Endless Thread - Ear rumblers assemble!

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Ben can make a roaring, rumbling sound with his ears that no one else can hear. He never thought much about it — whether only he could do this, or whether everyone could do this — until he discovered a subreddit called Ear Rumblers Assemble: a whole community devoted to the mysterious and understudied ability to voluntarily tense one of the miniscule muscles in our ears.  We go into Ben's ear with Dr. Anand Devaiah, and raise questions about how everyone experiences the world differently and the enduring mysteries of the human body.   Show notes: r/earrumblersassemble (Reddit) Thanks to Reddit, a New Diagnosis Is Bubbling Up Across the Nation (KFF Health News) This episode was produced by Grace Tatter and edited by Dave Shaw. It was co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.  

WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Amory. Ben. A couple years ago, I went to the Independent Media Initiative conference in Austin, Texas. It was sort of this gathering of creators, podcasters, YouTubers, documentaries of all stripes. And I was kind of a fly on the wall listening to a bunch of YouTubers talk about how they do their work. But these YouTubers started to talk about a subreddit that I had never heard of before in my life.

And it was like a revelation. The subreddit they were talking about is called Ear Rumblers Assemble. Let's go to the subreddit for a second. Okay. So I am going to, yeah, R-slash ear rumbullers assemble. A subreddit for those who can control their tensor timpony muscle. Okay, so I previously did not know what this was. I now do, you know, some of the smallest muscles in our whole bodies,

Amory, exist in our ears, and this is one of those muscles. And when you control this tiny muscle, you hear a little bit of, a drum roll in your ear. It's hard to describe. It's in my ear. It's kind of all encompassing. It sort of sounds like a drum roll. It sounds like being underwater.

And it sounds like kind of like the rumble of a rocket lift off. This is a thing that I can do that I kind of didn't think anybody else could do. I thought I was special. Or, you know, maybe it's a thing that I assumed everyone could do, but that nobody really talked to each other about. I certainly never talked about it. So discovering this subreddit blew my mind. Wow. You know, just the titles of the posts that are most recent at the time that we're recording this.

Yes. The overwhelming sentiment is, this isn't just me. Yes. There's no way. It's people like me discovering the subreddit. I thought it was the only one. This is awesome. Yeah.

No freaking way, man. Like, this is incredible. I know you're probably. nervous now that you're in the presence of someone like me who can do this. Oh, man. What questions? No, I mean, you know, honestly, it felt like that to me. Yes, I get that.

It felt like this weird superpower that I didn't, I was like, huh, that's the thing I can do. That's weird. Well, and you know what I imagine is kind of especially exciting about this subreddit is that this is, when someone can do something that most people can't do, it's a party trick, right? But if this is a party trick that, this is in your head. I've never heard this. So I assume that other people can't hear

when someone is ear rumbling, if that's the right term. I'm doing it right now. Can you hear it? No. No, so it's like a party trick that you can never show anyone else. People just have to believe

that you can do it. Yes. And on this subreddit, other people believe because they too can do it. Yeah. Unlike my double-jointed butt, which is another different episode,

But you cannot demonstrate it at a party. That's right. That's right. Yep. You're double-jointed butt. As you probably know, Amory, Boston is home to one of the most prestigious specialty hospitals in the world, Mass Eye and Ear. Mm-hmm. We reached out to them.

We heard back. Okay. A spokesperson from Mass Eye and Ear said they have, quote, never seen this clinically. Oh, boy. Producer Grace Tatter actually reached out to several medical institutions, and I do have good news, Amory. A doctor at Boston Medical Center did agree to see me. Does this doctor believe before you even see them?

We'll get to that. I'm Ben Brack Johnson. I'm Amory Sewardson. From WBUR Boston's NPR, this is Endless Thread. In today's episode, Ear Rumblers Assemble. All right, Amory, by the time we found a professional who might cut through some of the potential skepticism

about whether or not this is indeed a thing, I was pretty excited to roll up to Boston Medical Center with producer Grace Tatter to see Dr. Anand DeBiah. We immediately hit it off. He and I, starting with checking the room for a good quiet spot to record. It's a decimal meter. Oh.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. Oh, that is really cool. Sound nerdiness is great. Onond is technically an otolaryngologist. They specialize in noses, throats, heads, and necks, and, of course, hearing and ears. Audio person after our own hearts. When did you first hear of this phenomenon that, like, I think we're, for the lay people, we're calling ear rumbling? Unofficially, I noticed it in myself when I was able to do this with my ears.

Hey, we got a rumbler. We got a Rumbler. He can do it too. My first encountering with this was as a kid. And the first time that I plugged in an electric guitar into an amplifier and I realized that my volume was way too loud. Okay. And my ears did this thing. And then I figured out that I could control that when the sound around me was really loud when I was playing in bands and things.

and I could dampen that sound. And so I thought that was something that everyone could do. And I was very wrong. Wow. This is like a form of ear protection for people who can rumble. You know, that's how Anand used it. That's not something that I did. But the important thing is like, you know, we are Legion.

He and I were the same. Anand really didn't start figuring any of this out, though, until he started seeing patience. People are coming to me saying, I have this strange sound. So Anand estimates that about 10% of people in the world can do this. The studies that have looked at this, you know, range in order between 10 to 40%. So I've picked the low end of it because it seems like it's the right place to land

for something that's very difficult to study. But I should probably adjust higher because two of us sitting here on microphones can do this. And one of our colleagues here who's not on the microphone also can do this. Oh, also an ear rumbler? Yes, it's right. She's nodding. So, Emery, of the four people in the room, sorry, Grace, the Boston Medical Center spokesperson

who helped us organize this interview, Kirsten, she wanted to send in on it because she, too, is in the ear rumbler. I love that. I love that you reach out to like a mass eye and ear, the otolaryngology. you know, establishment of prestige and get nothing. And then you reach out

to Boston Medical Center and the person that you reach is like, oh, I'm a Rumbler. Yes, let's make this happen. Yeah. Rumblers assemble. That's right. You may notice, perhaps,

and I know people too, that when you do this, you're flexing your eyes a little bit or maybe your palate a little bit. You can... You're doing it right now, you. Yeah. Yeah. Amory, have you ever seen me squint a little bit while we're talking? I'm sure you have. I can't say that like in my memory, I'm going, oh yeah, sometimes he gets a little squinty.

When you're telling me something I don't want to hear, walking you out. No, I would never, I would never rumble you into the background. Interestingly enough, Anand had made a video of the inside of his ear while it is rumbling and brought it to us. See that? It's sort of like contracting or something? Exactly. It pulls it in, relaxes it. Whoa.

Yeah, it's like a contraction in the drum. Mm-hmm. And it's that contraction that gives you the rumbling sound. How deep is this muscle? Like to film that, what did he, did he have to use a tube going down his ear, a tiny tube or something? So it is technically behind the... ear drum. So you actually can't see it in the video, but you can see how it's making the ear drum contract. Okay. I don't have Anand's video on hand, but I'm going to show you a video

like it. Okay. So take a look at this. Oh, we're going in the ear. Oh, it's waxy. Oh, gosh. Okay. It looks like a semi-translucent pale balloon that's contracting almost like a heart beating. Okay, so here's a more detailed description of what is actually happening. It's a contraction of this teeny little muscle inside the ear that connects to the first of the three earbones that conducts sound from the outside to the inside of the ear, the tensor timpony. and it connects to this bone called the malleus. The malleus is that first bone that connects to your eardrum, and it receives sound, and it starts the transmission process.

Yeah, just like I said. So when you do ear rumbling, what you're doing is you're able to contract that little muscle that tenses and relaxes. I'm playing the timpani. Yeah. I'm playing the drums. You are. You are.

You're playing your own drums. Exactly. So for most people, this muscle in the ear, the tensor timpony, Emery, contracts when they're startled. It could be that this is kind of like a built-in volume knob. You know, you dial the volume down when it contracts and back up when you relax again. Yeah, it's like a damper pedal,

if that reference makes sense to anyone. Yeah, make the piano quieter. Uh-huh. But, like, here's some complexity to that, right? Like, I don't experience that for whatever it's worth. When I, like, do that, like, I was just doing it now while I was talking. And my talking didn't get quieter for me. I can.

It's difficult. I'm doing it. I'm doing it again right now. But it's difficult to do them both at the same time. But I don't experience the world as becoming quieter when I do this. And we just, we still don't know a lot about this tiny muscle and, like, why it does what it does. It's complicated, and we haven't done like a million, you know, we haven't done a bunch of studies on this. So whatever its purpose, most people experience

this contraction involuntarily, but people like me and Anand and Kirsten from the Boston Medical Center, we can control it. And a lot of the posts on Ear Rumblers Assemble subreddit are like, you know, oh my God, this is awesome. But some of them are, by the way, more concerns. Like, is this okay? Can my ears get stuck this way? Yeah. For me, there's been that fear a little bit that it's like, because it's so hard to do, I worry sometimes that if I do it too much, something will happen, something bad will happen. Anand says it is totally cool to play those timpies. There are a small percentage of people that they'll have this rumbling for other reasons,

but that's usually coming with other symptoms, and it's not what this community is experiencing. And I can't speak for the whole community because I don't want to... Obviously. Yeah, pretend like I know every person that has posted on that subreddit, that wouldn't be fair of me.

But, yeah, the vast majority of people that can do this, it is unique and special. And again, celebrate it. That's great. All right, Amory, you know a little bit more about the mechanics here. you've seen the video, you've heard the names of some of the pieces of the body involved, tensor timpony muscle like timpony drums,

malleus or mallet or hammer-like part. Right. So after the break, we are going to take a journey to the center of my ear. And for the first time possibly in history, we are going to figure out a way to let the non-rumblers hear what the rumblers hear. It's Ben Brock Johnson, director of digital audio at WBUR. You've probably been following our consistent coverage of the Lindsay Clancy case, along with people around the country and around the world.

Well, if you want to hear even more from WBUR's own veteran reporter Deborah Becker, who has been covering the story for three years. We're putting deep dive podcast episodes and analysis about the Clancy case in a podcast feed. You can listen by searching Beyond All repair wherever you get your podcasts. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions,

the creative studio from WBUR's business partnerships team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR's. www.org slash creative studio. Every episode of Planet Money begins with a question.

Can we help people rise out of poverty by improving the neighborhood where they live? What would you build on a piece of land when all the normal rules go out the window? What do robot chefs mean for the restaurant industry? Planet Money helps you find answers by going to places, watching people, and sometimes robots, at work, and asking questions. Listen to Planet Money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Amory, somewhere between 10 and 40% of the population, we think, can ear rumble. But we still know very little about what all these people, whether it's 10% or 40% or whatever percent, what they have in common. I think it's partly because it's a very select group of folks that know that they can do this, that have even heard it.

And so you've got the percentage of people that can do it. Then you've got the percentage of people that understand that that's unique. Then there's a percentage of people that are curious about it. And I think it's that combination, sort of diminishing numbers of people and understanding why that might be impactful is the reason why. That's not to say it's not impactful. In fact, we've raised a number of questions here, right, that don't have a good answer, or at least I'm not aware of a good answer.

So, Emery, you talked about this a little bit before, you know, when Grace reached out to a bunch of specialists about this and only three got back. and all of the ones who did get back actually had disability. What does that make you think about? The people who don't experience it, they probably don't think that this is very consequential. Like, okay, you can rumble your ears, and I have a double-jointed butt, so what?

Like, they don't, they're not seeing it as a medical emergency or even a higher-stakes phenomenon. Maybe it makes sense that the people most interested digging into this can do this, but Anand thinks there's a lot we could learn from taking a closer look at your rumbling. If you take 100 people that have this ability and you can control for the different things that make people different, and you could understand if there was maybe a trend towards maybe their hearing is better, maybe it's worse. Maybe they have other qualities of their hearing that you wouldn't expect.

Anand sees a lot of musicians who really need to understand how their ears are working and how hearing works and a lot of these people can have incredible hearing. They can hear tones or assess the quality of a sound

in a way that other people can't. What if a lot of these musicians with exceptional hearing can also ear rumble? I mean, you could look at any family of musicians and be able to see these characteristics play out.

My gosh, just look at like the Marcellus family along. Just to get one of many examples, you know, of people that have an incredible level of talent. Winton's brother's name, I forget. Bramford and the result. You should see if either of them can rumble. We may have to reach out to them. I think this is a real good reason to make an introduction. I would love that. You and I can maybe work on this. Yeah, sounds good. Have any actual studies been done where they, you know, the ear rumblers have actually assembled and all take in hearing tests to see if there are,

like if there's anything else in common about the way you rumblers hear the world? I would say, like, not really that we know of. And this all reminds me of, you know, this other sort of complicated thing when you start to think about how we experience the world. You know, none of us can really know how each other feels or experiences even simple things, right? Like when you get down to it, you and I can like agree on like the color blue or what a piano sounds like maybe, but like even those kinds of ideas are complicated, which I brought up to on it. I think it's a great sidebar. And in fact, not really a sidebar at all. Let's take a great

example of some people that have autism. Yeah. They perceive the world in very different way than we do. And it's just different. You know, we have to figure out, or they have to figure out how we all communicate, how we see the world in a different way. And some of these folks have incredible talents that we can't, I'd say other people can't really fathom, right? So I think there's a lot of truth to that. And we can see examples not just in, say, autism, but in other places that we see

that we see people that are different in ways. that amaze us, and I think that that's a big part of it. Anand feels like this Ear Rumblers assembling subreddit is actually a beautiful thing that can enrich our understanding of human experience. That's where the sort of culture of this, the people that have gathered together in different spaces to talk about it, is pretty fascinating, to be honest with you. Yeah, it's literally inside your own head. Yeah.

Until you talk to other people about it. If you could get a message to the ear rumbling subreddit, what would your message be, what would you want them to know people who've been comparing notes on this kind of thing? Say that it is great that you're sharing and it's great that you're comparing and there is so much more to be learned by communicating with one another than to be isolated. So I am delighted that people are online talking about these things and about their own experience. And as long as they understand that in general, this is a very, very unique thing and very benign. That's great. There have actually been cases, Amory, where subreddits about specific conditions have led to real medical breakthroughs. Do you remember when we were talking about no burp syndrome?

Oh, yeah. There are people who can't burp. Yeah, exactly what it sounds like, the inability to burp. It's so frustrating. This is we're chuckling about, but apparently it's really painful. This thing didn't even have an official name until 2019. Now it is formally known as retrograde cryopharyngeesis dysfunction. And I say it, Jesus.

A lot of doctors didn't even know this condition existed, much less know how to treat it, until a no-burp subreddit brought thousands of people with this condition together. Gastroenterologists actually credit Reddit with raising awareness of the condition. You know, way more people are getting a procedure now that really helps with that syndrome. There's an interesting article about this from KFF Health News from a few years back that we can link to in our show notes. So you're a believer, which I appreciate. But if any part of you or any part of our listeners still doubts that I can ear rumble, Amory, you know what Dr. Anand had to do. Got to go inside your ear.

Yep. Very nice. Looks great. I can see a little movements. I can see a little movement of your eardrum. Yep. Bonified Rumbler. I'm a bona fide Rumbler.

Woo-hoo. Bonafide Rumbler, Emery. I'm going to get my patch and my bumper sticker. Yeah, you guys need all like a, well, your Rumblers assemble is pretty good. But I was thinking like, let's get ready to Rumble. One last thing that we should do, Amory, is, you know, for the remaining 90 to 60% of people who exist in the world. And it sounds like maybe you're one of them or maybe you haven't discovered yet that you can rumble. I don't know. As we've been, you know, recording this, there have been a couple moments where I've

just been like, maybe if I just, if I squint or if I just think really hard. Yeah. Use the force. I can't. I was just trying. I can't do it. All right. Well, I've got a present for you. I want you to listen to this. And, uh, and I want all the people who can't hear a rumble to listen to this so that you can get a sense of what it sounds like in these rumblers' heads. You know what this is. You know what sounds like to me it sounds like um like when you're like almost like when you're going over a slightly bumpy road in a tunnel um that's good i like that or it's like yeah it's like a low wind in your ears and you enjoy this sensation i'm sorry i didn't mean that to sound judgy like like is it is it a pleasurable thing for you because this to me is a little like

it's almost like the first time I tried to use noise canceling headphones back when those were a newer phenomenon. And it made me kind of feel a little ill. I would describe this as the opposite because unlike noise cancelling headphones are like removing a physiological ability that you have that's always on, right? Yeah, but it was the same sort of like wind in my ears, like pressure in my ears. like pressure in my ears, that listening to this just created for me. But I think the difference is that this is flexing a muscle, whereas that is like removing the ability to do something that you have, right? Which is like sense the world around you.

And this, it might remove your ability to sense the world around you a little bit because you're like creating a sound that you're going to hear other stuff less well. But I actually don't experience that. I hear stuff fine while this is going on in my head. But it's, yeah, I would say it's neutral. It's just like a thing I can do and sometimes I do it. You know, it's, it doesn't like immediately result in relief or anything like that. But it's any other kind of muscle that you can flex, like being able to like use your brain to make your body do something, I would say is pretty satisfying in general.

And so it has that level of satisfaction. Wow. Props to Paul Vicus, sound designer and production manager for creating that. Here's what's interesting, though, right? Like, we are talking in this episode about this, a little bit about this idea of a unique human experience versus a shared human experience, right? And where this complexity is, where it's like we all perceive the world in a way as individuals. and then we also try to share with each other how we perceive the world. And we cannot always be sure

that how we perceive the world is actually the same. So we discovered that somebody on our team, our other sound design powerhouse, Emily Jankowski, can also ear rumble. And she put together a different sound for us to listen to

that doesn't actually sound like my ear rumble. It sounds pretty similar to me, but I'm guessing to your very rumble, your rumbly, rumbly ear, this sounds very different. In some ways, they're different pitches, I think, which is maybe like an important piece of this. But Emily sounds a little bit more contained, whereas Paul's sounds a little bit more like fully wrapping around my head.

What instructions did you give Paul? specifically to create this sound? Oh my God, I don't remember. It's not just a, like, a timpony drum roll, which sounds. Yeah, I said, I said rocket launch, timpony drum roll, a fast drum roll so fast that, like, not that it's impossible for a person to do it, but it's like at the upper edges of their ability. Uh-huh. Whoa.

Well, congratulations on your rumbly ears. this is wild yeah I mean who knows right like does this matter I don't know but what I will say is that it matters to me

as an ear rumbler to know that other people can do it and that we do have this like shared experience actually that I didn't even know as a shared experience and it matters to me as a non-rumbler who just thinks it's cool

when we can do something with our bodies that other people can't do or the idea of people coming together to share in this phenomenon and feel less alone in their ability. It's beautiful. Endless Threat is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Grace Tatter and co-hosted by me, Amory Severson.

And me, Ben Brock Johnson. It was edited by Dave Shaw Mix and Sound Design by Paul Vicus. The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Franny Monaghan, Emily Jankowski, and our senior managing producer, Sumitajoshi. And also thanks to Philippe Fornier, an audiologist at Universite Laval, also in Ear Rumbler, by the way, for helping us understand more about this phenomenon. Endless thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and a Q-tip, which you should never use to clean your ears, even though we all use Q-tips to clean our ears.

And I'm not going to stop. If you have an untold history and unsolved mystery, or some other wow. story from the internet or the inside of your ear, you can hit us up at Endless Thread at WBUR.org. No inner ear picks, please. I don't want them.