Gravitational Anarchy

Summary

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Radiolab – "Gravitational Anarchy"

Release Date: November 29, 2010
Hosts: Jad Abumrad, Robert Krulwich
Guest Contributions: Actress Hope Davis (as Rosemary Morton), Neil deGrasse Tyson, David Quammen, Jack

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Episode Overview

This episode of Radiolab explores our tacit trust in gravity and the ways it can be disrupted—both in the human mind and in the seemingly miraculous physics of cats. It begins with the haunting story of a woman whose relationship with gravity unravels, leading to intense, novel perceptions that science can only partially explain. The show then pivots to an investigative, humorous debate about why cats tend to survive even when falling from great heights, drawing in physicists, science writers, and the show's characteristic playful sound design.

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Major Segments & Discussion Points

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1. Revisiting 'Falling' and Introducing Gravity (01:48–02:41)

• The hosts recall a previous episode focused on various types of falling.
• Jad Abumrad: "You and gravity have an agreement. Yes. But we're going to start off with this tale that we ran into. Amazing tale of a woman who lost that agreement." (02:32)

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2. Rosemary Morton's Story: Gravitational Anarchy (03:04–14:33)

a. A Sudden Disruption of Gravity (03:34–07:34)

• Hope Davis (reading Rosemary): A woman describes minor tremors in the floor—first at home, then in her workplace—and a mounting sensitivity in her sense of touch.
• As her sensations intensify, the room seems to shift beneath her feet. The world becomes unstable, "like snow," and she feels herself sink or rise unpredictably.
• Quote: "Sometimes it was as if I were sinking into the floor. The room would tilt and I'd take a step and the floor was like snow. It would give under my foot and I would sink." (06:40)

b. Doctors' Reassurance and Escalation (07:34–12:31)

• Rosemary's doctors provide no explanation: "Essentially normal." (07:46)

  • Quote: "It sounds so reassuring, so comforting. But it isn't. At least, it wasn't to me. It was terrifying." (07:51)

• Her experiences become even more surreal:

  • Faces existential dread but also senses a new vividness in music and urgency in life.
  • Extreme distortions in her body perception: limbs lengthen or shrink unpredictably.
  • Feelings of being directly aligned with the Earth's rotation, as if some external force is winding her body.

• Quote: "My legs, my arms, my face, my whole body felt different. It had no permanent shape. It changed by the minute. I seemed to be completely at the mercy of some outside force, some atmospheric pressure." (11:28)

c. Diagnosis and Resolution (12:38–14:37)

• After months, Rosemary finally receives a diagnosis: labyrinthitis, a disturbance of the inner ear, also known as vertigo.
• Quote: "My trouble was a disturbance of the internal ear called labyrinthitis... the meaning of labyrinthitis as a word was simply an inflammation of the oral labyrinth." (12:46)
• Hosts reflect on how her experience was far deeper than the usual pop culture concept of "vertigo."
  • Jad Abumrad: "At some point in the essay, she actually refers to her situation as a case of gravitational anarchy." (13:41)
• Abrupt and unexplained, Rosemary’s symptoms disappear: "Her vertigo just went away. Poof." (14:33)

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3. The Physics of Falling Cats (15:07–21:49)

a. Veterinarians’ Observations (15:22–16:06)

• David Quammen: Cites a study where cats falling from the 5th to 9th floors get hurt worse than those falling from the highest stories or the lowest.
• Jad Abumrad: "Why would a cat falling 42 floors not get hurt more than a cat falling 9 floors? Just doesn't make any sense." (16:06)

b. Bias in Cat-Falling Data (16:10–17:14)

• Enter Neil deGrasse Tyson, who immediately scrutinizes the statistical evidence: only cats who survive and receive treatment are in the data; many might have simply died and never made it to the vet.
• Jack (Tyson): "You started with a completely biased sample. So I try not to spend much brain power analyzing flawed data." (17:14)

c. Terminal Velocity and the Relaxed Cat Theory (17:41–20:22)

• The hosts propose an explanation: After reaching terminal velocity (around 9 floors), cats may relax and spread out, akin to flying squirrels, reducing injuries.
• Jad Abumrad: "After the cats hit terminal velocity... they relaxed. They sort of stretch out like a flying squirrel." (19:44)
• Tyson counters that weightlessness occurs throughout free fall; acceleration isn’t physically felt by the animal, so relaxation at terminal velocity is unconvincing.
• Jack (Tyson): "There's no obvious reason to me why a cat at terminal velocity is more relaxed than a cat in free fall. You're essentially in free fall. You're weightless." (20:08)

d. Behavioral vs. Physical Explanations (20:22–21:42)

• Hosts consider whether Tyson, as a physicist, can understand cat behavior better than cat owners.
• Conclude it’s "a tricky, opaque, intractable question." (21:54)

e. The Cat and Jelly Toast Paradox (22:12–23:03)

• For comic relief, Jack recounts the famed "cat jelly toast" experiment from the Journal of Irreproducible Results: When a cat (which always lands on its feet) is strapped with jelly toast (which always lands jelly-side down), the combination causes it to hover—unable to resolve the paradox.
• Jack: "There’s a research paper… the cat with the jelly toast strapped on its back... it stops and then it hovers above the ground." (22:27–22:45)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Jad Abumrad: "Some things just don't have explanations, Robert, but they have wonderful sound design, and that's Radiolab. No explanations, pretty sounds." (14:41)
• Hope Davis as Rosemary: "I was amorphous. My left leg would seem to lengthen, or my right arm or my neck, or one whole side of me would double or treble in size. And yet that doesn't fully describe it." (11:28)
• Robert Krulwich: "So what is wrong with her?" (12:35)
• Jack (Neil deGrasse Tyson): "You started with a completely biased sample. So I try not to spend much brain power analyzing flawed data." (17:14)
• Jack: "Do you know the famous cat jelly toast experiment?" (22:12)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |------------|--------------------------------------------------------| | 01:48 | Introduction & recalling "falling" episode | | 03:34 | Start of Hope Davis' reading (Rosemary's story) | | 07:34 | Doctors' diagnosis: "essentially normal" | | 12:46 | Diagnosis: labyrinthitis (vertigo) | | 14:33 | Resolution: Rosemary recovers | | 15:22 | Cat-falling data presented (Quammen) | | 16:10 | Data bias and Tyson's entrance | | 19:38 | Terminal velocity argument explained | | 20:08 | Tyson critiques 'relaxed cat' reasoning | | 22:12 | Cat jelly toast paradox recounted |

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Tone & Style

The episode balances a sense of awe, curiosity, and playfulness—capturing both the existential unease of losing trust in gravity and the comic mystery of how cats defy injury in violent falls. There's banter, skepticism, and delight in inquiry, often undercut by the hosts' appreciation for the limits of science and statistics.

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Conclusion

“Gravitational Anarchy” is quintessential Radiolab—an imaginative foray into phenomena we take for granted, told with literary flair, rich storytelling, and lively skeptical debate. Whether examining the inner ear’s rebellion or the feline knack for survival, the episode probes the curious edges of sense, physics, and the mind.

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Transcript

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[Jad Abumrad]

Wait, you're listening. Okay.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

All right.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay. All right.

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

You're listening to Radio Lab, Radio Lab.

[Robert Krulwich]

Sharks from WNYC.

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

And npr.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, so let's just do something, okay. Off top of our head. Hey, I'm Jan Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krilwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab, the podcast. The podcast. And on this podcast, just short, we're thinking back to our falling show. Do you want to just briefly describe that show?

[Robert Krulwich]

The falling show was a show just to dwell on the word or the idea of falling, Right? So it included falling in love and falling down. Falling over waterfalls, in a barrel.

[Jad Abumrad]

Falling apart.

[Jack]

Falling apart.

[Jad Abumrad]

You know, a place we didn't really get to go in the falling show, which I'd like to take us now.

[Robert Krulwich]

There.

[Jad Abumrad]

Gravity. You know, the force that makes one.

[Robert Krulwich]

Fall, it's working against me.

[Jad Abumrad]

So no one can really explain why gravity works the way it does, but we all basically trust that it works, right?

[Robert Krulwich]

When you put your foot up in the air, it'll hit the ground. Throw a ball up, it'll hit the ground.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

And gravity. And you just get along.

[Jad Abumrad]

You and gravity have an agreement. Yes. But we're gonna start off with this tale that we ran into. Amazing tale of a woman who lost that agreement.

[Robert Krulwich]

Ooh, gravity. Stay the hell away from me.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is actually A true story that comes from an essay written many years ago by a guy named Burton Ruscha, who's this great. I don't know. How would you describe him?

[Robert Krulwich]

Burton Ruscha? He was a great essayist. Journalism essayist, yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

And this essay was published in 1958 in the New Yorker. And it's kind of an interesting essay because it's essentially one long quote from this woman that Burdon interviewed, Rosemary Morton. It reads like a novel, even though it's nonfiction. So we asked an actress who's been in some movies, Hope Davis, to read excerpts from Rosemary's story. The story begins on a normal night. Rosemary's at home with her husband, Frank. And everything's fine for the moment.

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

I'd been home about an hour. Dinner was ready and waiting in the oven. And I was sitting at the piano, not really playing, just amusing myself. That's something I often do at the end of the day. It helps me relax. My husband was in the kitchen making us a cocktail, which is another Morton custom. We usually have a drink or two before dinner. So everything was quite ordinary and normal until Frank came in with the drinks. I got up to join him on the sofa. And as I did, as I started across the room, I felt the floor sort of shake.

[Robert Krulwich]

Is that because there's an earthquake going on?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, in the essay, she looks at Frank and she's like, good heavens.

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

I said, what was that? Frank just looked at me. His face was a perfect blank. He made some remark about old buildings stretching and settling, and handed me my drink.

[Jad Abumrad]

So she doesn't really think too much of this because it was very momentary.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

But a week later, she's at work. She's actually in the library because she's a librarian. She's at her desk.

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

I worked at my desk for about an hour. And it was heaven. So quiet, so peaceful. Then I got up to get a book from the stacks or a drink of water or something, and it happened. The floor gave a shake and sank. It went down and up. Just one lurch, maybe a little more pronounced than the first time. And then everything was back to normal. Except for my state of mind. I didn't know what to think. The best I could do was tell myself that this was an old building, too. It was built around 1900.

[Jad Abumrad]

So that was your sense at first, Just old buildings.

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

It never occurred to me that there might be any other explanation. I suppose I didn't want it to.

[Jad Abumrad]

But then, over the next few days, very odd things begin to happen.

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

I don't know how to Describe it. But I had the feeling that my sense of touch was getting more and more acute, especially in the soles of my feet. I could feel little tremors that other people couldn't. I didn't tell Frank until the middle of the following week. On Wednesday night, to be exact. By then I had to. I couldn't keep it to myself any longer. There was something wrong with me. There just wasn't any word for the awful sensations I'd been having. The floor shaking feeling was only one of them. I don't know how many times that happened over the weekend. Seven or eight, at least. But even that began to have a different feeling. At first, the floor had moved or sagged As a whole, it still did. Only now I could feel another movement too. A kind of counterpoint. Sometimes it was as if I were sinking into the floor. The room would tilt and I'd take a step and the floor was like snow. It would give under my foot and I would sink. And other times it was just the reverse. A floor would rise up to meet me. By then, it wasn't simply the floor that moved. When the floor tilted, the walls of the room tilted with it and the ceiling. I mean, the shape of the room never changed, only its position in space.

[Jad Abumrad]

So Rosemary went to see her doctor. Her doctor sent her to some specialists and they ran some tests. And then a short while later, she went back to her doctor to get the results.

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

He'd read me their conclusions and they were all the same. They even used the same impression. Essentially normal. I'll never forget that phrase, normal. Essentially normal. It sounds so reassuring, so comforting. But it isn't. At least, it wasn't to me. It was terrifying.

[Jad Abumrad]

After this diagnosis or non diagnosis, the things really take a turn. Fast forward a few months.

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

There were times in March and early April when I was absolutely certain I was going to die. But my reaction to death was peculiar. I don't remember feeling afraid. All I remember is an overwhelming sense of urgency. So little time, so little done, so much I wanted to do. I dragged Frank to the theatre more than once, and I never thought of refusing when he suggested the Philharmonic or the Metropolitan. My response to music had never been so complete. I spent hours listening to records. I'd play some old favorite, like Beauchamp conducting Haydn's London Symphony. And it was amazing. It seemed to me that I could hear the inner structure more clearly than ever before. So the idea of a dinner and a concert wasn't at all unusual. My only mistake was to take that dreadful underground passage. It was Raining, and I was in a hurry. But even so, I should have realized. When I did, it was too late. The passage was jammed with commuters, shoving and pushing and surging toward me. But I didn't dare turn back. The floor was beginning to wobble, and I knew if I tried to swing around, it would tip me head, head over heels. All I could do was go on. The traffic was still all against me. People kept looming up, towering up. They came charging at me like giants. And then I felt something right out of a nightmare. I was almost at the end of the passage when I felt the movement change. It was as if someone had pulled a lever. There was a little jolt, and the floor was moving very slowly backward down the passage. I was walking on a treadmill. Only for a minute, though. Then I reached the stairs. I drove myself up to the lobby and collapsed in a chair. I was jelly. From early April, I began to move in a different world. I was conscious of a new dimension, a new plane. I had a new relationship to space. My legs, my arms, my face, my whole body felt different. It had no permanent shape. It changed by the minute. I seemed to be completely at the mercy of some outside force, some atmospheric pressure. I was amorphous. My left leg would seem to lengthen, or my right arm or my neck, or one whole side of me would double or treble in size. And yet that doesn't fully describe it. There were times when the force seemed to be the rotation of the earth. I would have the feeling that I was vertically aligned with the Earth's axis. I could feel a sort of winding movement start up inside me. Then one of my legs would begin to shorten as if it were an anchor being drawn slowly up by a winch. The other leg would dangle. After a minute, the winch would shift. It would engage the dangling leg and just as slowly bring it up to match the other.

[Robert Krulwich]

This feels like some kind of a nightmare cartoon of some kind.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

So what is wrong with her?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, after months of this, at the end of the essay, she does finally learn that this condition she has has a name.

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

My trouble was a disturbance of the internal ear called labyrinthitis.

[Robert Krulwich]

Labyrinthitis?

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

The suffix itis meant inflammation, swelling. So the meaning of labyrinthitis as a word was simply an inflammation of the oral labyrinth.

[Robert Krulwich]

But, you know, I think people in science and medicine love to give big fat names to. I don't know.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, actually, this condition, you should know, goes by another name.

[Robert Krulwich]

What?

[Jad Abumrad]

Vertigo.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

Oh.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's why I like the story. Because, like, I didn't Know, I mean, like, I always thought of Vertigo. Like from the movie.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Like you're on a stairs and you're like, whoa. Like, it's just a thing with heights, you know, like that's what it was in the Hitchcock film. But what Rosemary Morton goes through in this story, it's like, seems way deeper. And at some point in the essay, she actually refers to her situation as a case of gravitational anarchy.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's an interesting phrase.

[Jad Abumrad]

Phrase I kind of. I kind of like.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, well, does she get better?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yep.

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

It's impossible to say exactly when it all ended, but I think it was Frank who really sensed it first. It was after dinner one night in late August, and he suddenly smiled and remarked that I must be feeling much better. I asked him what he meant. You never look scared anymore. He said.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's very mysterious. But her vertigo just went away. Poof.

[Robert Krulwich]

Without explanation for the coming and no explanation for the going.

[Jad Abumrad]

Some things just don't have explanations, Robert, but they have wonderful sound design, and that's Radiolab. No explanations, pretty sounds.

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

I'd buy a ticket to that.

[Robert Krulwich]

Mr. Jeekers, I. I'm crazy for sound design. Speaking of not knowing anything, a few weeks ago on this very program, we decided to take up the question of falling.

[Jad Abumrad]

You know, falling in love, falling apart, all that.

[Robert Krulwich]

And one of our topics, which we did with the great. I have to say this now with a certain fierceness because of what's about to happen with the great journalist David Quammen. We were talking about falling cats.

[Jad Abumrad]

And just to summarize, the whole thing started for David and the therefore, for us, when he read this study written.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

By two vets, Wayne Whitney and Cheryl.

[Robert Krulwich]

Melhoff, who worked in the Midtown Veterinary Hospital. And they noticed that in Manhattan there.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

Were a lot of cats falling out of windows, high windows, falling off ledges, falling off roofs.

[Robert Krulwich]

And when they looked at the data, they found something a little strange, that cats who fell on the first two fifth floors were lightly injured, which makes sense. Cats that fell from the 10th floor up, they also didn't get hurt so.

[Jad Abumrad]

Much, which doesn't make sense.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's cats who fell from the fifth to the ninth floor, Those were the ones that really got banged up.

[Jad Abumrad]

We thought this was super interesting. I mean, like, why would a cat falling 42 floors not get hurt more than a cat falling 9 floors? Just doesn't make any sense. And David gave us what we thought was a very plausible answer, but it was one that made a lot of listeners go, I'm not buying it. Like, right Next to that guy, that's Neil Degrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, frequent guest.

[Robert Krulwich]

I laid out the general idea of the program for him, and we said they had. I don't know, was it six? How many cats?

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, boy.

[Robert Krulwich]

Hundreds of cats, apparently. This big?

[Jad Abumrad]

I think it was hundreds, but it was. No, no, it was hundreds.

[Jack]

Only hundreds of cats?

[Robert Krulwich]

You want a bigger number?

[Jack]

No, I'm just. Hundreds?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes. That's a lot. They kept a careful sort of record.

[Jack]

Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. It's hundreds of cats who fell and were taken to the vet.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's right.

[Jack]

That's a different number.

[Robert Krulwich]

Right.

[Jack]

Okay.

[Robert Krulwich]

The ones who died didn't probably get.

[Jack]

Taken to the hospital, nor the ones who survived without need of medical care.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, it's too bad.

[Robert Krulwich]

By the way, if your cat fell from the 40th floor, wouldn't you take him to the doctor?

[Jack]

If it stands up and does the jig. No, it's fine. Cats have nine lives, so this is a highly biased data set. Among all cats that fell from a window.

[Jad Abumrad]

Granted, but of the cats who fell, we, or rather these vets, noticed a particular cat.

[Jack]

No, of the cats who fell and were taken to the vet. So I'm betting that the high floors, most of them, just simply died. And you don't take a dead cat to the vet. I mean, you might, but why? All right, so you started with a completely biased sample. So I try not to spend much brain power analyzing flawed data.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

Okay, we can deal with that.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay, that's our guy in the fight. That's David Quammen.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

Clearly, Dr. Tyson, he's a smart guy, but Tyson is missing the point. I think the point is, within this admittedly biased sample, there's a really, really interesting pattern that begs to be explained. And that is, among the cats that have fallen and have gotten injured somewhat, the ones that fell five stories got injured worse than the ones that fell 25 stories. Why?

[Robert Krulwich]

And that's an interesting question. No matter how many cats die, there's still this interesting skew in the injured cat population that's not going away.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

And he's saying, your data set is incomplete. And what I say in response is, it's a very interesting data set. And let's try and understand it. Incomplete or not, all data sets are incomplete. What does he study?

[Robert Krulwich]

He studies physics.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

Does he study stars? Distant stars.

[Jad Abumrad]

Distant stars.

[Robert Krulwich]

He's actually an astrophysicist.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

Oh, okay. Well, he's looked at a few stars and he's drawn conclusions about him based on what He's Seen.

[Jack]

Wait, wait, let me back up. If your data, though incomplete, suggested something that made sense, given the laws of physics, then you'd have less urge to question it. But you're telling me something that conflicts with my understanding of Physics 101.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, we haven't yet told you. We're going to tell you.

[Robert Krulwich]

We're going to tell you now.

[Jad Abumrad]

Let me tell you in a miniature. So.

[Jack]

No, no. So you invent an. You invent.

[Robert Krulwich]

You haven't done it yet.

[Jack]

I feel an invention coming. I feel the vibe.

[Jad Abumrad]

What we would call a perfectly reasonable interpretation. But what you might call it, an invention, goes as follows. So the cat falls out of the 42nd floor window, let's say, and it begins to accelerate. So for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 floors, it is accelerating. And then something happens around nine floors where the pull of gravity gets balanced out by the push of the air against its belly and it hits terminal.

[Jack]

Velocity, which in regular words is it's continues to drop at the same speed.

[Jad Abumrad]

So then it's at cruising speed.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

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.

[Jad Abumrad]

And you're saying that because they hit the screws in speed and then relax into the flying squirrel, the impact is less?

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

Yes.

[Jack]

There's no obvious reason to me why a cat at terminal velocity is more relaxed than a cat in free fall. You're essentially in free fall. You're weightless. You're weightless. Your speed actually doesn't matter while you're weightless. You don't even know what your speed is.

[Robert Krulwich]

What do you mean? You're speeding up. So things are changing?

[Jack]

No, no. If you're speeding up, it is an unnoticeable phenomenon. The cat is as weightless the moment they leave the window as they are as they approach the terminal velocity speed.

[Robert Krulwich]

Do you have a cat, by the way?

[Jack]

No, but I've explored the behavior of cats under the laws of physics in my youth. Nothing violent, but just shall we probe.

[Robert Krulwich]

This or shall we discreetly look away?

[Jack]

So the cat freaks instantly when there's no ground under it. It gets its legs underneath within a fraction of a second after that. Now you try to go psycho on the cat and say, oh, well, it's thinking about its fall and it's in accelerating, then it's in terminal velocity. It's already legs pointed down at that point.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

Well, the part about you are essentially weightless when you're falling, whether you're accelerating or not is something that he's more likely to know about than we are, and I give him credit for that. On the other hand, he's a physicist, he's not an animal behaviorist, so he really doesn't know any better than we do what a cat thinks or what a cat feels. Probably. There are a lot of cat owners out there who could help us as much as this brainy, brainy physicist.

[Jad Abumrad]

So maybe we should ask our listeners.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

But ladies and gentlemen, do not approach this as an experimentally addressable question.

[Jad Abumrad]

Do not throw your cat out of a window.

[Robert Krulwich]

No, do not do that. We will come and arrest if you do that.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

That's one of the things that makes this kind of a tricky, opaque, intractable question.

[Robert Krulwich]

So here's what we suggest. We suggest that you go to your cat, if you have one. If you speak cat, just ask them. Tell me, is accelerating different from just gliding to the ground?

[Jack]

Do you know the famous cat jelly toast experiment?

[Jad Abumrad]

No, what's that?

[Jack]

So cat always lands on its feet. A slice of jelly toast always lands jelly side down. So you strap jelly toast to the back of a cat, thinking they might.

[Robert Krulwich]

Cancel each other out.

[Jack]

And so there's a research paper on it that says you take the cat with the jelly toast strapped on its back and then you toss it and it falls and then it stops and then it hovers above the ground.

[Robert Krulwich]

And decides which way to land.

[Jack]

No, no, it doesn't land at all because it can't know which way to land because the jelly toast is fighting the urge to land on its feet. This is a well known experiment in the Journal of Irreproducible Results where such a result belongs.

[Jad Abumrad]

Gary, let's get out of here.

[Robert Krulwich]

Thank you to Neil Degrasse Tyson, Director of the Small D, director of the Hayden Planetarium. Thank you to David Quammen, Big D, Big D, Big D. And thank you, Robert, and thank you, Jack.

[Jad Abumrad]

And while we're giving thanks, thanks to Burton Ruscha, well, he's not alive anymore, but you can find his story essentially normal in the awesome book Medical Detectives, which was published in 1984 by Dutton. Our sincere thanks to actress Hope Davis and to Sarah Montague and Ellen Horn for directing Hope in the studio. And thanks to Tim Howard and Douglas Smith for the scoring help with that piece. And lastly, thanks to you for listening.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

Hi, this is Caitlin Selby and Owen.

[Jad Abumrad]

Selby and we are Radiolab listeners From.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

Peterborough, N.H. radiolab is supported in part.

[Jad Abumrad]

By the Alfred Sloan Foundation, Enhancing public.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

Understanding Science and technology in the Modern world. More information about [e-mail].

[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

I love radio app.

[Caitlin Selby / Owen / Guest]

End of message.

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[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

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[Jad Abumrad]

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[Hope Davis (Actress Reading Rosemary's Story)]

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[Jad Abumrad]

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