From the brains behind brains on, this is the Moment of Um.

Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Ruby Guthrie.

Um.

Have you ever been on an airplane? I was just on one last week to visit my grandparents, and I loved it. I mean, nothing

beats looking out the window and just watching the world below get smaller and smaller. Skyscraper's

like toy buildings and cars look like ants. Or marveling at those big, enormous fluffy clouds,

and don't even get me started on those

tiny bags of pretzels but airplanes aren't all fun and tiny snacks sometimes

there's turbulence or crying babies or have you ever noticed as you're taking off

as the plane begins to climb into the sky that your ears pop? Like popping a tiny balloon

or bubble, but in your ears? Why does that happen? Avah was wondering the same thing.

Hello, my name is Avah Briel Mohammed, and my question is, why do our ears pop on airplanes?

So this is Frank Rame.

I'm an infectious diseases physician at Lina Health.

So you've got the ear canal.

You got that stuff that's on the outside, too.

As you go down the canal, you reach a membrane.

We call it the tapag membrane.

Everybody else calls it the eardrum.

And that blocks air altogether.

Behind that, you've got a little cavity and some bones that transmit the sound from the

ear drum to the hearing organ.

...