Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana
(Illustration generated by Bing Chat Mode AI)
According to our unscientific office poll, the annual changing of the clocks has all the popularity of a root canal. With few exceptions, people described the shift to and from Daylight Saving Time as disorienting, arbitrary, and unwelcome.
On a more existential level, winding the clocks back and forth reminds us that no matter how concrete minutes and hours may feel, the way we perceive time is fluid. Time flies when you’re having fun. A watched pot never boils.
So to celebrate (or perhaps protest) another year setting back the clocks, the Outside/In team has uncovered four mini-stories that will poke at, stretch, or even obliterate your perception of time. From “time expansion experiences”, to time-space synesthesia, to the slow-motion life of a fly, prepare for a totally different type of time warp.
Featuring Steve Taylor, Rhitu Chatterjee, Kevin Healy, Katherine Akey, and Patricia Lynne Duffy.
The crown-of-thorns starfish was the slowest animal at perceiving time, according to research by macroecologist Kevin Healy. Their eyes perceive just 0.7 frames per second. In contrast, flies can see changes 300 times a second. (Image credit: Kris Mikael Krister via Wikimedia Commons)
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LINKS
“To reignite the joy of childhood, learn to live on ‘toddler time’,” by Rhitu Chatterjee is part of NPR’s special series “Finding Time.”
“Can you see time?” (BBC News), by Victoria Gill, includes a drawing depicting an example of what a year might look like to a synesthete.
Research reveals which animals perceive time the fastest
“When Seconds Turn Into Minutes: Time Expansion Experiences in Altered States of Consciousness,” by Steve Taylor
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Blow flies and dragonflies have the fastest eyes at 300hz.(Image credit: Wolfgang Hasselmann via Unsplash)
CREDITS
Host: Nate Hegyi
Produced by Felix Poon
Reported by Felix Poon, Taylor Quimby, Nate Hegyi, and Justine Paradis
Edited by Taylor Quimby, with additional editing help by Justine Paradis
Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer
Special thanks to Jack Rodolico, Rick Ganley, Genevieve Andress, Mara Hoplamazian, Gabriela Lozada, Rebecca Lavoie, and Jason Moon for their thoughts on Daylight Saving Time, and to Anina Rich and David Brang for their expert knowledge on synesthesia.
Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Jharee, Isola James, 369, Suedo, The US Army Band, and Rand Aldo.
Theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
If you’ve got a question for the Outside/Inbox hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Taylor Quimby: I think this will work now. Justine, give me one, two.
Justine Paradis: One, two, one, two.
Justine Paradis: This microphone smells like coffee.
Taylor Quimby: that’s gross because i don’t think anyone has used it for a very long time.
[MUX IN]
Nate Hegyi: This is Outside/In, I'm Nate Hegyi, and I'm going to do a roll call because we've got a whole bunch of us right now. So roll call. Felix Poon present.
Felix Poon: Present.
Nate Hegyi: Perfect. Taylor Quimby, present?
Taylor Quimby: Here.
Nate Hegyi: Justine Paradise present.
Justine Paradis: This is bringing me back to middle school. And I'm not liking it.
Taylor Quimby: You'd have to mispronounce our names to really bring us back, though.
Nate Hegyi: All right, Felix, I'm going to give you the reins.
Felix Poon: Yeah. So do you all remember what's going to happen on November 5th?
Justine Paradis: Guy Fawkes Day? Yeah.
Taylor Quimby: We burn effigies.
Felix Poon: Guy Fawkes Day. Who's Guy Fawkes?
Taylor Quimby: Oh, This is. I don't think you want to open that can of worms there, Felix.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, that's a whole nother episode.
Felix Poon: Okay. More guesses.
Justine Paradis: Does it have something to do with our clocks?
Felix Poon: Yes! So that is the day we have to set our clocks back by one hour because it's the end of daylight saving time and I recently asked our colleagues about their thoughts on this annual ritual. And what I found was that people detest changing the clocks.
Jack Rodolico: I hate daylight savings. I cannot wait till it's gone forever.
Rick Ganley: I find it's so irritating.
Genevieve: I hate this. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. Single issue voter on that.
Taylor Quimby: That was like four hates in one sentence.
Felix Poon: But on the other hand, some people are actually really into it.
Mara Hoplamazian: So I love Daylight Saving Time.
Gaby Lozada: I like it. It's exciting. I don't know why I'm so excited about that.
Justine Paradis: Wow. Mara, betrayer.
Nate Hegyi: What's going on? Mara
Felix Poon: You know, even though we do this every year, a lot of folks just can't remember how it works.
Rick Ganley: I'm confused.
Jack Rodolico: I always get confused About what we're talking about.
Rebecca Lavoie: Everybody was confused.
Jason Moon: One happens in the spring? One happens in the fall? I think. I'm totally guessing right now.
Justine Paradis: I have to remember every year to reset the clock on my car and some years I just don't do it. And I just like operate on the wrong time for six months. And then I'm like, all right, it's back.
Nate Hegyi: Same.
Felix Poon: Does anyone know how Daylight Saving Time became a thing in the first place?
Nate Hegyi: It had something to do with farmers, right?
Felix Poon: Actually. So Germany started it during World War One as an energy saving measure, and then the US kind of followed suit. And then throughout the century, the federal government kind of went back and forth on this, like local cities and states did their own thing. Until 1974. The US actually experimented with making Daylight Saving Time permanent. They were like, Let's stop changing the clocks back and forth.
Nate Hegyi: Why did that not work? Seems like that's what everybody wants.
Felix Poon: because there was a public outcry. Kids were waiting for buses in the dark. Some were getting hit by cars.
Justine Paradis: Well, the solution to that is to move the school day later, which is what everyone wants.
Taylor Quimby: Yes. Thank you. It's to change our lives and not the freaking time. Yeah. God
[MUX]
Felix Poon: I think the reason that people get so upset about this is that we want to think of time as this thing we can control,
We try to organize our lives around these schedules, like work schedules, class schedules, nap time for kids.
Taylor Quimby: Yeah.
Felix Poon: You know, but disrupting the clock even by one hour, it's like we're losing our control over time. And maybe. Maybe it's a reminder to us that time is actually this slippery fluid thing.
Taylor Quimby: You know, all this reminds me of is so I used to paint houses as my summer job when I was in college. And I have and I had this boss,
Taylor Quimby: He used to play classical music And he played it because he was like classical music slows down time so that we get more painting done per day is what he told me.
Taylor Quimby: Like, listening to classical music made time feel like it went by slower because it's boring.
Justine Paradis: I'll die on the hill of classical music is not boring.
Nate Hegyi: I'll charge. The hill of classical music is boring, but that's another episode.
Justine Paradis: You haven't heard Good classical music.
Taylor Quimby: you know, I mean, I would load up my iPod with episodes of This American Life because it made it go by faster to listen to stories.
Taylor Quimby: You know the phrase like time flies when you're having fun. Like, has that been proven? Is that an actual thing? Is there a scientist who, like sat down and was like, we will do a measurement test of how how much fun changes time.
Felix Poon: Yeah, so that's the kind of time that I'm hoping to get at with this episode. like the passage of time, the flow of it, our human perception of it.
And so…
Justine Paradis: We’re going to free base the concept of time a little bit.
Felix Poon: Yes.
Justine Paradis: Yes.
Felix Poon: I put this challenge to you all. Can you go out into the world after we're done recording this find and bring back a story that plays with our perception of time, a story that pokes at or stretches or maybe even obliterates what we understand about time.
Taylor Quimby: Could I just do, like, a normal story? But I speed it up at like five times the normal speed and that plays with the listeners.
Justine Paradis: I'm going to slow mine down.
Felix Poon: Okay. So does everyone understand the assignment?
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, we’ve got a… we can do a lot of different things if we want to. It's a broad assignment.
Justine Paradis: Is it Groucho Marx? Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. That's such a good joke.
[MUX POST]
Felix Poon: Thanks everyone.
Justine Paradis: Have a good weekend guys.
Taylor Quimby: Yeah you too. Bye.
Justine Paradis: Bye.
<<FIRST HALF>>
Taylor Quimby: Check check check check check in the mic. Ha ha ha ha.
Justine Paradis: Bah bah bah bah bah bah.
Taylor Quimby: la la la la la la la la. Ooh la la la la la la la. Ooh.
Felix Poon: Getting zoom set up.
Nate Hegyi: Meeting summary with AI companion.
Justine Paradis: Oh, no.
Felix Poon: Oh, do we want to invite AI to this call?
Justine Paradis: No. I want to resist for as long as possible.
Nate Hegyi: Resistance is futile.
Justine Paradis: is it?
Felix Poon: That's what the Borg say.
Justine Paradis: resistance was not futile. That that human resistance did, was make us able to resist the Borg.
Nate Hegyi: Yes, it did work.
Felix Poon: So we're back.
Taylor Quimby: Hey.
Felix Poon: I think I'm going to go first with my story, because I'm thinking it could be a little foundational for the other stories
Felix Poon: I’m gonna start my story in a car – a silver minivan to be exact.
Steve Taylor: It was a gray autumn day, back in 2014. And my wife and I were driving to my mother's house to pick up our kids
Felix Poon: This is Steve Taylor. Steve and his wife were driving on the highway in England.
at about 60 miles an hour.
So, not too fast, not too slow. And at one point, he’s passing this big tractor trailer. When all of a sudden…
Steve Taylor: I remember hearing the bang…
Steve Taylor: that was when everything went into slow motion.
And I said to my wife…What was that noise?
And she said, Oh, I think somebody hit us.
And then our car started to spin.
There were lots of cars behind us and around us…
obviously traveling at a high speed. But to me, they seem to be very slow, very kind of almost like frozen.
so my initial thought was, oh, you know, we're going to we're going to die or have a serious accident
And after a certain amount of time… I felt as though I did gain some control over the car and I managed to move it towards the left…
and we crashed into a wall, into a crash barrier
[ambi switches here]
and then everything went back into normal speed again…
It was like I come out of a trance.
Steve Taylor: So that was really why I became interested in these experiences, what I call I call them time expansion experiences.
Felix Poon: Time expansion experiences.
Nate Hegyi: Huh? Wait. What does he do? Who is this guy?
Felix Poon: I feel like I should say that neither Steve nor his wife were hurt in this accident. But, yeah, Steve is actually a professor in psychology, and he studies this stuff. And he told me the earliest written research on this was done by a Swiss scientist named Albert Heim in the 1880s, who had a pretty similar experience when he was falling from a mountain.
Steve Taylor: He felt as though he had a lot of time to prepare for his landing, to shift around his body. And thousands of thoughts went through his mind.
Felix Poon: So there's no scientific consensus on why this happens. But Steve researched this by getting about 120 reports of time expansion experiences and accidents were the number one trigger. But he found that it also happens with athletes playing sports, psychedelic experiences and spiritual experiences.
Nate Hegyi: the only time I can vividly remember time really slowing down was when I was almost bitten by a rattlesnake. And I remember, like, hearing the rattle.the snake coiled and like the way my body just instantly reacted without me thinking. And I remember, like, leaping in slow motion. Like away from the snake and then like landing and being like, whoa, that was with a friend. And we were just both like, that was wild.
Felix Poon: Well, Steve does suggest in his research that it could be adaptive, like we may have just evolved this ability to, to slow down time like these, having these time expansion experiences as a way to help us survive.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah
Felix Poon: He also says it's a reminder that time is more flexible than we think, and it might even support what a lot of physicists say.
Steve Taylor: Time is really like space. It's everywhere. And when we have time expansion experiences, there are kind of entry point into that, that kind of spatial panoramic time world.
But in terms of practical takeaways, Steve is thinking about how this might offer guidelines on how to live a good life. Like you might want to inject more new experiences in your life to break up the routine and repetition.
Justine Paradis: Like rattlesnake bites.
Taylor Quimby: Almost get into car accidents, but don’t.
Felix Poon: I think he means things like, travel…or be a tourist in your own city and do new things.
But these time expansion experiences, they get you thinking about whether we can shape time ourselves.
Steve Taylor: Is it possible for us to consciously slow down time like they do in The Matrix or in other films?
Justine Paradis: I fully think that people can do that. You know, in meditation.
Nate Hegyi: Oh, yeah.
Have you ever slowed down time in meditation, Justine?
Justine Paradis: No, I'm not anywhere near that level
Nate Hegyi: Still trying to keep the mind still for five minutes.
Justine Paradis: Yeah, yeah. Still trying to quiet them or tolerate the voice in the head? Yeah.
[MUX TRANSITION]
Felix Poon: Should we move on to the next person who's next?
Taylor Quimby: That's me. I'm next.
Felix Poon: Let’s hear it.
Taylor Quimby: So it's not controversial to say that we perceive time differently as we get older, right? Like summer break feels like an eternity when you're in second grade. But, you know, by the time you're in high school, those weeks just fly by, right?
Taylor Quimby: But I want to talk about a particular rite of passage. As we get older, that seems to have its very own particular way of bending time. And one person who knows exactly what I'm talking about is named Rhitu Chatterjee. She is actually a health correspondent for NPR. So you might have heard her voice. And she is a mom to a three and a half year old toddler.
Rhitu Chatterjee: Yeah, so when I’m not on deadline or researching a story, I’m either trying to entertain him or getting entertained by him.
Taylor Quimby: So this thing I want to talk about sometimes is called parent time. And Rhitu was warned about this actually before her baby was even born.
Rhitu Chatterjee: “So many experienced parents starting giving us a piece of wisdom, they said enjoy it while it lasts because while the days might seem long, the years will fly by really quickly.”
Taylor Quimby: So she responded to this advice really? Seriously. She was like, you know what? I don't want the years to fly by. Like I want to be very present. And so even though her son was born at the very beginning of the pandemic, she tried to live every moment, you know, in the moment.
Rhitu Chatterjee: Even though the cell phone was sort of my only connection to the outside world I tried not to be distracted when I was with my son…. Whether it was for a diapers change, or really paying attention to those early milestones.
Justine Paradis: Wow. That's devoted to the the principal because. Yeah. The pandemic. Yeah. Not even not being a parent during that time. Um, that was that was hard to not be on your phone. Yeah.
Nate Hegyi: Oh, yeah.
Taylor Quimby: But three years later
Looking back, I was like where did all that time go? He’s already almost three! And now he’s three and half! He’s talking, he has jokes, he tells story. already, we’re feeling this thing that parents have warned about that the years will go by very fast.
[MUX OUT]
Nate Hegyi: Can’t beat parent time.
Taylor Quimby: So earlier this year, Ritu decided to dig into why parents have this experience for a series that NPR did called Finding Time. She spoke to a couple scientists, like a neuroscientist and a psychologist. And this is basically what they had to say.
First, according to the warning, the days go slow, right? That, she says, is because our perception of time passing fluctuates based on how much information we're processing, just like Felix was talking about with the car accidents and things like that. And, you know, there are a lot of new experiences when you're becoming a new parent. Like, you've got to figure so many new things out for the first time.
But also you're like up all hours of the night. You've got constant distractions. You know, you're changing diapers, and you guys have probably heard the phrase a watched pot never boils, right?
Nate Hegyi: Of course.
Felix Poon: Yeah.
So right, those late night wakes, when you’re tired and you’re trying to put your toddler to sleep… time drags on in the moment, because you’re paying attention to time. You wish it went faster.
Justine Paradis: I mean, isn't a lot of stuff really mundane too? And you're just like, the child is learning about the world, so it's repeating the same thing over and over and over and over. You know.
Taylor Quimby: Yes, and parenting, like it’s, so much of this stuff is routines, you know, naps, feeding, pick up, drop off activities. And after you get past that initial intense learning curve, you know, you're kind of on autopilot.
Taylor Quimby: but the way that we perceive time in retrospect. So if we're looking back, what she learned is that's based on the memories that we're making. And no matter how much a parent like Rhitu might think she's being really present in the moment, our brains are just not filing these routine memories away like we do other stuff.
Rhitu Chatterjee: Every diaper change doesn’t get saved… so when we look back at time, we’re like OMG.
Felix Poon: so routines are basically time killers.
Taylor: Oh totally. And in fact, Rhitu wanted to know, like, is there a way to break out of this? And one of the scientists that she spoke with did say like, yeah, break out of your routines, try new experiences. And for me too, she says, like, the biggest thing I've actually changed is that I just like, don't feel bad about totally destroying the bedtime routine.
I don’t get too worked up about getting ot him in bed on time. Because it makes more memories, and stretches time in the emoment.
I do see this a little differently in the sense that, like, you know, as we get older, there is a beauty and there is stability in our routines. And I, for one, don't like, want to leap into a midlife crisis and blow all of my life up just because I'm freaked out about how time feels like it goes by now. And I think if feeling the fleeting nature of time is what helps us appreciate it better, then this is just part of growing up.
Justine Paradis: There's this person I follow. Her name is Angela Trimbur. She's a dance teacher in New York, and shehad breast cancer a few years ago, and, you know, it was this life threatening thing. And it really changed how she was approaching her life. But she it wasn't. Let's live every day as if it's the last because of exactly what you're saying, Taylor. Like, that's kind of chaos. But she lives as if she has two years left because that was, I think, the remission time. And so that's enough time to have enough urgency, but also enough, you know, gentleness in my life to really make the things I want to happen for myself. And I really liked that.
Taylor Quimby: Yeah, I like that too.
Nate Hegyi: All right, breaky time.
Justine Paradis: It’s like you're telling us it's a nap time? Is it? Nap time.
Nate Hegyi: We're going to take a quick nap, and then we'll be right back. But first we want to know, do you have stories you want to share about your perceptions of time? Let us know. You can email us at outside-in at nhpr.org.
We've already heard from Dane Wooderson on Facebook. Dane wrote us, “If I’m in nature then time seems slower…, outside of nature time flies by…. I also think it depends on memory triggers…. Like if I go to high school or college sporting events I think about how long ago it was.”
Felix Poon: I have that feeling too. When I visit a college campus I’m like, oh man, college was a long time ago.
Nate Hegyi: Oh yeah, especially when you see styles, like styles have finally changed since we were in college.
Justine Paradis: They’re kind of back to the early 2000s though, unfortunately.
Nate Hegyi: Anyway…We love hearing from you, so don’t forget to rate us and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening to us.
<<MIDROLL BREAK>>
Nate Hegyi: Welcome back to Outside/In, I’m Nate Hegyi and I’m here with the whole crew – Taylor, Justine, Felix, and Felix of course has sent us on a quest for stories that challenge our perception of time.
Felix and Taylor you’ve already brought us our stories. Now it is time for me and Justine. Justine why don’t you hit it off.
Justine Paradis: Oh, I think you’re going first.
Nate Hegyi: Nate, why don’t you hit it off? Okay, I’ll do it! Um, this is great because we’ve been talking about human perception of time, butI want to talk about time and biology. And all that fun stuff.
Nate Hegyi: Do you guys get frustrated with flies?
Felix Poon: Oh, all the time.
Justine Paradis: Shoo fly.
Nate Hegyi: I get irrationally angry at them, especially when I can't hit them. And I have a lot of flies in this house and they are constantly dodging my swing.
Felix Poon: I bet you time slows down for that fly when you’re swinging for it, it’s like having a time expansion experience.
Nate Hegyi: Felix. Absolutely. So the reason why flies are always able to dodge our swatters and all that kind of stuff is because they perceive time as much, much slower than we do.
Kevin Healy: [00:00:31] It would be kind of like The Matrix, you know, that bullet time thing.
Neo: Trinity, help!
Kevin Healy: Where you can see all those little minuscule movements.
Justine Paradis: [00:00:47] We need as many matrix references in here as possible. So this is thrilling.
Nate Hegyi: [00:00:51] So so that is Kevin Healy. He is a macro ecologist at the University of Galway. He focuses on time perception like literally how creatures perceive time and space visually. And so to understand this you have to think about frames per second. Are you all familiar with frames per second?
Justine Paradis: [00:01:08] Yeah.
Taylor Quimby: Oh yeah. Movie buff.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah. Like movies are played at a certain speed so that you see all these individual frozen pictures, frames look like they're in motion.
Kevin Healy: [00:01:18] So we see about 60 frames per second or hertz. Interestingly enough, that's the frame rate of a lot of TVs. And for that reason.
Nate Hegyi: [00:01:27] So Healy recently spearheaded this research that looks into how more than 100 animals perceive time. And he did this with a strobe lights like he would flash a strobe light faster and faster until the animal's optic nerve no longer noticed that it was flashing.
Kevin Healy: [00:01:43] So this is kind of what we mean by time perception. When can we no longer perceive some event happening, when is it going too fast and we just kind of go, we mush it up into better. And that's really what's happening there. The light bulb, we could see two events when it was flashing, but when it was flashing so quickly, our vision basically puts those two events together. And what that looks like to us is a light bulb on. And in fact, wherever you're sitting is probably happening right now, AC current is usually what's used for lights, so that light is actually probably flashing on and off very, very quickly.
Nate Hegyi: [00:02:17] We're living in a world that's just full of flashing lights that we can't see.
Taylor Quimby: Did he also play EDM music for the Animals as he did this? So it was like a rave?
Nate Hegyi: I hope so that is the image I had in m y head is just like not just a flashing white light, but like all these different flashing, like pumping music and flies dancing.
[EDM MUX IN]
Yeah, if you were a fly in a room, you would actually be able to see at 300 frames per second.
Group: [00:02:42] Wow, wow.
Nate Hegyi: [00:02:43] That means that all of our light bulbs our computer screens. They would be flashing on and off, and that giant hand coming down from the sky would be moving so slowly that you could just, like, lazily fly away.
Felix Poon: [00:02:56] I feel like that would really give flies a headache.
Taylor Quimby: Yeah, that sounds super unpleasant.
Nate Hegyi: [00:03:01] But on the other hand, if you were a starfish.
[EDM MUX OUT]
Kevin Healy: And yes, starfish do have eyes and they can only see about 0.7 frames per second, so they can't even see a frame per second. So for them, the world, if you could imagine it is in very low temporal resolution. So everything's a blur basically.
Nate Hegyi: [00:03:20] So like if a fish swims past it just it's like this quick blur in and out, like the world is zooming by.
Justine Paradis: [00:03:25] Kind of like those old school nature cams where you only get like a stop frame image every so often.
Nate Hegyi: [00:03:31] Yeah. Just things, blurb, blurb, blurb. And so the reason for all this difference between animals and time perception, Kevin thinks, is evolution.
Kevin Healy: [00:03:40] Smaller animals tend to see time faster, because they can move quickly and act on that information. So if they see a predator coming at them really fast, they're fast enough to get out of the way. If they weren't fast enough to get out of the way, there'd be no point in having fast eyes. There'd be no evolutionary benefit to it. But if you're something like, well, a starfish, if you see something's moving, maybe that's useful, but that's all you need.
Felix Poon: [00:04:06] But does does this whole like frames per second, does that really translate to perception of time being slower or faster?
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, like a housefly, it lives for about a month, but if it perceives time as way slower, then does that month feel the same way that a lifetime feels for a human.
Justine Paradis: Fly years versus dog years? Right?
Taylor Quimby: There's an interesting other potential here, which is that, you know, there are certain animals in a fly might be one of them or of starfish. I have no idea where, you know, their memory is rudimentary compared to ours, and that means that maybe they are truly living moment to moment. You know, they don't look back and be like, gosh, remember when I was just a little starfish and it just felt like, you know, things were so different then.
[MUX TRANSITION]
Justine Paradis: [00:07:15] So I'm up.
Nate Hegyi: [00:07:16] Justine's up.
Felix Poon: [00:07:17] Last but not least. Justine, what you got?
Justine Paradis: [00:07:18] So when I selected my time topic for today, I immediately thought of an old friend of mine.
Katherine Akey: [00:07:24] I was thinking about this the other day when you asked me to talk to you. We've been friends for almost 20 years.
Justine Paradis: [00:07:30] My friend's name, by the way, is Katherine Akey. She's an artist, and I called her up for a really specific reason, because Kathy was the first person that I've met who knew that she had synesthesia.
Katherine Akey: [00:07:48] Yeah, I do, I have two kinds, two flavors of synesthesia that I'm aware of.
Nate Hegyi: [00:07:53] Synesthesia. What is synesthesia? I've never heard of it. Yeah.
Justine Paradis: [00:07:56] Quick definition is this is a blending of the senses and one that is consistent and involuntary. So Kathy has one of her types as audio tactile synesthesia, meaning she feels sounds as physical sensations. So, for instance, there's a particular guitar sound on this one Modest Mouse album that she loves –
Katherine Akey: [00:08:17] But it’s Just this rolling warmth on my upper arms and it's great. It's like a lovely feeling.
Justine Paradis: [00:08:24] But there's another kind where timely for our topic today, which has to do with our experience of time.
Patricia Lynne Duffy: You know, when I was younger, I thought every I never really gave it any thought. I just made an assumption that every everybody was perceiving time in this way.
Justine Paradis: [00:08:53] That's Patricia Lynne Duffy. She is an author, also an artist, and she has what's called time space synesthesia. So people who experience this see time often as a 3D object in their minds.
Justine Paradis: [00:09:08] Patricia remembers realizing that not everybody does this during a conversation with her father when she was around 16 years old.
Patricia Lynne Duffy: [00:09:15] Then I said, well, what does Monday look like to you? And he said, Monday doesn't look like anything. And that really didn't make I just didn't make any sense to me. Like, how could it not look like anything? It's a place. It's a it's a place you go every, you know, every week.
Justine Paradis: [00:09:32] So I didn't get into how this works like Neurochemically. But I do know what it looks like for Patricia.
Felix Poon: [00:09:39] I'm trying to I'm having trouble visualizing it.
Nate Hegyi: [00:09:41] I'm having a really hard time visualizing this too. Like, I can visualize Monday.
Taylor Quimby: The word Monday.
Nate Hegyi: Like in my head there's like an image of like, it's always raining because it's start of the workweek and nobody wants to be working.
Felix Poon: [00:09:52] My image of Monday is like a Google calendar where I have certain like, you know, you know, stuff to do. And yeah.
Justine Paradis: [00:09:59] Well, I mean, I think that that's interesting and well, for Patricia, there are a couple things going on that are sort of go beyond that.
Patricia Lynne Duffy: For example, a year is a kind of oblong string of colored rectangles and 12 rectangles, one for each month.
Justine Paradis: [00:10:28] Almost like a sidewalk. And this combines with another type of synesthesia she has, in which letters and words have their own colors. So Tuesday is blue, while November is a shade of deep Burgundy brown.
Patricia Lynne Duffy: [00:10:41] I think because November, the word November for me is a dark brown. But the V in November is a very is a very vivid Burgundy.
Justine Paradis: [00:10:50] When we release this episode, Patricia will have just crossed over into that Burgundy rectangle that is November along the pathway. So in other words, as time passes, Patricia is reorienting and moving along the sidewalk of the year in her mind.
Taylor Quimby: Cool.
Patricia Lynne Duffy: [00:11:05] I have a feeling of being of walking along this year pathway as I progressed right in my in my life every day.
Justine Paradis: [00:11:17] So I actually have this too.
Nate Hegyi: Oh!
Justine Paradis: Yeah, like Patricia, I hadn't ever really thought about it until I stumbled across an article about it a couple of years ago and realized it was a thing. So I don't have the color word type, but I do see time as a kind of oblong circle, a topography that I move along like a roller coaster track.
Nate Hegyi: [00:11:50] Okay. So help me understand this. So it's not like you're walking through November 2nd and like everything feels Burgundy. It's more like when she's thinking about the month of November. The image that comes to her mind is a Burgundy square.
Taylor Quimby: [00:12:14] I think that, Nate, we might just not be able to entirely grasp.
Nate Hegyi: [00:12:18] Yeah. Think it might be beyond the realm of my my mind to understand this? Yeah.
Taylor Quimby: Yeah, it may just be like, I can hear the words you're saying. And yet, like when I try and do it myself, I can't conjure it.
Justine Paradis: that's funny.
Taylor Quimby: It's like a superpower. Yeah.
Justine Paradis: [00:12:43] And I was curious because the article I read said that time space synesthesia is associated with having a stronger memory. That actually might be true for synesthesia more GENERALLY as well – researchers are still exploring this. But as a total layperson, non-scientist, I do have one hypothesis… and it comes from something that Patricia said during our interview about that conversation with her dad about Monday.
Patricia Lynne Duffy: [00:13:10] How could it not look like anything? It's a place. So I guess time is a place. Time is a place.
[MUX]
Justine Paradis: [00:13:18] Time is a place. And this made me think about this concept of the Memory Palace. Have you heard of this?
Taylor Quimby: [00:13:26] I know a podcast called The Memory Palace.
Justine Paradis: [00:13:28] There is a podcast, but different thing.
Felix Poon: [00:13:30] It's it's a tool for trying to remembering things. Right. You visualize like a big house with different rooms and you keep different memories in different rooms. Right. And to retrieve them, you visit the room that you want to try to retrieve a memory.
Justine Paradis: [00:13:44] Exactly.
Patricia Lynne Duffy: [00:14:19] I think it probably works like a memory palace.
It’s almost like a dream, you know, the way you don't you don't do anything to create your dreams. But yet there they are. They're just they're very vivid. It's just that this is a this is a kind of dream that's always with me in waking life.
Justine Paradis: [00:15:21] So it's just another thing to consider as we think about how diverse the human or the fly or the starfish experience can be.
Nate Hegyi: [00:15:29] Right? Yeah, right. Yeah. I just I have such a hard time imagining.
Felix Poon: [00:16:03] I think the the clarifying question I want to ask is like, so humans experience time in this linear fashion, right? So we experience many Mondays, but Mondays are actually completely different days. So someone who has synesthesia. Are they returning to the same room every Monday or is it a different room?
Justine Paradis: [00:16:37] I can only speak for me, right? Yeah, because I think everyone probably has a different conception. But yeah, I mean, the week just generally has a topography and I think it will change depending on if I'm excited about something on a specific day or something. But, you know my view of my life, like I have a topography to my life and my my experience of time and what my life looks like has changed since I was a teenager. I imagine if I was a parent, it would change profoundly, So I don't think it would always look the same, you know?
Taylor Quimby: [00:17:18] Yeah. Like maybe when you're younger, the roller coaster has like really big highs and lows and loop de loops, but it starts to straighten out and start to be a little bit more like a railroad track by the end. Yeah.
My question is what does Daylight Savings time look like? Is it like a gap in the tracks? Like, oh shit.
Justine Paradis: [00:17:38] Just really dark, dark day.
Felix Poon: [00:17:40] Yeah. Or it's kind of like a, I don't know, a train derailment.
Taylor Quimby: [00:17:44] That's what it feels like.
[THEME MUX IN]
Nate Hegyi: [00:17:58] If you've got thoughts about today's episode or about any of our episodes past, present, future, let us know. You can find us on social media. We're at Outside Radio, on Twitter and Instagram. You can also join our Facebook group Outside In and you can email us at Outside In at nhpr.org.
Felix Poon: [00:18:17] This episode was produced by me, Felix Poon.
Felix Poon: It was reported by all of us including
Felix Poon: [00:18:22] Me, Felix Poon.
Taylor Quimby: Me, Taylor Quimby.
Justine Paradis: [00:18:24] Me, Justine Paradise.
Nate Hegyi: [00:18:26] Me. Nate Hegyi. I Like how we said me in front every.
Justine Paradis: Meee!
Taylor Quimby: [00:18:31] I edited… I will edit… in the future, I will edit this episode.
Nate Hegyi: [00:18:37] I am the host of Outside/In. Rebecca Lavoie who is not here, so I'll speak for her,
Justine Paradis: Special thanks to Anina Rich
Felix Poon: and David Brang.
Nate Hegyi: Music in this episode came from Jharee, Isola James, 369, Suedo, The US Army Band, Rand Aldo, and Blue Dot sessions.
Our theme music is by Breakmaster cylinder.
Group: Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
Justine Paradis: I'm going to slow mine down.
Nate Hegyi: Have you heard, I think a few years ago they did that with a Justin Bieber song. It sounds like the most relaxing, just like atmospheric music ever.
[JUSTINE BIEBER]