[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JORDAN: Hello, hello, hello?

JAD ABUMRAD: How do I want to introduce this tape to you? Have you heard this tape, Krulwich?

ROBERT KRULWICH: I have not.

JAD: This is actually the first—it's one of my first radio pieces.

JORDAN: You're not gonna be able to hear what we're saying as we're in freefall.

JAD: And I had two friends who were in love.

WOMAN: I want to take a picture of the two of you suited up with your helmets on.

JAD: Have since fallen out of love and fallen in love with other people. But at the time, they were very much in love, and they had decided they were gonna go skydiving.

ROBERT: Together?

JAD: Together.

INSTRUCTOR: Everything looks good. You ready for this?

JORDAN: Yes, I guess so.

INSTRUCTOR: Let's go skydiving!

JAD: So this is my friend, Jordan. He is getting into a plane.

INSTRUCTOR: All right. So let's check your harness.

JAD: He's got a MiniDisc recorder strapped to his chest. And I should just say that the piece ended up being really dumb, but it contains the best moment of tape I think I've ever recorded.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: And you're gonna hear it coming up. Okay, so as Jordan gets up into the sky ...

JORDAN: I just hope I don't mess myself.

JAD: They're like 7,000, 8,000 feet. I don't remember the number, but they open the door ...

INSTRUCTOR: Okay, are you ready to skydive?

JORDAN: Oh, [bleep]!

JAD: He steps just to the edge, and he's about to go—you'll hear, there's going to be a moment.

Just listen.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: Okay, he is out of the plane now, he's hurling through space, free-falling.

JORDAN: Whoo!

JAD: Within, like, a few seconds, he's at 100 miles an hour. Up to 150. 175 miles an hour.

JORDAN: Whoo!

JAD: Maybe 200, I don't know. And ...

JORDAN: Whoo!

JAD: ... there.

INSTRUCTOR: How did you like that?

JORDAN: [laughs] It was incredible! Oh my God!

JAD: That's the moment where the parachute opens.

JORDAN: I can not believe it!

JAD: And he is floating.

JORDAN: God, that's amazing.

ROBERT: Well, what happened to the girl?

JAD: I don't know.

ROBERT: You don't know?

JAD: Well, her MiniDisc recorder malfunctioned on the way down.

ROBERT: Oh.

JAD: But let's just rewind that back for a second.

JORDAN: Whoa, damn!

JAD: That transition right there from falling body to floating body?

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: I love that because at first he sounds like this dinosaur falling through the air, but then the sound changes and it's just like, "Whoa!" I don't know, it's like this moment of somebody falling out of control.

ROBERT: And then falling back in.

JAD: Yeah. It seemed like a good way to open the show, because this is gonna be a show where we take this idea of falling ...

ROBERT: And we walk it in all kinds of different directions.

JAD: Like ...

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: A point comes where you snap.

ROBERT: That's one.

SARITA: I loved him so much.

JAD: That's one.

JOAN MURRAY: It's very dark. It's very hellish.

ROBERT: And that's one.

FREDERICK COOLIDGE: I was netting 81.

JAD: There are 14,932 ways to fall on the radio. In this hour, we'll bring you eight. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab.

ROBERT: And we are falling.

JAD: Number one ...

ROBERT: This one—this one is about—I don't know, would you call it terror, or just ...

JAD: No, it's about time, really.

ROBERT: Time. Okay, so we'll just call this one "Falling Time."

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Howdy.

ROBERT: This is David Eagleman.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: This is David here.

ROBERT: He's a neuroscientist, but back when he was a kid ...

JAD: How old were you? Just sort of ...

DAVID EAGLEMAN: I was—I was eight years old.

JAD: He had an experience which he says changed his life.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Yeah.

JAD: He was playing in his subdivision in Houston, and there was a house nearby ...

DAVID EAGLEMAN: That was under construction. And my father told me not to go climbing around on the house under construction, but I was a boy, so I did. And I was looking at the edge of the roof, and I stepped on it, but in fact it was tarp paper hanging over the edge, and I—and I fell.

ROBERT: Oh, so you stepped onto the air, in effect. You just went, whoosh!

DAVID EAGLEMAN: 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 down 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.

ROBERT: How long, by the way, was it from the top of the roof to the ground below?

DAVID EAGLEMAN: 0.86 seconds.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: [laughs]

DAVID EAGLEMAN: That's how long it takes to fall 12 feet. I calculated that later.

ROBERT: [laughs] I see.

JAD: That would be one one thousandth ...

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Yeah.

JAD: And this whole experience left David Eagleman with a question that he could not get out of his mind.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: 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 at some point, I realized I needed to study this.

JAD: How would—how would you even study that?

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Well, the first thing I did, I took my entire laboratory to AstroWorld, which is the amusement park here in Houston.

JAD: [laughs]

DAVID EAGLEMAN: And we went on all of the scariest roller coasters. We brought all of our equipment and our stopwatches and had a great time. But it turns out, nothing there was scary enough to actually induce this fear for your life that appears to be required for the slow-motion effect.

JAD: [laughs]

DAVID EAGLEMAN: So, I searched around, and I finally found something called SCAD diving.

JAD: SCAD diving.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: It stands for "Suspended Catch Air Device."

JAD: Where do you do that?

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Turns out it's illegal in Houston, but I found one in Dallas. [laughs]

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: [laughs]

DAVID EAGLEMAN: So we made a road trip up to Dallas.

INSTRUCTOR: All right, jump number one.

JAD: And we actually found a reporter in Dallas who agreed to give this a try.

INSTRUCTOR: Put the harness on, and then I'll put this on over the harness.

APRIL: No one's ever died on this thing, right?

INSTRUCTOR: No.

JAD: This is April.

APRIL: I feel like my heart's in my throat.

JAD: She's very brave.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: You ride up to the top of this tower in this very rickety little elevator type of thing.

APRIL: Okay, we're rising up in the elevator right now.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: 150-foot tall tower.

APRIL: Not too fast.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Climbing up and up and up.

APRIL: It doesn't seem that far when you're down there. Up here, it seems really far.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: It's like a 15-story building.

INSTRUCTOR: Okay, we're halfway.

APRIL: Halfway. [laughs] This is just halfway, I'm already freaking out.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: And ...

APRIL: My hands are starting to shake.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: ... at the very top, you're suspended.

APRIL: Like this?

INSTRUCTOR: Yes.

APRIL: Okay.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: You're hooked up to a carabiner.

APRIL: Oh, God. Okay.

INSTRUCTOR: Sit all the way back. Lean back.

ROBERT: Okay, so I want you to imagine this: you're up in the sky, you are facing the clouds, not the ground, you're attached to something which is about to be severed, and you will fall totally free into the void, unable to see what's about to happen to you, presuming a net—maybe.

APRIL: Oh, God. Okay. Don't let me die.

JAD: Three, two ...

APRIL: Really nervous right now.

JAD: And ...

APRIL: [screams]

JAD: Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. One thing I forgot to mention: April actually wasn't part of David's study, but if she had been, she would have been wearing around her wrist this little device.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: A new device called the perceptual chronometer.

JAD: It's about the size of a watch, and it flashes numbers super fast. Way too fast to see normally. But the thought is if April falls and everything starts to slow down, well then these numbers should slow too, so that if she looks at her wrist as she's falling, she should be able ...

DAVID EAGLEMAN: To now read the watch. That would be impossible under normal circumstances.

JAD: Back to April.

APRIL: Really nervous right now.

JAD: Three, two, and ...

APRIL: [screams] Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God, this is the scariest moment in my life! [laughs] Oh my God!

DAVID EAGLEMAN: I should probably tell you guys the results of this study, but ...

JAD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do people report that time slowed down enough for them to read the number?

APRIL: I'm alive.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: No.

ROBERT: No?

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Turns out when you're falling you don't actually see in slow-motion.

JAD: Aww.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Yeah, it's not equivalent to the way a slow-motion camera would work. Even though people feel like it's going in slow-motion, it's something more interesting than that.

JAD: Because here's the thing: right after people did the jump, he would ask them ...

DAVID EAGLEMAN: How long they thought their fall took.

JAD: The right answer, if they'd had a stopwatch ...

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Just under three seconds.

JAD: But what people would say ...

APRIL: How long—when you were falling, how long did it ...

WOMAN: 10 seconds.

WOMAN: It felt—it felt like time was stopped.

JAD: So how do you explain that? Like, time's not slowing in the moment, but seems to be slowing after the moment?

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Well, I came to understand that it's a trick of memory. Normally, our memories are like sieves. We're—we're not writing down most of what's passing through our system.

JAD: But he thinks that when you go ...

APRIL: [screams]

JAD: ... you know, life or death moment ...

APRIL: Oh my God!

JAD: ... in that instant, our memories go wide open.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Because that's what memory is for. It's for when everything hits the fan, you want to write it down and remember it.

JAD: So all of it goes right to your hard drive. The clouds, the feeling of the air, "Oh, look there's a guy in a blue shirt."

DAVID EAGLEMAN: So when you read that back out, the experience feels like it must have taken a very long time. It must have.

ROBERT: Normally, the trivial stuff gets dumped, but in this situation, it gets written.

JAD: Then you realize how much trivial stuff is in there.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: So for example, I just recently interviewed a gentleman who had been in a motorcycle accident, and as his helmet was bouncing along off the asphalt, he was composing a little song to the rhythm of his helmet bouncing.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: Was he in his helmet or had the helmet flown off?

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Yes, he was in his helmet. That's ...

JAD: Was he—before I guffaw too loudly, was he okay as a result of this bouncing?

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Yes, he was okay.

JAD: Wow, that's amazing! So his head was going thump, thump, thump, and he's like, "Hey, that's a good rhythm."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alice in Wonderland: Oh my, what a peculiar place to have a party!]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alice in Wonderland: Goodness, what if I should fall right through the center of Earth?]

JAD: Number two, falling in love from producer Lulu Miller. So set this up for us.

LULU MILLER: Well, this is a love story. And in some ways, it's a very typical love story. And in other ways, it's ...

JAD: Just not.

LULU: Yeah. The girl is a really good friend of mine. We're gonna call her Sarita. And the boy we'll call Simon.

LULU: When was the first time that you ever saw Simon?

SARITA: I don't remember the exact moment, but I do remember sitting in the lunchroom with the girls at the table and sort of scoping out the boys. And he was definitely the skinniest.

LULU: [laughs]

SARITA: He just looked like a really nice guy. Olive-skinned, thick hair, and he made really good eye contact to the point where it's a little flirty. There's no break in the eye contact. It's like constant to the point where I think it could be uncomfortable for some people, but I just really—I really liked it.

LULU: When was the first time you talked to him?

SARITA: Well, we had a class together our freshman year. We talked a lot in class, and after class, on the paths around campus.

LULU: And that's how it went all freshman year.

SARITA: Sophomore year.

LULU: Junior year.

SARITA: Mm-hmm.

LULU: They were sort of like particles that just kept colliding.

SARITA: In the lobby of the dorm, on the sidewalk.

LULU: And each time it was new.

SARITA: A new topic or a new idea.

LULU: For instance, one of them would walk by carrying a book ...

SARITA: Poisonwood Bible.

LULU: And the other one would say, "Oh, I love that book."

SARITA: Yeah.

LULU: They just clicked.

SARITA: And again, the eye contact. We would talk and be connected with the eyes. That's what I really was falling for about him, there was like an attentiveness beyond.

LULU: I want to ask you one thing which—like, you just said, "I'm falling for him."

SARITA: Mm-hmm?

LULU: Is that the way it felt? I mean, people always say "Falling in love." Did it feel like falling?

SARITA: Yeah, it does because it feels out of control. And there's a moment where it feels like I let go and allowed myself to feel it totally.

LULU: Though there were some moments where she wondered if she should.

SARITA: Yeah.

LULU: Like sometimes she'd walk by Simon on the path, look up and smile ...

SARITA: And he'd snub me.

LULU: But then ...

SARITA: We'd run into each other, and we'd talk ...

LULU: She'd let herself start falling again.

SARITA: This is really fun in this moment. And I realized years later that every time we ran into each other, he has no idea that those were me. [laughs]

LULU: Really?

SARITA: Yeah.

LULU: Hi.

SIMON: Hello?

LULU: Could you hear me vaguely? [laughs]

SIMON: Yeah.

LULU: Can we start out talking about your condition?

SIMON: Yeah.

LULU: What's it called?

SIMON: Prosopagnosia.

LULU: Prosopagnosia.

SIMON: Yes.

LULU: Sounds like a delicious fruit salad.

SIMON: It could be a cocktail.

LULU: And what is that—what is that word?

SIMON: Let's see. Well, "agnosia" is a lack or an inability, and "proso" is the Greek for face.

LULU: Oh.

SIMON: Face blindness.

LULU: This, of course, is Simon.

SIMON: There's a little piece in my brain that's missing and I have a really, really hard time recognizing faces, remembering faces.

LULU: And how does it work? Is it just that you forget where you know people from?

SIMON: No. If I've passed you in the street, I can't swear that I've ever seen you before.

SARITA: So he didn't know. He couldn't string those together as all the same person having the same conversation.

SIMON: Right, no way.

LULU: Even their first kiss. He didn't realize he was kissing a girl he'd actually known for years.

SIMON: [laughs] Yes.

SARITA: Yeah.

LULU: So were you, like, totally shocked?

SARITA: I was totally blown away.

LULU: Who was that person to you?

SIMON: I knew it was the cheese-plate girl.

LULU: [laughs] Yeah?

SIMON: I did not know it was field-house girl.

LULU: So what did you say?

SARITA: I think I just asked a lot of questions.

SIMON: You know, she was interested.

SARITA: Like, "Oh ..."

SIMON: "How does this work?"

SARITA: Yeah.

SIMON: So I probably said, "If you went to the park and started looking at trees, their shapes are different, their sizes are different, but to try to remember a thousand or two thousand of those ..."

SARITA: How do you pick it out?

SIMON: It's just hard. It's just computationally difficult.

SARITA: Yeah.

LULU: What details did you know about her?

SIMON: I knew it was good to be with her. The experience of being with her, I think ran ahead of my sense of her biography. So it was a leap.

LULU: It was a leap.

SIMON: Yeah. Let's try this.

LULU: So they embark on this relationship, which, you know, has its quirks.

SARITA: Right.

LULU: Like for instance, if they were meeting up somewhere public ...

SARITA: I'm gonna need to wave first.

LULU: Hmm.

SARITA: And backpacks.

LULU: She's always gotta wear the same one.

SIMON: Voice really helps.

SARITA: But I would get a little bit anxious when we'd have to meet each other somewhere.

LULU: Yeah.

SARITA: Because I knew if another curly-haired girl walked there before I did ...

SIMON: I'm thinking, "Is that her?"

SARITA: He would, like, smile and wave at her. [laughs]

SIMON: It's just awkward. It's just kind of embarrassing.

SARITA: Yeah.

LULU: And somewhere along the line, Sarita found out that that eye contact that drew her in, it wasn't really about her. It was something he did ...

SARITA: With everyone on the off-chance that they're his friend.

LULU: Wow.

SARITA: That's what I think the eye contact is.

LULU: Did that—did that make you step back at all?

SARITA: No. By then I had already fell.

LULU: And plus, Sarita at that time was getting really into Buddhism. And not just a little bit. She went and lived with Buddhist nuns for a year in Sri Lanka.

SARITA: And so the idea of impermanence and, you know, we think we have a self, but what really is a self? What it means to know someone? All of that was part of my world, and so this idea that he didn't recognize me didn't seem so—as important as the present moment.

SIMON: It just kept getting better.

LULU: And then what happened? You graduated, then did you move in together?

SARITA: Yeah.

LULU: Was it in Philly?

SARITA: It was in Philly, on Sansom Street.

LULU: A year and a half goes by, and then one day ...

SIMON: I woke up, and I swear to God, like, all the leaves fell off the trees. Fall turned into winter.

LULU: And Simon told Sarita it was over.

SARITA: Something about a core that I'm lacking.

LULU: He said you were lacking a core?

SARITA: Yeah.

LULU: What does that mean?

SARITA: I don't know. I'm not sure what it means.

SIMON: Good God, I knew the core would come up. The core, the core—what I was trying to talk about was lingering doubt, whether—whether this was it. Wondering could I fall further?

SARITA: He just wasn't sure that he loved me, and then at that point kind of backtracked and denied having ever really loved me. Yeah. That—that's how it was.

LULU: Did you feel like you at a certain point started to actually fall out of love with him? Like ...

SARITA: No. There was no falling. It was just like I was at the bottom of a well, sitting and stewing. I loved him.

LULU: Yeah.

SARITA: So much.

LULU: And would you see him in the neighborhood? Because you're still neighbors, right?

SARITA: Yeah. We would see each other around at parties. And he was working at a restaurant that had an outdoor patio, and I walked by there a few times without him knowing it was me, where I could see him and look at him.

LULU: But you got to just be hidden.

SARITA: Yeah. I got to just walk by.

LULU: Yeah.

SARITA: So there is comfort in that.

SIMON: I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's hard somehow that I wouldn't see her. It's like she'd faded back into the crowd quickly.

SARITA: I had become lost.

SIMON: It's actually haunting to me, you know, to hear that.

ROBERT: And we'll be right back.

[SARITA: Hey, this is Sarita. Radiolab is funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

[SIMON: Radiolab is produced by WNYC and distributed by NPR.]

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