Curiosity Killed the Adage

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Speaker 19 Hey, this is Radiolab.

Speaker 24 I'm Latif Nasser. All right.

Speaker 19 And today, I'm just going to kick things off with our editor.

Speaker 35 Got levels on my side.

Speaker 34 Alex Neeson. Cool.

Speaker 21 Okay. So once upon a time, it was summer.

Speaker 32 Okay.

Speaker 32 Okay.

Speaker 24 Hard to remember now.

Speaker 21 Hard to remember now.

Speaker 21 And okay, so over the summer, as you know, I'm a runner.

Speaker 24 Legit runner.

Speaker 3 A legit runner.

Speaker 24 Like you run marathons.

Speaker 21 So over this year, I decided to take the year off from marathons.

Speaker 21 And instead, I decided to tackle the one mile. Okay.
And I was going to try and beat my personal record. And so

Speaker 21 as part of doing that,

Speaker 21 last summer, every Tuesday like clockwork,

Speaker 21 I would drag myself out of my apartment and

Speaker 21 head out into the city and

Speaker 21 watch set.

Speaker 21 Run from my house, which is about a mile and change away from Riverbank State Park in Harlem.

Speaker 35 Okay, got it back

Speaker 21 over to this track.

Speaker 32 Hey, hello, what up?

Speaker 21 To meet up with some people from my running crew.

Speaker 31 I'm okay, how are you?

Speaker 21 And it depends on the night, but it's basically

Speaker 21 10 or 15 people who all get together to do these track workouts together.

Speaker 24 And as somebody who is definitely not a runner, you prefer this?

Speaker 19 You like running with people more than running alone?

Speaker 21 Yeah, I mean, I do this because I can't be trusted to do it by myself. Running is really hard, and having other people there with me to do it just makes me feel, it makes me feel like I'm a team.

Speaker 21 It reminds me of being on a track team in high school, where you show up for yourself and for the rest of the team, and you all do the hard thing together. And it's faster, it feels better.

Speaker 21 It's just the way that you get it done.

Speaker 21 So

Speaker 21 on this particular day, it was super hot. It's like the dead of summer.
And

Speaker 32 Ref,

Speaker 21 our coach tells us

Speaker 21 we're doing 400s the length of a track is 400 meters So that just means we're doing one long sprint around the entire length of the track and we're gonna do a lot of them

Speaker 21 and Everybody sort of makes this collective sigh and it's like okay

Speaker 34 Okay

Speaker 21 So we get on the track we warm up we stretch, we do drills, kind of get loose, and then we toe the line and

Speaker 21 we start

Speaker 21 immediately out the gate. I'm pumping my legs, swinging my arms, just sprinting for the entire length of this track.

Speaker 21 I cross the line, I take a little break, a sip of water,

Speaker 21 And then

Speaker 21 I'm sprinting again.

Speaker 21 And I do another lap.

Speaker 31 Rest, lap, rest, lap, rest.

Speaker 21 How many more do you have? Six. And that day, I was struggling to breathe.

Speaker 32 Come on, come on, come on.

Speaker 21 My heart was beating super fast. It felt like it was coming out of my chest.
And everybody else around me seemed to be settling into the workout.

Speaker 21 I don't know, it just felt like I just like couldn't get it together. And all of these very, all these like insecurities from like childhood came rushing back.

Speaker 21 Like I was suddenly very aware that I looked like I was struggling and there was all these other people around me who were just watching me struggle. And so I just wanted to disappear.

Speaker 21 And I wanted all the other people on the track to disappear.

Speaker 21 And I just felt like I was mentally spiraling because

Speaker 21 the whole point of this, of showing up at these group workouts, the whole reason why I started running with a crew in the first place was to avoid exactly this moment.

Speaker 21 And there's this adage, misery loves company, that has been the sort of philosophy of my athletic career, if you will.

Speaker 21 The idea that if you are suffering through something, and you're in the company of other people suffering the same misery, that it makes all of us a little more capable, that a burden gets lifted, and that you just ultimately, you can get through it.

Speaker 21 And here I was at this track workout that was especially miserable that day, but the burden wasn't being lifted. It felt heavier, actually.

Speaker 21 And after this workout, I remember walking home and just obsessing about this adage.

Speaker 21 And by the time I get back to my apartment and for days afterwards, I had just really started to wonder, like, have I had this wrong the whole time? Maybe this thing just isn't true.

Speaker 21 Like, is it true or not? And I started to think about, like, okay, well, I have to figure this out. I have to figure out,

Speaker 21 factually speaking, does misery love company? Like, who can I call? What can I read?

Speaker 21 What can I do to get like real nitty-gritty, real fussy, so that on the other end, I can sort of like stand up and declare it is true that misery loves company or it's just not.

Speaker 3 You needed an answer.

Speaker 34 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 21 A definitive answer.

Speaker 22 So,

Speaker 19 this quest that Alex suddenly wanted to embark on,

Speaker 34 we started talking about it at the show.

Speaker 32 About how there are these things that you hear in your life.

Speaker 14 Well, you know what they say is to squeaky weird against the grease.

Speaker 26 You hear them in movies, on TV.

Speaker 32 Idle hands of the devil's workshop.

Speaker 34 Maybe from a friend, a parent. Well, the early bird catches the worm.

Speaker 32 Actions speak louder than words.

Speaker 19 These little sayings, these adages

Speaker 26 that are supposed to be these little bits of wisdom, these true facts about how the world works.

Speaker 34 And we just started to wonder, like, are they true?

Speaker 16 And could we take Alex's mission and start looking at other adages and just getting really in the weeds and being like, okay, is there a way to objectively figure out whether or not an adage is true or it isn't?

Speaker 19 Could we put them to the test in some sort of scientific, rigorous, kind of literal, almost to the degree of being absurd way to try to get an answer?

Speaker 19 So we pick some adages

Speaker 2 and the staff basically fact-check them.

Speaker 38 Starting with

Speaker 39 number one:

Speaker 40 misery loves company.

Speaker 31 Okay, cool.

Speaker 21 So, so, so, so, so, so. First thing I did.

Speaker 34 Right, right, yeah. Oh, here we go.

Speaker 21 Was rope in producer Simon Adler. And then I went on Google and typed in Misery Loves Company study.
And to my surprise and delight,

Speaker 21 something popped up.

Speaker 41 We are rolling. We are rip roaring and ready to rock.

Speaker 21 This paper published in 2021, Does Misery Love Company, an experimental investigation?

Speaker 16 And Kate, could we just have you introduce yourself? Sure.

Speaker 42 Yeah, my name is Kate Hassett. I'm an environmental economist and I'm interested in the factors that make us do what we do, that make us tick, so to speak.

Speaker 21 And by sheer coincidence.

Speaker 42 I know where you're coming from.

Speaker 21 She is also a runner.

Speaker 42 When it comes to the particular kind of misery that long-distance running can be sometimes.

Speaker 21 But yeah, we are going to move away from running. Okay.

Speaker 21 Because, you know, like an adage should be sort of universal. Like, it should be true in multiple situations.
Yeah. Several years ago, Kate set up a series of experiments.

Speaker 42 In the first experiment, we wanted to know: do people actually believe this?

Speaker 21 Do people actually believe, like me, this adage to be true? That being miserable in company makes the misery a little less miserable.

Speaker 42 So we asked 100 people to complete a survey that said, imagine, oh, glory be someone

Speaker 42 who lives in an apartment building.

Speaker 11 But what I love most of all is

Speaker 3 my view of the park.

Speaker 42 They have this view of a green park.

Speaker 21 Yes, here from my window I can see all of the park in its glory.

Speaker 3 I can see the raccoons playing. The pigeons flying overhead, perched in the trees.

Speaker 21 But the survey says this person and actually pretty much everybody in the building is about to lose their view of the park.

Speaker 42 Because of a construction project.

Speaker 21 Like a big highway going in across the street.

Speaker 7 That sucks.

Speaker 21 So the survey asks, imagine you're like the landlord and you have to go tell one of these tenants that they're going to lose their view.

Speaker 42 If you want to minimize this person's disappointment, they're suffering. How would you inform them?

Speaker 20 Would you, A,

Speaker 21 who's there? Go knock on their door.

Speaker 32 Oh, it's Tony.

Speaker 21 What can I do you for, Tony?

Speaker 14 Hey, Gregory, I'm sorry to give you the bad news.

Speaker 42 And just simply inform them.

Speaker 14 They're going to be doing a construction project across the street. They're going to put up a highway.
That means it's going to block your view of the park.

Speaker 42 That they'll lose their view of the park.

Speaker 41 My view of the park.

Speaker 26 Tony, I live for my view of the park.

Speaker 21 So that's option A. Option B.

Speaker 17 Gregory, it's Tony.

Speaker 21 Everything's the same.

Speaker 30 Tony.

Speaker 21 You tell them, look.

Speaker 16 Big highway outside.

Speaker 21 Construction is going to block the park view, but this time you tell them...

Speaker 14 It's going to block everybody's view of the park, the whole building.

Speaker 21 you're not the only one who's going to be affected by this no one's going to be able to see the park anymore your neighbors are going to be losing this too and so if you want to make this person feel better which one do you do option a or option b b it's got to be b yeah exactly that's what i said and when kate gave out the survey almost 70 of people they said they choose b so huh but there were still 30 who didn't but yeah sociopaths or something i know right like i honestly don't know why you wouldn't go with b i would I would definitely be one of the 70%.

Speaker 21 But Kate says, you know, 70%, it's a big number.

Speaker 42 You know, we took this to mean that people do, by and large, believe that misery actually does love company. It can, you know, alleviate suffering.

Speaker 21 However, just because you believe something is true for everyone else doesn't mean it's true for you. So they did this second experiment.

Speaker 42 We tried to make it as similar as possible to experiment one.

Speaker 21 Everything was basically the same. There's a person in an apartment with the view, but this time the survey said, Put yourself in the shoes of the person who's going to lose the view.

Speaker 21 And then one group of those people was told you're going to lose the view of the park, while a second group was told for your information: 85% of the other people in your building will also lose their view of the park.

Speaker 42 And then we asked them, both groups alone or in company, please rate how disappointed you expect that you would be in this situation.

Speaker 28 So

Speaker 21 when they looked at the results, they actually found that both groups were miserable. Everybody was just miserable regardless of whether or not their neighbors were going to be miserable or not.

Speaker 24 I would not have thought that.

Speaker 42 Yeah, we didn't find evidence that misery actually does love company.

Speaker 21 What they found is that people believe misery loves company, but it just didn't seem like true that misery loved company in practice.

Speaker 21 However, they did find strong evidence for something that they weren't actually looking for and that I think was like way more interesting, which is that happiness hates company.

Speaker 24 What does that even mean?

Speaker 21 Okay, so one of the things that they found is that if you're one of the lucky ones, if you have a great view of the park from your window, according to the survey results, you don't want anyone else to have it.

Speaker 24 Wow, you want to be the lucky golden ticket winner, and it makes it better. It makes the golden ticket better if nobody else has one.

Speaker 26 Yes, that's sick. We're sick, right?

Speaker 26 We're sick. Like, what does that say about us? I don't like that.

Speaker 16 I really don't like that.

Speaker 42 I hear you.

Speaker 42 It's kind of a tough finding, but we're social beings.

Speaker 42 I think it's just the way we're wired that, you know, what's going on with other people, you know,

Speaker 42 it's not very relevant, you know?

Speaker 21 I realize what Kate is getting at is the fact that we're always keeping track of what we have, of what everybody else has. And that's asking questions about like equity and envy and fairness.

Speaker 21 But I think I was actually asking something even simpler than that, which is just like, when you're running with a group of people and everybody is suffering together, does that that we're together and suffering do something for us?

Speaker 35 Is it helpful?

Speaker 21 Svenya, hello. Hi.
It's so nice to talk to you. Yes, it is.
And I felt like I really started to get an answer to that when I found Svenya.

Speaker 20 Svenya Wolf.

Speaker 20 I'm an assistant professor of sports psychology at Florida State University in Tallahassee, and I research anything that has to do with groups and emotions in sport and in other performance domains.

Speaker 20 Amazing.

Speaker 24 Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful.

Speaker 21 I guess like I'm curious about this in your professional opinion and also in like your opinion as a runner. Like, does misery love company?

Speaker 20 Yeah. There is a good body and research out there and it's really,

Speaker 20 it depends. That is the answer.
Not every misery loves every company. That's kind of what it comes down to.
Misery brought on by fear, she says, where I'm fearful because the situation is dangerous.

Speaker 21 In that case, you probably do want to be around other people.

Speaker 20 Maybe make it less dangerous. So I want company.

Speaker 21 If I am am sad, she says with sadness,

Speaker 21 you're often feeling a sense of loss. So you want company.

Speaker 20 To reconnect with others, to kind of like get security again.

Speaker 21 But the one emotion she said that kind of struck me was shame.

Speaker 20 Shame. That is something where I don't want other people to witness that.
So that's something where I don't want company.

Speaker 21 And I think for me,

Speaker 21 That day on the track,

Speaker 21 I think a part of me was feeling that. Like I I felt sort of out of shape, like I wasn't doing well.
I felt slow, like I was dragging.

Speaker 21 You're really getting into that rabbit hole of like, I'm not good enough. I'm pathetic.

Speaker 20 And then the last thing we want is other people witnessing this.

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 20 even in that situation where we want to be alone, where we want to withdraw from others, sharing the emotion ultimately makes us feel better.

Speaker 21 Svenia says this has been studied with groups of people on stationary bikes, with teams that have just lost big games.

Speaker 21 And no matter the setting, when people feel miserable together, it helps them perform better, like they pedal faster on the bikes. And it also helps them feel better.

Speaker 20 That's at least what the research suggests. So to me, the way this resonates the most is if I'm in a miserable state, I'm yearning for company.

Speaker 20 I am like, I want, like, that's what I want. I want other people to comfort me.
I want people to reach out to me.

Speaker 20 And sometimes I don't have the energy to reach out, but I want that sense of like recognition and validation and like that somebody cares for me.

Speaker 20 So maybe I might rephrase it to

Speaker 20 misery can create company.

Speaker 20 How you feel?

Speaker 20 I feel okay.

Speaker 22 We can slow down because I'm definitely going too fast. Yeah, yeah, I'm definitely down to slow down.
I feel like I'm trying to make sure I'm not in anyone's way.

Speaker 32 No, you're fine.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I feel okay.

Speaker 32 I was come to the body

Speaker 46 when I woke up this morning. Look at you already.

Speaker 46 It's great.

Speaker 19 We have to take a break, but that gives you plenty of time to watch a pot boil, hold some horses, wait for a shoe to drop.

Speaker 31 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 39 Number two.

Speaker 39 An idle mind

Speaker 57 is the devil's workshop.

Speaker 6 I always heard it as the idle hands or the devil's workshop.

Speaker 58 Yeah, idle hands, idle minds. Like people say it all sorts of ways.
We're just going to go with idle minds.

Speaker 58 And I picked this one because...

Speaker 24 Wait, wait, wait. Just tell everyone who you are first.

Speaker 58 Oh, yes. Okay.
I'm Sindhu Jana Zambudam. I'm a producer here.

Speaker 58 And I picked this one because it's always felt pretty true to me.

Speaker 32 Huh. How, like, how so?

Speaker 58 Well, I mean, of course, the mind is never like idle, idle, but when I think of a mind that's like not focused on anything, like it's just sort of, you know, wandering around, that's what I'm thinking of as an idle mind.

Speaker 58 And I like try to avoid that mind as much as possible. Huh.
Part of it is that I just feel guilty for not being productive.

Speaker 37 Same.

Speaker 58 But also, when I just sort of like sit around idle, oh, it'd feel so good if I was in a bath right now. I wonder what Marcello's up to.
All these thoughts start flooding in.

Speaker 60 How do ants like always seem to know exactly where they're going?

Speaker 58 Some of them are fun or helpful.

Speaker 61 Did I leave the stove on?

Speaker 58 But like, that joke I made last night was so stupid. Others, I don't think anyone even smiles.

Speaker 61 You have to say something that is better, but that's why it's not texting.

Speaker 30 Always do this.

Speaker 26 Can really suck.

Speaker 58 Like, almost like the devil's in there trying to make me miserable.

Speaker 62 Yes, so a lot of religious writing tends to regard the wandering mind as something that's not particularly desirable.

Speaker 58 This is psychology professor Kalina Kristov-Hajiliva.

Speaker 62 I study spontaneous thought and in general, how people think.

Speaker 58 And when I called them to ask about this adage, they said it's deeply rooted in our culture.

Speaker 62 This industrial kind of capitalist work-based environment. There's this sense that there is a right way and there is a wrong way.
And when you wander, you depart from the right way.

Speaker 62 And that's sometimes how we think about our own minds as time on task.

Speaker 58 Like if I'm focused on something, that's good.

Speaker 62 Am I tasking right now or am I not tasking? If I'm not tasking, therefore I'm mind-wandering.

Speaker 58 And that's bad.

Speaker 58 But Kalina says...

Speaker 62 That's not necessarily a very rich way of looking at mind-wandering.

Speaker 58 That's the wrong way to think about it.

Speaker 26 Huh. Why?

Speaker 58 Well, first of all, you know that like devilish part I was describing of my mind where it can start to just like obsess and like ruminate over things?

Speaker 58 Like Kalina says that stuff isn't actually mind wandering anymore.

Speaker 62 No, no. For me, that's the opposite of mind wandering.

Speaker 58 Because when you start to obsess, you're back to a task of sorts. Like you're trying to solve some puzzle that your mind made for itself.

Speaker 62 So that's how people can get into like mental ruts, right?

Speaker 58 But Clina says when a mind truly wanders, like when it's free of any task,

Speaker 58 this isn't the devil's workshop at all.

Speaker 58 It's actually a place where something pretty beautiful is happening, like an act of creation

Speaker 30 wow

Speaker 64 and it starts deep inside the brain with these bursts of neuron firing called a sharp eye ripple

Speaker 58 sharp wave ripples

Speaker 34 have you heard of these never heard of that no never okay well let me tell you let us uh ripples i love the sound of that

Speaker 35 All right, so we're in the lab.

Speaker 34 Yeah, in the lab.

Speaker 58 So I went to go see one of the world experts on these ripples.

Speaker 12 I'm Yuri Bozhaki. I'm a professor of neuroscience at New York University.

Speaker 58 He showed me around his lab, rooms filled with wires and mazes and boxes of fruit loops.

Speaker 12 Rats and mice love fruit loops.

Speaker 58 Is that part of the experiment or just because you want to give them something nice?

Speaker 12 You want to have a good rapport with them.

Speaker 12 You want to be friends.

Speaker 34 They are pets.

Speaker 65 You're colleagues.

Speaker 58 And one of the things he does in his lab is he listens to the brains of these animals, specifically the hippocampus.

Speaker 58 And the way he does this is he sticks these little electrodes into it so that he can see or really hear these sharp wave ripples.

Speaker 34 Okay.

Speaker 58 So let's say he takes a rat and plops him into a maze.

Speaker 58 And maybe we can like play a song to represent just like the various neurons firing here and there as he like moves through and you know experiences like a turn over here or like

Speaker 58 runs straight down this path. Like, you know, I don't know what else happens in a maze.
Like whatever, looking up at the researcher, maybe like.

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 19 And maybe you're smelling something and it's behind this wall, but I can't get behind the wall.

Speaker 34 It's nice.

Speaker 58 And Ratt makes it through the maze. He gets to the end and stops.

Speaker 58 And, you know, he's just sort of like chilling, eating his food, drinking some water. His brain is just sort of like humming around, neurons firing here and there.

Speaker 58 When

Speaker 58 All of a sudden,

Speaker 58 there's this burst of activity, like tens of thousands of neurons fire all at once in this coordinated explosion.

Speaker 12 Extraordinary powerful synchrony.

Speaker 58 Then it happens again.

Speaker 12 Then again.

Speaker 58 And again. These explosions of activity, these are sharp wave ripples.

Speaker 58 And they're the biggest, most synchronized firing of neurons that happen in our brain, short of like a seizure.

Speaker 34 Wow.

Speaker 58 And Yuri says, like, when you look at them closely, you see.

Speaker 12 These are snippets that are compressed versions of learned information.

Speaker 58 They're actually just little sections of what the lab rat just experienced getting replayed, but super fast, something like 10 to 20 times faster.

Speaker 32 So it's like,

Speaker 24 it's like instant replay.

Speaker 25 About like a little.

Speaker 24 But like, it's like, it's like, it's like sped up instant replay.

Speaker 58 Exactly, exactly. And not the whole thing, but like little parts of it, basically.

Speaker 6 Highlights.

Speaker 19 Highlights real.

Speaker 34 Highlight real.

Speaker 58 And these sharp wave verbals, yuri says they're basically the very beginning of memories being formed they select which information will be remembered and which will go to the trash can and he's not like consciously experiencing this oh so this is even be this is below consciousness is all subconscious wow and when the rat goes to sleep that night yeah those ripples that played earlier they just keep rippling

Speaker 58 And this is where the memory is like actually getting made, where it consolidates into something that lasts.

Speaker 12 Well, how is it possible that I experienced something once and I will remember it forever? And the answer is that you

Speaker 12 experienced it consciously once,

Speaker 12 but the rest of the brain will experience snippets of it during the sharp valipulos a thousand times every single night.

Speaker 30 Wow.

Speaker 65 Yeah.

Speaker 30 Huh.

Speaker 58 There's more. The next day, we can stay with our rat, our little lab rat, wakes back up and, you know, a postdoc carries him back to the same maze.
You know,

Speaker 58 and now when he's just sitting there and again, just like sort of resting before starting the run,

Speaker 66 guess what we see?

Speaker 24 Oh, the same, the same, the song playing not as replay, but as preplay.

Speaker 58 Yeah, exactly. A sharp wave ripple.
And actually, his lab has found that like the direction of the ripple coincides with whether it's like a memory or like a planning ripple.

Speaker 12 And the selection is backward.

Speaker 12 we are talking about memory. When the selection is forward,

Speaker 12 we are talking about planning.

Speaker 38 No,

Speaker 26 that's crazy. Yeah, yeah.
Wow, that's so literal.

Speaker 58 Huh. So all the stuff that he described happens in rats.
It happens in us too.

Speaker 58 And you know, that experience when you can't seem to solve a problem or like there's this word you really want, but like it's just not. It's like on the tip of your tongue.
You don't have it.

Speaker 58 And then you just sort of like walk away from it.

Speaker 58 And all of a sudden, like bam it's there right this is the time the sharp face come very handy and you disengage and then a couple of sharp favours occur in your brain they prime the circuitry for you and then you can recall it like you've left the task but these like little you know subconscious neural things are just working for you yeah I also asked him how these sharp wave ripples connect to like mind wandering thoughts.

Speaker 58 Out of seemingly nowhere, I have this like memory of

Speaker 58 my mom cooking a specific meal or something like that. Is that connected at all to this sharp wave ripple activity?

Speaker 12 I never measured it. I don't know, but I bet yes.
So, sharp wave ripples are a good candidate for that.

Speaker 58 And actually, like, um, there was a nature paper earlier this year that made this exact connection that these like sharp wave ripples seem to be like the brain mechanism underpinning those like thoughts that seemingly pop out of nowhere.

Speaker 32 Huh.

Speaker 24 So, how often do these ripples happen?

Speaker 58 Yeah, so he says that they can happen once every 10 seconds or even once a second. But the one time they definitely do not happen is like when your mind is focused on something.

Speaker 12 If you are listening to me now, I guarantee you you don't have a single sharp wave.

Speaker 12 These ripples only happen, Yuri says, when we are idling, when we are not focusing on something, when we are not attending.

Speaker 62 It's almost like a digestion, right? So you go around acquiring experiences. If you don't don't have a digestion system, you're not going to extract anything from all these experiences.

Speaker 37 Right?

Speaker 58 So, in other words, without idling?

Speaker 34 You are nobody.

Speaker 12 You know, you are a zombie.

Speaker 1 Okay, so where does this where does this all leave us with our adage?

Speaker 58 I just, I'm like realizing how off I was about it.

Speaker 23 Like,

Speaker 58 idling is pretty important.

Speaker 34 It uh

Speaker 58 picks our memories, like, yeah, solidifies our memories, imagines new things. So, yeah, I guess, like, it is a workshop.
It's just like not for the devil. It's like, it's like a workshop where we make

Speaker 58 our sense of our world and

Speaker 58 who we are.

Speaker 34 Yeah, beautiful.

Speaker 24 Let that mind of yours idle for a bit.

Speaker 34 We will be right back.

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Speaker 9 It's It's 1972. A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes.
Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 9 All they have left is a life raft and each other. This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive, hosted by me, Becky Milligan.

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Speaker 3 Hello, welcome back.

Speaker 2 This is Radio Lab. I'm Latif Nasser.

Speaker 1 We have already covered two adages today.

Speaker 13 One was mostly true, one was definitely not.

Speaker 16 And so, for this third and final adage, we decided to take on one

Speaker 16 that it seems just has to be true.

Speaker 39 Number three:

Speaker 57 What goes up

Speaker 30 must

Speaker 39 come down.

Speaker 2 And fact-checking this one, we have...

Speaker 26 Okay, here we go.

Speaker 6 Here we go. Producers, Annie McEwen.

Speaker 20 It's irrefutable.

Speaker 36 And Maria Paz Gutierrez.

Speaker 45 Just a part of our lives.

Speaker 24 It's basically a law of physics.

Speaker 34 Right.

Speaker 45 I mean, for example. Okay, ready? If you take an egg, one, two, three, and you throw it up.

Speaker 23 Okay.

Speaker 45 Down it comes.

Speaker 37 Definitely came down.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Feels very inevitable.

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 54 Came down confirmed.

Speaker 45 But as we stood there looking down at our egg on the ground, we thought, wait a minute. From a journalistic fact-checking perspective, all this proves is that when an egg goes up, it must come down.

Speaker 45 In this case, there were 1.8 seconds between the up,

Speaker 45 go,

Speaker 45 and the down.

Speaker 34 Okay.

Speaker 27 And we started to wonder, like, what if we could find something that doesn't come down like right away?

Speaker 66 Like, maybe there are things out there in the world that test this adage.

Speaker 27 And if we can find those things, is there a chance, a teeny tiny chance, that we could disprove it?

Speaker 66 Even just a little bit?

Speaker 24 Okay, well, what kind of things?

Speaker 58 Ah, the sweet sounds in New York.

Speaker 45 Well, we went outside to get inspired.

Speaker 55 I wonder if that's blood or ketchup.

Speaker 45 And after a bit of haphazard research into things that go up in which

Speaker 45 we chased pigeons.

Speaker 66 You chased them.

Speaker 45 I chased them.

Speaker 25 Hello. We're here to look for balloons.

Speaker 45 Got some helium balloons. Uh-huh.

Speaker 66 And then they're all dudes with their big pants.

Speaker 46 Annie even tried to talk to some skateboarders.

Speaker 67 Excuse us. Can we talk to you for a second?

Speaker 45 About jumping.

Speaker 67 Excuse us.

Speaker 67 Excuse us, will you talk to us?

Speaker 67 Can we ask you a question?

Speaker 21 You guys don't want to talk to us?

Speaker 67 No? Okay.

Speaker 45 But then, it's a really pretty, sunny day. As we were looking up at the sky,

Speaker 60 we thought, clouds.

Speaker 26 It looks like The Simpsons.

Speaker 45 It does look like The Simpsons. They're basically just water that is up.
And so we wondered, how long does it take for water to leave the ground, rise up into the air, become a fluffy white cloud,

Speaker 45 and then come back down as rain?

Speaker 45 We looked it up, and the average is about 10 days.

Speaker 6 Really?

Speaker 3 That's the lifespan of a cloud?

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 19 I never thought of that, the lifespan of a cloud.

Speaker 26 That actually doesn't seem that long.

Speaker 27 Well, but there are a bunch of things that stay up in the air longer than clouds, like small particles of dust blown by the wind into the sky can stay up there hanging out in the atmosphere for around 20 days.

Speaker 30 Hmm.

Speaker 45 And then there are these spiders that do this thing called ballooning, where they shoot out these long threads from their butts.

Speaker 45 And using the wind and the Earth's electric field, field, they lift off the ground and fly through the air for hundreds of miles, traveling across cities, across deserts, across oceans.

Speaker 45 And we don't really know how long they stay up there, but we do know they can only go without eating for about 25 days. So they do have to eventually come down to land on top of your head.

Speaker 7 Thank you.

Speaker 24 Uh, but okay, so max 25 days between up and down?

Speaker 27 No, lots of, no, no.

Speaker 37 Because then there's this bird.

Speaker 27 This little bird that can do something so amazing, it is just ridiculous.

Speaker 59 It is ridiculous. It is.

Speaker 57 So here's the thing about Swifts.

Speaker 27 This is natural history author Scott Wiedensahl, who told us about the common swift.

Speaker 41 They are the most aerial of birds.

Speaker 27 They're blackish brown, could fit in the palm of your hand, have wings shaped like a boomerang, and they do basically everything in the air.

Speaker 41 They eat nothing but flying insects.

Speaker 27 It's thought that the two hemispheres of their brain take turns sleeping so they can sleep while they fly.

Speaker 41 They are the only group of birds that mate on the wing.

Speaker 26 Wait, it has sex in the air?

Speaker 16 How does it do that?

Speaker 65 Are they both flying?

Speaker 45 Oh, yeah. I mean, pictures on the internet saying they're just stacked on each other.

Speaker 21 They're just stacked.

Speaker 23 They're just stacked.

Speaker 32 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 41 And if they could figure out a way to carry an egg and incubate it on the wing, I'm sure they would do it.

Speaker 19 Oh, because you can't lay an egg while you're mating.

Speaker 24 That would be a mistake.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 41 And when they migrate to Africa, from the moment moment they leave their breeding grounds in Central Europe, all the way south to Africa, through the entirety of the winter in Africa and all the way back on their spring migration, they never touch ground.

Speaker 68 These birds lift up off the ground and don't come down again for 10 months of the year.

Speaker 3 10 months of the year?

Speaker 67 Yes, it flies.

Speaker 27 It flies for 10 straight months.

Speaker 41 They only come to the ground for the shortest period of time that they possibly can manage.

Speaker 41 They have have stretched the thread connecting them to the ground absolutely to the breaking point.

Speaker 41 Wow.

Speaker 27 And these birds, because they don't often need them, have very tiny legs and feet. So tiny that they can't walk.

Speaker 41 All they can do is cling.

Speaker 19 Wait, they can't walk at all?

Speaker 37 No.

Speaker 27 And it made us think like, just like that fish that long ago pulled itself out of the ocean and became a creature of land, maybe the common swift is on its way to becoming a creature purely of the sky.

Speaker 58 But then we thought,

Speaker 32 what about us?

Speaker 45 Like, we have astronauts.

Speaker 45 Astronauts, unlike eggs or clouds or birds, they have rockets.

Speaker 45 Rockets that have taken them farther than any other species has gone before.

Speaker 27 And then

Speaker 34 once they're up there,

Speaker 27 they can just stay up there.

Speaker 27 Just totally floating, defying our adage, we're gonna get Tim to spin me around.

Speaker 52 Somersaults.

Speaker 36 Olympic caliber flip technique.

Speaker 66 Backflips.

Speaker 11 Then he could come right back up again.

Speaker 27 They are truly up.

Speaker 11 Like Superman.

Speaker 27 and theoretically if they had enough food and supplies they could stay up there forever never coming down again

Speaker 45 so in conclusion we have found something that disproves the adage and therefore the adage is incorrect okay we are done here yes

Speaker 66 at least that's what we thought Until we talked to Dr.

Speaker 45 Michelle Faller.

Speaker 11 I am an astronomer and a science communicator.

Speaker 45 Who told us that, well, you see, although it might look like the astronauts are up there floating.

Speaker 11 No.

Speaker 45 They're not.

Speaker 34 They're not?

Speaker 11 Absolutely not. No.

Speaker 55 They're not flying. They're not weightless.

Speaker 45 They're not in zero-G, but instead, up there in the space station.

Speaker 11 The reason you can put your pen right beside you, it'll just float when you let go of it. The pen and you are falling towards the earth at exactly the same rate.

Speaker 45 What?

Speaker 55 They're falling. They're falling?

Speaker 11 Yes. Every second of every day they're up there.
Their Their whole space containment, their capsule,

Speaker 11 their space station, everything's falling. They are freely falling towards the earth.

Speaker 34 Oh, my God.

Speaker 11 I mean, if you've ever been on like a really great roller coaster that drops, that kind of thing, I mean, that is what they feel. They feel like they're falling.

Speaker 66 Ooh, that's nauseating.

Speaker 27 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 11 Some people get very sick.

Speaker 32 Yes.

Speaker 24 But then why...

Speaker 19 Why don't they fall straight down and just smack into the earth?

Speaker 27 Well, Michelle says says that these astronauts and the space station, they're not falling like how an egg falls when I throw it.

Speaker 63 Two, three.

Speaker 27 Straight up in the air.

Speaker 45 But more like if I took that egg and just

Speaker 45 threw it as hard as I could. As it's traveling, it is technically falling.
It's being pulled down towards the earth, but it's also zooming forward.

Speaker 45 And so it travels a certain distance before it inevitably comes down.

Speaker 68 Okay, now imagine the egg is a space station and it's just been thrown by rockets upwards and curving away from the earth into the sky, going so fast 17,500 miles an hour and traveling so high and so far about 200 miles up that though they are falling instead of hitting the earth the earth curves away as you fall and you actually kind of keep curving around the earth And so every second of every day that it's up there, it basically keeps missing the Earth.

Speaker 27 Never landing, forever coming down and around and down and around and down and around.

Speaker 11 This wonderful kind of stable path called an orbit.

Speaker 3 But haven't we also shot things into space that did not go into orbit? Like we did the story on the Voyager probes, right?

Speaker 24 Like we literally shot them out of the whole solar system.

Speaker 19 Like you can't you say that those are just going up and up and up?

Speaker 34 They're not falling.

Speaker 27 Well, actually, they are.

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 27 According to Michelle, everything is in some way going down and around.

Speaker 11 The Earth is always falling towards the Sun.

Speaker 11 You know, the Sun is falling towards the center of the galaxy, which is a big black hole.

Speaker 11 We go around the center of the galaxy at about half a million miles an hour. So right now, you are freely falling towards a giant black hole at half a million miles an hour.

Speaker 23 You personally, Raypa. You personally.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 45 And what's the galaxy falling?

Speaker 32 The galaxy is also freely falling.

Speaker 11 You got it.

Speaker 11 The Milky Way galaxy is freely falling towards the middle of a galactic cluster at more than a million miles an hour.

Speaker 34 Don't you see it? We're always falling.

Speaker 11 Nothing is holding you up.

Speaker 45 I just feel like throwing up.

Speaker 33 Yeah, me too. I really, really feel like throwing up.

Speaker 33 Whoa.

Speaker 30 Uh

Speaker 13 so so is this one true or no?

Speaker 57 Well

Speaker 45 I think yes, it is but it's different than what we originally thought.

Speaker 45 Like when we started out we thought down was like falling on the pavement like an egg or falling to earth as rain or landing on a branch like a bird.

Speaker 45 Things go up and then they must come down and then they're down.

Speaker 45 But

Speaker 45 what we found is that all that stuff that appears to be down isn't really down,

Speaker 45 but it's actually in a perpetual state of coming down.

Speaker 45 So maybe it's not what goes up must come down, but really

Speaker 40 everything that is

Speaker 40 must come down

Speaker 12 forever.

Speaker 32 That sounds depressing.

Speaker 20 I don't know.

Speaker 56 I mean, like, I think it's really cool.

Speaker 27 Like,

Speaker 45 it's almost as if we're on this rock, but we're just like those astronauts

Speaker 45 floating and somersaulting and and like

Speaker 11 flying. Like Superman.

Speaker 32 Woo!

Speaker 48 Forever

Speaker 57 and ever

Speaker 57 and ever

Speaker 36 and ever

Speaker 36 and ever

Speaker 36 and ever

Speaker 34 and ever

Speaker 34 and ever

Speaker 40 necessity is the mother of invention.

Speaker 40 Yeah, I guess so, but let's think about all the things that were invented by accident, where like no one was even trying to invent shit that day, and they ended up making a new medication or discovering a new element or whatever.

Speaker 19 Big thanks to Chioki Iansen, who performed our voice of wisdom for this episode.

Speaker 40 Morgan Freeman was not available.

Speaker 3 If his voice sounds familiar, it's because he does the underwriting for NPR.

Speaker 40 I spend most of my life as a disembodied voice.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Tell me about it.

Speaker 19 This episode was reported and produced by Alex Neeson, Simon Adler, Matt Kilty, Sindhun Yana Sambuddan, W.

Speaker 36 Harry Fortuna, Annie McEwen, and Maria Paz Gutierrez.

Speaker 40 Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Speaker 17 What are you saying here?

Speaker 40 We need some space?

Speaker 19 It was edited by Alex Neeson and Pat Walters, fact-checked by Emily Krieger and Diane Kelly, and has original music and sound design by Jeremy Blue.

Speaker 57 Good things come to those who wait.

Speaker 40 This one I hate. Awful things also come to those who wait.

Speaker 40 So what are we doing here? What's happening?

Speaker 19 Special thanks to Pamela Dark, Daniela Mursillo, and Jonathan Schuler, as well as Amanda Breen, Akmal Tajahan, Patrick Keene, Stephanie Lesczak, and Alexandria Iona from the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Speaker 19 To Alex's crew, We Run Uptown, and coaches Ref and Patty from Circa 95, Julia Lucas and Coffee from the No Name program, Diane Kelly, Hilly Bressler, Kim Ward Dwong, and Tom Friedman.

Speaker 40 I don't know that I would use any of these in

Speaker 40 my regular life.

Speaker 3 And of course, thank you for listening.

Speaker 19 I'm Latip Nasser. This is Radio Lab.
We'll be back soon with more stories, more questions, and if I'm being honest, questionable wisdom. But I can promise it'll be fact-checked.

Speaker 26 So, until then.

Speaker 15 Hey, I'm Lemon and I'm from Richmond, Indiana. And here are the staff credits.
Radio Lab was created by Jad Abimrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latzav Nasser are our co-hosts.

Speaker 15 Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W.

Speaker 15 Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhun Yanan Sambandan, Matt Kielty, Rebecca Lacks, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Kari, Sarah Sandback, Anissa Vitsa, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster.

Speaker 15 Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Speaker 29 Hi, my name is Teresa. I'm calling from Colchester in Essex, UK.

Speaker 29 Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betsy Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, the Saymans Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Speaker 69 Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P.

Speaker 29 Sloan Foundation.

Speaker 57 Building a portfolio with Fidelity Basket portfolios is kind of like making a sandwich.

Speaker 59 It's as simple as picking your stocks and ETFs, sort of like your meats and other topics, and managing it as one big juicy investment.

Speaker 17 Now that's pretty good.

Speaker 59 Learn more at fidelity.com/slash baskets.

Speaker 57 Investing involves risks, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, member NYSC SIPC.

Speaker 48 Tis the season of gifting and holes to deck, and the Who's and Who Newville were in love with new tech. Where can we find Sonos and Samsung and Nintendo? They shouted.
Would they find it in one place?

Speaker 48 This they questioned and doubted. When suddenly a who yelled, Walmart's the place to start.
And each who added headphones, TVs, and games to their carts.

Speaker 48 With Walmart, their shopping was done in a flurry. They cried out, who knew? and ordered their gifts in a hurry.
Shop the latest tech gifts in the Walmart app.