This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports and from business to history and everything in between.

And our next story comes from Bill Austin, the founder of Starkey, the largest hearing

aid manufacturer in America. And we've previously told you Bill's life story and how this

billionaire spends half of his time personally fitting hearing aids on the poor across the globe.

But today, Bill brings us a story of American innovation and the extraordinary capabilities of their

hearing aid called Livio A.I.

A.

lot of research came out that said, hey, people who have hearing loss, it so happens, are way

more likely to have cognitive decline if the hearing loss is untreated.

And then there's more and more research and they're finding out that it's

associated with Alzheimer's senility, etc.

And the people that had hearing loss, even mild hearing loss, were three times more likely to fall.

And when they get older, they'd fall, break a hip, and you're dead within a year, typically.

And so we said, wow, we can help in those areas.

And so we decided we would create a score to measure brain health. And we found

out there was a big university study that went on for years of what would help people

live longer. And they decided stop smoking, stop drinking, and that's what they thought

it was going to be. They they thought it was going to be.

They really thought that was going to be, and I would have too. I thought that's what it would be.

Stop smoking, stop drinking, exercise more, eat better, and they had the list.

And down the list comes social interaction. They found out that that was number one, that people who were engaged with their family and

communicating socially active, mentally engaged, communicating with close friends, family,

...