Transcript of Curiosity Killed the Adage

Listener supported, WNYC Studios.

Hello, and thank you for calling customer service.

Hi, it's Latif Nasser. I know you already know this, but it feels like maybe you need a tiny reminder. Yeah, I was just calling because I was looking for a free subscription.

Do you have a promo code?

No. But the things that you enjoy, the things that have value in your life.

When you say a free subscription, what do you mean?

I would still just get everything that I already get, but I just wouldn't have to pay any money.

Yeah, no.

You have to pay for them. Let me connect you with a representative who can help with your request. And even things that you think maybe you shouldn't really have to pay for.

I'm sorry. Well. A plan where the electricity is for free?

This is America. How can I help you today? It's going to cost you. Sure. Let me find someone to help you. Gas. I was looking to get the Internet for free. The Internet. I'm not sure what you mean by free. Your cell phone.

We don't have any free cell phone plans. No. Please hold.

I get it. You're probably sitting there thinking, well, you know what? I paid my taxes. I'm doing my part. I'm contributing to public radio. But you know how much of your personal federal taxes went to public radio stations last year? It was probably less than 50 cents. Two quarters for the whole year. That's what you contributed. That's what you paid for- Welcome to Science Friday. Everything. It's notes from America.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

Everything.

Everything you hear. You're basically getting it for free. We wish we didn't have to, but we got to say that's just not cutting it, folks. So please take a minute out of your day to support this thing that you mostly take for granted 364 days of the year. You can do that by joining The Lab, our membership program. The Lab is part of what powers all of this. Joining makes it possible for us to keep making these shows for you, and you get something out of it, too. Exclusive merch, bonus content, ad-free listening. If you join this month, a Radiolab poster. The poster is beautiful. It's by artist Tara Anand of A Moonrise Over the Ocean, from our Kids and Family show, Terrestrials. Our staff is obsessed with it right now. Go to radiolab. Org/join to check out the poster or become a part of the Lab. That's radiolab. Org/join. And thanks. Wait, you're listening? Okay.

All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radiolab. From W Nice.

See?

Hey, this is Radiolab.

I'm Latif Nasser.

All right.

Today, I'm just going to kick things off with our editor.

Got levels on my side.

Alex Niesen. Cool.

Okay. Once upon a time, it was summer.

Okay. Hard to remember now.

Hard to remember now. Okay, so over the summer, as you know, I'm a runner.Legit runner.A.

Legit runner. You run marathons.

Over this year, I decided to take the year off from marathons. Instead, I decided to tackle the one mile, and I was going to try and beat my personal record. And so as part of doing that, shoes last summer, every Tuesday, like clockwork, I would drag myself out of my apartment and head out into the city, andOkay, watch, set, and run from my house, which is about a mile and change away from Riverbank State Park in Harlem. Okay, get me hit by the car. Over to this track. Hey. Hello. What up? To meet up with some people from my running I'm okay. How are you? It depends on the night, but it's basically 10 or 15 people who all get together to do these track workouts together.

As somebody who is definitely not a runner, you prefer this? You like running with people more than running alone?

Yeah. 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. 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. It's just the way that you get it done. On this particular day, it was super hot. It's like the dead of summer. Ref, our coach, tells us- Check it out. We're doing 400s. The length of a track is 400 meters. That just means we're doing one long sprint around the entire length of the track, and we're going to do a lot of them. Ten on and ten on. Ten on, ten on. Everybody makes this collective sigh, and it's like, Okay, Okay. Always you want to be running the run.

Don't let the run run you.

We get on the track, we warm up, we stretch, we do drills, get loose, and then we tow the line, and we start. Immediately out the gate, I'm pumping my legs, swinging my arms, just sprinting for the entire length of this track. Oh, shit. I cross the line. I take a little break, a sip of water. And then I'm sprinting again. And I do another lap. Rest, lap, rest, lap, rest. How many more do you have? Six. And that day, I was struggling to breathe. Come on, come on, come on. 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. I don't know. It just felt like I just couldn't get it together. All these insecurities from childhood came rushing back. 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. I just wanted to disappear. I wanted all the other people on the track to disappear. I It just felt like I was mentally spiraling because 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.

There's this adage, Misery Loves Company, that has been the philosophy of my athletic career, if you will. 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. Here I was at this track workout that was especially miserable that day, but the burden wasn't being lifted. It felt heavier, actually. After this workout, I remember walking home and just obsessing about this adage. By the time I get back to my apartment and for days afterwards, I had just really started to wonder, have I had this wrong the whole time? Maybe this thing just isn't true. Is it true or not? And I started to think about, okay, well, I have to figure this out. I have to figure out, factually speaking, does Misery Love Company? Who can I call? What can I read? What can I do to get real nitty gritty, real fussy, so that on the other end, I can stand up and declare it is true that Misery Loves Company, or it's just not.

You needed an answer.

Yeah, a definitive answer.

This quest that Alex suddenly wanted to embark on, we started talking about it at the show about how there are these things that you hear in your life.

You know what they say, it's just squiggy weird that gets the grease. You hear them in movies, on TV. Idental hands of the devil's workshop. Maybe from a friend, a parent.

The early bird catches the worm. Actions speak louder than words.

These little sayings, these adages that are supposed to be these little bits of wisdom, these true facts about how the world works. We just started to wonder, are they true? 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? Could we put them to the test in some scientific, rigorous, literal, almost to the degree of being absurd way to try to get an answer. So we picked some adages, and the staff basically fact checked them. Starting with... Number one, misery loves company.

Okay, cool. First thing I did-Right, right. Yeah. Here we go.was rope in producer Simon Adler. Then I went on Google and typed in Misery Loves Company. Okay, cool. So, so, so, so, so, A surprise and delight. All right. Something popped up. We are rolling.

We are rip-roaring and ready to rock.

This paper, published in 2021, Does Misery Love Company: An Experimental Investigation.

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

Yeah. My name is Kate Hasset. 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.

And by sheer coincidence. I know where you're coming from. She is also a runner.

When it comes to the particular misery that long distance running can be sometimes.

But we are going to move away from running. Okay. Because an adage should be universal. It should be true in multiple situations. Yeah. Several years ago, Kate set up this series of experiments.

The first experiment, we wanted to know, do people actually believe this?

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

We asked 100 people to complete a survey.

That said.

Imagine. Oh, glory be.

Someone.

I just love my New York City lifestyle.

Who lives in an apartment building.

But what I love most of all is.

And.

My view of the park.

They have this view of a green park.

Yes, here from my window, I can see all of the in its glory. I can see the racoons playing, the pigeons flying overhead perched in their trees.

But the survey says this person, and actually pretty much everybody in the building, is about to lose their view of the park. Because of a construction project. Like a big highway going in across the street. That sucks. The survey asks, imagine you're the landlord and you have to go tell one of these tenants that they're going to lose their view.

If you want to minimize this person's disappointment.

They're suffering.

How would you inform them?

Would you to A. Who's there? Go knock on their door. Oh, it's Tony.

What can I do you for Tony?

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

And just simply inform them.

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

Not my view of the park. Tony, I live for my view of the park.

That's option A. Option B.

Gregory, it's Tony.

Everything's Tony. You tell them, look. Big highway outside. Construction is going to block the park view, but this time you tell them...

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

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. 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. When Kate gave out the survey, almost 70% of people, they said they'd choose B.

So Well, but there were still 30% who didn't, but sociopaths or something. I know.

I don't know. I honestly don't know why you wouldn't go with B.

I would definitely be one of the 70%.

But Kate says 70%, it's a big number.

We took this to mean that people do, by and large, believe that misery actually does love company. It can alleviate suffering.

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

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

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. 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.

Then we asked them- Both groups, alone or in company. Please rate how disappointed you expect that you would be in this situation.

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.

I would not have thought that.

Yeah, we didn't find evidence that Misery actually does love Company.

What they found is that people believe Misery loves Company, but it just didn't seem true that Misery loved Company in practice. However, they did find strong evidence for something that they I'm actually looking for and that I think was way more interesting, which is that happiness hates company.

What does that even mean?

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.

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. Yes. That's sick. We're sick, people. We're sick. What does that say about us? I don't like that. I really don't like that. I hear you.

It's a tough finding, but we're social beings. I think it's just the way we're wired, that what's going on with other people, it's not irrelevant.

I realized what Kate is getting at is the fact that we're always keeping track of what we have, of what everybody else has. That's asking questions about equity and envy and fairness. 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 fact that we're together and suffering do something for us? Is it helpful? Svenya, hello. Hi. It's so nice to talk to you. Yes, it is. I felt like I really started to get an answer to that when I found Svenia. Svenia Wolf.

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

Amazing.

Beautiful.

I'm curious about this in your professional opinion and also in your opinion as a runner. Does Misery love company?

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

That is the answer.

Not every misery loves every company.

That's what it comes down to. Misery brought on by fear, she says. Where I'm fearful because the situation is dangerous. In that case, you probably do want to be around other people.

Make it less dangerous. So I want company.

If I am sad- She says, with sadness, you're often feeling a sense of loss, so you want company. To reconnect with others to get security again. But the one emotion she said that struck me was-Shame? Shame. That is something where I don't want other people to witness that.

That's something where I don't want company.

I think for me, That day on the track, I think a part of me was feeling that. I felt out of shape, like I wasn't doing well. I felt slow, like I was dragging. You Really getting into that rabbit hole of like, I'm not good enough. I'm pathetic. And then the last thing we want is other people witnessing this.

But 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.

Svenia says this has been studied with groups of people on stationary bikes, with teams that have just lost big streams. No matter the setting, when people feel miserable together, it helps them perform better, like they pedal faster on the bikes. It also helps them feel better. That's at least what the research It's just so to me, the way this resonates the most is if I'm in a miserable state, I'm yearning for company. That's what I want. I want other people to comfort me. I want people to reach out to me. Sometimes I don't have the energy to reach out, but I want that sense of recognition and validation and that somebody cares for me.

Maybe I might rephrase it to, Misery can create company. How are you two? I feel okay.

We can slow down because I'm definitely going too fast. Yeah, I'm definitely down to slow down. I feel like I'm trying to make sure I'm not in anyone's way. No, you're fine. Yeah, I feel okay. I was- I'm too sorry. When I woke up this morning to get That's great.

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. We'll be right back. This year, at both Radiolab and our family-friendly spinoff, Teresita trials, we've spent a lot of time up in the heavens. We've named Quasimuns. We've pondered the poetry being sent into space. In general, we spent 2024 marveling at the expanse that surrounds our planet. But as the year ends, we're coming back down to Earth. We have a whole host of stories cooking for you all, but we need your help to keep it all going. We're a public radio show, and because of that, we rely on the generosity of our listeners, that's you, to keep this show afloat. If you join our membership program, The Lab, you will get members-only content, swag, and an incredibly beautiful poster of one of the most beautiful pieces of episode art we've made this year. If the holiday spirit really has a hold of you, if you're feeling extra-generous, we have a new ultra-premium tier of the lab called Whale Sharks. Anyone joining at this tier will get a special thank you in an upcoming episode.

To learn more, check out the poster or other details. Go to radiolab. Org/join. That's radiolab. Org/join. And thanks. Radiolab is sponsored by Betterhelp.

The holidays are a really stressful time.

I am not a fan of them.

Christmas, especially, not a fan.

But whether you are or you aren't, Betterhelp is here to help. I have long believed that taking care of your mental health is just as important as your physical health. Therapy is a great way to do that.

It can teach you helpful skills, help you set boundaries, or just give you the support you need. Plus, Betterhelp makes it super easy.

It's all online on your schedule. You go fill out a quick questionnaire, get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists at no extra charge.

Find comfort, whether you love or hate the holidays with Betterhelp.

Visit betterhelp.

Com/radiolab today to get 10% off your first month.

That's Betterhelp, H-E-L flashradiolab.

Hey, all.

Every week on Explained to Me, a listener calls in with a question. Maybe it's about politics or love or Nyquil fever dreams. Then I call them back with the answer.

I feel like a large part of my world makes sense. Are you kidding me?

There's something about hearing it laid out from a source I trust so much that is just devastating.

Oh, my God.

Listen to explain it to me every Wednesday from Vox Media. Number two.

An idle mind is the Devil's Workshop.

I always heard it as the Idle Hands or The Devil's Workshop.

Yeah, idle hands, idle minds. People say it all sorts of ways. We're just going to go with Idle Minds. I picked this one because- Wait, just tell everyone who you are first. Oh, yes. Okay. I'm Sindhu Yana, some of them. I'm a producer here. I picked this one because it's always felt pretty true to me.

How so?

Well, I mean, of course, the mind is never like, idol, idol. But when I think of a mind that's not focused on anything, it's just wandering around, that's what I'm thinking of as an Idle mind. I tried to avoid that mind as much as possible. Part of it is that I just feel guilty for not being productive. Same. But also when I just sit around, idol. Oh, it feels so good if I was in a bath right now. I wonder what Marcello is up to. All these thoughts start flooding in. How do ants always seem to know exactly where they're going? Some of them are fun or helpful. Did I leave the stove on? But like... That joke I made last night was so Others. I don't think anyone even smiles. You have to say something. Is it offensive? I bet it was. I bet that's why he's not texting. I always do this.

Can really suck.

Almost like the devil's in there trying to make me miserable. Yes. A lot of religious writing tends to regard the wandering mind as something that's not particularly desirable. This is psychology professor Kalina Krzysztof Hajliva. I study spontaneous thoughts, and in general, how people think. When I called them to ask about this adage, they said it's deeply rooted in our culture. This industrial capitalist work-based environment. There's this sense that there is a right way and there is a wrong way. When you wonder you depart from the right way. That's sometimes how we think of our own minds as time on task. If I'm focused on something that's good. Am I tasking right now or am I not tasking? If I'm not tasking, therefore I'm mind-wondering. That's bad. But Kalina says- That's not necessarily a very rich way of looking at mind wandering. That's the wrong way to think about it.

Why?

Well, first of all, you know that devilish part I was describing of my mind where it can start to just obsess and ruminate over things. Like, Kalina says that stuff isn't actually mind wandering anymore. No, no. For me, that's the opposite of mind wandering. Because when you start to obsess, you're back to a task of sorts. You're trying to solve some puzzle that your mind made for itself. So that's how people can get into mental ruts, right? But Kalina says when a mind truly wanders, like when it's free of any task, this isn't the devil's workshop at all. It's actually a place where something pretty beautiful is happening, like an act of creation.

Wow.

It starts deep inside the brain with these bursts of neuron firing called a sharp wave ripple. Sharp wave ripples. Have you heard of these?

Never heard of that. No, never.

Okay, well, let me tell you, Latish. Yeah, ripples.

I love the sound of that.

All right, so we're in the lab. We are in the lab. I went to go see one of the world experts on these ripples. I'm Yuri Bujaki. I'm a professor of neuroscience at New York University. He showed me around his lab, rooms filled with wires and raises and boxes of fruit loops. Rats and mice love fruit loops. Is that part of the experiment or just because you want to give them something nice? You want to have a good report with them.

You want to be friends.

They are pets. Your colleagues. One of the things he does in his lab is he listens to the brains of these animals, specifically the hippocampus. 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.

Okay.

Let's say he takes a rat and plops him into a maze. Maybe we can play a song to represent just the various neurons firing here and there as he moves through and experiences a turn over here. Okay. Runs straight down this path. I don't know what else happens in a maze, whatever, looking up at the researcher, maybe.

Yeah, and maybe you're smelling something and it's behind this wall, but I can't get behind the wall. Exactly. It's nice.

Rat makes it through the maze. He gets to the end and stops. He's just chilling, eating his food, drinking some water. His brain is just humming around, neurons firing here and there. When all of a sudden, there's this burst of activity. Tens of thousands of neurons fire all at once in this coordinated explosion. Extraordinary powerful synchrony. Then it happens again.

Then again.

And again. These explosions of activity, these are sharp wave ripples. They're the biggest, most synchronized firing of neurons that happen in our brain, short of a seizure.

Wow.

Yuri says, when you look at them closely, you see- These are snippets that are compressed versions of learned information. 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. It's like…

It's like instant replay?

About like a little…

But it's like sped up instant replay.

Exactly. Not the whole thing, but like little parts of it, basically. Highlights. Highlights real. Highlight real. These sharp wave ripples, Yuri says they're basically the very beginning of memories being formed.

They select which information connection will be remembered and which will go to the trashcan.

He's not consciously experiencing this.

Oh, so this is below consciousness.

This is all subconscious. Wow. When the rat goes to sleep that night, those ripples that played earlier, they just keep rippling. This is where the memory is actually getting made, where it consolidates into something that lasts. Well, how is it possible that I experience something once and I will remember it forever?

The answer is that you experienced it consciously once.

But the rest of the brain will experience snippets of it during the sharp very pills, thousand times every single night.

Wow. Yeah.

There's more. The next day, we can stay with our rat, our little lab rat, wakes back up and a post-doc carries him back to the same maze. Now, when he's just sitting there, and again, just resting before starting the run, guess what we see?

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

Yeah, exactly. A sharp wave ripple. Actually, his lab has found that the direction of the ripple coincides with whether it's a memory or a planning ripple. When the selection is backward, we are talking about memory.

When the selection is forward, we are talking about planning.

No. That's crazy.

Yeah.

Wow, that's so literal.

So all the stuff that he described happens in rats. It happens in us, too. That experience when you can't seem to solve a problem or there's this word you really want, but it's just not... It's in the tip of your tongue, you don't have it. Then you just walk away from it, and all of a sudden, bam, it's there. Right. This is the time the shop is come very handy. You disengage, and then a couple of phase occur in your brain, they prime the circuitry for you, and then you can recall it. You've left the task, but these little subconscious neural things are just working for you. I also asked him how these sharp wave ripples connect to mind wandery thoughts. Out of seemingly nowhere, I have this memory of my mom cooking a specific meal or something like that. Is that connected at all to this sharp wave ripple Ripple activity?

I never measured it. I don't know, but I bet yes.

So sharp wave ripples are good candidates for that. Actually, there was a Nature paper earlier this year that made this exact connection that these sharp wave ripples seem to be the brain mechanism underpinning those thoughts that seemingly pop out of nowhere.

How often do these ripples happen?

Yeah. He says that they can happen once every 10 seconds or even once a second. But the one time definitely do not happen is when your mind is focused on something. If you are listening to me now, I guarantee you don't have a single sharp wave. These ripples only happen, Yuri says. When we are idling, when we are not focusing on something, when we are not attending. It's almost like a digestion. You go around acquiring experiences. If you don't have a digestion system, you're not going to extract anything from all these experiences. In In other words, without idling. You are nobody. You are a zombie.

Where does this all leave us with our adage?

I'm realizing how off I was about it. Idling is pretty important. It pics our memories, solidifies our memories, imagines new things, things. Yeah, I guess it is a workshop. It's just not for the devil. It's like a workshop where we make our sense of our world and who we are.

Yeah. Beautiful. Let that mind of yours idol for a bit. We will be right back.

Hey, all.

Every week on explain it to me, a listener calls in with a question. Maybe it's about politics or love or Nyquil fever dreams. Then I call them back with the answer.

I feel like a large part of my world makes sense. Are you kidding me?

There's something about hearing it laid out from a source I trust so much that is just devastating.

Oh my God.

Listen to explain it to me every Wednesday from Vox Media. Hello.

Welcome back. This is Radiolab. I'm Latif Nasser. We have already covered two adages today. One was mostly true, one was definitely not. And so for this third and final adage, we decided to take on one that it seems just has to be true.

Number three, what goes up must come down.

Fact-checking this one, we have-Okay, here we go. Here we go. Producers, Annie McEwen.

It's irrefutable.

And Maria Paz Gutierrez.

It's just a part of our lives.

It's basically a law of physics.

Right. I mean, for example-Okay, ready? If you take an egg-One, two, three. And you throw it up. Okay. Down it comes. Definitely came down.

Yeah. It feels very inevitable.

It came down confirmed. 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. In this case, there were 1.8 seconds between the up, and the down.

Okay.

We started to wonder, what if we could find something that doesn't come down right away? Maybe there are things out there in the world that test this adage. If we can find those things, is there a chance, a teeny tiny chance, that we could disprove it? Even just a little bit.

Okay, well, what things?

The sweet sounds of New York. Well, we went outside to get inspired. I don't know if that's blood or ketchup. After a bit of haphazard research into things that go up in which... Okay, there's a pigeon on the ground. We chased pigeons. You chased them. I chased them. Okay. Hello. We're here to look for balloons. Got some Helium balloons. . And then... They're all dudes with their big pants. Annie even tried to talk to some skateboarders. Excuse us? Can we talk to you for a second? It was about jumping. Excuse us? Excuse us? Will you talk to us? Can we ask you a question? You guys don't want to talk to us? No? Okay. But then, it's a really pretty sunny day. As we were looking up at the sky, we thought, clouds. It looks like the Simpson. It does look like the Simpson. They're basically just water that is up. We wondered, how long does it take for water to leave the ground, rise up into the air, become a fluffy white cloud, and then come back down. There's rain. We looked it up, and the average is about 10 days.

Really? That's the lifespan of a cloud? Yeah. I never thought of that, the lifespan of a cloud. That actually doesn't seem that long.

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. Then there are these spiders that do this thing called ballooning, where they shoot out these long threads from their butts. Using the wind and the Earth's electric field, they lift off the ground and fly through air for hundreds of miles, traveling across cities, across deserts, across oceans. 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 You do have to eventually come down to land on top of your head.

Thank you. But okay, so max 25 days between up and down?

No lot of no-no, because then there's this Bird.

This little bird that can do something so amazing, it is just ridiculous. It is ridiculous. It is. Here's the thing about Swift's. This is natural history author, Scott Widen Saul, who told us about the common Swift. They are the most aerial of birds. 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. They eat nothing but flying insects. It's thought that the two hemispheres of their brain take turns sleeping so they can sleep while they fly. They are the only group of birds that mate on the wing.

Wait, it has sex in the air? How does it do that? Are they both flying?

Oh, yeah. I mean, pictures on the internet saying they're just stacked on each other in the air. They're just stacked. In the air, it's stacked. They're just stacked. Yeah. Okay. If they could figure out a way to carry an egg and incubate it on the wing, I'm sure they would do it.

Oh, because you can't lay an egg while you're doing it. Exactly. That would be a mistake.

Yes. When they migrate to Africa, from the 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. These birds lived up off the ground and don't come down again for 10 months of the year.

Ten months of the year?

Yes, it flies. It flies for 10 straight months.

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

They have stretched the thread connecting them to the ground absolutely to the breaking point. Wow. These birds, because they don't often need them, have very tiny legs and feet, so tiny that-They can't walk.

All they can do is cling. Wait, they can't walk at all?

No. It made us think 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 his way becoming a creature purely of the sky. But then we thought, what about us? Like, We have astronauts. You know the drill. Astronauts, unlike eggs or clouds or birds, they have rockets. Rockets that have taken them farther than any other species has gone before. And then Once they're up there, they can just stay up there.

You can have a really cool big space station that you can fly around.

Just totally floating, defying our adage with-I'm going to get Tim to spin me around.

Somersaults. Olympic caliber flip technique.

Back flips.

Then you can come right back up again.

They are truly up.

Like Superman.

Theoretically, if they had enough food and supplies, they could stay up there forever, never coming down again. In conclusion, we have found something that disproves the adage, and therefore, the adage is incorrect. Okay. We are on here. Yes.

At least that's what we thought.

Until we talked to Dr. Michelle Thaller. I am an astronomer and a science communicator. Who told us that, well, see, although it might look like the astronauts are up there floating? No. They're not.

They're not?

Absolutely not. No. They're not flying. They're not weightless. They're not in zero G. But instead, up there in the space station. 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. What? They're falling. They're falling? Yes. Every second of every day, they're up there. Their whole space containment, they're Their capsule, their space station. Everything's falling.

They are freely falling towards the Earth.

Oh, my God. If you've ever been on a really great roller coaster that drops, that thing, that is what they feel. They feel like they're falling. That's nauseating. Oh, yeah. Some people get very sick.

But then why don't they fall straight down and just smack into the Earth?

Well, Michelle says that these astronauts in the space station, they're not falling like how an egg falls when I throw it. Ready? Two, three. It's right up in the air. But more like if I took that egg and just threw it as hard as I could. As it's traveling, it is technically falling. It's being pulled down towards Earth, but it's also zooming forward, and so it travels a certain distance before it inevitably comes down. 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 keep curving around the Earth. Every second of every day that it's up there, it basically keeps missing the Earth, never landing Forever coming down and around, and down and around, and down and around. This wonderful stable path called an orbit.

But haven't we also shot things into space that did not go into orbit? We did this story on the Voyager probes, right? We literally shot them out of the whole solar system. Can't you say that those are just going up and up and up? They're not falling.

Well, actually, they are. Yes. According to Michelle, everything is in some way going down and around. The Earth is always falling towards the sun. The sun is falling towards the center of the galaxy, which is a big black hole. We go around the center of the galaxy at about half a million miles an hour. Right now, you are freely falling towards a giant black hole at half a million miles an hour. You personally, Maria Paz. You personally. And what's the galaxy falling towards? The galaxy is also freely falling. You got it. The Milky Way Galaxy is freely falling towards the middle of a galactic cluster at more than a million miles an hour. Don't you see? We're always falling. Nothing is holding you up. I just feel like throwing up.

Yeah, me too.

I really, really feel like throwing up.

Whoa. Uh. So is this one true or no?

Well, I think, yes, it is, but it's different than what we originally thought. When we started out, we thought down was falling on the pavement like an egg or falling to Earth as rain or landing on a branch like a bird, things go up, and then they must come down, and then they're down. But what we found is that all that stuff that appears to be down isn't really down, but it's actually in a perpetual state of coming down. So maybe it's not what goes up must come down, but really- Everything that is must come down forever.

That sounds depressing.

I don't know. I think it's really cool. It's almost as if we're on this rock, but we're just like those astronauts floating and summer-saulting and flying.

Like Superman. Forever.

And ever.

And ever. And ever. And ever. And ever. And ever. And ever. And ever.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Yeah, I guess so. But let's think about all the things that were invented by accident, where 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.

Big thanks to Chioke Iansson, who performed our voice of wisdom for this episode. Morgan Freeman was not available. If his voice sounds familiar, it's because he does the underwriting for NPR.

I spend most of my life as a disembodied voice.

Yeah, tell me about it. This episode was reported and produced by Alex Niesen, Simon Adler, Matt Kielte, Sinduniana Sammenden, W. Harry Fortuna, Annie McKeown, and Maria Paz Gutierrez.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. What are you saying here?

We need some space? It was edited by Alex Niesen and Pat Walters, fact-checked by Emily Krieger and Diane Kelly, and has original music and sound design by Jeremy Blue.

Good things come to those who wait.

This one I hate.

Awful things also come to those who wait. What are we doing here? What's happening?

Special thanks to Pamela Dark, Daniella Mercillo, and Jonathan Schouler, as well as Amanda Breen, Akmal Tajaran, Patrick Stephanie Lescheck, and Alexandria Iona from the Upright Citizens Brigade. 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 Bresler, Kim Warduang and Tom Friedmann.

I don't know that I would use any of these in my regular life.

Of course, thank you for listening. I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab. 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. So until then.

Hey, I'm Lemon, and I'm from Richmond, Indiana, and here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abamrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latsif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keef is our Director of Sound Design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Bekka Pressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Nianan Sambandan, Matt Kielte, Rebecca Lacks, Annie McKeel Alex Nissen, Sara Khari, Sarah Sandback, Anissa Vitsa, Erienne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Hi, my name is Teresa. I'm calling from Colchester in Asics, UK. Leadership support for Radiolabs Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, the Saymans Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P.

Sloan Foundation. Nyc Now delivers breaking news, top headlines, and in-depth coverage from WNYC and Gothamist every morning, midday, and evening. By sponsoring our programming, you'll reach a community of passionate listeners in an unclutter audio experience.

Visit sponsorship.

Wnyc. Org to learn more.