“You know you were told to be nice and not to heckle?” Sophie Meekings asks her audience in the dingy cellar of the North London pub. “Well, you can heckle me if you want – it’s just there’s not much point, because I won’t be able to hear you.”

She’s only partly joking. Meekings is profoundly deaf and would struggle to make out the conversations around her. The subject of her talk is, in fact, hearing – and the strange tricks our ears can play on the mind.

To explore the theme, she plays some auditory illusions, which are among the strangest sounds I have ever heard. What strikes me is just how easily the eerie and futuristic sounds divide the audience. Like the viral furore #TheDress, which prompted radically different interpretations of colour, the audio clips she played – and others like them – challenge our assumptions about how we each perceive the world.

We’re often told that seeing isn’t believing, but I had never realised just how fragile and deceptive our hearing can be, too. Once I have left the pub’s cellar and made my way to the hustle and bustle of King’s Cross Station, I begin to wonder just how much of what I hear is created by my brain. My soundscape will never be quite the same way again.