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Dream, design, and build with Tough Shed. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday morning.

In this month when we've been celebrating the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, many music lovers who remember that legendary concert now find themselves having to turn up the volume. Turns out their hearing is not what it used to be. Fortunately, help is on the way. David Pope will be spreading the word. Sooner or later, two-thirds of us will need hearing aids, but most of us won't get them.

On average, about 20 percent of adults who have a hearing loss actually use a hearing aid. But there's some good news. Thanks to new technology and a new law, we may no longer have to suffer in silence. Companies like Bose, Samsung, Apple could all enter the market now.

Coming up on Sunday morning, we'll show you the present and future of hearing aids, loud and clear. Think mermaids are a nautical myth? Faith Salie will be along to insist that they're real and making a splash. From swim classes to bars to parades, you could say our fascination with mermaids is a deep subject. Why do we love mermaids so much? We have this longing to go back to the sea. So just what is it about mermaids?

What makes this myth so magical? We've got the tales ahead on Sunday morning. Jim Gaffigan calls out decaf coffee drinkers and more. All coming up when our Sunday morning podcast continues. When members of a certain generation are watching TV, they've been known to ask the younger people in the room to turn up the volume.

A request that some state-of-the-art hearing aids could make obsolete. Our cover story is reported by David Pogue. Meet Dick Pogue, Cleveland lawyer. He's 91 years old, he goes to the office six days a week, and he's my dad. Oh, you dog. My dad doesn't make many concessions to aging. About the only one I've noticed is that he wears hearing aids.

There it is. Under what circumstances do you wear them? Movies? Wear them at movies, yes. Watching TV? I do wear them watching television.

Talking to mom? When I'm listening to her. Most people with hearing loss get it by getting older. Two out of three people over 70 have trouble hearing. But what's really surprising is how many of them don't get hearing aids. On average about 20% of adults who have a hearing loss actually use a hearing aid.

I mean 20%. So is it true that too much rock music can lead to early hearing loss? Yeah, so I think loud noise exposure is by far one of the biggest risk factor hearing loss as we age.

Frank Lin is an ear surgeon and professor at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. His research shows that hearing loss is associated with higher risks of hospitalization, depression, and especially dementia. So why don't more people seek treatment?

First, the price. The average cost to get a pair of hearing aids in the United States is about $4,700, which is remarkable, right? Because that basically means then for the average American that this could be their third largest material purchased in life after housing a car.

So it's incredibly expensive. How much of hearing aids does insurance cover? So the vast majority of insurance companies don't cover hearing aids.

So Medicare right now is obviously a major insurer for all older adults. It does not cover hearing aids or any type of hearing treatment services around hearing aids. But cost is only one obstacle. Some people are also embarrassed to wear hearing aids. Some people don't realize how much smaller hearing aids have become over the decades.

And some people are put off by the hassle of getting them. In the U.S., you currently can't get hearing aids without testing and consultation with a doctor or audiologist. Today, most of the world's hearing aids are made by six companies. Only one is headquartered in the U.S., and that's Starkey, near Minneapolis. I've been in everybody's ears. Starkey's founder and CEO is Bill Austin.

Ford, Reagan, Clinton. He's had some experience. You didn't treat the pope, did you?

Actually, we did. Oh my gosh. I don't actually need hearing aids, yet.

So it's a light and a camera? But Starkey's team treated me to a pope-worthy fitting experience. That's amazing. First, a cleaning. You do have narrow hair canals. I know. I wanted to give you a challenge. All right, there you go. I wanted to give you a challenge. All right, there's your eardrum. Wow.

That's a sight a lot of TV correspondents never show their viewers right there. I'm ready. Into the chamber. Then, the hearing test. You do have small ear canals.

I'm getting that. Say the word skin. Skin. Toe. Toe. Owl. Owl.

Shakespeare at eight. You have a narrow opening here. That seems to be the takeaway today. Then, a molding session for hearing aids that will exactly fit into my ears. So this is called taking an impression? Yes.

This blue liquid plastic takes about five minutes to solidify. Oh, I can hear again. And voila, you make a good impression.

Technicians have to fit all the electronics into a tiny shell that will disappear completely inside your ear. That's it. That's all you need. All right. I'm going to slip this in your right ear. Okay.

Can you see it? You can't see any hearing aids there. Or you can get the kind that slips over your ear. There you go.

Oh, that's nice. They have room for a lot more features. You can listen to music from your phone, or make phone calls. They even have different presets for different sonic environments. I'll have one that would be more for crowd or when you're in a noisy area.

Think that sounds fancy? You ain't heard nothing yet. We'll transform the hearing aid with sensors and artificial intelligence to become a true gateway to your health. Starkey's chief technology officer, Achin Bhaumik, met me inside one of the company's echo-proof testing chambers. He's adding more sensors to their hearing aids. This new model, for example, can count up your steps like a Fitbit. It can even notify loved ones if you fall.

But probably the number one technology most hearing loss sufferers would like to see now is just the ability to understand someone talking across the table from you in a restaurant. Why can't we lick that? I think we are close to cracking the problem. We will be able to do that by detecting where are you looking. Are you looking at me?

Are you looking at the person over there? But even basic hearing aids cost an ear and a leg. And this is why.

That looks good. Two-thirds of the price is all those doctor services, testing, customization, and follow-up, all bundled in that price. But Frank Lin became convinced that people with mild hearing loss don't need all that. They might be content with something more generic that costs a tenth as much. The importance of the present bill instructing the FDA to carry out...

So his team worked with Congress to successfully pass a new bill. For the first time, you'll be able to buy hearing aids over the counter. Which effectively means by August of 2020 that we will have the ability for companies to basically sell hearing aids directly to consumers. Companies like Bose, Samsung, Apple, could all enter the market now. One, it helps the access, obviously, because you don't need a prescription. Two, the costs would come way down, right? The six big companies who make hearing aids, you're taking direct aim at their spreadsheet.

Yes and no. It's an industry and a profession and a practice that's built up over the last several decades. And now we're disrupting the model. We think hearing is so important for public health, then that's how we need to advance the field. The new law will create a new class of hearing aids, much less customized, but also much less expensive. They may resemble these devices. So these are PSAPs, Personal Sound Amplification product.

Nicholas Reed is an audiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. These PSAPs are on the market today, but legally they can't be called or marketed as hearing aids. But when this new law kicks in, some of these things on the table here might now be allowed to be called hearing aids. I think several of these items on the table would meet the standards that will be set up. Some of these over-the-counter devices have some pretty cool features too.

I tried them out. This is the super ear. Oh, this is the microphone here? That's the mic, yeah. So I could kind of sit on the microphone here.

I could sit like this, and it's bulky, but you get a nice signal. And it feels kind of cheap. It can't be that expensive.

I think these retail at $79, $99, yeah, $80. This is Bose. I think it's a $500 device.

Let's turn on the device. You're probably- So wait a minute, are these noise canceling? These have noise cancellation.

Because all of a sudden, the general hiss of the room went away. You yourself did a study, and you compared these two, three, four, five hundred dollar things with these multi-thousand dollar hearing aids, and what were the results? In a controlled environment, they improved speech understanding about as well as a hearing aid. As you could probably guess, the big hearing aid companies say they're not as good as their products. In a restaurant or backgrounds of noise, they just don't perform.

Chris McCormick is the chief marketing officer at Starkey. So what's going to happen when people are allowed to buy hearing aids without the audiologist's services? The concern is people trying to self-diagnose, people trying to self-program. The products will have to be standardized. And the problem with that is everybody's hearing is different. So everyone notice the difference when you try them on? Bottom line, the world of hearing aids is about to improve dramatically.

They recharge in their case. Both at the expensive end and, thanks to that new law, over the counter. We're going to switch to your left here, OK? In the meantime, if you're among the 80 percent who could use hearing aids but haven't looked into it. Say the word room. Room.

Well, I'll give the last word to my dad. Are you able for a minute to imagine your life without the hearing aids? I wouldn't be able to work. I mean, I couldn't go to meetings.

I couldn't hear people. It would just cause me to isolate myself and be at home and very seldom go out. It would be a dramatically different life.

I would not like it. And now a page from our Sunday morning almanac. August 11th, 1903.

116 years ago today. A day of instant gratification for coffee drinkers everywhere. For that was the day chemist Satori Kato of Chicago received a patent for his method of making instant coffee.

A method that avoided the spoilage that had thwarted earlier attempts. Alas, his brand of instant coffee never achieved commercial success. But the many other brands of instant that followed did create a marketing buzz. Not to mention a rich brew of TV commercials.

As in this 1981 ad starring actress Lauren Bacall. Delicious. In fact, instant is so deeply steeped in our popular consciousness that its absence was grounds for a coffee colloquy of sorts on the Seinfeld TV show. You don't have any instant coffee? Well, I don't normally. Who doesn't have instant coffee?

I don't. You buy a jar of Folgers crystals, you put it in a cupboard, you forget about it. And later on when you need it, it's there. It lasts forever.

It's freeze dried. Though instant will never win over true coffee snobs with their French presses, it's likely to always be valued by the impatient among us pressed for time. As the poet T.S. Eliot wrote in the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. Suddenly, as Faith Salie is about to tell us, mermaids are making a splash and not just in the movies. This summer, thousands of mermaids ditched the sea for the boardwalk for the 37th Annual Mermaid Parade at Coney Island. And in Florida, one with your tail off to the side. Little mermaids worked on their tail technique.

Beautiful. Today you have many people who believe in mermaids. Perhaps they just believe in their heart. It's like, oh, if mermaids are real, then anything is possible. You might say that author Varla Ventura has a deep-seated interest in these magical creatures, which she says date to ancient mythology. There are examples of mermaids going back thousands of years, mermaid stories, mermaid tales. Do we know when and where the first mermaid sighting took place?

We have a good idea. There was a goddess named Atargadus, a Syrian goddess, who is said to have killed, accidentally, the man that she loved, and so punished herself by throwing herself into a lake and basically transformed herself to be half fish. Centuries later, the story of the little mermaid got its legs in Denmark. Written by Hans Christian Anderson, it tells of a young mermaid in love who trades her beautiful voice for legs.

A story equally well known for its Disney adaptation. What all of the mer creature have in common are beautiful voices. They have an enchantment to their voice that sucks people in.

But in many folk tales, those voices are not used for good. Like the mermaids pirates encounter in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. Once upon a time, they were quite feared. Even real-life pirates were known to fear mythical mermaids. Blackbeard was said to be so afraid of mermaids that he would order his crew to sail around mermaid-infested waters. Why do you think pirates so often saw mermaids? Well, I think anytime you have the combination of many months at sea with a bunch of stinky crew, total lack of nutrition, so you got scurvy, you're drinking rum because it's the only thing safe to drink, you can't drink the water. A lot of sun.

Probably lots of sun and you haven't seen a woman for a while. And it's believed many reported mermaid sightings, including those said to be seen by Christopher Columbus, were actually manatees. These were creatures that fit the stories that they had heard about mermaids. I mean, and manatees do have perfect mermaid tales. And so they mermaid offshore. But if seeing is believing, visit Weeki Wachee Springs State Park in Florida.

And all your doubts will float away. It's definitely a unique conversation starter to say, I'm a mermaid and I swim every day as a mermaid. Amanda Luder is a Weeki Wachee mermaid, where underwater shows have been delighting tourists since 1947. For dreams at Weeki Wachee come true. Anybody who's been a mermaid will say this is the most unique experience of their life.

It's given them some of the best memories, but it's also hard work. Thanks to air hoses, these nymphs can stay submerged for a 30-minute performance. When you were a kid, did you want to be a mermaid? Yes, what kid doesn't want to be a mermaid? And you're going to spin while you do. Kids like Lydia Foss and Elena and Natalie Williams have heard the call.

Remember, I'm going to feed you. They're here for Mermaid Camp. Do you believe in mermaids? Yes. Yeah. Yes, definitely. Without a doubt. Yep.

Mermaids are real. Yes. How do you know? There's proof right here.

Exactly. Right here. So ever the intrepid reporter, I decided to get to the bottom of this. Here we go. Mythical, magical, mermaids.

Maybe their time has come. We believe what we want to believe, and we believe what we need to believe. And quite frankly, I think we all need to believe in mermaids.

It just might save us. At one Ohio hospital, the doctor is most definitely in. In the job he's always dreamed of having.

Steve Hartman has his story. I really want to be a doctor when I grow up. Whenever his two little girls play doctor and dream of becoming one someday. Let me take your heartbeat, doctor.

48-year-old master mechanic Carl Allenby is flooded with the feeling of deja vu. You wanted to be a doctor? Oh yeah. But then you're like, I want to be a doctor.

Oh yeah, but that wasn't realistic. Not where I came from though. I grew up in East Cleveland, which is a very impoverished city.

We were on welfare, and I remember the powdered milk, government powdered milk and block cheese. And because they were so poor, young Carl quickly set aside his professional aspirations and focused instead on becoming the best auto mechanic he could be. So this was the parts store where I got all my customers from. So you would work on cars in the parking lot of the parts store?

Oh yeah, sometimes till one, two o'clock in the morning. Eventually, he got his own shop. And for 15 years, he did okay.

Until one day, he decided to ratchet things up. In 2006, Carl enrolled here at Ursuline College. His intention was to get a business degree to help him manage his repair shop. But there was one hurdle, a biology class.

He couldn't understand why he had to take it, and he put it off as long as possible. I'm a business major. What do I even care about biology? But I went to class and in the first hour of being there, I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. All those ideas of wanting to be a doctor just came rushing back. And to make a long story short, the car doctor, Dr. Carl Allenby, is now a doctor doctor. Last spring, Carl graduated from Northeast Ohio Medical University, and today he's an emergency medicine resident at Cleveland Clinic Akron General. Hey, Miss Fiore. By all accounts, Carl is already an exemplary doctor, partly because, according to his supervisors, he worked so long in a garage. That cannot translate. You'd be shocked, actually.

I think it's some of the customer service. This is Dr. Rebecca Merrill. But could you imagine right now going and learning auto mechanics? No. But Carl said he'll do our oil changes, so. Fortunately, Carl now has more important repairs on his mind. But this old auto mechanic also knows that whether you're working under a hood or staring down a hatch, Can I have you open up your mouth otherwise?

your success hinges on your drive. I would hear people say, well, Carl, it's going to take nine years to become a doctor. Yeah. And I'd say, well, nine years are going to pass anyway.

So I'd rather be someplace I want to be than someplace that I could have been. And there's the prescription. Yeah.

For the I can't do it blues. Earlier, we told you about instant coffee. Now the subject is real coffee.

Or is it? Jim Gaffigan, whose Amazon Prime special Quality Times starts streaming next weekend, shares some thoughts. America.

I love it. But we live in such a divided country. Red states, blue states, liberal, conservative. Each side thinks the other is wrong. I believe it's our civic responsibility to focus on the real problem. People, those fellow citizens who are frankly destroying the true fabric of this great nation.

I think everyone knows who I'm talking about. The decaf drinkers. We've put off dealing with these coffee frauds for too long, people. Now I understand there may be some decaf drinkers living amongst us.

Maybe a decaf-er is watching with you right now and drinking their dirt liquid. My objective is not to make them feel bad. So please do me a favor. Turn down their hearing aid. I'll wait.

Thanks. These decaf weirdos have lost sight of the true purpose of coffee. Coffee should have caffeine in it. Everyone knows that.

It's in the Bible, for God's sakes. Heck, even the way coffee is spelled, it looks like the person who wrote it had too much coffee. Coffee is not just some brown beverage we foolishly stand in line and paid too much for. Coffee fuels the engine of America and magically makes other humans palatable. If there was no real coffee, America as a country would literally stop.

And so would many of our digestive systems. I resent how decaf is presented as some logical alternative to coffee. A server might ask, would you like regular or decaf?

Do I look pregnant? Don't answer that. In hotel rooms, there's always one packet of regular coffee and two packets of decaf. As if every hotel guest has kidnapped two grandmas. There are so many reasons to confront these coffee traders. My biggest issue is the inconvenience decaf causes. As someone who briefly worked in the service industry, I know when someone selfishly orders decaf in a restaurant, a whole other pot of fake coffee has to be made. Or a server has to lie and say regular coffee is decaf.

That's what I would do. It's unfair to everyone involved. Decaf is un-American. Maybe I'm overreacting.

I don't know. I had a lot of coffee this morning. I could go for another cup. Coffee!

I'm Jane Pauley. Thank you for listening. And please join us again next Sunday morning. There are bad people in the world. The best way to protect the good people is to convict the bad. So here's to us. The Good Fight, the final season. Now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.