Radiolab - Curiosity Killed the Adage

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

The early bird gets the worm. What goes around, comes around. It’s always darkest just before dawn. We carry these little nuggets of wisdom—these adages—with us, deep in our psyche. But recently we started wondering: are they true? Like, objectively, scientifically, provably true?So we picked a few and set out to fact check them. We talked to psychologists, neuroscientists, runners, a real estate agent, skateboarders, an ornithologist, a sociologist and an astrophysicist, among others, and we learned that these seemingly simple, clear-cut statements about us and our world, contain whole universes of beautiful, vexing complexity and deeper, stranger bits of wisdom than we ever imagined.Pamela D’Arc, ​​Daniela Murcillo, Amanda Breen, Akmal Tajihan, Patrick Keene, Stephanie Leschek and Alexandria Iona from the Upright Citizens Brigade, We Run Uptown, Coaches Reph and Patty from Circa ‘95, Julia Lucas and Coffey from the Noname marathon training program.We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites here: https://radiolab.org/moonEPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Alex Neason, Simon Adler, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Annie McEwen, Maria Paz Gutierrez, and W. Harry FortunaProduced by - Simon Adler, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Maria Paz Gutierrez, and Sindhu GnanasambandanOriginal music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy BloomFact-checking by - Emily Krieger and Diane A. Kellyand Edited by  - Pat Walters and Alex NeasonSign-up for our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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From WNYC. Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Lutif Nasser. All right. And today, I'm just going to kick things off with our editor. That level's on my side. Alex Neeson. Cool.

Okay. So once upon a time, it was summer. Okay. And then it was summer. And then it was summer. And then it was summer. And then it was summer. And then it was summer.

And then it was summer. And then it was summer. And then it was summer. And level's on my side. Alex Neeson. Cool. Okay. So, once upon a time, it was summer. Okay. Okay. Hard to remember now. Hard to remember now. Um, and, okay, so over the summer, as you know, I'm a runner. Legit runner.

A legit runner. Like you run marathons. Um, so over this year, I decided to take the year off from marathons. Mm-hmm. And instead, I decided to tackle the one mile. Okay. And I was gonna try and beat my personal record. And so, as part of doing that, last summer, every Tuesday like clockwork, I would drag myself out of my apartment and head out into the city and

Okay, watch, set, go. Run from my house, which is about a mile and change away from Riverbank State Park in Harlem. Okay, get in my car. Over to this trap. Hey. Hello. What up? To meet up with some people from my running crew.

And it depends on the night, but it's basically 10 or 15 people who all get together to do these track workouts together. And as somebody who is definitely not a runner, you prefer this? You like running with people more than running alone? Yeah, I mean, I do this because I can't be trusted to do it by myself. Running is really hard, and having other people there with me to do it just makes me feel... It makes me feel like I'm a team. 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. So, on this particular day, it was super hot. It's like the dead of summer, and... Y'all can hear me over there? ...Ref, our coach, tells us... Check it out. We're gonna do... We're doing 400s.

The length of a track is 400 meters, so that just means we're doing 400s. The length of a track is 400 meters, so that just means we're doing one long sprint around the entire length of the track, and we're going to do a lot of them. Ten on and ten off. Ten on and ten off. Yeah. And everybody sort of makes this collective sigh,

and it's like, okay. Always you want to be running the run. Don't let the run run you. Right? So, we get on the track, we warm up, we stretch, we do drills, kind of get loose, and then we toe the line, and 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.

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. And all of these very, 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. And so I just wanted to disappear.

And I wanted all the other people on the track to disappear. And I 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. And there's this adage, misery loves company, that has been the sort of 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. And here I was at this track workout that was especially miserable that day,

but the burden wasn't being lifted. It felt heavier, actually. And after this workout, I remember walking home and just obsessing about this adage. And by the time I get back to my apartment and for days afterwards, I had just really started to wonder, like, have I had this wrong the whole time? Maybe this thing just isn't true, Like, is it true or not? And I started to think about like, okay, well, I have to figure this out.

I have to figure out, factually speaking, does misery love company? Like, who can I call? What can I read? What can I do to get like real nitty gritty, real fussy, so that on the other end, I can sort of like stand up and declare it is true that Misery Loves Company or it's just not.

You needed an answer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a definitive answer. So, 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. Well, you know what they say is to squeaky weird against the grease. You hear them in movies, on TV.

Idle hands of the devil's workshop. Maybe from a friend, a parent. Well. The early bird catches the worm. Action speaking out of the words. These little sayings, these adages. that are supposed to be these little bits of wisdom, these true facts about how the world works. And we just started to wonder, like, are they true? And could we take Alex's mission and start looking at other adages and just getting really in the weeds and being like, okay, is there a way to objectively figure out whether or not an adage is true or it isn't?

Could we put them to the test in some sort of scientific, rigorous, kind of literal, almost to the degree of being absurd way to try to get an answer? to try to get an answer. So we pick some adages and the staff basically fact-checked them. Starting with... Number one. Misery loves company. Okay, cool. So so so so so so so. First thing I did.

Right, right, yeah. Oh, here we go. Was rope in producer Simon Adler. And then I went on Google and typed in Misery Loves Company study. And to my surprise and delight. 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. And Kate, could we just have you introduce yourself? Sure. Yeah, my name is Kate Hassett. I'm an environmental economist and I'm interested in the factors that make us do what we do, that make us tick, so to speak. And by sheer coincidence.

I know where you're coming from. She is also a runner. When it comes to the particular kind of misery that long distance running can be sometimes. But we are gonna move away from running. Okay. Because you know, like, Gainadad should be sort of universal.

Like, it should be true of universal. It should be true in multiple situations. Several years ago, Kate set up a series of experiments. In 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. So we asked 100 people to complete a survey. That being miserable in company makes the misery a little less miserable. So 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 park in its glory. I can see the raccoons 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. So the survey asks, imagine you're like the landlord and you have to go tell one of these

tenants that they're going to lose their view. If you want to minimize this person's disappointment. They're suffering. How would you inform them? Would you 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 what about the other guy? 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. So that's option A. Option B... ["Gregg Reitz, Tony." Everything's the same. 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.

And so if you want to make this person feel better, which one do you do? Option A or option B? B, it's gotta be B. Yeah, exactly. That's what I said. And when Kate gave out the survey, almost 70% of people, they said they choose B.

So, huh, but there were still 30% who didn't, but sociopaths or something. I know. Right. Like, I honestly don't know why you wouldn't go with B. I would definitely be one of the 70%. But Kate says, you know, 70%, it's a big number. You know, we took this to mean that people do, by and large, believe that misery actually does love company.

It can, you know, alleviate suffering. However, just because you believe something is true for everyone else doesn't mean it's true for you. So they did this second experiment. 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. But this time, the survey said, put yourself in the shoes of the person who's going to lose the view. And then one group of those people was told you're going to lose the view of the park, while a second group was told... For your information, 85% of the other people in your building will also lose their view of the park. And then we asked them... Both groups, alone or in company, please rate how disappointed you expect that you would be in this situation. So 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 like true that misery loved company in practice. However, they did find strong evidence for something that they weren't actually looking for and that I think was like way more interesting, which is that happiness hates company.

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. Right? We're sick. Like, what does that say about us? I don't like that. I really don't like that. I hear you. It's kind of a tough finding, but we're social beings.

I think it's just the way we're wired that, you know, what's going on with other people, you know, it's not irrelevant, you know. 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. And that's asking questions about like 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?

Svenja, hello. Hi. It's so nice to talk to you. Yes, it is. And I felt like I really started to get an answer to that when I found Svenja. Svenja Wolf, I'm an assistant professor of sports psychology at Florida State University in Tallahassee. And I research anything that has to do with groups and emotions in sport and in other performance domains. Amazing.

Beautiful. Beautiful, 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 kind of 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. Maybe 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 kind of like get security again. But the one emotion she said that kind of struck me was... Shame. Shame. That is something where I don't want other people to witness that. So That is something where I don't want other people to witness that.

So that's something where I don't want company. And I think for me, that day on the track, I think a part of me was feeling that. Like I felt sort of out of shape, like I wasn't doing well. I felt slow, like I was dragging. You're 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. from others. Sharing the emotion ultimately makes us feel better. Svenja says this has been studied with groups of people on stationary bikes, with teams that have just lost big games. And no matter the setting, when people feel miserable together,

it helps them perform better, like they pedal faster on the bikes. And it also helps them feel better. That's at least what the research suggests. So to me, the way this resonates the most is, if I'm in a miserable state, I'm yearning for company. I'm like, I want, 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. So maybe I might rephrase it to, misery can create company. We can slow down because I'm definitely going too fast. Yeah, yeah I'm definitely down to slow down. I feel like I'm trying to make sure I'm not in anyone's way. No you're fine. Yeah, yeah, I feel okay. I was, I'm so sick.

When I woke up this morning, I was like, I need to get ready. It'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. Uh, we'll be right back. Number two.

An idle mind is the devil's workshop. I always heard it as the idle hands are the devil's workshop. Yeah, idle hands, idle minds, like people say it all sorts of ways. We're just going to go with idle minds. Okay. And I picked this one because... Wait, wait, wait. Just tell everyone who you are first. Oh yes, okay.

I'm Sindhu Niyana, some of them. I'm a producer here. And I picked this one because it's always felt pretty true to me. Huh, like how so? Well, I mean, of course the mind is never like idle idle, but when I think of a mind that's like not focused on anything, like it's just sort of, you know, wandering around,

that's what I'm thinking of as an idle mind. And I like try to avoid that mind as much as possible. Huh. Part of it is that I just feel guilty for not being productive. Same. But also, when I just sort of like sit around idle... Oh, it feels so good if I was in a bath right now. I wonder what Marcello's up to.

All these thoughts start flooding in. How do ants like 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 stupid. Others.

I don't think anyone even smiles. You have to say something. Was it offensive? I bet it was. I bet that's why you're not texting. Oh yeah. You're so stupid. You can really suck. Like, almost like the devils in there trying to make me miserable.

Yes, so a lot of religious writing tends to regard the wandering mind as something that's not particularly desirable. This is psychology professor Kalina Krista Hajileva. I study spontaneous thoughts and in general how people think. And when I called them to ask about this adage, they said it's deeply rooted in our culture. This industrial kind of capitalist work-based environment, there's this sense that there is a right way and there is a wrong way and when you wander you depart from the right way. And that's sometimes how we think of our own minds, as time on task.

Like if I'm focused on something that's good. Am I tasking right now or am I not tasking? And if I'm not tasking, therefore I'm mind wandering. And 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. Huh. Why? Well, first of all, you know that like devilish part I was describing of my mind

where it can start to just like obsess and like ruminate over things? Like Kalina says that stuff isn't actually mind wandering anymore. Nope. No. For me, that's the opposite of mind wandering. Because when you start to obsess, you're back to a task of sorts. Like you're trying to solve some puzzle that your mind made for itself. So that's how people can get into like 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. And it starts deep inside the brain with these bursts of neuronal firing called the sharp wave ripples. Sharp wave ripples. Have you heard of these? Whoa, never heard of that. No, never. Okay, well let me tell you, Letesh. Yeah, ripples. I love the sound of that. All right, so we're in the lab.

So I went to go see one of the world experts on these ripples. I'm Yuri Buzhaki. 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 Froot Loops. Rats and mice love Froot Loops. Is that part of the experiment or just because you want to give them something nice? You want to have a good rapport with them. You want to be friends. They are pets. Your colleagues. And one of the things he does in his lab is he listens to like the brains of these animals,

specifically the hippocampus. And the way he does this is he like sticks these little electrodes into it so that he can see or really hear these sharp wave ripples. So let's say he takes a rat and plops him into a maze. And maybe we can like play a song to represent just like the various neurons firing here and there. He like moves through and you know experiences like a turn over here like runs straight down this path. Like you know I don't know what else happens in a maze like whatever looking up at the research or maybe. Like yeah and maybe you're smelling something and it's behind this wall, but I can't get behind the wall.

Exactly, that's nice. And Rat makes it through the maze, he gets to the end and stops. And he's just sort of like chilling, eating his food, drinking some water. His brain is just sort of like humming around, neurons firing here and there. When all of a sudden, there's this burst of activity, like 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. And they're the biggest, most synchronized firing of neurons that happen in our brain, short of like a seizure. Wow. And Yuri says, like, 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 instant replay. But like a little, but like it's like it like, it's like sped up instant replay. Exactly, exactly. And not the whole thing, but like little parts of it basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Highlights, highlights real.

Highlight real. And these SharpWave ripples, Yuri says they're basically the very beginning of memories being formed. They select which information will be remembered and which will go to the trashcan. And he's not like consciously experiencing this. Oh, so this is even below consciousness. This is all subconscious. Wow.

And when the rat goes to sleep that night, those ripples that played earlier, they just keep rippling. And this is where the memory is like 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? And the answer is that you experienced it consciously once, but the rest of the brain will experience snippets of it during the sharp variparous thousand times every single night.

Wow! Yeah. Huh. There's more. 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, you know, a postdoc carries him back to the same maze. And now when he's just sitting there and again, just like sort of resting

before starting the run, Guess what we see? Oh, the same. The same, the song playing not as replay, but as pre-play. Yeah, exactly. A sharp wave ripple. And 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 backward, we are talking about memory. When the selection is forward,

we are talking about planning. No, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah. Wow, that's so literal. Huh. So all this stuff that he described happens in RATS. It happens in us too. And you know, that experience when you can't seem to solve a problem or like, there's this word you want but like it's just not it's like in the tip of your tongue you don't have it.

And then you just sort of like walk away from it and all of a sudden like bam it's there. Right. This is the time the sharp phase come very handy and you disengage and then a couple of sharp phase occur in your brain. They prime the circuitry for you and then you can recall it. Like you've left the task, but these like little, you know, subconscious neural things are just working for you. Yeah. I also asked him how these sharp wave ripples connect to like mind-wandering thoughts. Out of seemingly nowhere, I have this like memory of my mom cooking a specific meal or something like that.

Is that connected at all to this sharp wave ripple activity? I never measured it. I don't know, but I bet yes. So sharp wave ripples are good candidates for that. And 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. Huh. So how often do these ripples happen?

Yeah, so he says that they can happen once every 10 seconds or even once a second, but the one time they definitely do not happen is when your mind is focused on something. If you are listening to me now, I guarantee you, you don't have a single shopping. 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, right? So you go around acquiring experiences. If you don't have a digestion system, you're not going to extract anything from all these experiences.

Right? So, in other words, without idling? You are nobody. You are a zombie. Okay, so where does this all leave us with our adage? I'm just realizing how off I was about it. Like, idling is pretty important. It picks our memories, like, solidifies our memories, imagines new things.

So yeah, I guess it is a workshop. It's just like, 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 idle for a bit. We will be right back. Hello, welcome back.

This is Radiolab. I'm Lettif 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. And fact-checking this one, we have... Okay, here we go. Here we go. Producers, Annie McEwen. It's, um, 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... Up.

Okay. Down it comes, up. Okay. Down it comes. Definitely came down. Yeah, feels very inevitable. 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, go, and the down. Okay. And we started to wonder, like, what if we could find something that doesn't come down, like right away? Like, maybe there are things out there in the world that test this adage. And 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 kind of things?

Ah, the sweet sounds of New York. Well, we went outside to get inspired. I wonder if that's blood or kitchen. And after a bit of haphazard research into things that go up in which we chased pigeons. You chased them. I chased them. Got some helium balloons. And then any even tried to talk to some skateboarders. Excuse us. Can we talk to you for a second? It's about jumping. Excuse us. Excuse us, will you talk to us? Can we ask you a question?

You guys don't wanna talk to us? No, okay. But then. It's a really pretty sunny day. As we were looking up at the sky. Fluffy clouds. We thought clouds. Looks like the Simpsons.

It does look like the Simpsons. They're basically just water that is up. And so we wondered how long does it take for water to leave the ground, rise up into the air, become a fluffy white cloud, 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. And then there are these spiders that do this thing called ballooning where they shoot out these long threads from their butts and using the wind and the earth's electric field, they lift off the ground and fly through the air for hundreds of miles, traveling across cities, across deserts, across oceans. And we don't really know how long they stay up there, but we do know they can only go

without eating for about 25 days. So they do have to eventually come down to land on top of your head. Thank you. But, okay, so max 25 days between up and down? No, Lutif, 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. So here's the thing about swifts. This is natural history author Scott Wydensall, who told us about the common swift.

They are the most aerial of birds. Their 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. They're just stacked. Stacked. Yeah. OK.

And if they could figure out a way to carry an egg and incubate it on the wing, I'm sure they would do it. Oh, because you can't lay an egg while you're flying. That would be a mistake. Yes. And 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 lift up off the ground and don't come down again for 10 months of the year. Ten months of the year. 10 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. to the ground, absolutely to the breaking point. Wow. And 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. And it made us think, like, just like that fish that long ago pulled itself out of the ocean

and became a creature of land, maybe the common swift is on its way to becoming a creature purely of the sky. But then we thought, what about us? Like, we have astronauts. But then we thought, what about us? Like we have astronauts. Astronauts unlike eggs or clouds or birds, they have rockets. Rockets that have taken them farther than any other species has gone before. Once they're up there, they can just stay up there. You have a really cool big space station that you can fly around in.

Just totally floating, defying our adage with… I'm gonna get Tim to spin me around. …summer salts. Olympic caliber flip technique. Back flips. Then you can come right back up again. They are truly up. Like Superman.

And theoretically, if they had enough food and supplies, they could stay up there forever. Never coming down again. So, in conclusion, we have found something that disproves the adage and therefore the adage is incorrect. Okay. We're is incorrect. Okay. We're done here. Yes. At least that's what we thought.

Until we talked to Dr. Michelle Fowler. I am an astronomer and a science communicator. Who told us that, well, you 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. 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, their capsule, their space station, everything's falling. They are freely falling towards the earth. Oh my god.

I mean, if you've ever been on like a really great roller coaster that drops, that kind of thing, that is what they feel. They feel like they're falling. Ugh, that's nause thing. That is what they feel. They feel like they're falling. Ugh, that's nauseating. Oh, yeah. Some people get very sick. Yes. 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? Three, Two, three. Straight 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 kind of keep curving around the Earth. And so every second of every day that it's up there, it basically keeps missing the Earth. Never landing, forever coming down and around

and down and around and down and around this wonderful kind of stable path called an orbit. But haven't we also shot things into space that did not go into orbit? Like we did the story on the Voyager probes, right? Like we literally shot them out of the whole solar system. Like 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. You know 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.

So 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? Galaxy is also freely falling. You got it. The Milky Way galaxy is freely falling towards the middle of a galactic cluster of more than

a million miles an hour. Don't you see it? We're always falling. Nothing is holding throwing up. Yeah, me too. I really, really feel like throwing up. Whoa. So, is this one true or no? Well, I think yes, it is, but it's different than what we originally thought.

Like when we started out, we thought down was like falling on the pavement like an egg or falling to earth as rain or landing on a branch like a bird. Things go up and then they must come down and then they're down. 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 mean, like, I think it's really cool.

Like it's almost as if we're on this rock, but we're just like those astronauts. Woo! Floating and somersaulting and like flying. Like Superman. Whoo! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!

Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Forever. And ever. And ever. And ever. And ever. And ever.

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

And ever. And ever. And ever. And ever. And ever. And ever. 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 like no one was even trying to invent shit that day and they ended up making a new medication or discovering a new element or whatever. Big thanks to Chioki Ianssen 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 Kiltes, Induniana Samadhan, W. Harry Fortuna, Annie McEwen, and Maria Paz Gutierrez. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. What are you saying here? We need some space? It was edited by Alex Nisen 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. So what are we doing here? What's happening? Special thanks to Pamela dark, Daniela, Mercillo and Jonathan schooler, as well as Amanda Breen, Akmal Tajahan, Patrick Keene, 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 Ward-Dwang and Tom Friedman. I don't know that I would use any of these in my regular life. And of course, thank you for listening. I'm Lotta Pnassar. 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. Radio Lab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and LotsofNasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our Director of Sound Design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bresler,

W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyanan Sambandan, Matt Kielty, Rebecca Lacks, Annie McEwan, Alex Niesen, Sara Khari, Sarah Sandback, Anisa Vitsa, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, my name is Treza. I'm coding from Colchester in Essex, UK. Leadership support for Radiolab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, the Seymonds Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Science Sandbox, the Seymonds Foundation Initiative and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation.