Radiolab - The Flight Before Christmas

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From WNYC. You're seeing. You're seeing.

Starting point is 00:00:16 You're seeing. Buh, buh, buh, doodoo. Oh, okay. Look at that. Difference. Huge dim. All right, let me just do the, I'm producer Mack Hilty, Oh, wow. Okay, look at that difference. Huge difference. Okay, let me just do the, I'm producing my guilty,

Starting point is 00:00:30 bubbly, bubbly. All right, you wanna just take it away? Yeah, this is number eight, because, it is the season. For one of the greatest miracles on earth, not the birth of Christ, Virgin birth, pretty wild stuff, but actually the miracle of human flight.

Starting point is 00:00:45 Hello everyone, my name is David and I'm your chief flight attendant on behalf of the Captain. Okay, now I should say this is not a story. I don't have a story to tell you. Who needs a story, map through us, whatever you got. We're Captain. Alright, so I wanted to start on a plane because millions of people around the world are going to be on them around this time of the year. Yeah. But also because of this thing that happens to me every time I fly

Starting point is 00:01:07 Which is like I you're on the plane. You're out on the tarmac. You're waiting to take off for A while Along while And then while. And then the engines start to work and suddenly you feel that that jolt like the whole plane starts shaking. You hear the seats rattling. Plane is just going faster and faster. You're doing something like 180 miles an hour. And then all of a sudden you're just like, oh, and you feel that little rise. you leave the earth and you can see the ground just start

Starting point is 00:01:49 to fall away. And the higher you get, you can start to see the snakeings of the freeways and the highway systems and the parks and the neighborhoods. And then all of a sudden you're in the clouds. That's where we used to think that God exists. Yeah. And angels. And like we're just up there.

Starting point is 00:02:05 And maybe you take a moment to kind of just take a breath, relax. Feeling a state of pleasant anticipation about the place you're going to be when you land. I actually talked to Dan Coise, who's a writer for Slade, who pointed out to me that one of the incredible things about being up there with all these people. Is we're 200 people or so, and we're like a little civilization.

Starting point is 00:02:26 Soaring through the sky, which is actually kind of where everything goes wrong. Because what it means is it's just you and a bunch of people trapped inside of a relatively small metal tube. And any agency we have over ourselves has essentially been stripped of us. You are literally strapped into a seat no longer in control of your physical body or your fate. It is in other people's hands. And you start to wonder, who are these other people? Like, is the person next to me?

Starting point is 00:02:59 A loud snorer or a drooler on my shoulder? And there's that guy across the aisle who looked Hey, hon. hey, honey. Super flirty with a flight attendant. Is that a kid behind me? They might kick the back of your seat. Somebody sounds sick. Like, they're coughing a lot. Whatever pilots are bad pilots.

Starting point is 00:03:13 We could crash and I might die. And slowly, you're confronted with the fact that this glorious miracle of human flight is really just some sort of like weird endurance test? Yeah, or like a test of your worth. Like, can you make it through this challenge with your humanity intact in order to earn the reward at the end, which is that you're in Palo Alto or whatever.

Starting point is 00:03:42 Palo Alto or whatever. Okay, this is Radio Lab. I'm Lula Miller. I'm Lestive Nazar. And today to ring in the holiday airline travel season, we are going to take you on a flight. A flight through these sometimes stressful. Sometimes scary. Sometimes disgusting. Sometimes pleasant.

Starting point is 00:04:03 Endurance test that is flying commercial. We have got three different stories, that examine three different elements of this strange little civilization in the air. And to kick it off. Yeah, it's like in all the tens of thousands of miles of space, these few inches are the most contested. Producer, Matt, Kilti. Okay, so Matt, maybe just rewind a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:04:28 Okay, go back, airplane civilization. Let's see, what do I do? Gonna bring back Dan Coise for this. So in all those civilizations, I think of the pilots, the flight attendants, the sort of the guardians, the providers, the authority figures, and then also up at the front of the plane, you have

Starting point is 00:04:46 the first class passengers. There in another universe. Oh, you won't believe what he said. Talking about whatever they talked about, drinking champagne and mimosas. Yes, he said boot straps. Probably in the pajamas, he massaged. I said no, no, Bradley. Low fratassles.

Starting point is 00:05:01 Not boot straps, but the rest of us. We are in the endurance test. 35 rows of six. Where your stuck-in-ey seats seem to have no cushion, which is fabric. And that's where you are for your flight. Upright, locked position. Except for when you finally... Hello, everyone. The captain has turned all the seatbelt sign. You're first little bit of freedom off flight. And if you want to your left, there is that... ...and you're going to have to to all the sleep belt sign. You're first little bit of freedom on the flight.

Starting point is 00:05:26 And if you want to your left, there is that, oh, it's a nice little metal button, the recline button. It's such a delicious button. It is perfectly concave for your thumb to just like nestle right into. It's like a little bed for your thumb. It wants to be touched. It's begging for you to touch it. But the thing that I have not stopped thinking about

Starting point is 00:05:48 for the past month is how this little button actually contains this sort of basic moral dilemma, which is, do you push it and push your seat back, taking up a little bit of space from the person behind you for your own comfort, knowing that that might make them less comfortable. Well, I mean, so that- Basically, what that means for Dan every time he flies on a plane, right before the seat belt sign goes off, he's sitting there waiting, hoping,

Starting point is 00:06:16 wondering- If everyone will, just this once, prioritize the health of the community over the comfort of the individual. And then the little ding goes off and you discover that people don't, they don't care about the community, they're not willing to sacrifice even a tiny bit of comfort for the greater good. Oh, come on. That feels so extreme. Well, I think it's sure, but a tall gentleman. Oh, no, no, no, dance five foot nine. Okay, that's, that's my land. But no, I think Dan has a point here, which is if you choose to recline, not only are you

Starting point is 00:06:49 taking up someone else's space, they then feel they have to recline. And so you are setting off a cascade of unpleasant circumstances right down the line as every person now faces this decision about their own comfort now under duress. But you have to admit that it's much more comfortable to be reclined than it is to be upright. Is it much more comfortable? How much of a reclined do you get on it? Five degrees, typically.

Starting point is 00:07:15 A five degree reclined. But in such a confined world, that little bit is at least something. It's like a little gulp of fresh water. It's like a little, yeah, I agree. But it's hard to imagine that the difference in your happiness from reclining five degrees is even close to the increase in unhappiness of the person behind you

Starting point is 00:07:39 who now has your seat in their face. So Dan's solution is basically, therefore no one should recline, which feels pretty extreme. And actually I was talking to my roommate about this, who loves, she loves to recline. And she said, why not everyone just recline? And then you maximize happiness for everybody,

Starting point is 00:07:57 if everybody gets to recline. But... But then bathroom seat. The last row. The last row doesn't have to be completely reclined. But her position was, you found the back row. On the row doesn't have to do the recline. But her position was you found the back row. No, that is not true. Not to be too responsibility. Just to find it. To wait that way, to buy your ticket. You waited too long. That is cool. Victim blaming.

Starting point is 00:08:16 That's like, build the plane to let the backseat recline. And then we could all recline. It's a great idea. But Dan would still say no. It is still a selfish move to recline, because you are simply saying, I'm making this decision for everyone. You're effectively saying, what I want is what everyone should want. So let's all just recline. There, I solved it.

Starting point is 00:08:37 Okay. Now I'm starting to feel like a monster. You're a recliner. You're a major recliner. Yeah, it's like I'll take my little corner of like, I'm usually anxious and so I'm like, I gotta take that extra inch and a half and like try to find a little comfort.

Starting point is 00:08:52 Okay. Now this is good because I do not recline. Really? No, I don't, I'm an absolutist, I don't recline. You mean like never? I mean, maybe if there's no one behind me, but like, yeah, I don't think I ever reclined. Okay, Mr. Moral High Ground.

Starting point is 00:09:07 Maybe I'm just feeling defensive, but I do, I feel like I gotta go here. Like I do wonder if there's a gender thing of foot here, which is like women are used to not getting any space, so a little bit less, like I'm not affronted by anyone reclining in me because I'm not affronted by anyone reclining and maybe because I'm used to like not taking up space and like moving through the window. Okay, granted, granted, different people value that space a different amount, right?

Starting point is 00:09:33 But it doesn't kind of matter what that person behind you is valuing because if you choose to recline, you're making that choice for them. Okay, maybe I can just jump in quick and say, I, on occasion, do recline. But I do it as softly and gently as possible. That's what a gift you've given that poor bastard behind you. But I feel like we're having this moral argument, which I understand. But to me, it feels like it's more an argument about ownership, because it's like, I paid for the ticket, for the seat that comes with the recline button.

Starting point is 00:10:05 And therefore, like, it feels like the space behind me belongs to me, like I own that space. Remember that makes sense. What do you mean you own the space behind you? I own the space in front of me. You have no control over the space in front of you. I know, that's what's so upsetting about it. But then you can imagine you're sitting right now,

Starting point is 00:10:23 you're sitting in front of your computer, right? And you've got a microphone in front of you and you're recording this. And what if your next door neighbor just fucking showed up and like put his lawnmower on your desk? It's exactly the same. Well, but it isn't, because it feels slightly different.

Starting point is 00:10:38 It's like, what if, it feels more like if there was like some sort of movable wall with my neighbor that I had no access to control, but they paid their price for their apartment. And it's just like one of the features of their apartment. And so for some reason, they need to like, they're having a large dinner party and they need to move the wall over three feet.

Starting point is 00:10:56 They're just going to be like, you see and trying to invent this analogy that it's insane. It's a very idea. Here's a question, what do you do? You're on a flight, you're in your seat, the person in front of you has reclined you're annoyed about it, you're simmering, then they get up and go to the bathroom and leave their seat reclined.

Starting point is 00:11:19 I would never. I always, always could push their button and pop it back up. Dad, I thought you were a model citizen. I am a model citizen. I don't know. You sound like a tyrant is what you sound like. I'm just a good parent. But as I was reporting this story, I did start to wonder like who actually owns that space?

Starting point is 00:11:41 That's right. So I talked to these two lawyers. Michael Heller, Professor at Columbia Law School. and Jim Salisman, Professor of Environmental Law at the University of California, Standard Barber School of the Environment and UCLA Law School. So Jim and Michael wrote a book called Mine, am I any? Uh-huh, Esquamation Point. Mine! Yeah, so the book Mine is basically who gets watch and why. And in the the book they point out what is actually kind of obvious

Starting point is 00:12:06 Which is that the airlines are the ones who own the space on a plane like they're the ones who actually own this Reclined space and there actually is a rule the airlines have which is your lab to recline airlines will never enforce it And they told me that in fact flight attendants are trained to just de-escalate conflicts about recline seats. Not actually come in and say, who controls that space? And by not making it clear who controls the recline space, they get to sell that space twice on every seat and every flight. Because the recliner thinks that they own it and the recline into thinks they own it. They basically pit us against each other. A new air war has broken out.

Starting point is 00:12:44 Which leads to two passengers. Irresolvable conflict. A new air war has broken out. Which leads to two passengers. Irresolvable conflict. We've got into a brawl Sunday. There's been drinks thrown, fists thrown. Punching the back of this woman's seat after she reclined it. I mean, there have been flights that have been grounded because of fights over super-clining.

Starting point is 00:12:58 Wow. And sure, maybe you actually have more self-restraint than that and you deceive in your seat with frustration if somebody reclines into you. But the whole point is, we get mad at each other we turn against each other because we're in this confined space where we all think we own this precious little sliver of it and it's mine no it's mine let's you experience that conflict as being between me and you rather than between being us and the airlines ah so this is all the airlines fault they like encourage this is all the airlines fault.

Starting point is 00:13:26 They like encouraged this conflict to just be left in muddy waters. No clean, you know, no clean boundaries, like boundaries are an illusion of gas, but we agree upon them. No clean boundaries, it's just gonna be murky. It's just gonna like, it's incentivizing conflict. It's incentivizing hating of your fellow human.

Starting point is 00:13:44 Like, so let's just hate the airlines. Yeah, I agree I agree with that. I agree with that And then like and then that's not the problem that I didn't actually solve the problem though. Well, no it does here's why Because then you can do either thing Your Uh-uh. Uh-uh. No way. You can't wash your hands, you're lullabies. Well, I might ask now. I can, I can learn. I think I would, I think I would ask. Well, I should say, I do think there actually is a solution here, which I, okay, say, say, say, say, say, say, okay. So there was this research done by two other lawyers, actually, like back in 2014, it was something that was published in Slate, but these two lawyers

Starting point is 00:14:25 did a survey. It was online where they pulled, I forget how many people, and they were trying to figure out, is there actually some sort of solution that seems viable? So the research showed that actually just asking somebody, trying to be polite, trying to ask, can I lean back, or can you please move your seat forward, is ineffective. That doesn't actually get you what you want. Any effective. And so then they started asking, well, how much money would it take for you

Starting point is 00:14:48 to either stop reclining or for somebody to give up the space in front of them to allow somebody to recline? And this is kind of absurd. The amount of money it would take for somebody to give up the rights to the space in front of them, $39 is what the number came out to be.

Starting point is 00:15:06 You have to pay somebody. You have to pay somebody $39 essentially to be able to recline into their space. Like that's how strongly they felt about the space in front of them. That's the dollar out that it feels reasonable. That weirdly feels like a reasonable amount of money. To stop somebody from reclining, the number was $41.

Starting point is 00:15:24 You would have to pay somebody for it. Well, what is that mean? To me, I see it, there's more pain in, you're willing to pay more. There's more pain in reclining. No, no, it's more. It's more, no, no, no, no. Like, this isn't even the point I'm trying to make.

Starting point is 00:15:38 The point I'm trying to make is that actually, the most effective thing that you can do is, the researchers asked, what if somebody purchased for you a drink or a snack that's maybe like eight bucks? Oh, that's nice. And 78% of people said they would accept that offer and not recline their seat.

Starting point is 00:15:58 Amazing. They only asked people who were going to recline. So it's limited to just people who were going to recline if you get... So he's so large if it could be like, wait, wait, wait, wait, so we could go like this. Lots of could go chat me on the shoulder and say, Lulu, can I buy you a drink to not recline? Yeah, exactly. And I'd be like, oh, I would love a little shard.

Starting point is 00:16:15 And then I'd be like, lots of, can I buy you a drink to recline and you'd be like, well, I don't want a fancy cocktail, but you could buy me a tomato juice and some, and one of those expensive cheese plates. And then I'd be like, okay, oh. I can recline now. That's classy.

Starting point is 00:16:32 And isn't it so sweet? It's so cute. It's sweet, but it's back to capitalism. But no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's gift-giving, it's transactional. I mean, you're saying the solution to the problem of the plane selling that space twice is to buy more Snacks from them and give them more money. Okay

Starting point is 00:16:55 Hello everyone and a few minutes the flight attendants will be coming down the aisle to offer you complimentary hot or cold beverages as Well as a light meal for purchase. Alcoholic drinks are also available at phenomenal charge. Now sit back, relax, enjoy the flight and thank you. All right, next up we have got a story from our producer Simon Adler. Okay, when I say airplane food, what comes to mind for the two of you? The blandest, unhappiest, tiny packet of experience. And there's often a bar fee quality making my stomach turn. Fair enough, but what if I were to tell you that it wasn't always this way?

Starting point is 00:17:39 I'm given to understand that we're ready. Excellent, excellent. That in fact, as food writer and frequent flyer Richard Foss here tells it, not that long ago. It was wonderful. Huh. Even an economy. Yeah, for years, food was the way that airlines competed for customers. Today's menu and food for shrimp cocktail, a chocolate hot Sunday.

Starting point is 00:18:03 And so you saw the sort of arms race for who could be tastier and fancier. So on transatlantic flights by SAS. Scandinavian Airlines, that is. It was a Scandinavian smorgasbord, carving salmon, and all sorts of things. It's all up there. An airline called Northwest Orient, which is based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, served Japanese food.

Starting point is 00:18:29 On flights all over America in what essentially became a flying teaky bar. What? Yes. It was not Japanese food as any Japanese person would recognize it, but for someone in the 1950s, this was glamour. You get to the point where allotalia airlines of Italy. Benvenuti a borgue. They just made it an Italian restaurant

Starting point is 00:18:51 that served you food all the way from one place to another. Parmesan, prosciutto. Roma tomatoes, red wine out of an actual wine glass. That's flying allotalia. I want that flight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a pretty amazing experience. So that's how it was. Okay. If they could return to that. Yeah, it sounds pretty good. But continue. Okay. Well, how airplane food became the sad, sorry thing it is today, you could argue. I all begin with an olive. What? Yes, candles olive. Cause olives are great. Huh, I love olives. Me too.

Starting point is 00:19:32 Well, they ruined it. And here's how? Okay. Back in the 1980s, American airlines had to CEO by the name of Robert Crandell. See the costs now exceed revenues. And that means, of course, that we are losing money. Tough guy with slip back hair and glasses and he was trying to make the company more money. And what happened is he was on an American Airlines flight where a meal had been served and he looked

Starting point is 00:19:57 and he saw that most of the other passengers had left the olives from their salad sitting there. And that just bugged him. Sure. He was thinking, we're paying for these olives and no one's eating them. So he basically went back to his office and said, cut the olives. And then he started looking at everything else.

Starting point is 00:20:21 You know, why are we using cloth napkins when regular napkins will do cut costs? Who needs metal branded silverware? Be a winner. Next, stop giving people the entire can of Coca-Cola and instead pour it into a tiny little cup and you get six ounces. Before long, you've got to pay for your goddamn cheese and crackers that they give you in the little box. Like, here's a damn brag suck on it it, and that passes to the next guy.

Starting point is 00:20:45 You're right. Exactly. The next guy. Exactly. And then on top of this, 9-11 happens. OK. And I don't know if you remember, but in the months after the attack.

Starting point is 00:20:58 Overall, the industry remains in a slump. Plains are only 62% full. Revenues down about 40%. Airlines were going bankrupt. Continental has announced unspecified cuts. American Airlines also fighting to stay out of the bankers. And so they sold off their flight kitchens. And these airline-owned smaller kitchens got replaced by companies like Gate Gormais.

Starting point is 00:21:23 Okay, we're now entering. Yeah, this room in the store, I just wanna explain as we walk. Companies that began churning out airplane food for tons of different airlines all at once. We know this hour, we've got 13 flights going out. Next hour, we've got 24 flights. I went and visited one of these places,

Starting point is 00:21:40 just a couple miles from the Newark airport. This massive warehouse, the size of nearly six football fields, end here. We have trucks coming all day long. 24 hours a day on a scale that's almost impossible to comprehend. We use 7,000 pounds of white ice a day. Ingredients come in through the loading dock. We get pounds and pounds of struplaffles, biscop cookies, pretzels.

Starting point is 00:22:03 And are prepared in this stainless steel covered industrial kitchen. Mash potatoes, we need to make pollinthas mushroom deluxe. As we entered the kitchen, the executive chef, Mark DeCruz, here was preparing some breakfast items. If you walk my kitchen, you sit, you're raising, sawtings, stewing. So how many eggs you're going to go through today? It will be 2600 eggs. Okay. Eggs that will leave on little plastic trays.

Starting point is 00:22:29 And how many meals do you think you make a day? We make roughly like 1520,000. 20,000 or so at a time. Maybe like a few hours. Thank you so much, you all. We're gonna go back out. We're gonna go to cold food now. And I got to say walking away from that factory tour.

Starting point is 00:22:50 I was left feeling that it's a minor miracle that we have food on airplanes at all. And also that, you know, at this scale, there's just no way. No matter how hard chefs like Mark DeCruz try, that this food is gonna be that tasty. But then, as I kept reporting this, I learned that these chefs are actually up against another challenge, one that has nothing to do with the airlines. Oh, I can do it closer. Hold on. Let's put that, put that. And everything to do with us. But better? Yes, there. Now you sound nice and

Starting point is 00:23:30 rich and full. So this is Charles Spence. Head of the cross-modal research laboratory at Oxford University. I'm interested in the senses. And he says to understand why your plain food doesn't taste that good, we have to appreciate that taste. It isn't just what's happening on the tongue. Our experience, what we call the taste of food, which is really the flavour, is probably one of the most multi-censory experiences that we have, because it really does engage all of the senses. The coating you get on the inside of your mouth, the melting sensations. You know, that's all touch. The meaty, creamy burnt to my wife's cooking, a kind of flavors,

Starting point is 00:24:08 does actually your sense of smell. And crispy crackly, crunchy, those sort of sounds really important to our enjoyment of food. And in an airplane at 30,000 feet, he says, all of these different senses, they're under assault. Take smell, for example, in an airplane, it's super, super dry. Equivalent to being in the desert,

Starting point is 00:24:29 all that means is your nose is gonna be not as moist. And so the little food molecules floating in the air, the ones that you're meant to smell, they're gonna have a harder time sticking to your nose. Wait, for smell to work well. It needs to be a little like humid. Yep, yep. And therefore you're gonna miss all that meaty, creamy, burnt goodness.

Starting point is 00:24:51 However, Charles says there is another stranger culprit at play here. Beyond smell, it's really the engine noise that plays a really important role in suppressing our ability to taste. Turns out that the 80 or so decibels of white noise that are pounding your ears from the Jets engines. They reduce your ability to taste salt, reduce your ability to taste sweet, and increase your ability to detect and enjoy umami. Increases your voice? Increases, yes. So that you need 20 to 30% more salt and sugar

Starting point is 00:25:36 and significantly less MSG or umami seasoning. To get the same taste experience as somebody down on the ground eating the same food. What? Yeah. Oh, we know now that this is really the thing. So in 2014 we published a paper saying, there's something about that white noise that messes with us. And they've documented this in people both up in an airplane and then also with people down on the ground using just like headphones. Yeah, just playing them 8-8-8-5 decibels of white or engine noise. Their taste thresholds did change in this way.

Starting point is 00:26:16 Sweet and salty, really hard to taste, umami, easier to taste. That is so bonkers and specific. Doesn't that make you want to know why? Why sound or effect taste? In particularly umami, like why that that union. I think no one's got the fighting to its clue. They're pretty sure that this is why people drink so much tomato juice. There's so many bloody marries when when they're in flight. Yeah, yeah, Tartus You've got lots of umami and Worcester sauce is another rich sauce. It's like the most umami is Thing you could drink. We are such weird animals man. Oh, yes

Starting point is 00:27:13 Okay, before I hop off, a couple quick solutions here. Yeah, yeah, give me some advice. So number one, it's been recommended that you bring along a nasal douche, a small, little bit of water. I never leave home without it, frankly. Just to spray, you know, to keep some moisture up there in your nose, which is going to allow you to smell things better, and therefore enjoy the food more. Number two is you just bring a little MSG,

Starting point is 00:27:35 because MSG is very umamious, and just put a little of that on whatever thing. Yeah, and it's going to taste better. OK. I've got another idea. Noise canceling headphones? Yes. Just put a little of that on what everything. Yeah, and it's gonna taste better. Okay. I've got another idea. Noise canceling headphones? Yes. And if you want to take the noise canceling headphones one step further.

Starting point is 00:27:52 Why not pick some music that will enhance the taste of the food you're eating? Charles Spenson, his lab, they found that white noise isn't the only sound to impact our perception of flavor. That different sounds and different music can do all sorts of different things. You can't turn water into wine with music. The taste has to be there to begin with, but what you can do is dial up something in the tasting experience or suppress less desirable tastes. And so I will leave you with this.

Starting point is 00:28:21 Some empirically-backed sounds you may want to pair with whatever the tray that's put in front of you. So if you're looking to add some salt, they recommend something rhythmic, kind of harsh and in a minor key. So you might want to try something like supernova at the end of the universe by the orb here. If you're looking to bring out the bitterness, it's hard to do better than William Basinski's brassy drones and occasional crackles. Sour accentuating music isn't particularly pleasant to listen to. It's high-pitched and dissonant, like composer Neal's Oakland's horizontal. porosante. And then lastly to bring out the sweetness, you're going to want something melodic, higher pitched, and probably with a piano somewhere in there oddly enough. Like for example, Fentasia here. Alright folks, bon appétit.

Starting point is 00:30:02 Hello everyone, we hope you enjoyed your meal. The captain has turned on the seatbelt sign. Please return to your seats and keep your seatbelts fastened. We'll be right back. Stay put. Sit down. Thank you. Lulu, Latif, Radio Lab, and now, producer, Rachel Kutsek. Okay, so there's this very specific moment when I'm flying. It's after I've scooped out the very last bit of the world's most unsatisfying meal. I've kicked off my shoes.

Starting point is 00:30:51 Everyone's like push their seat back, who's gonna push their seat back. For the first time, all flight, I feel relief. Hmm. And then, usually, at that exact moment, this little bubble arrives in my stomach. This bubble starts out small, but then it feels like it finds other bubbles and it grows and moves inside me. And pretty soon, I feel like a lava lamp. Rachel, tell me you are not doing a whole story about farts.

Starting point is 00:31:21 Sorry. Every single time it's not like I was farting all day and then it just continues on the airplane. It's like it just kicks on this switch in me that happens once I hit cruising altitude. And I go into this panic mode because I'm like packed in like a sardine with all these fricking strangers around me.

Starting point is 00:31:41 And I've always thought it was just me. But I have had wind. You've had Kevin Prisha. I had Kevin Prisha? It is not. Turns out... Somebody... ...has to gas on an American Airlines plane.

Starting point is 00:31:56 The airplane fart. Fight broke out over a passenger who led you refuse to stop passing gas. Is a global problem. Thousands of feet in the air. the pilot is forced to divert. And everyone had to be removed from the jet. It was that bad. I'm just in a ball of discomfort.

Starting point is 00:32:14 I'm just in a ball of curiosity. Like, what is happening here? All right. So then how do you answer that question? Where do you go? So we actually have to go down a little bit down to ground level. Okay. Alright. Land the play over side. We're going to land it. No one get off. I feel better already. We have to go back to this hiking trip. Okay. From the 1980s, two men, York Miller. And my friend Paul Arabach, who was a class behind me at Duke Medical School.

Starting point is 00:32:46 York Miller is the one telling us the story, by the way. Great. Okay. We planned a five day backpacking trip in Colorado, in the San Juan Mountains. So day one, they start hiking back in there in some high country and they go up higher above Timberline and then probably the very first night they kind of get into their tent they zip it up and one of them farts and then the other one does and all of a sudden their tent is

Starting point is 00:33:17 filled with this symphony and it's a symphony of farts yeah I'm one of these guys who likes to make as much noise as possible. Oh, you thought this was better than I would say, okay. You know, it could be quite unpleasant in that tent. Just my hands are like clenched against my face right now. This happens again and again. And by the way, Paul and I were, you know, stuck in a tent together in the rain. There's like truly no escape. It's not like you're going to like step outside and fart.

Starting point is 00:33:57 Ultimately, they decide to expedite this trip from a five day trip to a three day trip, not because of the farts. Oh, no. Okay. And they're heading back home. And we started to remark about how much gas we were each passing. Wondering what was causing all of that? They considered diet, granola and various freeze dried stuff. And then they thought, like, are we just focusing on it? Because we're stuck in this small enclosed space. For longer than usual.

Starting point is 00:34:25 And then one of them wondered if this had anything to do with... We were up at 12 to 13,000 feet. Altitude. And Coil's Law. Boils Law? The ideal gas equation. Which is when it comes to gas. Any gas.

Starting point is 00:34:39 As pressure goes down, volume goes up. So just imagine walking up a mountain. As you go higher, the pressure goes lower, and the gas in your intestines is expanding. Right, okay. Right. Ballooning outwards until you really have no other option but to let it out. out. And so according to Boyle's Law, Farts increase as the elevation does. So York and Paul, we started to compose a letter to a medical journal. They call this phenomenon hafe. High altitude, flatus expulsion. And they wanted it to have a very official name to fit in with the general high altitude literature. They submit it. And let's just say people resonate with the topic. I'm sure that this hayf paper is the most cited thing I've ever published.

Starting point is 00:35:33 I'm kind of a big fish and a small pond in that farting area. It's a really bubbly pond. Yeah, I guess so. Do you think that the same? And so I asked York, is this what's happening on airplanes also? Will it maybe, I mean airplanes are usually pressurized to about 8,000 feet,

Starting point is 00:35:52 meaning they're pumping air into the cabin at a level that's not sea level, but a level that is basically the height of a mountain. Oh, so they're pumping in thinner air? Yes, they pump in thinner air. So, but why wouldn't they just pressurize to land level and not fart mountain level? Because if there's too much pressure inside this airplane,

Starting point is 00:36:15 the airplane could burst. Okay, fair, fair, fair, fair. Okay, good call. No, no, good call, good call. Okay, come down with that decision. Yeah, great. And the airplanes, they could pressurize it to 6,000 feet instead of 8,000 feet. They've done it before in certain airplanes, but those airplanes are more expensive.

Starting point is 00:36:32 So does that mean there are certain airlines that are like, you know what, we do it up right? You got sea level pressure in here. And others are like, yeah, we're skimping. It's mountain pressure. There's going to be more farts. Yeah, theoretically, you could assume that those more expensive airplanes have less of an effect on the body and therefore have fewer farts on them.

Starting point is 00:36:50 Oh, I hate it. And again, the thing I'm actually mad at is money. It's like there it is lurking in all these stories. Yeah, it's like we set it up at the beginning as this civilization in the sky and here are three moments that we've found where, you know, we could have prioritized human dignity and comfort, but no, we chose not to. Yeah, yes, yes.

Starting point is 00:37:19 It is like everywhere you look in this little metal tube, you find capitalism over humanity. Yes. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in, wait, wait, wait, wait, before we go, I just have one last little tidbit that I think could help us clear the air. What a rip. Okay, so I talked to this pilot named Lou. Lou Boyer, I'm 747 captain. And Lou helped me realize we are not the only civilization, flying around up in the clouds. I'm flowing just about every animal you can think of over the years.

Starting point is 00:38:02 And you two buckle up and put your seeds in the upright position for what I'm about to tell you next. Okay, all right. In his 30 plus years of flying, blue has flown bears horses all the time. Small containers of reptiles, you know, we get snakes. Samuel L. Jackson was not lying. There's actually snakes on plans. Yeah, we we flew 562 llamas, when we took off, at least it was 562 llamas. And when we landed, it was 564 because we had two live bursts while we were in root. Wow. Blue has flown fish and cows and elephants. That's a lot of whales.

Starting point is 00:38:39 I've flown tigers. I've flown everything. You've flown whales? I don't know. They need a whale, I guess, from Japan for aquarium. They don't have one, I guess. They fly in one end. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:38:49 You're flying whales, folks. Yeah. I'm featuring McNoah's arc. That's a pretty good imagination there. They just don't roam freely on the main deck. Do they have big giant aquarium pools that you just ins, like at a time you plop a whale onto the to the plane? Yeah, sort of. It's it's its own little capsule if you will Well, not little but they have their own compartments. Yeah, so they can't really move around much

Starting point is 00:39:14 There's obviously a veteran area in there that you know, they're sedated and everything else Are these planes specifically just animals? Are these like in the cargo on a passenger plane? Yeah. So it's a mix. Oftentimes, these animals are just plopped on a cargo plane. But I did read about these two sloths that needed to get transported to a zoo, and they just blocked out seats for the sloth and the handlers at the front of the plane, and they're just sitting where they give in drinks.

Starting point is 00:39:42 Apparently, they refused the peanuts. I don't know if that was like a writerly line or if they actually didn't want peanuts. And their arms are so long, you just picture their hands like a draped over the arm. One of them ends back when like reclans they're seeing and the other. So slowly like.

Starting point is 00:39:59 Yeah, it sounds like a Disney movie. But hearing about these animals that are flying in the sky, it reminds me of this absolute magic that happens on an airplane. Like 200 years ago, a flying human probably sounded about as crazy as a flying whale, and now every single day hundreds of thousands of us are up in the sky in our own little tanks, and we're breathing out of thin air, and being taken care of by our flight attendant handlers, and going to the bathroom and watching Bridget Jones' diary. In a place we never were meant to.

Starting point is 00:40:41 And even I get tired of that amazingness, and I focus instead on this small amount of leg room and the sad little meals and the farts in the air. But I think next time I fly, I'm just gonna try to remember that I'm a flying whale. Is that the end? Do we make it to the end? Yeah. Not even close. I have so many more questions here, yeah. Imagine like a farting whale. No, can we, are we done yet? But maybe if they're blowholes,

Starting point is 00:41:10 sort of take care of all of that. Yeah, farting above. Although is it different issues because there's a blowhole about like a lung? Yeah, I wonder. That's a great question. Okay, we're here. Woo, thank goodness. Okay, we're here. Thank goodness.

Starting point is 00:41:25 Okay, so this episode was reported and produced by Matt Kilti, Simon Adler, and Rachel Qsick with production help from Sindunyan Asumbandan, and mixing help from Arianne Wack. It was edited by Pat Walters, and our flight attendant was none other than Mr. David Gable. Bravo, bravo! Special thanks to Natalie Compton, Julia Lungoria, Mike are not an everyone at Gate Gormay. If you want to learn more about the history of airplane food,

Starting point is 00:41:52 check out Richard Foss's Food in the Air and Space, the surprising history of food and drink in the skies. Thank you. I hope you have safe travels, whether you are a farting human or a farting whale. One thing I wanted to recommend during this travel time, which can also be emotionally complicated, our colleagues over at Death Sex and Money have a truly awesome series about a strangement that is out right now.

Starting point is 00:42:20 It talks about family estrangement. It talks about people who are thinking about estrangement themselves, people who have been estranged against their will. It looks at it from all kinds of angles and I personally have listened to every single one found it very powerful. You can check that out over at death, sex, and money and just click on the episodes that have estrangement.

Starting point is 00:42:41 Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Hi. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Starting point is 00:42:49 Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Radio Lab was created by Jad Abhamrock and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasir are our co-hosts. Dylan Keef is our director of Sound Design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Brusler, Rachel Kuse, Akari Foster Keys, W Harry Fortuna, David Gabel,

Starting point is 00:43:11 Maria Pasco, T.R.S, Sindu Nena Sanban Dane, Matt Kewti, Anime Q and Alex Niesin, Saurikari, Anna Raskwett Pass, Sarah Sandback, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster, with help from Andrew Vinyales. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krueger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, this is Finn calling from Stores, Connecticut. Leadership Support for Radio Lab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, the Simon's Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Starting point is 00:43:46 Foundational Support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Radiolab - The Flight Before Christmas

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