Radiolab: "Time"

Podcast: Radiolab (WNYC Studios)
Episode Date: May 29, 2007
Hosts: Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich
Guests & Voices: Oliver Sacks, Rebecca Solnit, Brian Greene, Jay Griffiths, Tony Schwartz, athletes, and others

Episode Overview

Radiolab’s “Time” dives into how we perceive, measure, and experience time – from the deeply personal to the cosmic, from ancient natural clocks to the precise instruments of science, and from the clocks in our homes to the relative time experienced in our bodies, societies, and even nations. Through stories, sound experiments, and interviews with neurologists, physicists, and artists, the episode explores the plasticity, mystery, and politics of time.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Music as a Metaphor for Time

• Opening Experiment: Jad plays Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, digitally stretched from 60 minutes to 24 hours, illustrating how altering the beat changes our perception and reveals hidden layers in familiar forms ([01:48]).
  • “The slowness unlocks something in the original…change the routine, you make new discoveries.” – Jad Abumrad ([02:28])
• The program promises to analyze time "so closely" that new discoveries will emerge about its nature.

2. Personal Memory and “Plastic Time”

• Oliver Sacks’ Story: Sacks recounts recalling years of his life while driving, noting how vivid years (like when important life events occurred) seemed longer; recent, less eventful years felt shorter ([04:37]-[06:19]).
  • “The most recent years…did not, apparently, have such detailed memories…and they seem subjectively shorter.” – Oliver Sacks ([06:13])
  • Robert calls time “swollen and rich some of the time, flaccid…other times.” ([06:19])

3. Experiments with Compressing and Expanding Time

• Childhood Time-Lapse: Sacks describes photographing ferns unfurling, compressing days into seconds with a flip-book, fascinated by “the compression of time photographically” ([07:10]-[08:04]).
• “Parent Clock”: Tony Schwartz’s audio time-lapse of his niece growing up compresses 12 years of life into 2 minutes, demonstrating the emotional weight of time’s passage ([08:04]-[10:43]).
  • Robert notes: “What you’ve just heard is a parent clock…a kid gets older, you must be getting older too.” ([10:45])
• Jad: “Everything is a clock, I guess.” ([11:09])

4. The Rise and Rule of Clock Time

• From “Task Time” to “Clock Time”: In the 19th century, communities had many local times—until railroads required standardization ([11:47]-[14:49]).
  • “There was no official time in Sandusky…only clocks.” – Robert Krulwich ([13:10])
  • Railroads imposed a standardized time, leading to conflict and “time wars” ([15:06]).
• The Politics of Time: This standardization is linked back to power and, later, empire ([48:36]).

5. Technology, Time, and Movies

• Muybridge and Motion: The photographic experiments of Eadweard Muybridge, spurred by a bet to capture a galloping horse’s feet off the ground, led to motion photography and the birth of movies ([16:12]-[19:55]).
  • “The camera unlocks a secret. It lets us see something you could never see before, because this camera, essentially, it stops time.” – Robert ([18:42])
• The pace of life and work itself was accelerated by film technology, which enabled efficiency studies and, paradoxically, enabled leisure via movies ([20:11]-[20:41]).

6. Natural and Cultural Clocks

• Clocks Without Numbers: Jay Griffiths and Rebecca Solnit discuss non-mechanical time-telling:
  • Spice clocks (taste the hour at night) ([21:21]),
  • Bird clocks (call of birds to signal time among the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea) ([22:06]),
  • Flower clocks (Carl Linnaeus’s botanical timepiece, flowers bloom to mark hours) ([23:06]).
  • Scent calendars (Andaman Islanders mark months by the scent of flowers/fruit) ([23:38]-[24:23]).
  • “Time is everywhere in nature…for most of history, time has been absolutely embedded in nature in some beautiful ways.” – Rebecca Solnit ([24:18])

7. What Is Time? Science & Relativity

• Brian Greene: Physics defines time as “that which allows us to see change,” but Einstein’s relativity teaches that time is not universal ([25:47]-[27:38]).
• Thought Experiment: Turbocharged jetpacks, synchronized watches, and how high-speed travel makes personal time elapse differently ([27:38]-[29:48]).
  • “Time itself is not some universal concept. Time is held by the individual, by the observer.” – Jad ([29:24])
• “Relativity says that time and speed are mysteriously coupled so that when I go fast, my time goes slow.” – Robert ([29:48])

8. The Human Experience of Time: Neurology & Sports

• Different Human Tempos: Oliver Sacks recounts patients whose sense of time was drastically altered:
  • Myron V.: A single gesture (wiping his nose) took two hours, but seemed normal to him ([34:52]-[37:30]).
  • Hester Y.: Moved and reacted at extreme speed, much faster than others, yet she was unaware ([38:10]-[40:21]).
  • “She was no more conscious of her speed than Myron was of his slowness.” – Oliver Sacks ([40:11])
• Being “In The Zone”: High-performing athletes describe how, during peak performance, time slows and their senses become heightened ([41:44]-[46:12]).
  • “It’s almost like everything is moving in slow motion…you’re watching birds kind of slowly fly by and you hear a song just whistling in your ear.” – Unnamed athlete ([44:39])

9. Time as Power & Politics

• Empires of Time: Rebecca Solnit and Jay Griffiths discuss how control of calendars and clocks is a form of political power—from British-imposed Greenwich Mean Time to Turkmenistan’s president renaming months after himself and his mother ([48:36]-[51:25]).
  • “We’re very used to thinking that empires are to do with land. What I’m arguing is that actually there have been empires of time.” – Rebecca Solnit ([50:24])
  • Dictators (e.g., Pol Pot starting “year zero”) rewrite time to claim authority ([51:00])

10. Transcending Time

• Ecstasy and Eternity: Jay Griffiths reflects on losing one’s sense of time in love, prayer, art ([51:42]-[52:34]).
  • “All you have to have done is loved somebody…that half an hour has lasted an eternity.” ([52:14])
  • “That’s when the moment meets the eternal…just this moment that you hold in your hand.” – Jay ([52:21])

11. Returning to Beethoven and the Nature of Time

• The Stretched Symphony: The episode closes with sounds and reflections from a 24-hour performance of Beethoven’s 9th, where listeners experienced time as something vast and transformed—sometimes “buzzed,” sometimes feeling “lifted up” ([53:02]-[57:47]).

  • “It’s like an ecstatic apocalypse…just a constant lift, lifting, lifting.” – Rebecca Solnit ([57:31])

• Jad reflects on how perception of time might differ among animals—hummingbirds, whales, turtles—suggesting our experience is just one slice of the temporal spectrum ([56:26]-[57:20]).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• Music and Perception:
  • “Maybe it was there all along and we couldn’t hear it. But play with the meter…and the music has a different story to tell.” – Jad Abumrad ([01:48])
• Time’s Emotional Texture:
  • “For a parent, a kid gets older, you must be getting older too…This is how the whole world works.” – Robert Krulwich ([10:45])
• Historic Clocks and Resistance:
  • “Who owns noon in Sandusky? Sandusky Railroad.” – Robert Krulwich (mock debate, [14:49])
• Photography’s Impact:
  • “The camera…lets us see something you could never see before, because this camera, essentially, it stops time.” – Robert Krulwich ([18:42])
• Nature’s Clocks:
  • “The Kaluli people…have what they call a clock of birds.” – Rebecca Solnit ([22:06])
• Physics of Time:
  • “Time itself is not some universal concept. Time is held by the individual, by the observer.” – Jad Abumrad ([29:24])
  • “This is like one of the great conundrums…what you know and what you feel are so different.” – Robert Krulwich ([31:26])
• Neurology and Extremes:
  • “He said he was just wiping his nose…this movement…was taking about two hours.” – Oliver Sacks ([36:07])
  • “She was no more conscious of her speed than Myron was of his slowness.” – Oliver Sacks ([40:11])
• Athletic “Time”:
  • “It’s almost like everything is moving in slow motion…you hear a song just whistling in your ear.” – Track Athlete ([44:39])
• Empires and Power:
  • “Empires are…to do with land. What I’m arguing is that actually there have been empires of time.” – Rebecca Solnit ([50:24])
• Transcending Time:
  • “All you have to have done is loved somebody…that half an hour has lasted an eternity.” – Jay Griffiths ([52:14])
• Beethoven’s Time:
  • “It’s like an ecstatic apocalypse…the other thing I felt when I came in and continued to feel I was being lifted up. Just a constant lift, lifting, lifting.” – Rebecca Solnit ([57:31])

Important Timestamps

• Beethoven’s stretched 9th as intro: [01:48]
• Oliver Sacks on memory and time: [04:37]-[06:19]
• Tony Schwartz’s “Nancy grows up”: [08:04]-[10:43]
• The advent of clock time via railroads: [11:38]-[15:23]
• Muybridge and motion photography: [16:12]-[20:41]
• Natural clocks—spice, birds, flowers: [21:20]-[24:23]
• Brian Greene explains relativity of time: [25:47]-[33:10]
• Oliver Sacks: Patients with extreme slow/fast time: [34:52]-[41:00]
• Athletes in “the zone”: [41:44]-[46:12]
• Empires of time, Greenwich, Turkmenistan: [48:36]-[51:28]
• Ecstatic, timeless states: [51:42]-[52:34]
• Stretching Beethoven, human and animal time: [53:00]-[57:47]

Episode Tone & Style

Radiolab’s tone is inquisitive, playful, and contemplative. The hosts and guests muse, riff, and experiment in real time, using sound, story, and humor to make science and philosophy vivid and visceral.

Conclusion

“Time” by Radiolab is a sweeping, ear-opening journey. It asks not just what time is, but how we live inside its many forms: measured or mystical, personal or public, fast or slow, clocked or felt. Whether through the inner lives of patients, the silent sway of flowers, the rush of an athlete, or the politics of empires, the episode reveals that time is far from an absolute, but rather a shifting, deeply human experience.