Radiolab - Breath

Episode Date: June 12, 2021

We’ve just barely made it to the other side of a year that took our collective breaths away. So more than ever we felt that this was the time to go deep on life’s rhythmic dance partner. Today we huff and we puff through a whole stack of stories about breath. We talk to scientists, musicians, activists, and breath mint experts, and try to climb into the very center of this thing we all do, are all doing right now, and now, and now.  This episode was reported and produced by Annie McEwen, Matt Kielty, and Molly Webster. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.   Further reading:  Alice Wong’s book Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories From the 21st Century Here’s a speech Alice gave when first referring to her body as an oracle.  And for more on ventilator allocation in NY State, check out this article by the Gothamist.    

Hey y'all, I just want to play you a promo for a project that's coming that we are very excited about starting next week actually. This is the story of a man who changed your world. Oh wow. Let's see, I would have claimed this brother right here. This dude's... Good God, why don't we have like three movies about this dude? Record owner, lawyer?

I mean, he's like the vocational Maghiver. Good God, why don't we have like three movies about this dude? Record owner, lawyer? I mean, he's like the vocational muggiver. This is how America invades the world. Like this is the greatest music of all time. But then? It's like, tooth. Vanished. Somebody pretending to be somebody that they're not.

I need to think about why, but when the chemo was telling me the story, all I could think was, oh, that's the white boy right there. That's hilarious to me. I don't know what can't be a story like that. This looks like a black man to me. I want you to see what I see. Once, I was in a festival and some guy came up to me and he said, what are you? What are you? My parents put me in front of a mirror. They said that I asked what am I. It's a story of an American riddle. It's a mystery.

Rapped in a family secret. It's a mystery. The vanishing of Harry Pace. A new mini series from the people that brought you Dolly Parton's America. Jada Boom. And Chimoli Eye. Coming soon to Radio Lab. That lands next week right here. Okay. Now onto the podcast. This podcast contains some content and language that might be upsetting for sensitive listeners or young children. And but we do hope you listen because it's pretty awesome.

And it comes to you from the duo of Annie McEwen and Matt Kielty. Oh wait, you're listening. Okay. Alright. Okay. Alright. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab.

From WNYC. You're listening. You're listening. You're listening. You're listening. You're listening. You're listening. You're listening. You're listening. W and Y Okay, so how should I start this thing? I don't know I mean what I've got oh probably a I think this all came out of a question that I had Oh, how does a baby take its first breath?

How does a baby like a fetus is spending all this time inside the womb, right? Right. And that is like a water world. But then it comes out of the mom and then all of a sudden it can breathe in this air world. That's a crazy transition. Yeah, it's weird. I guess I would assume the transition is essentially like water world breathing, water world

breathing. Born, it's weird. I guess I would assume the transition is essentially like water world breathing, water world breathing. Born. It's now just breathing differently. Okay, well, you find that at all. Are you at all curious or interested in finding out how it actually works? No, I think I got it. Okay. Well, I'm going to tell you because the true answer is totally bananas and I just could, I can't, anyway anyway I'll just tell you it. Tell me.

Okay so first just to set it up let's just review really quickly how you and I are breathing right now. Okay. So as you might remember from elementary school this whole thing is like a little dosi dough between the lungs and the heart. Okay so blue blood blood low in oxygen enters the right side of our heart. From there it gets pushed to the lungs, which are filling with air, oxygen hops on the blood,

CO2 hops off, poop, poop, poop. Returning to the heart, the blood is bright red in color because it is filled with oxygen. It's gonna enter the left side of the heart this time. Not the right, it's gonna go the other side of the heart. And then from there, the red blood gets fired out around the body. It's gonna go out the brain, our legs, our arms, our organs, which is like, gotta deliver its little oxygen parcels to all ourselves.

All ourselves. And one more thing. One thing to pay attention, so we have in our heart, so we have these two different sides to it, the right and the left. Yeah. Between those two sides is a wall, and the red and the blue blood just doesn't mix. Like, one side of the heart has the stuff that needs oxygen. The other side of the heart has the stuff that has oxygen.

Right. Okay, now we're gonna learn how a fetus in a womb breathes. It's very different. Right, I mean, the baby is surrounded by water. a womb breathes. It's very different. Right. I mean, the baby is surrounded by water. Pediatric infectious disease doctor Rishi decide. And it's lungs are full of water. Oh.

So, you're not going to get any oxygen from them, but that's okay because instead of course, for a fetus, the oxygen comes from... Mom. The mother. Right. She does the process you just laid out. Yep. And then... This wonderful oxygen blood. That's bright red.

Get sent down to the placenta. The placenta grabs the oxygen and puts it into the fetus blood. Okay, so things get a little weird here. Absolutely. Red blood leaves the placenta through the umbilical cord. Goes in the belly button. And then through a small special tube, baby tube, that you and I no longer have.

Weird. It gets shunted into a giant vein that zooms it up to the heart. It goes into the right atrium, which is where blood normally goes. Now, if it was you and me, this would then go to the lungs, but it doesn't go to the lungs because the lungs are just pretty much useless. The lungs are full of water, right? They're just hanging there, like these soggy raisins. The sense of disgusting.

So instead of going to the lungs, that blood goes through. Chopped or? Oh. There's a door. In the heart. In the heart? There's a door in the wall of the heart. Between the two atrium.

Left and right. And you and me, the two atria are completely separate, walled off, but in the baby, there is a special little door. Okay. And has a special little flap that opens one way. That little trap door is flopped open. So the blood all mixes together

and you've got this combination of fresh, you know, oxygenated blood from the placenta and old blood from the rest of the baby's body. Purpleish, munch blood, right? Which then gets pumped out to the rest of the baby's body, goes to the brain, goes to the legs, goes in nurtures itself, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Eventually, it gets back into the placenta

where the carbon dioxide hops off. And then mom will carry that in her blood to her own right atrium, and then to her own lungs, and then breed that out. Wow. Got it? Got it. Got it. Okay. So this system with a special baby tube and the trapdoor heart and the mixing blood and all that at the moment the baby is born has to somehow transform into the system that you and I have within seconds. Well. Okay, so let's go to or do you have any questions or can we go to labor? No, yeah, it all makes sense. Labor labor labor. Well. Okay, so let's go to, or do you have any questions?

Are we gonna go to labor? No, yeah, it all makes sense. Labor, labor, labor, okay. Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, labor begins. As mom's squeezing it as the baby's coming through the brisk canal, it's a little bit like ringing a towel dry. All that squeezing and squishing is pushing this water out of the baby's lungs and-

Into the baby's body. Wait, what? Like we just kind of like, absorb the water. Like our bodies are like, yooop. Internally. Yes! Weird. Okay, so labor labor labor,

squish, squish, squish, and then... Boom! Boom! The baby comes out of the mother. The moment a baby is born, it's extremely wet. And for the first time in its life, it's cold. It's never been cold before. Oh.

Actually, if babies aren't like dried and swaddled... The baby can lose a lot of heat right away and can die from hypothermia very quickly. Oh my God. I never thought of the shock that is. Yeah. But it's also useful. When that cold hits.

The skin sends little signals to the baby's breathing center in the nervous system. And this breathing center is just like waking up. It's like someone's wrapping loudly on its bedroom door like, wake up! Wake up! It's time! And it's like groggy and like, wait, what are we? Okay, as that's happening, the umbilical cord that has been supplying this baby, it's oxygen, it's nutrients, it's everything is-

Getting super tight. This thing already is beginning to close. That's insane. So, there's no blood coming in through that umbilical vein. That means there's no oxygen getting to the baby, but it also means that that CO2 in the body is beginning to build. The baby is suffocating. Well, a baby comes out and it looks blue, right?

It's blue because it's not breathing yet. It's like, it's never breathing its life. But this baby taking a breath, it has to happen. And it has to happen fast. Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide levels are rising. Until finally, that little breathing center woken up by the cold skin snaps into action. And all of a sudden, the brain triggers the baby's big breath, and with that breath, the nervous system's like, as the oxygen hits the lungs, all the downedness are followed. All the muscles keeping blood out of the heart.

The unison... Relax. Blood is just rushing into these lungs, picking up all this fresh oxygen. The lungs are opening up like two sails, filling with wind. The blood then rushes from the lungs back to the heart and as it enters the left side, that door that's been pushed open the whole time, slams shut. The wall is sealed. The heart is divided.

Now you've got no mixing anymore. That door will never open again. And that special baby tube I mentioned starts to close. Protein is kind of like sewing it shut. Wow. The baby is now breathing on its own. It's funny because it's like it is a little story of the necessity of trauma that like the deeply traumatic act of coming into existence in the air breathing land world. The like severity of it and the harshness of it forces you to adapt in order to survive.

Right. Right. Let me cover her up. Of course, that's just the first breath. Then there's another, and another, and another, and another, and another,

and another. All right. I'm Annie McEwen. I'm Matt Kielte. This is Radio Lab, and today we are going to do a show all about Breath About how after that first breath and the next and the next breath from the moment you are born to the moment you find yourself in Right now these breaths can be long they can be shallow they can be short they can be quick They can be harsh they can be quiet they can be soft

But like whatever they are they set some sort of like rhythm in our lives. Which makes you kind of wonder, like, where do those rhythms come from? And we just figured this sounds totally like a question for Molly Webster. Our senior correspondent. Yeah?

Oh no. Is that good? Yeah. All right. So I ended up talking to this guy, Mark Krasnoy, professor of biochemistry at Stanford University. Okay. Perfect. So Mark is a lung researcher. My favorite topic, it's like favorite topic, obviously. And we're going to pick up with him in like the early arts. Kind of a natural extension. So he actually has this question of just like, well, what is actually controlling the rhythm of the lungs?

Exactly. Like what makes you breathe? Exactly. Yeah. So he starts doing some research and he finds this paper that says, if you go down to the base of your brain. In what's called the brains down? It's kind of the space that goes up between that like,

or like the roots that you have at the back of your skull. Yeah, yeah, it's right, very deep below that. I can feel it right now. And it is right there. The mark learned that there is this little clump of neurons that are actually initiating each breath. With every single pulse, they send a signal down the spinal cord,

your diaphragm, and the tiny muscle between your ribs, telling them to expand, and then they send another signal, telling them to contract. And this is just what these neurons do. They are the pacemaker neuron. Huh. So there are 86 billion neurons in your brain and it is just as clump of maybe 8,000 that

do this very vital thing. That seems very small. It does seem very small, does it not? Yes. And so Mark came across this paper actually by this guy named Jack. I consider Jack the father of the field. Just a really quick Jack Feldman shout out. Wonderful.

But when Mark came across Jack's research, we found out about him. He just had this really simple question. Which was, hey, are all these neurons, are they all the same as one another, or are they different from one another? And so we started interrogating these neurons. And so he and some colleagues,

what they did was they started looking at this group of neurons. In a mouse brain. Under a microscope. And what it seemed to be, a uniform mass of beating. It turned out these neurons weren't all alike. There are over 50 different types. Really? Of a pacemaker neuron. Mark was just like, okay, weird. You know, why are they different than what do they do that's special? So to start, in mice, Mark decides to focus on the specific group. These 200 neuron from the breathing pacemaker. And basically with some molecules and a syringe.

We can very precisely remove just those neurons. And so Mark's team goes in, they shut down the 200 neurons, mouse is happy, mouse is alive, and basically what happens is mouse stops sighing. What? Which was like, whoa. So I didn't know this, but mice sig. And so that's just like saying like oh these 200 neurons control sigh And they are the only neuron apparently in the brain that have this

Specific function weird. Yes, and that's not all in another experiment. They knocked out again like 150 neurons and the rate of Again, like 150 neurons and the rate of exhalation changes. So like, you know how you can go like, and then you go, and you can say, I want to exhale for four seconds, or your body just doesn't naturally at some rhythm. They found that when they took out this one group of neurons, the rate of exhalation got much longer. And so they're like, oh, interesting. So they're starting to put together this little like visual map of like what all these different neurons do. They almost have a function, right? Yeah. So different. And so they, you know, go to another group of neurons.

No, roughly 150 neurons. Knock them out. But this time, very, very disappointing. Nothing happens. So like that's weird. Like, did really nothing change, you know? And they realize a few days later that something did change. That hey, these guys look... Relaxed. They are very calm.

They're just kind of licking their fur and hanging out in place. Chill. Melo. It's like what are these neurons? Gimmies, and they start looking at what the neurons are connected to. You know how neurons can have those long,

like tentacle projections, and those let them communicate with other neurons? And he realizes that where they actually go is directly to the fight or flight center of the brain. And so the story that they've put together So is directly to the fight or flight center of the brain. And so the story that they've put together is that this group of neurons, what it's probably doing is sending updates about the status of the breath pacemaker to the fight or flight region, saying like, we're working, everything's okay over here.

And they're like sending these little signals, giving it updates. And if something's wrong, they can send the things straight to fight or flight and be like, mayday, mayday, breath is a mess. Like breath is a mess, we need to fix it. I guess I think of it. Would it be the other way of like, you see something really scary,

fight or flight then sends a signal to the breath pacemaker being like pick up the pace. Well, so this starts where you can really start tripping off on some cool, gnarly things about breath. That's what I wanted to do. Let's do it. So I'm here for it.

Okay, let's do it. Great. So Mark walked me through this very cool thing. So there are two great pacemakers in our body. One that many people know about is the pacemaker of the heart, which beats every second. And it's located right in the organ that it controls. It's right there in the heart. So there's actually like pacemaker cells in your heart that do the rhythm of the beating.

Oh really? They're like directly on the organ that they make beat. That's crazy. But with breath, the other great pacemaker, it's located far from the organ that it controls. It's located in the brain. And once you put, once you put breath into the brain, you allow evolution to put more on the breath than just a mechanical function. Like it starts getting integrated into like the emotional centers of the brain and the anxiety centers of the brain. And those parts of the brain can impact and regulate breath, a sigh, and then there's a laugh or a cry, or even speech.

All of those, those are actually breathing. So yes, to answer your question, you see something scary, a signal gets sent from the fighter flight to the breath pacemaker saying, pick up the pace, you know. But what Mark's research shows is that it's going both ways, there's crosstalk, there's deep integration happening. And the other key aspect of the breathing pacemaker compared to the cardiac pacemaker is you can consciously control the breathing pacemaker. That's the injury. You can hold your breath at least for a certain period of time and you can change the output of the breathing paper so you can override and alter

the breathing pacemaker. Is that why like if, if I take like a... Ffff. Ffff. Ffff. Like a deep breath, I can actually calm myself down. Yeah, but that is the way that you're getting control of this communication between the breathing pace maker and the fight or flight neuron. Oh, and so in talking to Mark, pacemaker and the fight or flight neuron.

And so in talking to Mark, I feel like in a way, he almost gave me like a scalpel to get inside my own brain and control it. Like if I actually changed my breathing, it will change this breath pacemaker region and it will send an I'm chill signal to the fighter flight directly and it will calm down. Wow. It's like you cross a blood brain barrier and you're like on the ground floor communicating with the parts. Yeah, it just felt like, and so like last night when I kept waking up, like when I was sleeping, I was like, okay,

I'm just gonna breathe slowly, and then I'm just like almost like being like, hi, neurons. Like, I'm breathing solely now, so you can send the signal to the fighter flight that like, I'm okay. And like, I can like, conduct this whole system. I can work this system. I'm going to go to the next one. This next story is about when the system tries to conduct you. I saw it on Facebook.

It was a Facebook post with Mike Brown's body laying on the ground with his arms sticking out and his legs sticking out. You see Darren Wilson, who is the police officer who's standing over here looking down on it. You see Darren Wilson, who is the police officer who's standing over here looking down on him. So once I heard about what happened to Mike Brown, I say you, get yourself a revolution! I was out there. This is Justin Hansford.

He's a law professor at Howard University, and back in 2014, he was living just outside Ferguson. I was mostly curious at first. During the day, it was just a march. People chanting and singing and clapping their hands. But also, there are people who are very upset. They're yelling, they're screaming, they're crying. By the time, it starts to get dark,

police start telling people which way to walk, giving people orders. They're gonna go home. They actually have tanks on the streets, helicopters in the sky. Pretty soon after that. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. So you start seeing the gas.

It was screaming and pain, trying to rub their eyes. I just broke and bolted. But after that first night, Justin returned to the protests again and again. Yeah, I would go every day, especially during that first, what, 10, 14-day period. Whenever those canisters began to fly, whenever the tear gas came, he always did the same thing. I ran. He always did the same thing. My reign. I ended up talking to Justin because this past summer, seven years after his experience in Ferguson, at the height of the George Floyd demonstrations,

even if you weren't on the streets at night, every morning you were seeing pictures and videos of these massive clouds of smoke hanging over people. It really began to feel like every time there was a demonstration, or protest, or march, it would end with tear gas. And I couldn't stop wondering, like, how did we get here? How did we get to this place where the go-to weapon for police responding to these protests is this gas.

Hello? Hello. And the first thing that popped up was that it basically began in World War I. Right, first world war, you had trenches. I learned about all this from Anna Feigenbaum. I'm an associate professor of digital media and communication at Bournemouth University. And she says those trenches... They were like a protection and a trap, right?

People would just hide their trenches and then shoot at each other and then hide their trenches. It was really difficult to advance on either side. You couldn't move up on the enemy soldiers without getting shot. So both sides would just end up sitting there. So the question became,

how do we get the enemy soldiers out of their trenches? And the answer? Tear gas. Tear gas. Frans were the first to fire it according to the most agreed historical story of World War One. August 1914, the French fired tear gas grenades at the German line. Strange smoke crept across No Man's land and down into the trenches.

And given what tear gas does, we can imagine that the German soldiers started to rub their eyes and pain. Tears started streaming down their faces, and then as they breathed the smoke in, they began to cough. They coughed and coughed. Their throats started to burn. Their chests tightened up. And at that point, panic set in.

They left the safety of their trenches and began to run. And of course, then you can shoot them. The French opened fire. In this moment, sort of broke the seal for chemical warfare. Soon after, Germany brought chlorine gas and mustard fire. And this moment sort of broke the seal for chemical warfare. Soon after Germany brought chlorine gas and mustard gas, these far more harmful gases to the battlefield, other countries made and deployed their own gases, and eventually, gas just became this terror of World War I.

Right, so first world war ended, what happened? So you've got people who are like, all gas warfare is inhumane. It creates a kind of psychological trauma and torture of the psyche that is just not acceptable. And the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, you may have heard of it. I know all about it. This is like at the end of World War I, the Allies can be a third to figure out what to do about Germany, but at the same time, part of it was like, what do we do about gas?

Uh-huh. And it basically kicked off this whole debate, which would eventually get all these gases, including tear gas, banned from use in war. But one of the key things they did at the Treaty of Versailles was to make a distinction between the different gases. So there was a really bad kind. Like chlorine gas, which could just straight up kill people.

Yeah, they're not so bad-kind. Like tear gas, which eventually got labeled non-lethal. Right. And Anna says that distinction is really, really important. Because it left the door open for people to argue that even if we can't use tear gas in the trenches abroad, maybe we could use it on the streets back home. Okay, so fast forward to the end of the First World War. There's a recession. There's been a recent influx of black folks in northern cities looking for opportunities that they don't have down south and a lot of white soldiers just getting back from overseas

see these black folks as threats to their jobs and in dozens of different cities across the states, gangs of white men roamed the streets, burning black homes and businesses, and killing hundreds of black people. And black soldiers who'd also recently returned home from war were fighting back. This became known as the Red Summer of 1919, and in the midst of all of this,

there was also a wave of labor strikes, and some police forces began writing to the war department requesting tear gas. This is from the New York Police Department in August 1919. It has occurred to me that these gases might be an efficient agency in suppressing disorder. From the Department of Public Safety in Norfolk, Virginia in September. In this city where it's possible that we may have a great deal of trouble with a Negro element, such a device, I believe, would work to perfection. And the word department is like, no way. But these requests that said send us tear gas.

They kept coming. And in the meantime, there were people within the ward department who were thinking, maybe this isn't such a bad idea. In particular, there was a general named Amos Fries, who was a huge proponent of tear gas. And he and his networks started to arrange these big demos with these police departments. So he had like 200 police officers go out into a big field, you know, a bunch of police pretended to be the protesters and the other police were the police. The pretend protestor police got shot with tear gas and Amos Fries made sure there were some reporters there to see it.

In the article, there's these lines of like, the grown men were crying like babies. Showing that just by restricting their breath, he could dominate these guys, make them run or cower or give up. But the key part of his argument, the thing that made tear gas so special, was that... A couple hours later, everyone's going to be back to normal and fine, and you won't have any blood on your record. And as the riots and labor strikes and civil unrest continued, tear gas, this thing that could control a crowd without killing,

started to win the day. And if you search the archives of The New York Times around 1921, 1922, tear gas holds back mob, idle rids threatened a tear gas revolt. Tear gas stops riot. You start to see tear gas slowly seep into its pages. Police use tear gas to dislodge Mania. At first, it's only a few years to Bob's used on Princeton students.

Bob's scattered Detroit mob of 5,000, which masses before anti-clan media. But by the time you get into the 30s, Bob's route crowd of Negroes here and riot, there are hundreds of instances of tear gas being used all over the country. And so it got to the point where wherever there was a crowd of unhappy people, there was

tear gas. The civil rights movement, the anti-viet Namur protests, the anti-globalization summits, had lots of tear gas, occupy got super tear gas. And I talked to this guy at the Omega Research Foundation, his name is Neil Corny, and part of his job is looking into the use of tear gas worldwide. And he told me that in the last 10 years or so, the use of tear gas has just exploded. And that is also, of course, when the Black Lives Matter movement really, you know, began and picked up steam. And over that time, Justin Hansford kept showing up at protests.

He became a legal observer and even went on to accompany Mike Brown's family to Geneva to testify at the UN. And he says that he probably ran from tear gas about 30 times. There were times I could not escape it multiple times. Really the worst time for me I was actually in my car. Oh wow. I have asthma and you know a lot of especially black kids have asthma and in part because we've had to grow up. But anyway, I know that if I got tear gas

in a major way, it could be lights out. So I ran to my car and I couldn't drive through the protesters, because the protesters run the street. So I had to drive sort of perpendicular to get around where the protest was. Unfortunately, everybody was trying to do the same thing. So I was about one block over from where they had deployed the tear gas.

And I was stuck. I double-checked to make sure my windows were real. I tried to roll up more. I tried to turn off my vents. I knew when the tear gas had entered the car because I could recognize the smell. Almost like laundry detergent, but it's more pungent. I was panicking a bit because I didn't have my inhaler on me at the time. Damn. Like I covered my mouth but I knew that it wasn't much I could do. I was coughing a lot. I was coughing

uncontrollably. Here's where coming down. I never knew if it would just hit. Like I'd have asthma attack and just hit, just panic. As his chest clenched and tightened, as he struggled to breathe. You're in flight mode. Like you're frantically searching for what's going to keep you alive and you're not finding it. It's sort of impossible hearing this story to not think about that phrase, I can't breathe. Let's become a rallying cry for the whole movement. It's sort of sitting over all of this as both a metaphor

and literal experience. Yeah, I mean, it's seared into our minds because the phrase was repeated. It gets repeated in people's final moments of their life. It's seared into our minds because the phrase was repeated. It gets repeated and then people's final moments of their life. Eric Gardner and George Floyd, those were their last words, and that the chokehold and that position of putting someone prone on the ground with your knee on their back,

even if it interferes with their breath. So the panic in that moment is in his body, but also in the world he lives in, and his history. You know, we have a history of lynching in this country. People hanging from trees couldn't breathe. It was often a typo suffocation that happened in our history as a little legacy of that. Always a choking. And all of that settles on Justin in that moment in the car. I sort of just put my head down and sort of just steal myself to take whatever's going to take place. He says it was in some way a feeling of resignation.

I was resigned. I have to be honest with you. But also resolve. Imagine me driving with my hands on a steering wheel, I smell it and I just hang my head and just like take my head and just say, all right now, here we go. So, um. I wish there was like a lighter question I can now ask you. Yeah, it's something like. What do you do to feel better? What do you do to unplug and relax or do you not? Like, do you just write papers or do you have like, do you have a cat? Like, what do you do?

I don't know. Oh, you know what I like to go jogging, especially if it's warm outside and there's sun what I like to go jogging, and especially if it's warm outside and there's sun, and I listen to some music. I like to jog when it's very sunny out. I'd like to get out there early in the morning, listen to the birds sing for a little while, then just turn up the janitor jackson

and just make it happen. make it happen. And keep him with something lighter. Matt, do you know what you're talking about? Do you have any idea what you're talking about? Did it turn out that no, he didn't. Yeah. Wait, who are you? I have no idea who you are. Maybe me?

Yeah, maybe we should back up. If you could just say who you are. Okay, so like when do you want me to start doing like now? Yeah. Five, four. You guys are nuts. Okay, so I'm Marcia Mogulansk and the director of insight at Mintele Food and Drink.

Director of insight. Insight, yes. What is the director of insight? A person who sits on the phone with people like you and talks about where myths came from. Which is sort of true because Marcia works for this market research analytics company. And she's in the food department. I am the category expert for confectionery.

So I'm in charge of chocolate gum and mints. Yes, this is like the perfect job. Like when you started, what jumped out to you about mints? What was interesting to me is the line between a mint, a candy, and a breath freshener is very fuzzy unless you're going for breath freshening strips. What we used to squirt into our mouths, I don't know if it even existed. Oh my god. Like, bonacca?

Oh, bonacca. Bonacca was great. And then there were those list-dreamed breath freshenes. Oh, those are good. Those, Bonacca. Bonacca was great. And then there were those, um, listarine breast breast. Oh, those are good. Those are good. Those are really weird. Yeah. They were really weird and they were gross tasting.

That's how I was. That feels like it's a market innovation though. I mean, it was when it was first launched, but, um, it doesn't really exist anymore. It's been replaced by other innovations. What's, what are the new ones? It was a hot thing right now. Just minty flavored strong, minty flavored, everything. Like those alt-hoids that come in strong minty flavors.

But this is a really small slice, really small slice of the confectionery industry. This is not, you know, stop traffic. We've got new mint because it is intended for two purposes. Basically, well, maybe three. Number one is breath-freshening. Number one is breast freshening. Number two is to wake yourself up because you're having a slump and you're really bored.

So you reach for something little at your desk, you're not gonna eat a bag of Doritos if you're having a slump. Speak for yourself. Yeah, exactly. But most people are looking for a pick me up. And that pick me up could be a chocolate. It could be a cookie.

It could be just a mint because you don't want to have anything too big. You just want something different. You want something that you want. And the mint is like kind of stimulates. It stimulates. It stimulates. Or you want something that it chew on,

which is to get rid of nervous tension or stop yourself from doing something worse, like eating or smoking. Right. And number four is kissing. Well, yes, of course. Okay, well, so last time we spoke, you had said something that totally surprised me, because I just called you up being like, I don't know, breath, breath,

breath, minutes, what, like what's going on. And you said that the market is down. Yeah, the market for mince and gum, sales have declined. Why have sales declined? It's not, because we all want to have stinky breath breath Well, that might be part of it But the major reason is those are really impulse purchases on the way to work Getting on the train before you get on the train. There's a kiosk right by the subway stop You go, oh, I could use some mince my my breath's from that little stinky So you pick up a pack of jimins and you throw them in your purse or your pocket or whatever All right, that doesn't happen anymore because no one's going anywhere a package of minced meat through all of your purse or your pocket or whatever. Right.

That doesn't happen anymore because no one's going anywhere because you see them and you realize there is a need. And the need is you have to freshen your breath. You have to freshen your breath because you're going to go have some very garlicky food for supper and then you're going on a date afterwards. Or you're going to work and you have a big meeting and you're gonna have to meet the boss, but you happened to have had garlic chicken for lunch, which was a big mistake, believe me.

I'm really everywhere. Or you're at the bar and you have a drink and then you meet someone and you wanna talk to them and you don't wanna appear like you've been drinking. You wanna have fresher breath. Oh yeah, at the bar I wasn't drinking I swear. You can't you tell by my spearman breath. I haven't been drinking at all.

Exactly. You don't normally have them, but suddenly you have a reason to buy them. It's not a planned purchase. It's usually an impromptu purchase. There's also something like the idea of breathments or something hopeful about that. Like you reach for it because you have a date later or because you have a meeting later or there's like, you're going to be a person in the world and this is going to help you. It's going to be like, you're a cyst or your lifesaver or like, you know, whatever.

And so like, and this lack of reaching for these little hopeful things that will like, you know, push us to be that much better in our day or that much more confident. It's like just interesting that we're at that time. And I think that things will improve. I think that this has just been a blip in the general universe of things. This has been a whole sale change in people's behaviors that people just did not anticipate. No one ever thought we would grind to a halt where we spent the past year staring at our own four walls

and not meeting people and going to the movies, going to concerts, going shopping, going socializing, all that stuff just ground to a halt. But I think that things will improve. I think that people are going to be desperate to resume. It's going to be poppin' men's like crazy. Oh, yes. Neesin' their way from here to there. So you guys seriously don't sneeze when you eat a strong mint. I do like the idea though of like the sign that

we've we're getting out of the darkness is the breath mint rebounding. Yeah. Yeah. I ended up calling another retail sales firm. It told me that in the pandemic, mint sales dropped by 40%, but that since March with each passing day, they started to see mint sales, take back up. Okay, I'm going to count down from 10. I will stop the count down at 3. Everybody ready? Here we go. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3. We're going to keep breathing. Just after this man holds this note for as long as he can. Be right back. This is Angela Babiar's from San Jose, California. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.

More information about Sloan at www.Sloan.org Science Recording on Radio Lab is supported in part by Science Sandbox. A Science Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I said the disturbance in the air, but just your stider. Something is not right, if it is yet. Flames are liquid, the bottom the trees. The trees have miles away. From my home as ever sister, the artist has a wildfire coming before most people because of how by respiratory systems builds. By diaphragm which is slowly beginning over time, it gives you a higher sensitivity to do secrets

in the air. Because my diaphragm is weak, do I use a ventilator to help me push the air out of my thoughts? To without this machine, to my OCO2 would gather my body. Did I have a dime slowly from a buildup to a acidic blood? This really happened when I was 18. And this really happened when I was hit. Dear first experienced respiratory failure. But brave with fuzzy, dear hit the ER. I remember seeing my heart through your blood draw.

To my body, starved of oxygen. I should have done it thick and black to have thick. But I could fall my way back. They lived until the day of death. That is, if you are willing to the sick. Don't let the corrode of virus approach out. There are better states for most people like me to adhere a machine to breathe. Don't throw it down all of this. Don't lose the survey to survey critical treatments.

They're a New Yorker would even further. They're according to the ventilator allergy check guidelines, to all the New York State Department of Health websites. The existing hospitals are allowed to take people's personal ventilators. It gives them to other patients the types of triage if they seek a cure. It is it that they can still run for people like me. It gives them to others. They give them to others. But by bodies, they're the state-grossed project, the hydro-rural. It's not just the distant flames,

that I just see before you, but it's a cruel path that calculates the value of by- my life and outer rhythm of respectability to the weather you realize your thoughts, to get your hope for you as well. By David's Alice War, did I would disable activist or writer to edit all the retro images? Okay, so this next thing comes from... Yeah, you sound great. All right.

Writer, mostly secret. Who typically does pretty serious journalism? Yeah, I mean, I have mostly done investigative reporting or end-up narrative writing on issues of race or issues of criminal justice. And man, this just sounds like fun. Yeah, I'm not sure that. Yeah.

But I will say that this did not end up being a totally silly thing. So, thing begins. Maybe two or three years ago, there was this video that went around. Bunk flex, I'm here. From Funkmaster Flex's show on Hot & N-7. Hashtag freestyle. And just set up the significance of what you're about to hear.

So Flex, he's got a radio show, a lot of rappers come on. And it's a regular feature that Funkmaster Flex has where people kind of come on in freestyle. Young and May here, about to shut it down on a Funk's flex show. And there are a lot of people who are, hey man, ain't looking with the hood of the young with my main don't you.

A lot of younger newer rappers who come on and you know who we're doing something, I think they're doing something. Oh, season. We've got to do something about the go crazy. Think they're doing something. Because in these freestyle, jit, uh huh. Which of any, very good. go crazy. Think they're doing something. Because in these freestyle's, shit.

Would you say they're very good? There are moments of rappers who are kind of stalling out. rappers who want to do multiple takes, rappers who can only go for like a minute or two. And so they're like, okay, let's bring in the OG and show them how it's done. I mean, looks, I like to answer people's demands. I like to come through it what they asked me for.

So this video is a video of black thought is here. The rapper black thought, and we're gonna, you know what we do in this position. He's sitting on desk next to Flex. He's got on a page for Dora, some glasses. Let's go, Ernst. And you just kind of like destroys it. Oh, I'm sorry for your loss, this is somebody dead in the car.

And it's probably one of yours. The writing all across the window, when the walls, whether it was true or false, we shouldn't have got involved. Remember, we walked past the teacher, take the talk and laugh. We wrote punishments. I will not talk in class. Now it's pistol's punishment. People for talking fast.

And all these innocent bystanders is all in ass. And white unfolds in this freestyle is 10 minutes of him not missing a beat. And the beat was very fast and the rhymes were like intricate. And what you start to see in this video is that the beat was very fast and the rhymes were I was making major moves, my dollar days are voodoo, my mission when my ambition was brandishing to be a icon When slippers made a python get mine. And what you start to see in this video as as black thought keeps going is like about Three minutes in you can kind of see this motion in his body like he starts to almost like bounce in his seat at about five minutes He breaks the sweat. By six minutes, the sweat is just dripping down his face. By seven minutes, you're just like, this guy's entering a trance.

By eight minutes, he can see Flex's face, just like, to live. By 8 minutes he can see Flex's face just like, oh shit, by 9 minutes you can tell he's just like, pushing it out. I'm a bull inside a china shop, Molly Wap, I watch another cop, I'm pickin' body job. Every time we rock, your neck, I'm a black guy. And finally, just under 10 minutes, 10 minutes straight, black thought lands this freestyle.

Into much data, I tell a story like fingerprints and blust flatter. You see what it is, black door, thump flicks, one motherfucking tape. this freestyle. And after that, there are all these discussions like, oh, you know, like, is he one of the greatest rappers of all time? Do we not know this? And I was talking to some friends about it. Like a lot of people were talking about it. And like one of my friends was like, well, you know, he can do that because he can

circular breathe. And I was like, huh, that sounds crazy that he can circular breathe while wrapping. Um, I was just like, oh, okay, that explains it. That explains it. Because for Mosy, he knew the power of circular breathing. As a kid, Mosy got really into jazz when he picked up the saxophone. And I was, in the beginning beginning I was really into horn players. You know, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, these tenor saxophone players.

These guys became heroes because that's what I was trying to learn. And so as a kid, he had heard about circular breathing. I almost had this mythic quality, like this kind of superhuman uncanny ability that some people have to sustain sound for minutes and minutes or hours and hours. Like, sunny Rollins, I knew that he could do it. Kind of do these solo improvisations,

and they were incredible. And mostly I was like, if you could just learn how to get there, learn this technique, you could enter this other realm. But that was not the best practiceer. And I also just had this feeling that people were listening to me and I felt a little embarrassed that I wasn't good yet.

So... Eventually, he put down the sax. So I hadn't thought about saxophone or a circular breathing for a long time. But then, for flex, I'm here. Huh, that sounds crazy. And so, talking about this episode that you guys are doing.

Most he pitched the story about the freestyle, about circular breathing. We were just like, yeah. So I think he went off reporting, basically internet research ended up on Reddit. On this, like I read this subreddit where it's like, oh my God, did you guys see that flow? You know why he can do that?

It's because he can circle to breathe. And then people are like, oh man, that's so amazing. That's why he's so great. And then there, you know, like a few posts down, there's somebody who comes in, he's like, well, actually I play clarinet and it is technically impossible. It is actually impossible for one to use circular breathing while speaking.

Huh. Yeah. And I'll just say it really quick. In hindsight, we went back and watched the Black Thought video. And it was just like, ooh, we walk past each other. He's breathing all the time. This is just super cut. This is super cut in breathing.

And I didn't count the breaths, but it's like a lot of, clearly a lot of breaths. He's just like breathing like a normal person by doing this extraordinary thing. Yes. The artistry there is amazing. So like, he's a genius, but he's not doing the crazy, godly, mythic thing of circular breathing.

But then, Mahaseed dropped another bomb. From what I understand, like most horn players can do it. Yeah. I know, sorry. Not why. No, it's quite so exciting. I mean, there are videos on YouTube showing you how to do it. I know sorry I mean there are videos on on YouTube showing you how to do it. So like in Kenny G's how to video on YouTube You have to watch the

Hello, it's Kenny G here. Welcome to the Rico website because Just everything about it says, you know, 1990 Smooth Jazz, EMG. And it's called circular breathing. It's where you hold a note and you actually breathe while you're still sustaining the sound. But anyway, this is what happens when you do it right, okay? And then there's stuff, you know, like like so what is circular breathing? You can circular breathe in 10 minutes. Oh, that's easy to do.

You can practice it. It comes really, really quickly. So you can see how I'm breathing through that. I'm not out of air. Now, so it is there is like a little bit of like, oh, I could have been doing this when I was 12, you know, like, damn, this is a lot easier than I thought it was. But, is it really? More people!

How's it going? So, Annie and I went out into the world. We're at the Brooklyn Music School in downtown Brooklyn. To a room at the Brooklyn Music School, which had a little vibraphone, piano, and also... ...some floutists. There were three of them. Your name is... My name is Adelaide.

I'm Matt, nice to meet you. There was Addy. My name is Sadie Lou. Sadie Lou. And I like water, really. So Addy, Sadie Lou, both 10 years old. Oh, and Hana, Hana, how old are you? 12.

And Hana, the 12-year-old. And which grade is that? 7th. Also, there was Shia, the flute instructor, and Hana, Hana, how old are you? 12. And Hana, the 12 year old. And which grade is that? 7th. Also there was shy of the fluid instructor and a couple of parents. Did your parents explain to you what we're trying to do? Do you know that circular breathing? No. I think it's like breathing, like a breathing technique

where you're breathing with your nose and your mouth at the same time. Exactly. Yeah, well I can actually kind of tell you how to do it. Okay. So most you try to teach us how to do it, we try to teach the kids. Okay, maybe we should take a second, practice step one.

So if you just blow up your cheeks. Put some air in your mouth cheeks. And then breathe through your nose while you have that air in your cheeks. Uh-huh. Okay, well we got some fast learners. Okay, does everybody feel good about step one? Yes.

The second thing that you will do is while you have your cheeks blown up, use your fingers to press in your cheeks. Squeezing the air out of your cheeks. Out of your cheeks. Out of your taut lips. Very elegant little slowly I should say. And so the skill is learning to force that air out of your mouth with your cheek muscle. Wow! Rather than with your fingers. And you are doing that at the same time as you were inhaling. doing that at the same time as you were inhaling. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay, how do we feel about step two? Okay, great. And then the last part is, which is where it gets really difficult. How do you refill the cheeks? Exactly. How do you refill the cheeks? So, one of the things that we need for this is a straw.

So, there's three straws. And this is the really tricky part is you have to, while you're pushing the air out with your cheek muscles, you have to inhale to get some more air back in there and you just keep it going. Continue as flow. Also, I will hand out, I will hand out jars of water. So now you get a glass, you fill it half with water, you fill your cheeks with air, blow through the straw into the water, and the way that you know that you're doing it correctly is that the water obviously will bubble and you want those bubbles to continue.

Forever. Yeah, forever. Okay, I'll start at three. Three, two, one, break. And what we saw was our two 10-year-olds, God love them after about 20 seconds when their faces were just like peer pushing out air. They took a breath. But then we noticed, are you already doing it?

Our 12-year-old Hana was totally doing it. What? I think you got it. Look at that. Oh my gosh. She has got big balls earlier. Shia the Flutenstrucker picked it up. You're mom's champion.

Eddie's mom got it. She wants to stop. Take that. Mom, that was great. Awesome. Nice job. So yeah, circular breathing. Easy PC fun for the whole family. Although I will say that actually doing it on the flute proved really hard. And to be fair, you only took about 20 years to kind of get it okay.

Kenny G said, took him a long time to master it. But yeah, it turns out it's pretty simple. Yeah. I'm just I'm just wondering given that and the sort of let down of black thought and horn players and whatnot. Like was there anything in your reporting that sort of jumped out to you? Well, I think that, I mean, a lot of it has to do with the idea of the breath. So like in Western music, especially, or Western theory kind of revolves around the phrase, the musical phrase, and the phrase is something that really is modeled on the human voice and on breath. So there is something that begins and there is something that ends. And one's breath and one's phrasing is highly personal and it is like, it is the signature.

It is the way you breathe, the way you speak is what makes your music musically yours. You know, it's interesting. I haven't really ever considered the way in which my breath is intrinsically tied to my speech and the way that that's like distinct in some way. Yeah, yeah. It made me think about the way in which it defines me, or the way in which it is kind of a signature of mine,

the way that I have a rhythm, there's a rhythm to the way that I speak, which is entirely my own, and there's a rhythm to the way that you speak that is entirely your own, and that it might even be possible to recognize that rhythm absent the words that I'm uttering. That I'm uttering, you know that,

that there's something, that there's a sound that we produce with our breath that is so kind of innately hours that, yeah, it's almost like a fingerprint. Right. And then it becomes this really interesting tension of then how do you escape that or how can you? And so circular breathing then becomes this way of, okay, if this is my limitation, who am I or what am I if I don't have that limitation

and if I can kind of sustain my breath indefinitely? ... ... So this is the piece, Motopropetua, which was this violin solo known to be kind of one of the hardest passages in classical music. And in the 1960s, Raphael Mendez came across it, implated for trumpet. This version is a version by Winton Marcellus. And it's like four minutes of just unbroken, very high tempo sound. ... That's two minutes. ... ... Three minutes. And just keeps going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, Say it out I don't know how to split your melon Close that to split your melon Close that to split your melon Melan the new day, do it, shoot it, shoot it It's a new day, don't understand the point you did I'm new day, do it, shoot it, shoot it It's a new day, don't understand the point you did

This one grows that to split your melon Close that to split your melon Close that to split your melon Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha which. I didn't die, I'm just lying here. Nothing to do this after. I have a thought. Let's talk about Draft. So we told Robert what we were up to with this breath show. And he came back to us with a tale of a time when the air was so different that the creatures who breathed it were literally so different that the creatures who breathed it were literally transformed. Okay, so we're talking about 350 million years ago or so. Yeah, the world at that time was wet and warm and very swampy. And covered in forests filled with very weird looking trees. Skinny but very tall, like pencils with a little like a chicken on top or something like a little feather head sort of top. And of course what a tree does

is it takes in CO2 and pumps out oxygen. So this oxygen flowing into the sky I mean great amounts because there's so many trees. Today our atmosphere is 21 percent oxygen but back then the amount of oxygen in the air is something like 31 or 32%, or something like that. That's an oxygen-rich, that would be like going into one of those, you know, into a greenhouse where you feel that very pleasant sensation of just very clear, I don't know, heavy air that you can feel in a greenhouse. That's the whole world was like that at the time. How is that way a greenhouse feels like that? Super- in a greenhouse, that's the whole world was like that. Oh, is that way? And greenhouse feels like that?

Yeah, yeah. You're getting a little oxygen high when you go into a greenhouse. It's a little bit like maybe wearing a terry cloth robe and a really nice four seasons hotel. It's like, you get gorgeous air. Luxury air. It's just how we just feel, you finally feel pampered, I guess it's better to imagine. It's sort of nice to like imagine squishing through that moist, warm forest feeling like you're

wearing a tarry cloth robe at all times. But now you might not want to do that because of what all this oxygen has done to the bugs. Oh yeah, you see something very startling going on. And real quick, to understand the startling thing, you have to know that both back then and today, bugs don't have lungs. No, they don't. Instead, they have these little holes all over them, like a polka dot kind of outside.

And they get the air and thus the oxygen into their bodies through these holes. So breathing for a bug is... The equivalent of opening a window. You just open your valve and you wait. Air drifts into the holes and the oxygen in the air feeds the insect cells. Now because the oxygen is just sort of drifting rather than traveling through veins, the cells closer to the surface, closer to the window, get more oxygen. And so, if there's not that much oxygen in the air, you have to make sure all your cells are really close to the surface, meaning you have to be little.

But, when oxygen levels were 30-something percent... The chances of a hungry cell in your body getting a meal has just gone up. And if more cells can feed, then you can grow bigger. In bigger, in bigger, in bigger. There's a spider from that period, which, you know, and spiders are very leaky animals, but how about a leg that's a foot and a half? You just like pat them on the head as you pass them by.

There's a dragonfly that had a wingspan that's about two feet across. Oh dear, you can't just think about that. That's like a fiego in the form of a dragonfly. So that would be so weird. Wow. They have a millipede. There was one that was eaten in a half feet long. Oh my god.

Actually, it might have been more like 7 feet long, but still. It would be like a gigantic crocodile in the form of a millipede. You could just lie on one and read a book as it like slithered a lot. Yes, it could be a bus you take to the next side of the forest. It was back. It was back. Yeah. Hmm.

I guess like, you're a bug, what's in the air, like totally defines you, or like sets your physical boundaries, right? Because like, because there's so much oxygen in the air. Um, that's Rick Burns. Hey, I'm doing an interview, can I call you back later? Okay. Some things never change. That's true. I have never figured out how I never remembered to turn off the phone. Or we go do these things.

So four years ago is actually when we first thought about doing this episode. And the reason the impetus for that was actually because of this small piece of tape that we heard. The sound of a breath. Do you do anything else? Yeah, I feel like I've been partying. And that breath came to us from a New York Times audio producer, Annie Brown. Yeah. This came about because I was applying for a job at the New York Times.

This is 2017. And I got an assignment that I had to find a story that was about controlling an urge or an impulse that was surprising and gave you some kind of instructions on how to do it. And I really wanted to get this job, and I found these two people who figured out that controlling the urge to breathe was largely psychological. That actually, it's like really not a physical thing. So.

Okay. The two people any found are these free divers who live in Canada. They're just like the most famous trainers of breath holding. And Annie flew out to Canada, spent a day training with them in their house, and then went to her hotel pool. The comfort in on Vancouver Island. So, um, with her instructor Kirk,

it's kind of goes through a little bit of a briefing, so really just to kind of get us comfortable. And so Annie's standing next to the pool. I got on a hooded wetsuit. The place of reeks of chlorine. And like the air is so thick, you know? It's just that kind of like, it's so familiar to me. Are you a swimmer?

Yeah. Okay. Like that's how it feels on the pool deck. That's how it felt in that meet. I went, you know, it's just like, that is a very familiar feeling. Okay, so let's find that doubt. So she gets in the pool. I wouldn't say standing, we want to out-call her both.

Be a boat like that, right? Good depth, come. Yeah, okay. So I'm on the side of the pool. I am just trying to relax. And so I'm like, doing my legs slow, breath, to calm my heart right down.

Nice and relaxed. Now, most people can hold a breath for about a minute or two. But beyond that, what happens is carbon dioxide starts to build up in your body, and your brain starts to panic. It'll try and get you to inhale and exhale before it shuts down. Amy was trying to hold her breath for over three minutes. In ten seconds.

And then it's like, okay time to take a big breath in. And five, four, three, two, one. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh One. Like drop my hands from the side of the pool and just let myself fall into the water. So I'm face down in the pool, like arms, arms floating by my side, just floating there. Like a piece of jello, you're just jiggling in the water. I was like, this is amazing! And like I felt good through like a minute and a half, where I was like, like, tapped for like one minute, give me a signal and I was like still feeling pretty good.

And I moved my finger and I show him that I'm okay. And then I get my first contraction. Your body starts to demand to breathe by contracting the diaphragm. So you start getting these convulsions in your belly that feel like hiccups. It's like and it's like okay. Okay, um, the keep relaxing. Stage by stage, like your shins relax them, your knees relax them, your thighs relax them. And then they're coming more and more frequently.

But also, there's this voice. You didn't get a good breath in, you're not going to make it, you're the worst at this. And so, just like go back to the toes and the ankles and the shins and the knees and the stomach and the arms and the ankles and the shins and the knees and the stomach and the arms and the shoulders and the mouth. Two minutes. And then Kirk. I want you to go on a vacation. Talks me through packing for this vacation.

You're going to go to Europe. You're going to grab your luggage and you're going gonna pack everything you need to go to Paris. Paris for two weeks. And I was really doing it where I was like, okay, my luggage is under the bed and I'm gonna pull it out and unzip it. Oh, and relax. It's like, okay, what do I, I don't know what I'm gonna bring. I'm definitely gonna bring that coat. That was like, okay, I screwed my coat and I was really trying to pack this coat. Okay, I got my luggage, pull it out, unzipping it.

I don't know what shirt to back, okay, the- I can't do this packing thing anymore. And then it was just like- You're just fighting. You're just holding on. Ehh! I'm gonna make it worse at at this you are a fucking idiot. You are so dumb. Why did you do this? Like you're so bad at everything you've ever tried and then I was like oh Madeline

Like I saw her from above her head in the water and Then I was like oh my my God, this, this is this, it's this. So Annie grew up with two sisters, the oldest was Madeline. And she had epilepsy. And so starting at like age 10 or 12, she started having seizures sort of just randomly, you know, what happened at a, when something really exciting was happening, she'd be at a school dance or she'd be at the football game of the year. And eventually she started taking medication to control the seizures. But after you have seizures and are the kid who's convulsing on the floor like you just kind of can't get any less cool than that So she was just like the most unabashedly herself person in the world like we we all share to a Toyota Camry in

High school, I like that was the one car for the three girls to drive. Yeah, the three girls to drive But she got a vanity license plate that said mad dog Wow, and then she got a vanity license plate that said mad dog. Wow. And then she got a fun, fun, fun steering wheel cover. But the big thing that Madeline did, actually all the girls did is swim. I was a bad swimmer. But Madeline was the swimmer she loved to swim.

And she was a butterfly. Oh, cool. Yes, she was super strong, like much stronger than me. And like just got super fast and was so committed to it. Eventually she got recruited to swim in a college in Atlanta. She did that her freshman year. Yeah.

How did you find out what happened to her? I was at home getting ready for the snowball dance. Because you're still in high school. Still in high school. I was a junior and that was the night of the big dance. Annie was getting ready. And my parents just kind of yelled, like we're going to the hospital.

Madeline is sick. And you know, she had had seizures so many times and been in the hospital so many times that I was just kind of like, okay, like, you know, like here we go. They left the house, drove to the hospital. And before we walked into the emergency room, they told my mom that she was in a coma

and my mom just like, she just like collapsed. Madeline had been found in the college swimming pool face down in the water. There wasn't a lifeguard on duty. So just like an adult swimmer who had come in to do his own laps just like noticed her. And we don't really know what happened. She likely had a seizure and fell in the pool. Any inner family basically moved into the hospital. And it was the morning of the fourth day and I really didn't want it to end.

I really didn't want to. I was like, let's just give it another day. But the doctor was like, she's not coming back. The rest of the day, I drove home with my dad and I just kept on repeating to myself like, my sister died today Today my sister died And we got home

Everything looks different Everything looked like it had been moved around And I sat in the living room and I was just like Everything looked like it had been moved around. I sat in the living room and I was just like, Madeline died today. And so there any was in this pool. This voice is not gonna make it or the worst at this. Getting louder and louder. Fucking idiot, you're gonna die. And it was after three minutes of having

not taken a breath. I was like, oh, Madeline. And I suddenly like was her floating there. And then I was just like, I gotta come up. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, And like, it was like in the tape, there's no like acknowledgement of the like terror. But it is weird. It's like I felt so like, yeah, coming, I guess very strange, a series of like, of emotions. After all this was over, and he said when she was thinking about Madeline coming to her in the water, she kept coming back to this question. What was the point of that? Like, why did you do it?

And what did you learn? And while in some way it was just this thing she was doing to get a job, this story about controlling an impulse or an urge. She realized that in her reaction to Madeline's death, there was also an impulse, a voice that would come to her in moments of pain and sorrow, not totally unlike the voice she heard in the pool. Like, why wasn't either one who died? You know, like, and she was so good, like, why wasn't it me? She should be alive, and I should have been the one who died.

And he says, in the years since Madeline died, she's learned how to push that voice away. But she did say that moment in the pool gave her another way to push it. And like uncovered a muscle. She didn't totally know that she had. If you can learn to not trust that voice, you know, and really put it down, that it can get better.

And hopefully it just means I can do it more, you know, that when those things come up, recognizing them as this unnecessary voice. And getting past that voice, and he said, let's you push through the grief or maybe just like settle into it in a way that lets you heal. It feels like we can enjoy the memories of her more. Like you can like enjoy just who she was and where like it's like just a like a memory of her that can like, that can be like a blanket that I can pull out and wrap around me

and put back in the closet. So like, I went to one of her swim meets in college and that was, that was about a week before she died and she died in that pool. Sorry. I went to see her. See her swim because she was trying to get these big qualifying times. And so I drove over to Emory because we lived in Atlanta. And it was

a, I think, like, a Saturday morning. And I was watching her, you know, she's like super focused before she goes in the pool. And she, like, gets on the stand and dives in. And like, she's just going so much, her splits are so much faster than they've been in the past. And I think she's going to get these times. And these times and she got them. And she doesn't know that I'm there. And I made my way down to the pool, which you're really not supposed to go on the pool deck, because it's like for some reason,

and I'm not a swimmer anymore. Now I'm in the theater, where I belong. And I made it down to the pool and just kind of like slipped by the people and was on the pool deck like trying to find her and she was in the warm down pool. So she's just swimming and I'm like trying to yell at her and she like doesn't see me and she does her, you know, her flip turn and flip turn. And I finally just like kind of whack her as she does the flip turn and she looks up at me and she goes, ah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful.

I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it.

I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful.

I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful.

I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. This episode was reported and produced by us along with Molly Webster. With production help from Karin Lyong and Sarahari. Reporting help from Sarah Kari, Alex Nisen, Lou Miller, lots of Nasr, Johnny Moens. This episode had sound design from Jeremy Bloom and voice work from David Gable and Alexander Richie. Okay, special thanks. Special thanks to a lot of people, Kevin Burke,

Ren Ferrell, Antonio Sarajito, Cisco Grazia, Joe Arena, Pervine, Juari Lau. Special thanks also to Rohini Har, Sisko Grazia, Jo Arena, Prevene, Duarilal. Special thanks also to Rohini Har, Sven Erich Yort, Paul Dixon, Neil Corny, Mary Dalton, and Jack Feldman. Big thanks to everybody over at the Brooklyn Music School. Huge thanks to Latif and Carly and Fival for the use of their birth tape that you can hear at the end of the first story, as well as to Alan Zili, Taisa Manchau, and Antonio for the use of their birth tape

that you can hear at the end of the episode. And finally, thanks to Richard Fink IV, who is not the man you heard during the break, but is the current holder of the longest held, son, note. I'm Annie McEwen. And I'm Mack Yolte. Thank you for listening.

Radio Lab was created by Jad, a boom rod, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulum Miller and Latif Nasir are our co-host. Suzy Electrenberg is our executive producer. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Kisik, David Gable, Maria Pas Gutierrez, Sindoon Yana Sammondam, Medkilti, Annie McEwen, Alex Niesen, Sara Kari, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. With help from Shima Oliahi, Sarah Sandbach, Karine Lyong, and Candace Wong, our fact checkers

are Diane Kelly and Emily Krieger.