falling falling
THIS IS RADIOLAB
There are 14932 ways to fall on the radio. Here are 3 stories about letting go, taking the plunge, & hanging on.
FALLING
WE ARE
on your face for someone from grace head over heels out behind asleep apart at the seams back by the wayside down prey to heir to in a heap in line in with ill in love into a trap into place into the wrong hands off the map off the wagon on deaf ears on hard times on a sword out of favor out of love over over oneself overbard short through through the cracks to pieces under a spell where they may
A Story About Letting Go Robert Krulwich
David Eagleman April Johnson
I’m Robert Krulwich, this is david eagleman. Hes a neuroscientist. But back when we was a kid, he had an experience which changed his life. He was playing in his subdivision in Houston, and there was a house nearby...
...that was under construction. And my father told me not to go climbing on a house that was under construciton but I was a boy do I did. And 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. And I fell. So you stepped onto the air. You just went “wshhhh”
Exactly. And , 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 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.
This 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 I searched around and I finally found something called SCAD diving”. Stands for “Suspended Catch Air Device.” Turns out its illegal in Houston but I found one in dallas so we made a road trip upt o dallas. And we actually found a reporter named April in Dallas who agreed to give this a try. This is April. Shes very brave.
You ride up to the top of this tower in a rickety little elevator type of thing, 150 foot tall tower, rising up and up and up.
It doesnt seem that far when youre down there but up here it seems very far. Its about a 15 story building. And at the very top, youre suspended, youre hooked up to a carribbeaner.
So i want you to imagine this. You are up in the sky, you are facing the clouds, not the ground,
WHAT
IF I
TO
DOWN THE CENTER
OF THE
WERE
FALL STRAIGHT
EARTH ?
straight down the center What if I were to fall
of the Eaaarrrrgghh
This 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 I searched around and I finally found something called SCAD diving”. Stands for “Suspended Catch Air Device.” Turns out its illegal in Houston but I found one in dallas so we made a road trip upt o dallas. And we actually found a reporter named April in Dallas who agreed to give this a try. This is April. Shes very brave.
You ride up to the top of this tower in a rickety little elevator type of thing, 150 foot tall tower, rising up and up and up.
It doesnt seem that far when youre down there but up here it seems very far. Its about a 15 story building. And at the very top, youre suspended, youre hooked up to a carribbeaner.
So i want you to imagine this. You are 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 is about to happen to you. Presuming a net. maybe.
Oh god. ok, don’t let me die.
3.... 2... 1...
Aahhhh
Oh wait wait wait wait wait. One thing I forgot to mention. April wasnt actually part of my study. But if she had been, She would have been wearing around her wrist April would be wearing a new device called a perceptual chronometer. Its about the size of a watch and it floashes numbers suuuuuper fast, way too fast to see normally. But the thought is, if april falls, and everything starts to sloooowww down, well then the numbers should slow too. So if she looks at her wrist as shes falling, she should be able to now read the watch. That woul be impossible under normal cicumstances. Oh my god! Oh my god! Thats the scariest thing ive ever done in my entire life!
So..did people report that time slowed down enough for them to read the numbers?Â
No. No? Aw man!
Turns out, when youre falling, you dont actually
see in slow motion. It’s not equivalent to the way a slow motion camera would work. Even though people feel like its going in slow motion, its something more interesting than that. So how would you explain that? Times not slowing in the moments, but seems to be slowing after the moment
I came to underatand its a trick of memory. Normally, our memories are like seives. were not writing down most of whats passing through our system. But he thinks that when you go “aaahhhhhh!” you know, life or death moments, In that instant, our memories go “whtchhhh” wide open. Because thats what memory is for. Its for when everything hits the fan, you want to write it down and remember it. So all of it goes right to your harddrive. The clouds, the feeling of the air..Oh look, theres a guy in a blue shirt! So when you read that back out, it must seem like the experience should have taken a very long itme. 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.
“Because thats what memory is for. Its for when everything hits the fan, you want to write it down and remember it.”
“MY, what a peculiar place to have a party!�
....a
arr
rrr
rgg h
h!�
PLUMMETING.
A STORY ABOUT HANGING ON So the next falling feature..hey! are you asleep!?�
Did you see what I just did with my leg? I kicked myself awake. Yeah, you kicked me, too.
Oh. Sorry. That was a hypnic jerk!
So just so we get our definitions right, what is a hypnic jerk? Â
It appears to be a reflex. Everyones experiences it. When you’re still semi-concious, and 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, just after the first onset of sleep, onset of sleep,
BBAM
D! D! GOGO Y MYM OHOH
o g h O One big jerk! and then you’re awake. And usually you wake up with this feeling of “oh my god! oh my god! Oh. all right.” And you know, no one can explain it and why these things happen.
There were some theories having to do with physiological changes in your body. The lowering of oxygen content or something like this. But you know, that kind of explanation didn’t really satisfy me. It really doesn’t say well, why? What was its function? When I started looking at the literature, I saw that we had a very long history of sleeping in trees. Let’s go back to australopithecus afarensis (lucy), three million ears ago. Lucy was bipedal. meaning walking on two legs.
! d o Lucy lived in the trees but unlike the other primates sometimes she would go down to the ground. But on the ground you have big birds, snakes, tigers and reptiles. That ground life was stressful! But at night she crawled up the tree for safety. She climbes up in that tree, drops food for her baby, and she drops off to sleep.Â
Her muscles loosen, her hands uncurl; She starts to have that relaxation. Pretty soon she cant feel that tree under her back. Or hear the noises down below. And she feels like shes..floating!
floating...
or falling!
FALLING??
Lucy!
falling! FALLING!
FALLING!
FALLING!
FALLING!
falling!
Falling! Falling! That means lions! Tigers! And it would be a REALLY good idea to wake up from that! Sleep was such a dangerous proposition for so many millions of years that something like hypnic jerk, if some of those primates had that behavior, they may have been just slightly more likely over millions of years to adapt and survive.
We havent gotten rid of it yet, as you might say. So that jerk, it’s just so that I won’t get eaten by a stray lion in my room.
But um...is there any evidence to support your theory?
There is at least one tantilizing bit of evidence to support this idea. If you ask college students what they’re most common dreams are, falling is the number one or number two most common theme.
And if you go on a college campus, thanks to OSHA, you have no chance of falling! off anything! Theyll make sure your fullest drop is six inches, or a foot or anything. And even then there would be big yellow and red signs all over it. But they dream of falling? what?
Exactly. It has to be some collective memory. and by the way the next most common dream after falling is being chased by an alien. in a blue dress.Â
“Stay awake, dont rest your head. Dont lie down upon your bed.
While the moon dips in the skies, stay awake.
stay awake.
stay awake.
stay awake.
This book was made by Celine Bondoc for Washington University’s Communication Design major. The text for the story is edited from Radiolab’s “Falling” podcast and is set in Baskerville and Knockout. Images are soursced from the Flikr Creative Commons. This book was printed on a Xerox Color 550 printer.