As she approached her 90s, Aba’s world shrank. She spent her days reading and watching television, listening to the sound through a pair of oversized wireless headphones over her ears at maximum volume. She still wore his hearing aids, but as his hearing worsened, the devices became even less effective. Simple conversations were now Herculean efforts ending in shouting matches and frustration.
“DO YOU WANT TO HAVE DINNER?”
“ARE YOU SLEEPY?”
“CAN I BRING YOU A TEA?”
Phone calls were impossible: Aba had to put her phone on speakerphone, press it to her ear, and ask the person on the other end to yell as loud as they could. Eventually, “talking” to Aba on the phone meant having him on a video call and smiling and waving at him.
When I visited him in the fall of 2022, he was wearing a pair of AirPods and pointed to my ears with a puzzled look on his face.
“HEADPHONES!” I yelled. “I USE THEM TO LISTEN TO MUSIC!”
And then I wondered if I could use them for something more important.
In 2018, Apple made listen live, an iOS feature that allows iPhones and iPads to stream audio from their microphones directly to compatible headphones, works with regular AirPods. I hadn’t had any reason to use the feature myself, but now I was curious. Could Live Listen help me have a conversation with my grandfather after all these years?
I took the AirPods out of my ears and put them in his. I turned on Live Listen on my iPhone, held it up to my mouth, and spoke to it.
“Hello, can you hear me?”
Aba’s face broke into a smile and he nodded excitedly. “I can hear you! I can hear you!”
AirPods are not my favorite Apple product. I think they are overpriced and don’t sound very good for what you pay. But it’s also true that no other wireless headphones work as well with iPhones, which is why they’re the default wireless headphones for most people, including me.
They are also an environmental hazard. Vice I call AirPods, “fossil futures of capitalism”, destined for landfills once their tiny batteries, encased in hard plastic, wear out after a couple of years. And I resent the fact that Apple removed perfectly working headphone jacks and forced people to pay for something they used to get in the box for free.
But with Live Listen, AirPods helped me reconnect with my grandfather in a way no other device ever could. I am willing to look beyond my doubts for that.
