Hearing is a pretty straightforward thing physiologically.

Sound waves cause vibrations within our inner ear, and if everything is working correctly,

our brains process those sensations so we recognize

them as voices or music or noises of all kinds. But listening, listening is a whole other

level of attention and comprehension, not so much as science as an art. From KERA in Dallas,

this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. The thing about listening in the most profound way possible is that it demands more of us than just processing physical sound. It involves interpreting, making meaning of what is available to our ears. And sometimes, as my guest has learned, it's about paying attention not only to what we hear, but to what we don't, to silence and to what remains unspoken.

Elizabeth Rosner is a novelist, poet, and essayist.

Her new book is called Third Year, Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening.

Elizabeth, welcome to think.

Thanks so much for having me on the show.

So you open the book with this provocative idea.

Hearing is a science, listening is an art.

How do you define the art of listening?

Well, I love that you begin with that question because it really is the underlying material

that threads everything in the book together.

And the title third year, I hope, is going to inspire people to consider the possibility

that what we process internally is an interpretation as much as it is a mechanical experience.

Our ears are anatomical things that function in a quantitative way.

We can measure how well our ears are working or not working.

But listening is so much more nuanced and subtle and really is, I think, more akin to art,

as I say, than something quantitatively measurable. This idea that we aren't just taking in the

world, humans as well as the non-human world, we aren't just taking in that information as frequency, as vibration.

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