hundreds and hundreds of hours. And the way you play ping pong when you get really good is you hear the sound of the ball hitting the table and it tells you how much spin it has. It's not just visual, it's very auditory, and you want to be really good at that. People listening to this. There are a lot of professional athletes who listen to the show who have for years, and I'll bet you money that some of them are going to call Starkey for performance enhancement. They're not playing anymore. But I'm just thinking the Bryant brothers would be prime examples. Nick is really into that, into anything that will enhance performance. So again, it's the sound of the thwack, right? So this is free information. And if I can have tech filter out all the crap information that I don't need and focusing on the sounds that are useful for me, I'm going to perform better.

And this is why I'm interested, because think about this. Because I talk to professional sports leagues, ones that are very popular, and we're talking about amplifying. Think about noise cancellation, where you got the home field advantage, or the opposing teams in the stadium, all the noise, think about filtering that out so you could hear the play call. Think about hearing the, you know, the ball off of the bat. You know exactly what you're talking about. So there's different ways to approach this because it's not just about, yeah, I'm 75 years old and I need to hear, and I'm in a retirement home. People are active, people are not retiring, People are living longer. I mean, you want to be 180. God, I hope I could get to, you know, 80. You know, I can help you with that. I think you can but point is, people are working later in life because they want to. Because I believe, and firmly believe, even before we've had in depth talks, that you retire, you're done, you retire. I mean, you just start. You got to stay active and, and the ears, eyes, brain, that's going to keep you active.

If you want to stay powerful, no matter how old you are, you want to keep your muscles strong and working. And you might think that the answer is to hit the gym harder, maybe for two hours a day, like one mistaken longevity doctor says. But there's a hack so that you don't have to add even a single rep. It's called Mitopur. Pure by timeline. As you get older, your muscles naturally do shrink. It's one of the big causes of aging and people falling and stuff like that. Unfortunately, it means you feel tired and worn out first. And studies show that this is because your mitochondria are weaker. And there's great research going back over 10 years to back up this one compound. So give Mitopure a try for two months, let it sink in and you'll feel the difference or maybe even see the difference in your skin. Go to timeline.com Dave you'll get a great discount. This is something I use every single day. Arma Colostrum is a must have. This isn't just another supplement. It is Colostrum, which is upgraded to boost your immune system and your gut health. Armor is great because it comes from first milking Colostrum, which means it has more than 200 functional nutrients that includes immunoglobulins, growth factors and peptides that specifically protect your gut lining. You can expect cellular defense and energy on a new level. Since I've added armor to my stack, I have definitely seen faster recovery, especially during travel, better immune resilience and more mental clarity. Clinical studies show that Colostrum reduces gut inflammation and supports muscle mass. And turns out I have both of them those but my gut inflammation is far better than it used to be. This is nature's original superfood. It's potent, it's clean, and I think you want to try it. Head to tryarmra.com and use code Dave. They'll give you 15% off. You know what's funny? There are studies showing that smelling things like essential oils in the middle of the night change the quality of your sleep and even increase iq. And that's.

You gotta give me some recommendations on this one.

Then don't eat Taco Bell.

But you're right. I could see that. Sure.

In Fact, there's a company out there somewhere looking at doing timed essential oil things, but probably just putting on your pillow helps. And it's because the olfactory sense of smell also goes directly into the brain. And so if you've modified the signal coming in, taste, smell, touch, sound, light, these are all variables that you get to play with. You get to decide what happens. And I think that's a profound shift in our ability to work with technology. There's also studies showing that kids who live on the lower floors of buildings have lower IQs than higher floors. And it's because of the noise pollution. The higher up you are, the less noise pollution.

Sure, I never thought about that.

So chronic noise pollution is bad for you. Being able to hear what you want to hear with less effort is good for you. So I am eager to have noise canceling on most of the time because if I never heard the hum of a city or a fan in the back again, my brain will only have more peace.

I don't want to make money off people's misery. Let's help up front. Our largest customer in the United States for Sarkey is the Veterans Administration.

Makes sense.

VA Veterans. Right. And the number one and number two, chronic hearing or excuse me, health issue with veterans is what it's hearing and tinnitus, ringing of the ears. And I've told members, the Senate, Congress, presidents of the United States, others, I hope the VA is not our largest customer in 10 years because it could be avoided. Because I want to do good and do things that help people up front be the best they could be. Because I think. No, I think you and I would both agree our world needs to listen a little more to each other. I think we just need to calm down and just listen and we can help up front and avoid the issues that veterans and other people about the age of 60 or so experience or earlier.

How long until my star keys are listening to the people talking to me and telling me who's lying?

Ooh. Yeah. Outside of a mood ring, your voice inflection like a, like a light detection won't tell you. I've never had anybody mention that.

I have a very weird brain for that.

Yeah.

There is no reason that it should not be able to. Anytime someone either uses manipulative language or has the wrong tone of voice that it's not going to just play a little.

Detect something. Yeah, yeah. Consistency or. Yeah, no, yeah, absolutely.

I'm sure DARPA is listening right now and they probably just classified what I just said. But seriously, like, help me Spot narcissists with my star key, and I will give you all my money.

Oh, gosh. I. I'm right there with you. I've never. You know, we have a roadmap. We have a lot of ideas, but I've never had anybody suggest that I'm gonna make. Got it.

There's so much richness in the signal around us that we don't think about because it's invisible. Because I'm a biohacker. That's where I play. And I want to know what they're saying in a foreign language so I can communicate better. I'm gonna be able to listen better. And maybe my nervous system isn't as good at some people as figuring out who's manipulating me. So I've interviewed Robert Cialdini, who wrote the book Influence, one of the best books ever, to see how sales and marketing and other people influence you without your knowledge. Why my Starkey couldn't listen to what they're saying. Be like, that guy's running number seven playbook on your subconscious alarm system. Or that Guy's not running playbook 7, but he's lying because his voice inflection is wrong. We might have some of that in our nervous systems if we've really suffered a lot at the hands of people lying to us. Or we could use technology to help us. So hook me up, brother.

Right. No, it is that. I lightly say that. It's that mood ring. It's expanding that. And then the other thing is you mentioned is sleep. Think about what we can do in getting those harmonic tones that putting somebody in a deep state of sleep. I know we all have the calm app and stuff.

I've got a hookup for you.

Love it.

The guy runs a company called Sleep Space, who's been on the show a couple times. He knows how to play certain tones to increase the amount of deep and REM sleep.

Exactly.

And that's what we want to do. Where should you play them? He's got the best algorithms in the industry. I'll hook you up.

Yeah, hook me up.

Dan Gartenberg.

I had a meeting on 4 o' clock yesterday because that's. I probably shouldn't be saying this, but hell with it. I'm CEO. I could do that. The joy, looking out. Well, I mean, I welcome competition. Bring it on. Because it makes you better.

Is Starkey public or private?

Private.

I can do whatever the hell you want.

That's right. I can. I can make the decisions. And the owner, founder, who is still alive, very active. He's seeing patients right now. He's our best technician. He's 82 years old and that's how we know what the patient needs. And he's had the vision. A lot of stuff he talked about in the 80s and 90s and I get the thrill of bringing it to reality. And so 4 o' clock yesterday we were just having a discussion on sleep because he has a problem sleeping. Right.

We can fix that.

And it's those deep harmonic putting somebody in a deep state of sleep. And we were just talking about what's next and how we. Because again, better hearing but those health features. And that falls under the health. Because yes, sleep is a big industry but you know better than I do because I've read what you've said, I've read it all. Sleep restoring the body, you've got to have it. What better way than right here?

Well, if you have the ability to reduce noise in the environment, that'll improve sleep. And if you have the ability to know what phase of sleep you're in and then to play the right sounds that in clinical studies backed by $3 million of NIH research that Dan has done will increase DEEP or REM sleep. This is cool stuff.

Yeah. Because we were just talking about, okay, who can we. Because you know, you hear the big name, the Bose sleep, the sleep pods, sleepbuds, all that. Who's out there on the cutting edge, who's doing what's next? Not trying to sell a commodity or something. What's next? And that's the kind of technology, the stuff I'm looking for.

Well, congrats on having the future oriented mindset. As a CEO, especially of a larger company, it's really hard to maintain that. It's, I mean I've worked with large companies. One time, Coke, Coca Cola had me come in and give a talk about innovation to their entire STEAM leadership team. Like how do you do innovation? And it's oftentimes I think large company CEOs end up becoming fearful and it's unconscious fear and they say I'm going to go do all the work but they're afraid of whatever risk. So then innovation dies.

No, you can't let that happen. And for, for me is I'm big. If I don't want to be the.

Smartest person in the room, just hire them.

And I'm talking to you about a lot of innovation. What we're doing, it takes a team and the talent. And over the last, I'd say five years we have about 40, 50% new talent at Starkey because you got to find the right engineers. You got to find the people that can think big, those moonshot ideas. And. And I don't need to know how to be cto, CIO ops. I'm the conductor of the band.

There you go. That's a good description.

I go out and find the talent. I failed. But you have to fail. You have to embrace failure if you're going to learn. You have to embrace failure. Because you just mentioned people are afraid to take risk. If you don't take a risk, you're not going to learn. You're going to be complacent. And I say it's starkey. Complacency has no employee number. I don't want complacency. It drives me nuts. I don't want to be a blockbuster.

There you go. It's funny, the reason my new coffee company is called Danger Coffee, it's because who knows what you might do.

Right.

The idea of, of course I'm going to take a calculated risk and it's going to work or it's not work, but it was worth it to try.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And I want a lot more of that kind of intelligent risk taking in the world because otherwise innovation and evolution stop. And it looks like you're evolving hearing aids in a way that's fascinating.

Well, because we're privately held. So what's best for the technology and innovation where you're a public company, you're worrying about the stockholders and stock price, all that you have. Risk avert. No, I'm going to go for it. You know what, Whatever happens, let's find out. All right.

There's one concern I feel called to ask you about.

Okay. Please.

Voltage gated calcium channels. These are little parts of your mitochondria, and when they're exposed to an electromagnetic field, they allow more calcium into the cell, which causes cell swelling, which is the most likely reason that some people are sensitive to EMFs. What evidence do we have that having prolonged Bluetooth on our ears is safe?

I could wear 76 hearing aids right now simultaneously, and that will get equivalent to your cell phone.

Got it. Okay. So it's very, very low powered. Very low powered, which is important.

And, you know, 70 to 2,000 times below the standard. And so it's compared to EarPods, where are you? AirPods and Cell. Yes.

Okay. So yours are substantially.

We measure it, and they're substantially low.

So the parts of that that I like are. It's exceptionally low power even compared to what people are doing today. And I will Admit that today I use wired headphones on my iPhone because I have no interest in having a high powered Bluetooth signal in my ears all the time from EarPods. And that's because they don't deliver any benefit over the wire. And I also use my phone and everyone listening, except for a few people who are minimizing EMFs also uses their phone because they chose danger because it was worth it. The benefits of being able to communicate with people are very, very high. And I don't have any issues with using an exceptionally low power EMF shielded hearing superpower device if it gives me way more benefits than the risk. Any technology that helps humans can be used to harm humans. And I learned this in the very early days of making web 1.0. Like we were building this platform for sharing information that became a censorship engine. Oops. Yeah, so look at how would I misuse Starkey if I was an evil dictator? What do you worry about?

I'm not worried. There's. I call it's friendly AI because we were doing AI 17, 18 and it was back, you know, I, I forget which super bowl it was. It was one Lady Gaga jumped off the top. They had all the drones. Well, CTO did that and so AI kept advancing. And it's friendly AI because I want it for the individual because hearing is personalized. It's not a commodity, it's not a consumer electronic. It's personalized. And if anything, where could you misuse it? I could tell you a quick funny story where we came out with the first AI Livio in 2018 and my son was 12 and he could, he was like, oh, I want a set. That's the first time. And then his friends like hearing aids are cool because why did he want could stream and then language translation. He wanted to try it. So I got him a pair for his birthday. Who thought you're going to give a kid a set of hearing aids for his birthday? But it's more of the weretech and technology a little bit before sight. Fast forward a couple weeks later and he's going to get upset. I might say this, but I've said it publicly many, many times is like, where's your bud? I got grounded from him. What you got grounded from? Never heard that. I said what happened? Yeah, well, I was in French class. Oh. And he was translated. He wanted to show his friends and he got busted translating French through our technology. And I'm like okay, you listen to your mind. But I was resourceful thinking ahead, you know, I mean like you're doing exactly. I didn't say this, but thinking it, because, yes, support. But he's doing exactly what, you know, we intended to do, not to cheat. But he didn't know he was cheating. He's being resourceful. Right.

You know, I pay for OpenAI subscriptions for both of my kids who were in high school. And I told them, I fully expect you to use this in your classes because you're smart and I expect you to not get caught, and I expect you to not have it do your work for you, because then you won't learn.

Right.

And what are they doing? They're saying, hey, can you teach me this thing that my teacher didn't explain in a way I could understand? And they're learning really fast.

Right. What's wrong with that?

I mean, it's actually what is supposed to happen.

Right. And it's just like our cell phones. I mean, how you knew your home number growing up. I knew my home number. I don't. I hope my kids know their, you know, know their number, because we memorize. But we use and rely on technology to make it a little bit easier. OpenAI make it a little bit better. I don't want OpenAI to write a speech for me.

I want to make a terrible speech.

Right, Right. But I know what I want to say. But if there's a couple words or things that I could. Sure, I'll look at it. Just like Google. Use it as a resource.

There you go. It's about using appropriate technology. And that's why I wanted to talk about what you're doing with Starkey. There's a couple asks I have. As a former Silicon Valley computer hacker and CTO and one time vice president of cloud computing security for a publicly traded company, you have the opportunity to build your architecture at the company to prevent surveillance.

Yes.

Or to enable it. And if you build it so that even if you get a court order to do something that your technology can't do, you can say no. So if you're doing language processing on the Starkey, that's on my ear. Does that stuff go back into your data centers?

Why'd you ask that question, if you don't mind?

I asked that question because my entire career in Silicon Valley, I've been working on things that make the world better. But there's always some asshole out there who figures out a way to use it to control other people and accumulate power or wealth.

Yeah, I can see it.

And since you run a large, privately held company, you have the ability to, with about zero Cost design your product architecture so that it preserves individual ability to control things. So, so if my star key is set up so I get to set up the rules for what it does and no one else can change them, that's cool. And if whatever is stored on your system is encrypted with my key that you can't see, you don't have to deal with the 10,000 requests from small town cops who would ask to hear whatever Dave was talking about three days ago because you can't. Or, and this is why Apple actually made it. So there's stuff like, sorry, we can't break our system because we designed it to be unbreakable so they don't have to deal with that. Right. And so it's easy to do that. And that way people who use Starkey have even more confidence that when they choose what they are going to hear, which is ultimately what you're doing, it allows me to discriminate. I don't want anyone else to get to choose what I hear. I get to choose what I hear.

And I appreciate you asking that because your experience and what you've done in your career, you've had those moments and those asks. I haven't thought like that, to be honest with you.

Well, let me help you a little bit.

No, it's, you know, I appreciate it because that's not. Because hearing health, it, I think like I said, we're in healthcare and I don't think, you know, yes, I follow the news, everything, but I don't think of our products like that because to me that's a waste of time.

Yep, it is a waste of time. And so we want to do is build it so that the kind of people who would think like that, how can I help people, but how can I take away from them? How is it impossible to misuse Starkey? And I think it's an easy thing to do and I'd be very happy to help you do that.

Okay, I will take the advice and the insight because I don't want to do. I want to use our time and energy and resources for good. And I'm not trying to sound like the, you know, do good and not evil, but it's true. Because so many people need hearing help that can make the world better. It's the stigma and it's the education because again, it's not sexy. People haven't talked about this until the last two, three years. No, they haven't. It is.

Superpowers are.

It is. And you said before we came in here you said those words. And that's, you know, when I was talking to Damon. And how I describe is, like, I want our products to give people superpowers. And you're the first one that I've heard say that. I don't think that was on any bio sheet or anything.

You guys didn't tell me to say that.

Right, exactly.

You and I are coming in here.

We'Re just AD Libby. And that's exactly what I feel we're doing is giving people their boost. A little bit of their superpower to help the world be better. Not take. Because there's enough of that.

One of the things that pisses me off in the world is I go to the gas station and I put my credit card in the machine. And some person out there thought it'd be a great idea to spam me with an ad while I have to stand there pumping the gas with some asshole telling me to buy their car insurance or whatever. The human who did that, who came up with that idea, that was an evil sort of like, arm of Satan or something, that they're violating your time.

Basically.

This was my piece and my cognitive liberty, my ability to think about what I want. And you. You stole it. And I'm paying you for gas. Like, how about you die? That's what runs through. Then I have to do a bunch of deep breathing and forgiveness exercises and return back to fear.

I never thought about like that. But I know exactly. Because I've thought about it when I'm in the moment. But you're bringing it up that you're exactly right.

Right. I think everyone.

And it's loud, right? Yeah.

They have no right to do that. So I've dreamed since the 90s, I want glasses. That every time there's an ad, they black it out and they put, like, a positive affirmation. Augmented reality. I want my star keys to recognize every audio ad on the planet and replace it with something worthy of my attention. This is my dream. Can you help me?

Yes. Just kind of like YouTube TV, you could skip and then go see your Zen. Right? Yeah. Because you notice commercials in some channels, they're louder than the actual, you know, movie or whatever you're watching because they want you to hear it. They blast that intentionally. The. The gas station saying, you get out there like, what is all this? I mean, I know exactly. I could hear it in Minnesota, where I live. And, you know, it's. It's. It's noise pollution. It's invasion.

It is absolute noise pollution. And it was without my consent. And I think that having really smart AI star keys allows me to take back control of my auditory environment.

And what you want to hear.

That's what I want.

Yeah. And that something that makes you better during that moment. Good idea. Second. Great. Yeah. I haven't thought about it. Love it.

Well, I look forward to hanging out some more and chatting about what other superpowers are brain monitoring or just improvement of the human condition as possible. You have a unique piece of real estate on the human body inside the ear where you get better vagus nerve, you get better blood flow, better balance, better brain access, and the ability to manipulate a primordial sense so that it improves human reality. And I'm really stoked. That's biohacking 101. And so I'm really, really pleased you could come in.

Well, I'm pleased for you having and I'm pleased for you opening a world that, quite frankly, I didn't know existed because I focused so much in our industry. Coming to your conference six months ago and learning and talking with you, you've opened up a world of possibilities that again, I didn't know was there. And let's continue.

Sweet. Guys, that's biohackingconference.com it'll be in, let's see, April of this year, I think April or March. Shoot, I don't know. April or march in biohackingconference.com May 27th.

Through the 30th, because I asked about it before we came. I don't know.

I don't know what month it is now. So it's May 28th and it is biohackingconference.com 4,000 people. And you can go to starkey.com starkey.com yes. Okay, so you probably have hearing problems if you listen to headphones a long time when you were young. And if you've ever been in the military, you probably have have a hearing problem. And most people never see an audiologist. It was life changing for me when I realized what was going on in my mid-20s. And it was really, really time consuming and exhausting to train my brain to be better. And I am really stoked to be able to get my star keys fitted right after this. So guys, go to Starkey.com if you're interested in getting in early on the idea of having hearing superpowers. If you were to go back about 12 years from today. The first wristband that could track your heart rate all day long. I was a CTO and co founder and the dream was someday we're going to have it on our finger. And today you do. And we're at that point with hearing where what's happening now? This is Generation one of AI. It's not a hearing aid at all. It's an enhancement device that allows you to have a deeper experience of reality. And I'm really, really excited about this. So my track record is damned good, both in tech and in biohacking, on predicting the future. I'm telling you, learn how to do this now and you'll have additional abilities that most people around you don't have. Just like when you first started putting butter in your coffee. Just like when you first started doing breath work and first started doing red light therapy and all the other stuff that you've learned in the world of biohacking. This is part of that. Starkey.com and thanks, Brandon, for coming in.

My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank you for bringing an important topic to your viewers and again, helping me see a different light.

You got it. See you next time on the Human Upgrade podcast.