Radiolab - Falling

Episode Date: September 17, 2020

There are so many ways to fall—in love, asleep, even flat on your face. This hour, Radiolab dives into stories of great falls.  We jump into a black hole, take a trip over Niagara Falls, upend some myths about falling cats, and plunge into our favorite songs about falling. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    

Oh wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From WNYC. You're listening. Hello, hello, hello.

How do I want to introduce this tape to you? Okay, how much is it? want to introduce this tape to you? Okay, how much are that? Have you heard this type of approach? I have not. This is actually one of my first radio pieces. You're not going to hear what we're saying as we're in Freepa. And I had two friends who were in love.

I want to take a picture of the two of you. I've soon adapted your helmet. I've since fallen out of love and fallen in love with other people. But at the time, they were very much in love and they had decided they were gonna go skydiving. Together. Together. Everything looks good. You ready for this? Yeah, I got to go skydiving. So this is my friend Jordan. He is getting into a plane. Right, so let's check your harness.

He's got a mini disc recorder strap to his chest. And I should just say that the piece ended up being really dumb, but it contains the best moment of tape I think I've ever recorded. You're gonna hear it coming up. Okay, so as Jordan gets up into the sky, they're like 7,000, 8,000 feet. I don't remember the number, but they open the door. Yeah, you rock, skydive!

Oh, here they are! He steps just to the edge and he's about to go, you'll hear there's gonna be a moment. Just listen. Okay. Okay, he is out of the plane now, and he's hurling through space, free falling. Woohoo!

Within like a few seconds, he's at a hundred miles an hour. Up to 150. 175 miles an hour. Maybe 200 I don't know. And... And there. Oh my god. That's the moment where the parachute opens. I cannot believe it. And he is floating. God, that's amazing.

Oh, I haven't seen the girl. I don't know. You don't know? Well, her mini-disk recorder malfunctioned in the way down. But let's just rewind that back for a second. That transition right there from falling body to floating body. Yeah, I love that. Because at first he sounds like this dinosaur falling through the air, but then the sound

changes and it's just like, whew. And I don't know, it's like this moment of somebody falling at a control. And then falling back in? Yeah. It seemed like a good way to open the show because this is going to be a show where we take this idea of falling. And we walk it in all kinds of different directions.

Like, point comes where you snap. That's one. I locked him. So much. That's one. It's very dark. It's very hellish. And that's one.

I was netting 81. That's one. It's very dark, it's very hellish. And that's one. I was netting 81. That's apparently killing me. There are 14,932 ways to fall on the radio. In this hour, we will bring you eight. I'm Jan Abumrod. I'm Robert Kilwich. This is Radio Lab.

And we are falling. 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, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I don't know what you call terror or just... No. It's about time, really. Time. Okay, so we'll just call this one falling time.

Howdy. This is David Eagleman. This is David here. He's a neuroscientist, but back when he was a kid. How old were you just a sort of... I was... I was eight years old. He had an experience which he says changed his life. Yeah.

He was playing in his subdivision in Houston, and there was a house nearby. That was under construction. My father told me not to go climbing around on the house under construction, but I was a boy so I did. I was looking at the edge of the roof and I stepped on it, but in fact it was tar paper hanging over the edge. I fell.

Also you stepped onto the air and in fact you just went whew. Exactly. And, um, what happened was the event seemed to take a very long time. I thought about whether I had time to grab for the edge of the roof, and I realized it was too late for that. So then I was looking down at the ground as the red brick floor was coming towards me,

and I was thinking about Alice in Wonderland, how this must be what it was like for her when she fell down the rabbit hole. How long by the way was it from the top of the roof to the ground below? .86 seconds. That's how long it takes to fall 12 feet. I calculated that later. That would be 1,000. In this whole experience,

left David Eagleman with a question that he could not get out of his mind. What happens to people when they're in a life or death situation and they have these thoughts that seem to take a long time? So at some point I realized I needed to study this. How would you even study that?

Well, the first thing I did, I took my entire laboratory to Astral World, which is the amusement park here in Houston. And we went on all of the scariest roller coasters who brought all of our equipment and our stopwatches and had a great time, but it turns out nothing there was scary enough to actually induce this fear for your life. That appears to be required for the slow motion effect.

So I searched around and I finally found something called Scad Diving. Scad Diving. Stance for a suspended catch air device. Where do you do that? Turns out it's illegal in Houston, but I found one in Dallas. So we made a road trip up to Dallas. All right, jump number one. We actually found a reporter in Dallas who agreed to give us a try.

And then I'll put the song over the horn. No one's ever died on this thing, right? Nope. This is April. Ooh, I feel like my heart's in my throat. She's very brave. You ride up to the top of this tower and this very rickety little elevator type of thing Okay, we're rising up in the elevator right now 150 foot tall tower

Planning up and up and up It doesn't seem that far when you're down there appear it seems really far. It's like a 15 story building. Yeah, we're halfway Okay, this is just halfway. I'm already creeping out. And my hands are starting to shake. Very top. You're suspended. Like this? Yep. You're hooked up to a carabiner.

Oh God. Sit all the way back. Bring back. Okay, so I want you to imagine this. You're up in the sky. You are facing the clouds, not the ground. You are attached to something which is about to be severed and you will fall totally free into the void, unable to see

what's about to happen to you, presuming a net, me. Oh my God, okay, let me die. Three, two. Really nervous right now. And, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, one thing I forgot to mention, two. Really nervous right now. And... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, one thing I forgot to mention.

April actually wasn't part of David's study, but if she had been, she would have been wearing around her wrist this little device. This new device is called the Perceptual Chronometer. It's about the size of a watch, and it flashes numbers super fast. Yes, yes, yes. Way too fast to see normally but the thought is if April falls and everything starts to slew down well then these numbers should slow too so that if she looks at her wrist that she's falling she should be able to now read the watch that would be impossible under normal circumstances. Back, April.

Really nervous right now. Three, two, and... Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! It's scary to move my life. Oh my god! I should probably tell you guys the results of the study, but yeah, so do people report that time slowed down enough for them to read the number? I'm alive. No, no. Turns out, when you're falling, you don't actually

see in slow motion. Oh. Yeah, it's not equivalent to the way a slow motion camera would work, even though people feel like it's going in slow motion. It's something more interesting than that. Because here's the thing, right after people did the jump, he would ask them, how long they thought their fall took. Right answer, if they'd had a stopwatch.

Just under three seconds. But what people would say? What? How long, when you were falling, how long did it fall? 10 seconds, it fell. It felt like a time was stopped. So how do you explain that? That like time's not slowing in the moment

but seems to be slowing after the moment? Well, I came to understand that it's a trick of memory. Normally, our memories are like sivs. We're not writing down most of what's passing through our system. But he thinks that when you go... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH So when you read that back out the experience feels like it must have taken a very long time It must have normally the trivial stuff gets dumped, but in this situation it gets written and then you realize how much trivial stuff is in there So for example, I just recently interviewed gentleman who had been in a motorcycle accident and as his helmet was bouncing along off the asphalt He was composing a little song to the rhythm of his helmet was bouncing along off the asphalt, he was composing a little song to the rhythm

of his helmet bouncing. Was he in his helmet or had the helmet flown off of it? He was in his helmet. That's... He was here before I'd go far too loudly. Was he at OK as a result of this bouncing? Yeah, he was OK. Wow, that's amazing.

So his head was going, don't, don't, don't. He was like, OK. Goodness. It's kind of a good rhythm. Mine. What a peculiar place to have a party. Amazing! So his head is going, tttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt Right through the center Falling right through the center Good morning. Number two, falling in love from Pretty Zoolulu Miller. So set this up for us. Well, this is a love story. And in some ways it's a very typical love story.

And in other ways it's just not. Yeah, the girl is a really good friend of mine. We're gonna call her Serita and the boy, we'll call Simon. When was the first time that you ever saw Simon? Um, I don't remember the exact moment, but I do remember sitting in the lunch room with the girls at the table and sort of scoping out the boys. And he was definitely the skinniest. He just looked like a really nice guy, olive skinned thick hair.

And he made really good eye contact to the point where it's a little flirty. There's no break in the eye contact. It's like constant. To the point where I think it could be uncomfortable for some people, but I just really liked it. When was the first time you talked to it? Well, we had a class together, our freshman year.

We talked a lot in class and after class on the paths around campus. And that's how it went, all freshman year. Sophomore year. Junior year. There's sort of like particles that just kept colliding in the lobby of the door on the sidewalk. And each time it was new. New topic or a new idea. For instance, one of them would walk by carrying a book.

Boys in woodbible. And the other one would say, oh, I love that book. Yeah, they just clicked. And again, I contoured. We would talk and be connected with the eyes. That's what I really was falling for about him. There was like an attentiveness beyond. That's what I really was falling for about him. There was an attentiveness beyond.

I want to ask you one thing, which you just said I'm falling for him. Is that the way it felt? I mean, people always say falling in love. Did it feel like falling? Yeah, it does because it feels out of control. And there's a moment where it feels like I let go and allow myself to feel it totally. So there were some moments where she wondered if she should.

Yeah. Like sometimes she'd walk by so I'm in on the path. Look up and smile. And he'd snubbed me. But then we run into each other and we talk. She'd let herself start falling again. This is really fun in this moment. And I realized years later that every time we ran into each other, he has no idea that those were me.

Really? Yeah. Hi. Hello. Could you hear me vaguely? Yeah. Can we start out talking about your condition? Yeah, what's it called? Proso Pagnosia. Proso Pagnosia. Yes sounds like a delicious fruit salad It could be a cocktail and what is that? What is that word? Let's see well Agnozia is a lack or an inability in Proso is the Greek for face.

Oh. Facepalign this. This, of course, is Simon. There's a little piece of my brain that's missing and I have a really, really hard time recognizing faces from membrane faces. And how does that work? Is it just that you forget where you know people from? No.

If I passed you in the street, I can't swear that I've ever seen you before. So he didn't know. He couldn't string those together as all the same person having the same conversation. Right. No way. Even their first kiss. He didn't realize he was kissing a girl he'd actually known for years. Yes. Yeah. So were you like totally shocked? I was totally blown away. Who was that person to you? totally shocked. I was totally blown away. Who was that person to you? I knew it was the cheese plate girl. Yeah. Do not know it was field house girl. So what did you say? I think I just asked a lot of questions. You know she was interested. Oh. How does this work? Yeah. I probably said if you you know went to the park and started looking at trees, their shapes are different, their sizes are different.

But to try to remember a thousand or two thousand of those. How do you pick it up? It's just hard. It's just computationally difficult. Yeah. What details did you know about her? I knew it was good to be with her. The experience of being with her, I think ran ahead of my sense of her biography. So it was a leap. It was a leap. Yeah. Let's try this. So they embark on this relationship, which, you know, has its quirks. Right. Like for instance,

if they were meeting up somewhere public, I'm gonna need to wave first. Hmm. And backpacks. He's always got to wear the same one. Voice really helps. But I would get a little bit anxious when we'd have to meet each other somewhere. Yeah. Because I knew if another curly-haired girl walked there before I did. I'm thinking, is that her? She would like smile and wave at her. It's just awkward. It's just kind of embarrassing. Yeah. And somewhere along the line, Sarita found out that that eye contact that drew her in. It wasn't really about her. It was something he did with everyone. On the off chance that they're his friend. That's what I think the eye contact is. So did that make you step back at all?

No. By then, I had already fell. And plus, I think, Zerida at that time was getting really into Buddhism. And not just a little bit. She went and lived with Buddhist nuns for a year in Sri Lanka. And so the idea of impermanence and, you know, we think we have a self, but what really is a cell, what it means to know someone. All of that was part of my world, and so this idea that he didn't recognize me, didn't seem so as important as the present moment.

It just kept getting better. And then what happened, you graduated and then did you move in together? Yeah, it was in fillet. It was in fillet, on Stansom Street. A year and a half goes by. And then one day, I woke up and sweared a gun like all the leaves fell off the trees, fall, turning to winter. And Simon told Serita it was over.

Something about a core that I'm lacking. He said you were lacking a core? Yeah. What does that mean? I don't know. I'm not sure what it means. Good God, I knew the core would come up. It was the core of the core. What I was trying to talk about was lingering down whether, whether this was it wondering, could I fall further? He just wasn't sure that he loved me and then at that point, kind of backtracked and denied

having ever really loved me. Yeah. But that's how it was. Did you feel like you at a certain point started to actually fall out of love with him? Like, no. There was no falling. It was just like, I was at the bottom of a well,

sitting and stewing. I loved him. Yeah. So much. And would you see him in the neighborhood? Cause you're still neighbors, right? Right. Yeah.

We would see each other around at parties and he was working at a restaurant that had an outdoor patio and I walked by there a few times without him knowing it was me where I could see him and look at him. but you got to just be hidden. Yeah, I got to just walk by. Yeah. So there is comfort in that. Yeah. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's hard somehow.

But I wouldn't see her. It's like she faded back into the crowd. Quickly. I had become lost. It's actually haunting to me. Do you hear that? I'm here, I think I'm falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, Fighting you again. Help me out, think I'm falling in love again. When I get that crazy feel of me, I'm in love again. And we'll be right back.

Oh, that message is still there. Hi, it's Lulu calling with the credits. Radio Live is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.S Sloan.org. Radio lab is produced by WNYC, Hibis and this message. Science reporting on Radio Lab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simon's Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.

Hey, I'm Chad Abumran. I'm Robert Kowicz. This is Radio Lab and today, uh, today we're falling in many different flavors. And we're at number three. So next we have a story of a different kind of fall. All right. Or fall or? Yeah. Comes from Science, Render, David Kwaman.

One article in particular that he wrote, caught our attention, right? I'm gonna quote you to yourself. Okay. Nowadays, too, enough, we know quite a bit about cats. They've been dissected in uncountable numbers. They're anatomy, they're physiology, their behavior have been minutely studied. But there's so much we still don't know.

Among all the other intractable issues, one in particular interests me, and that is, what's the terminal velocity of a plummeting cat? Why? Can you give me a little history? Why did that question interest you? I mean, when I used to write for outside magazine, I would browse through journals and I would come across obscure papers.

How I happened upon the journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, familiarly known as JVMA. It's a... I don't know, I don't remember. But I'm sure that that was the starting point. Because it was in that journal that David ran across a research paper

by two vets, Wayne Whitney and Cheryl Melhoff, who worked in the Midtown Veterinary Hospital. And they noticed that in Manhattan, there were a lot of cats falling out of windows, high windows, falling off ledges, falling off roofs. What is a lot? I mean, how many cats were coming into this place? We saw 132 cats fall in a five-month summer period.

132. That's in Hohen House. She actually works in the veterinary hospital. We're in here at the Antoinette Medical Center. And she's been there since that research paper was written back in 1986. When I came to New York City, I said, what do you mean cats fall out of buildings? Doesn't make sense. I said, why would the cat fall out?

But we'll get back to her in a little bit. 132 and 5 months? That's almost a reign of cats. Well, no, don't say that because I think people should visit New York without cat receiving umbrellas. What are you doing? I'm doing the math to see how many that is in a week of... I think people should visit New York without can't receiving umbrellas. You too. What are you doing? I'm doing the math to see how many that is in a week of, you can do a date with it.

It's about a cat a day. It's a shame, we can all agree about that. But according to David, it's actually not as much of a shame as you would think. 22 of the cats that they saw had fallen from eight stories or higher. And out of those 22 only one died So 21 cats survived from eight stories are higher

Wow, that's a long way and there was one cat that fell 32 stories and the cat had a little bit of sort of Therasic bruising and a chip tooth and that was it the quit I mean how in the world do cats? I mean we all know cats land on their feet, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But how do they do that? Like, these are not magical creatures. Well, if you go back about a thousand years, they, you know, it was thought that they consorted with witches, with the devil, and their reputation got darker and darker. The more people started to distrust and dislike cats, the more they started to do horrible

things to them, they would put cats in a barrel and then they run the barrel through with swords. Also throwing them out of windows, the defenestration of cats. What does defenestration mean to you? Throwing out the window. Really? There's a word for that. Oh, Chad, add that to your active vocabulary today. I plan to. So what would happen when they would defenestrate these cats? The cats would land on their feet and walk away. And that made people even crazier.

Yeah. No, of course, we love our cats now. We don't do that to our cats anymore. But when we went to visit Ann back at the veterinary hospital, we were asking her about the Falling Cats Research Paper, which is called the Feline High Roos. The Feline High Rise Syndrome. Then the mystery of how cats from fall from these amazing heights and survive got a lot deeper.

Well, cats that fell less than five stories. They did find, she said. Not too bad. Cats that fell over nine stories. They They did find, she said. Not too bad. Katz had fell over nine stories. They did find two, she said. Not so bad. Which is weird, but. Katz had fell between five and nine.

Between five floors and nine floors? Had really serious injuries and had more injuries per cat. So Katz that fell a little ways were okay. Katz had fell a long ways, were ways were okay weirdly but this five to nine thing So the so we had to get a physicist to help us explain this this is where we get back to what common calls the terminal velocity issue or Here's how Ann put it to us. Well say you're living on the 30th floor of a building and it's summertime You get done at work at five you you go home, get there about six.

The apartment's hot and stuffy and you open up those windows. And fluffy says, hmm, I like that pigeon out there. And the next thing, you know, the misstep. As the cat starts to fall, he's all disoriented. And almost immediately. Probably within the first six feet. The cat's brain says, okay, turn your front half over, now bring your back legs around.

That's like instant. The cat can apparently do that move lickety split, but the cat is still speeding up. Going faster and faster. Three floors, five floors, seven floors. And after falling about nine floors, and accelerating the speeds, up to about 60 miles an hour something happens

You hit an equilibrium between the pull of gravity and wind resistance What it means is gravity is pulling down on you and the peak pull is between five and nine floors for a cat But after nine floors the wind resistance which all the while has been pushing back up on you floors, the wind resistance which all the while has been pushing back up on you starts to slow you down. You don't speed up anymore. So that's your cruising speed. That's your cruising speed. After the cats hit terminal velocity and the sensation of acceleration was gone, they relaxed.

They sort of stretch out like a flying squirrel. And then they hit the ground, belly flop. And you're saying that because they hit the screws and speed and then relax into the flying squirrel, the impact is less? Yes. Yeah, and our record here, it wasn't in this paper, but our record is 42 floors in the catwalk the way. Wow. 42 floors. Is that a lucky cat or is that just plain physics?

Should cats everywhere go to the 42nd floor before jumping out of the window? No cat can't ever jump out of a window. That's right, stay indoors. No fluffy back. Okay so the next falling... what are we going to call these, following episodes? No, is there an F? Where do you get to use features? Yes, great, our next following feature. Oh boy. Okay, no, I mean it's up to you.

We invited Columbia University Physics Professor Brian Green into our studio. Did I get to play with any buttons? We wanted to ask him, really one of the most basic questions you could ask a physicist. Why do we fall? You know, we all know that Newton wrote down a law of gravity to calculate how gravity acts from one object to another. Yeah, like if you dropped your pen. That's right. But there's a difference between being able to predict what will happen and be able to explain why it happens. And Newton could not explain why it happens.

He could only tell you what would happen. But I mean, how it works is it just pulls the pen down. What does that mean though? Has it pull it? I don't see anything between the table and your pen. So what is the agent responsible for the pull? This is something even Albert Einstein himself couldn't quite figure out.

He was struggling to understand how the force of gravity works. And it was a big, big puzzle. And the legend goes that Albert Einstein was walking around one day, and he found himself imagining a person riding in an elevator. And all of a sudden, the cable gets cut and the elevator starts a plunge right down towards the earth. The version I know is that he was actually sitting at his desk looking out the window and was imagining window washers falling sort of from their scaffolding. But it's the same exact idea.

But anyway, we're going to stick with the elevator version right now. Einstein, imagine this person standing actually on a bathroom scale in the elevator. In the elevator. This is before the cable gets cut. If the person is in the elevator standing on a scale, they see that they weigh 160 pounds. And then, snip! When the elevator cable is cut, they look down at the scale and the scale will drop to zero, because the scale will be falling away from their feet at exactly the same rate that their

feet are falling. So their feet won't push on the scale any longer because the scale will be moving downward with them. In my mind I imagine like the Hollywood movie where it's falling so fast everybody kind of drifts up on the floor. That's right. So Einstein sets himself hang on a second. Here's an environment where in essence I can turn gravity off. Another way of saying it that flips it around and may make it more clear. Just as you can turn gravity off. Another way of saying it that flips it around and may make it more clear, just as you can turn gravity off by snapping the cable, you can actually simulate gravity by pulling on the cable that pulls that elevator

up really, really quickly. Because now the scale is running into your feet. If you're standing on that scale, it won't read 160, it might read 250. Huh, it seems like gravity and being pulled up really fast, there's the same thing. They are. Chad, look what that look at you.

You just had the insight on your own? That's right. He walked us 17 steps and I just made the last baby stuff. What? You did it. You did it. Wow. So whenever you're faced with a gravitational problem,

this allowed you to ignore gravity and translate it into a problem about motion. Does that solve the what is gravity question? It just sort of...no. He then had to make one more leap. And it's not obvious how we took the final step. But the final step was to realize that the what is gravity is the curvature of space and time.

That's a leap. I don't know what that means. Well, this is a very difficult concept. Do you understand it? That's a little bit. I don't know what that means. Well, this is a very difficult concept. Do you understand it? I understand what Einstein tells you when he explained it. He said, if you imagine the universe as a vast rubber mat, a rubber mat held really, really taught.

Let's just take, oh I don't know, let's take the earth and just pop it onto the mass. So what just happened? Well, it sunk into the rubber. It stretched the rubber, didn't it? Yeah, I mean, so the rubber is kind of curved around underneath it. Yeah. In Einstein's mind, he thought, maybe this is how to explain gravity.

This is what gravity is. That curved shape of space, he said. And the pen falls because it's following a contour in that curved space time environment. So if we're living on the curve, then we're constantly falling down that curve. Yeah, we have no choice. And the reason why right now I feel the chair pushing up

on me is, again, my body also wants to slide down, but the chair's getting in the way. So we're all sort of on some kind of slope sliding down unless we're... That's right, that's right. I like that. Yeah. I'm now an inherent to that theory. Not knowing anything else. Now for number five, should we call it falling fortunes or... Well falling fortunes is a good one for this I think, because someone is seeking fame and fortune and then falls. The idea of the gravity hero, to me, one of the things that it goes along with.

Was that a term that was used, gravity heroes? No, that's my term. I like it though, it's a really catchy term. Well, thanks, yeah. This is Garrett Soden, he's an author. Author of Defying Gravity. Original title. Following how our greatest fear became our greatest thrill a history. And speaking of history and fears and thrills and I would add to that list tragedy, he tells the following story. It

really started with Niagara Falls because up to that point people had done all kinds of things in Niagara Falls. To back up it is the 1850s and at Niagara Falls, you've got these two guys doing tight rope tricks over the falls. Yeah. The fellow named Charles Blondon. Famous French wire walker. And a Canadian guy who called himself.

Be great freiny. And they would do good out. Right. Blondon came out, strung a rope across Niagara Falls, put a chair down, balanced on two legs, and stood on it. Well, one time he carried a guy over, he had to keep upping the ante, so. So, for his greatest trick?

He carried a small cast iron stove on his back with some firewood. He got out there and he put the stove down. Little fire had a couple of eggs in a frying pan, and made an omelet. Right over this churning, like, rapid? Yes. Wow. So the great freini came out with a washing machine, that was his answer to you, London.

Wash some clothes out there, yeah. The thing to know about these guys is that this was basically just a show, because, for example, the wire that they walked on was pretty wide. About the diameter of a coffee cup. And really they were just avoiding the big trick. The most anticipated trick. The one that everybody was waiting for.

Well somebody going over the falls in the barrel. The guy who did that would be the real. Gravity hero! You were walking with this. Niagara Falls is one of the great forces of nature. Every second, 600,000 gallons fall over the edge, pound rocks below with such a fury that you can hear it five miles away. Which is why in 1850 when PT Barnum saw the falls? He said that if someone could figure out a way to go over that That would that would be a huge stunt that would give them fame and fortune

That's a Joan Murray. I'm a poet. She's a poet. She's written in a whole book Converse about the first person to conquer the false in a barrel and it's called Queen of the Mist Queen of the Mist. Yep of the Mist huh. Yep so wasn't a guy then. No I just said it was a guy to set you up so that you would ask me that question because in fact it was a woman. Wow props to her. Thank you for acting surprised. What's her name, Chad? Danny Taylor. When we first meet Danny Taylor. This was 1901. She was down on her lock. She'd been a she'd done a lot of different things. She'd run a dancing school.

She had been a principal. She traveled all over the world. Her only child had died. Her husband, right after that, and she was broke. But then it hit her! She was sitting at home, sitting in her apartment, in Bay City, Michigan. And for some odd reason, she read an article about the goings-on at Niagara Falls, and she decided she would go over Niagara Falls in a barrel hall. Yeah. Why? I mean, do we mean? I mean, she's looking to save herself from the poor house.

She was after money. And when she read about these guys at Niagara Falls, she thought, this is it. Right, so she called a Cooper to build the barrel. At first, he refused to build it when he heard what her plan was, but finally he did. And not long after, Annie was on a train with her barrel. Headed to the falls. By the way, what day are we talking about?

She's so we have a day. On October 24th in 1901. Okay. Word had spread. This was going to be a spectacle. Everyone was there. Lobs of people. Thousands.

Up and down the river. Tens of thousands and Annie shows up. Waving to the crowd. Waring a very fancy Victorian dress. And a hat with all stretch feathers. She's quite the lady but then they go on in Ireland where she changes. Into some gym clothes.

And now she gets in the barrel. They tow her out to the middle of the river. And then they knock and cut the rope and off she goes to the brink. The roar of the river. Enormous. And it's wet at my feet and I'm feeling while I'm in there that this is miserable. Interesting thing is that in Joan's poem, she actually becomes Annie. I creamed and spun. She's in the barrel, getting hurled down the river, tossed and turned.

My brain told me. And as she gets closer to the edge, it's about a half-mile journey. She begins to hallucinate. My glimpse through the turbulence. There was my young husband, in his arms, our baby trembling and whimpering as a woman. And then? This moment of weightlessness.

She's going down. Into the pool's below. The great mass of foam and boiling water. And then she shoots out again. Through the buoyancy of the barrel, about 15 feet in the air. Wow. The barrel crashes back, back down on the water, and then it floats.

Over to some rocks. And a rescue team paddle out to the barrel right away. They get the barrel and they have to a saw it open. The crowd no doubt is thinking that woman is dead. There is nothing but a dead woman in that barrel. But when they pull her out. She's alive. I am alive.

She took on this thing that the world was waiting for, and she did it. She was the first to ever try. And Joe, when she was pulled out of that barrel, and presumably she's going to take the next step into fame and fortune, what happened? More or less nothing. She stepped out of the barrel, and she didn't look right. She didn't look like a hero. What does that mean? Well, I've kept something from you, Carl, which is what. The thing I haven't told you is that not only was she wet and soggy in

according to newspaper accounts, hysterical, and who wouldn't be she was 63 she was your grandmother. She was an older lady like Joan said, you know for the Hero-consuming public she just didn't look right after that exhibition Her manager ran off with the barrel and he took the barrel and he started Going on the circuit with a lovely young woman that he claimed was Annie Taylor. No.

Much better showpiece. Oh yeah, yeah. Well, it happened to Annie, though. She would drag herself to Niagara each spring and summer. She would just sit on a street with a barrel. It wasn't the original barrel, but it was a barrel. And do what? She probably had photographs of herself that she signed.

And did she ever make any money off this? No. No, she died in a poor house. Which is where she didn't want to wind up. But that is where she wound up. In just 10 years later, somebody repeats Annie's feet. A man and he tours the world. Pastored.

Yeah, bastard. But... Because the heavens are merciful. During this guy's victory lap, is he traveling around the world? He slipped. He slipped on an orange vine in Australia, New Zealand

and got a compound fracture of his leg. Ha! She says that leg got gangrene and he died. Yeah, there is there is cosmic justice. The heart The heart The heart The heart The heart Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Hey! Hey! Hey! Are you falling? I'm a free fallin' out! Hey! Are you a... Hey! Oh, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.

I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.

I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.

I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. sleep but with a little kick. This is radio lab. Let's do it. Well tell me your name first and just tell me how you would like to be identified on air. You can call me Fred. I like it the best. Okay. My full title is Professor Frederick Alcouillage University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. So just so we get our definitions right. What is a hypnic jerk? It appears to be this what seems to be a reflex. Everybody's experienced it. It's your still semi-conscious, when you start to feel kind of dreamy.

You start to feel this loosening of your thoughts, loosening of your reality. But just as you're about to go under, he says, just that the first onset of sleep, bam! One big jerk, and then you're awake. Usually you wake up with this feeling of like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Oh, all right. And you know, how did you start studying this? I was working at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Can I save it on the air? Yeah, for a dollar, for a dollar

an hour. And I just thought, man, I still can eat coleslaw to this day because I would do a hundred pounds of coleslaw a day. So I saw this ad on campus and it said somebody to work in a sleep lab. So I went and applied and I ended up in the beginning cleaning toilets, but I just got into all asleep. I thought it was fascinating and I got fascinated by these giant jerks at the beginning of sleep and I said, what is that? You know, and they said, oh, that's a hypnic jerk. And I said, what is that? And they said, that's a hypnic jerk.

In other words, no one could really explain to him why these things happen. That's right. So he started poking around and there were some theories, you know, having to do with like physiological changes in your body, you know, a lowering of oxygen content or something like this. But that kind of explanation didn't really satisfy it. It really doesn't say, well, why? What was its function?

And as I started to look at the literature, I saw that we had a very long history, sleeping in trees. If we go back to Australopithecus aphorensis, this is Lucy, three million years ago. Lucy was bipedal. I mean, walking on two legs. Lucy lived in the trees, but unlike the other primates, she would sometimes go down to the ground.

But on the ground, you've got big burry. You've got snakes, tigers, and reptiles. That ground life was stressful. But at night, she crawled up the tree for safety. She climbs up in that tree, drops the food there for her baby, and she's going to drop off the sleep. Her muscles loosen, her hands uncurl. She starts to have that relaxation.

Pretty soon she can't feel the tree under her back or hear the noises down below. Stay with me, girl, would you? You can't feel the tree under her back or hear the noises down below. Stay with me, grow it. Yeah, okay. And she feels like she's floating. Or falling. They say falling, falling, that means. Maybe a real good idea to wake up from that.

Sleep was such a dangerous proposition for so many millions of years that something like hypnog jerk if some of those primates had that behavior they may have been just slightly more likely over millions of years to to adapt and survive we haven't gotten rid of it yet as we sing so that my jerk is just basically so I don't get eaten by a lion all these many years yeah that's what he's saying it's sort of like a echo. Do we know this or we just imagine? No, how are we going to know this? It's just a story. But there is at least one tantalizing bit of evidence to support this idea.

You ask college students, what are the most common dreams that you have in falling his number one or number two most common theme? And if you go on a college campus, you know, thanks to OSHA, right? You have no chance of falling off anything. They'll make sure the Eiffelis drop is like a foot or six inches, even then it had big yellow and red signs all over it. But they dream of falling what? And by the way, the next most common dream after falling, being chased by an alien in a blue dress. No, it isn't. Stay away.

It is too. Don't rest your head. Don't lie down upon your bed, while the moon drives in the skies, When Stay Stay, stay, stay, stay Stay, stay, stay, stay The bird It's the third time. You're walking and you don't always realize it, but you're always falling. Well, actually, I have a random one for you guys about falling, as I was driving over here,

I was thinking about it. Okay. With each step, neuroscientist David Eagleman again, you fall forward slightly and then catch yourself. I started wondering what happened. And falling. Why is it that elderly people fall down a lot? If you go into any hospital ward,

you'll see lots and lots of elderly people who are in there with broken hips and things like that because they've fallen. So I started asking my clinician friends, and they say, well, they have a porcelain balance, muscle weakness, so I said, could it have anything to do with timing? What do you mean?

Well, one of the things I study is how the brain sends out signals to the whole body and how these signals come back. Because the strange part is the brain is situated all the way at one end of the body, all the way at the top end, and it's controlling this huge amount of machinery, you have to send signals all the way out to the toes

and all the way back, and they're surprisingly slow in the brain. It's about 300,000 times slower than signals move around in a computer. So it would be like if you were a NASA operator controlling the Mars rover, there's a delay between when you send the signals... When you send the signals... ...and when you get the feedback. And so what happens is the brain is very... puts a lot of effort into making sure that it knows exactly the timing of sending signals out and when it's getting signals back and that's how you Walk for example So this is like what toddlers learn in reverse

Aren't they learning the timings to get the left foot out in front of the right exactly what they're doing They're calibrating the timing of their whole nervous system. That's interesting, because my kid's 10 months old, and I think he's in this calibrating period. I stand up. So what's happening with him now is he's standing, but then he looks like he's about to take a step, but then he's about to go out.

Oh, oh. Thought I was his little spell. Yes. That was good. So basically you're saying his little brain is trying to figure out the timings of electricity racing from brain to foot and foot back to brain. Yes.

Mission control is going. Okay, sending message to the feet. We expect it back in 300 milliside. Oh. Oh. Temple fall. Take three. Okay, we're going to try now 280 milliside.

Okay, 280 go. And down number two Tumble fall that's exactly right a lot of trial and error until you get the timing right but get it right now You're a walker right Now something that happens in let's say Multiple sclerosis and maybe also when you get old, says David. Is that the timing starts to change because there's damage to the she-thing around the nerves and that slows down certain signals.

Then the brain says, Oh, I thought my foot should have hit the ground by now, but it hasn't, so I'm going to send out a corrective motor command. And then finally the signal does come back and you send out this corrective motor command and you'll stumble. With each step you fall forward slightly and then catch yourself from falling. Now we're going to fall far from home. We're gonna have to travel a good and many light years off the planet to fall in this particularly special and gruesome way. Our faller is Neil deGrasse Tyson, he's a astronomical physicist. Is that what he is? Here he is at the Herbst theater. I like saying that. Herbst theater in San Francisco. In front of an audience, talking about falling apart.

I'm mining my own business on the airplane and someone looks and sees what I'm doing. They find out I do astrophysics that outcome to questions. When will life end? Will the asteroid come? Will the Aztec calendar destroy the Earth? There's all, there's, it goes on and on. As I figured, people like death and mayhem. So I might as well title the book with that because there's a whole chapter on how to die as you fall into a black hole, which I personally think

is a kind of cool way to die. Because what happens is the gravity of the black hole is extreme, as you can imagine. Light doesn't even escape. Its gravity is so extreme. Light traveling at the speed of light. All right? So if light doesn't come out, nothing's coming out.

It's black, you fall in, you're not coming out. It's a one-way trip. Okay? So, you don't just die because you disappear. You die long before you disappear. As you fall in, the gravity at your feet becomes rapidly greater than the gravity at your head. So your feet start falling faster than your head does.

That's a bad situation to be in. You don't really, initially you kind of feel good, you know? Because it's, every, we all stretch when you wake up in the morning. Initially it feels like a stretch. But what happens is that stretch continues beyond comfort levels. And you reach a point where, and they're called the tidal forces, tides on your body, basically. The tidal force comes so great that they exceed

the intermolecular forces that bind your flesh. And so the point comes where you snap into two pieces, likely to happen at the base of your spine. Now you are two pieces. Now, I know you didn't ask about this, but it turns out you will survive that snap because below your waist, while there are no vital organs below your waist while there are important organs, there are no vital organs below your waist. So your torso will stay alive for a little while until you bleed to death, but this all happens much faster than it would take to bleed to death. So these two pieces then feel tidal forces

and then they snap into two pieces and then they snap again into eight and then 16 and then you're bifurcating your way down and so eventually it's your head and multiple other parts and so that will continue until you are a stream of atoms descending toward the abyss and it turns out that's not the worst of it okay the worst it turns out the fabric of space and time funnels down towards a black hole. So the space that you occupy up here is larger than the space you occupy down here. So in fact, you're getting, while you're getting stretched, you're getting squeezed, extruded through the fabric of space, like toothpaste through a tube. I'll wait for you all to piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, piece-knit, Well, we're about to fall away, I think.

Yeah. Okay, nice one. Nice one, Growich. Before we do, though, know that we have a podcast. It's at radiolab.org. I'm Chad Abumrod. I'm Robert Growich, bye. This is Joan Murray.

Radio Lab is produced by Chad Abomrod and Tim Howard. Their staff includes Ellen Horn, Sorn Wheeler, Luhu Miller, Reniferao Pat Walters, and Lynn Levy. With help from Sharon Chatta, Raymond Tonga Carr, Sam Raudman, and Nicole Corrin. Special thanks to Ari Daniel Shapiro, and Wayne, Emily Corwin, April Kinzer, and the C-Yarts and Lectures in San Francisco. How is that guys? This is Fred Coolidge. All about the Hibnic jerk. Bye!