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Listening vs. Hearing

Those are words I often usually use interchangably. I've never really given much though to the actual meaning behind them. But then I read this, and I go- why haven't I thought of this before? What the difference between something like "she heard them" and "she listened to them"? Well now that I think of it, there are many things.

Listening requires the strategic part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) which helps us pick out and understand the speech that we hear. When I read that, a part of me went- so what?

Well listening is different from hearing because listening means finding meaning and making sense of the noises and sounds around us. We're always hearing things around us but the only time we pay attention is when we actually listen to things.

So I decided to listen to the sounds around me right now- car driving outside, plane somehwere in the air and a steady dripping somehwere in the house. What did that brief listeneing spell tell me? Well even though these noises surrounded me for a while and I heard them in the background, I never really listened.

It also told me that I'd left a tap on somewhere in the house.

So when we listen to a podcast- do we really listen to it? Or do we just hear it? For me personally, I only tend to listen when something really grabs my attention. A sound effect that stands out, a new voice or something that made my random thoughts pause- things that make me want to listen.