海角大神

Jessica Mendoza:听Welcome to 鈥淩ethinking the News鈥� by 海角大神. I鈥檓 Jessica Mendoza, a producer on this podcast. Over the next 6 weeks, we鈥檒l be releasing a new science series called 鈥淚t鈥檚 About Time.鈥澨齌ime affects literally everything, and thinking about it in new ways can shape how we live our lives. The series is hosted by Rebecca Asoulin and Eoin O鈥機arroll. Here are Rebecca and Eoin.

听[Music]

Eoin O鈥機arroll: OK, I want to play something for you. Tell me what you hear.

Rebecca Asoulin: OK.

[Risset Rhythm plays]

Rebecca: That is so stressful, I feel like I鈥檓 in a horror film or like something terrible going to happen.听

Eoin: It sounds like it鈥檚 getting faster and faster, doesn鈥檛 it?

Rebecca: You鈥檙e going to tell me it鈥檚 not actually , right?

Eoin: It鈥檚 not getting faster. It feels like it鈥檚 going somewhere, but it鈥檚 not.

Rebecca: Wait, what?

[Fade out Risset as series theme begins]

Rebecca: This is 鈥淚t鈥檚 About Time.鈥� A series all about ...

Eoin: Time. I鈥檓 Eoin O鈥機arroll.听

Rebecca: And I鈥檓 Rebecca Asoulin.听

Eoin: In this science series, we interview experts on time. They鈥檒l help us unravel its mysteries.

Rebecca: Because understanding time more deeply can help us make the most of the time we have.听We can depend upon time passing. You鈥檙e listening to this in the present. Tomorrow this experience will be in the past and you鈥檒l be in the future thinking about having listened to this podcast.

Eoin: We鈥檙e used to thinking of time as just sort of being there, in the background. Time is almost like a stage on which events play out. But in this series we鈥檙e going to flip that. The stage is now the star.听

Rebecca: In this episode, we鈥檒l dig into why time often seems to slow down and speed up. And why experiencing the world more like a child could help us all slow down and make the most of our time.听

[Fade in Risset Rhythm]

Eoin: I promise this illusion will help us start to understand those bigger questions.

Rebecca: So it will solve all my existential time anxiety.听

Eoin: Not by itself 鈥� but it starts us on the journey to calming that anxiety.听

Rebecca: What I hear is that it sounds like the rhythm is endlessly speeding up.

Eoin: Right so if it were endlessly speeding up then it would eventually just become one big blur like this...

[Play speeding up continuously version of Risset rhythm]

Eoin: But this illusion is called the Risset rhythm. You make it by layering drum beats. As one beat speeds up, its volume fades out and a slower beat fades in. You don鈥檛 notice your attention slipping between the two beats.

Rebecca: So it is speeding up, kind of! You tricked me!听

Eoin: The individual beats are, but the overall rhythm is not.听

Rebecca: Illusions just make me feel really unsettled. I never get them, I never see them, I never hear them.听

Eoin: I think that鈥檚 the point. They reveal that the reality you perceive is not necessarily 鈥� reality. Illusions reveal that our minds are not these blank slates that passively record events, but are active participants in constructing our experience.

Eoin: That鈥檚 Peter Tse, a cognitive neuroscientist at Dartmouth College.听听

Eoin: Immanuel Kant was an Enlightenment philosopher. What Kant called 鈥渢he world in itself鈥� was his term for the world that exists independently of our perceptions. Interestingly, Kant argued that the foundation of all our perceptions is an intuitive understanding of time and space.听

Rebecca: And Illusions like the Risset Rhythm are kind of proof that those perceptions of the world don鈥檛 always correspond to whatever it is that鈥檚 out there beyond our senses.

Eoin: Like Professor Tse, I鈥檝e always been fascinated by illusions, and, more generally, the gap between perception and reality.听听

Most people think of illusions as this fun thing that shows us how silly we are but I think they actually show us how smart we are. They show us how hard our minds are working all the time to present us with a coherent picture of reality.听

I get a lot of this fascination from my mom. She鈥檚 a professional magician. And magic is the art of illusion. During her more than three decades performing magic, she has seen all kinds of things go wrong in the moment, and she has seen time go all kinds of wonky.

Rebecca: That鈥檚 Eoin鈥檚 mom, Debbie O鈥機arroll 鈥� who has the same first name as my mom.听

Rebecca: But then Debbie ends up with a cloth in one hand and an empty bowl.

Eoin: The water vanished.听

Rebecca: Debbie was able to vanish the water. But ...

[Music]

Rebecca: So why did time slow down when Debbie鈥檚 trick went awry? The way Professor Tse explains this, there is no single clock in our minds that perfectly keeps track of time. Instead, our sense of time changes based on how much information we鈥檙e taking in. When we pay really close attention to something, we take in more information.The more information you take in, the slower time feels. When Eoin鈥檚 mom noticed her husband鈥檚 mistake, she began to pay really close attention which helped her react faster and is also what made time appear to slow down.听

Eoin: Professor Tse and his colleagues where they bored people by showing them the same image, like a little black ball, over and over and over 鈥� and over and over again.听

Rebecca: The subjects in the study reported that the different image lasted 50 percent longer. Even though it wasn鈥檛 actually on the screen any longer than the other images. This demonstrates the point that when we pay more attention to something 鈥� in this case because it was something new 鈥� time feels like it鈥檚 slowing down.听

[Music]

Eoin: Like 鈥淒ie Hard,鈥� 鈥淚nception,鈥澨�鈥淭he Matrix,鈥� 鈥淭helma and Louise.鈥澨�

Rebecca: Hard to go into the details because like Peter Tse said movies use this technique at very important moments, which means we鈥檇 be spoiling all them. Film is all about directing people鈥檚 senses 鈥� kind of like magic.

Rebecca: Debbie actually performed a trick for Eoin and me 鈥� back before the pandemic, when we could all be in the same room

Eoin: My mom brought in two velvet ropes tied together on each end. The two ropes had three large wooden beads strung on them.听

Eoin: The ropes were tied in knots at the ends, so that the beads couldn鈥檛 slide off without first untying the knots. Or so it seemed.听

Eoin: Rebecca and I held on to the ends of the ropes.

Eoin: The beads just fell off the ropes, even as we were holding each end.

Eoin: When I was a kid, my mom made me take the , so that I wouldn鈥檛 reveal the secrets of her profession.听

Rebecca: During the trick, Debbie moved my attention away from the beads, so I wasn鈥檛 able to react to what she was doing.

But when I鈥檓 paying attention to something, I can react faster. That relationship between attention and reaction times turns out to be a pretty fundamental question in the field of psychology.

Rebecca: The year was 1879, to be more exact but I鈥檓 still really impressed with Professor Tse鈥檚 memory.

Rebecca: Many psychologists have tested the theory of prior entry. In 1991, psychologists Lew Stelmach and Chris Herdman where they put subjects in front of a screen that had two rectangles appear at the exact same time.听

Rebecca: In magic, you can think of the magician and the assistant as the two rectangles. And you鈥檙e like the study subject being told to pay attention to one rectangle 鈥撎� the assistant.听

Eoin: Who, let鈥檚 remember, is also a magician.

Eoin: Illusions require spectators. In order for an illusion, whether on stage or over a podcast, to actually be an illusion, there needs to be a perceiving subject experiencing it.听

Rebecca: And if the trick goes wrong, Debbie relies on her decades of stage experience. Because when you do something for the millionth time, you just know what to do.听

Eoin: The more we experience something, the more our minds tend to ignore the details. This helps us react faster. It鈥檚 kind of like a computer that compresses files to save hard disk space.听

Rebecca: This is called automatization, which describes what happens when you practice a skill so much that you no longer need to exert conscious effort to do that task. Automatization actually helps explain why the coronavirus lockdown seemed to break time.

Rebecca: Humans evolved to think in categories or schemas for the same reason we evolve to do just about anything: survival. It鈥檚 really exhausting to pay attention all the time when we don鈥檛 have to.听

Rebecca: So we generalize to survive. We put all tigers in a category, and label that category 鈥渄angerous.鈥澨�听

Eoin: And when you think in terms of categories, you don鈥檛 take in every detail. You don鈥檛 count the claws on tiger, you don鈥檛 see if it鈥檚 ears are forward or backward or whether it鈥檚 signaling whether it鈥檚 going to pounce on you. You just react and that鈥檚 efficient.听

Eoin: For instance, if I say the word 鈥渕agician,鈥� what image pops into your head?

Rebecca: Faulty chunking leads to this sort of sexist thinking. Relying too much on our mental scripts is also why time speeds up as we age. It can even have fatal consequences.

[Music]

Rebecca: The defense hired Professor Tse as an expert witness to explain the perceptual error the defendant had made. The defendant was a hunter. And one day he was out hunting bears. His brother had actually killed a bear that very morning.听听

Eoin: The hunter saw what he expected to see. Which is something all of us do all the time, whether we鈥檙e proofreading an email, evaluating a political candidate, or watching a magic show.听

Eoin: Professor Tse says the hunter felt so guilty. And that the family of the man he killed sought the death penalty.

Rebecca: You may be thinking that you would never make a mistake like that. But many psychology studies show us that we actually make perceptual mistakes all the time. is probably the most famous of those studies.听

[Music]

Rebecca: In the study, the researchers have a person ask the study subject for directions.听

Eoin: But then鈥� another person walks by with a door blocking the first one from view.

Rebecca: Hence the name, the door study...

Eoin: And then a third person steps in the first one鈥檚 place, and continues asking the directions.听

Rebecca: The subject 鈥� which, remember, is the person giving the directions 鈥� keeps giving directions. They don鈥檛 notice that the person they鈥檙e talking to is literally a new person.听

Eoin: The only time they notice is when the new person has a different age, race, or gender.

Rebecca: The study did have slightly different results when they conducted it in Minnesota.

Eoin: My mom typically performs for younger children. But she says there鈥檚 a lower age range for magic appreciation. Kids under four years old typically don鈥檛 get it.

Eoin: That鈥檚 because they haven鈥檛 yet formed expectations about the world. And expectations are what magicians manipulate.听

Rebecca: And as we get older, relying on those expectations too much makes time speed by.

Rebecca: Professor Tse has two suggestions to help you pay attention: Meditation and minimizing distraction.听

Rebecca: Professor Tse read us a short poem 听by Mary Oliver. We can鈥檛 play that recording because of rights. But google the poem, it鈥檚 really beautiful. In the poem, the narrator watches a grasshopper in her hand wash her face and then fly away. The narrator praises paying attention and being idle. And ends the poem by asking the reader what her plan is for her 鈥渙ne wild and precious life.鈥澨�

[Music]

[Music]

Eoin: So I was on vacation recently and during that vacation, there wasn鈥檛 really much to do because it was during the lockdown. But a caterpillar had gotten stuck in my bedroom window between the screen and the window pane. And my wife and I had a debate and I鈥檒l preface this by saying that my wife, as usual, was correct. My wife and I had a debate over whether the caterpillar would find her way out of the window soon enough.

I thought it would be fine. My wife was concerned because the caterpillar made its way all the way to the top of the window where there is no exit. And so we just kind of sat there watching it for a little while. And I have a little jeweler鈥檚 loupe. I think it magnifies things twelve times. And I was able to really get a close look at the bottom side of a caterpillar, which we don鈥檛 normally get to look at. We got to experience caterpillar time for a little while. 鈥� And the caterpillar did make it with some human intervention.听听

Rebecca:听For a lot of people slowing down during the coronavirus crisis isn鈥檛 an option. But Professor Tse believes that during crises 鈥撎齜ut also at all times in our lives 鈥� paying more attention can be freeing.听

[Credits music]

Rebecca: Thank you for listening to our very first episode! We hope you had fun. If you did, subscribe to 鈥淩ethinking the News鈥� wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or comment.

Eoin: And share this series with your friends, family, and coworkers! You can find us at csmonitor.com/time.听

Rebecca:听 This series is hosted and produced by me, Rebecca Asoulin. My co-host is Eoin O鈥機arroll. Editing by Samantha Laine Perfas, Clay Collins, and Noelle Swan. Production support from Jessica Mendoza. Sound design by Noel Flatt, Morgan Anderson, and Ed Blumquist. Jacob Turcotte created the Risset Rhythm for this episode. Our engineers were Tory Silver and Tim Malone. Special thanks to Em Okrepkie, Lindsey McGinnis, and Nate Richards for their feedback on this episode.

This story was produced by 海角大神, copyright 2021.

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