Graphs from my audiologist show hearing loss across all sound frequencies, but especially for high sounds, so I was expecting this moment. Yet my hearing loss is now worse than most of my cohort of friends in their mid-50s, a quirk of my genes. The hair cells in our ears are descendants of the wiggly cilia hairs that animate single-celled creatures swimming around in ponds and ocean water. Sudden shocks like gun blasts kill inner-ear hair cells. Instead, aging undermines hair cells.

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Persons: I’ve, I’m Organizations: National Institutes of Health