[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LULU MILLER: This is Radiolab. I'm Lulu Miller.

LATIF NASSER: I'm Latif Nasser.

LULU: And we're gonna start this one ...

SINDHU GNANASAMBANDAN: So it's right here. I'm gonna grab it.

LULU: ... with our producer Sindhu Gnanasambandan ...

SINDHU: I had to take the tape off of my wall.

LULU: ... who, a few weeks ago, brought me into the studio to show me a very large poster.

LULU: Life calendar and lots of red Xs.

SINDHU: Yeah, so this is a poster that I keep across from my bed.

LULU: Okay.

SINDHU: It's basically this, like, giant grid of boxes. There's, like, 52 going across, 90 going down. And every Sunday, I use this red marker to cross off a box.

LULU: So 52 weeks for a year. So each box is a week?

SINDHU: Exactly.

LULU: And, like, in theory you'll maybe make it to 90 years?

SINDHU: Exactly. If I live to be 90 years old, every single box will be checked off.

LULU: [gasps] I'm triggered. [laughs] I am. I am. Why on Earth?

SINDHU: Yeah. Well, I got this poster six years ago when I was living in this Zen Buddhist commune.

LULU: Hmm.

SINDHU: And part of the practice there was to, like, really confront our own mortality.

LULU: Right.

SINDHU: And this poster was a way for me to do that. But as I've been doing this for years now, you know, just checking off a box week after week after week, I'm, like, starting to notice something, which is that, like, these weeks are going faster and faster.

LULU: Hmm.

SINDHU: And, like, I know people say this happens, that time moves more quickly as we get older. But, like, I'm really feeling it happening. You know, like, I'm about to turn 30, and I feel like I'm gonna wake up tomorrow, 80 years old, staring death right in the face.

LULU: Hmm. That's interesting, because I think you're right, that, like, a lot of us do get the leery sense of, like, whoa, whoa, that year just went by. But for you, having those regular check-in points, must make you notice it in a slightly more granular way.

SINDHU: Yeah. And it's made me, like, desperately want to know is there something I can do to slow this down?

LULU: To slow time?

SINDHU: Yeah. Like, is there a way for me to make my life, like, this one single life I have ...

LULU: Yeah.

SINDHU: Is there a way for me to make it feel longer?

MARC WITTMANN: Could you send me a link to where one could find this poster?

SINDHU: [laughs] Yeah, of course.

SINDHU: So I actually called up a couple of time perception researchers—Marc Wittmann.

MARC WITTMANN: From the Institute of Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, Germany.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and a writer.

LULU: Yeah, okay. Friend of the show.

SINDHU: Friend of the show. And I asked them my question: how do I live the longest-feeling life possible? And they said one way to make time feel longer ...

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Think about sitting on an international plane flight.

MARC WITTMANN: Just imagine you're waiting for the bus or a subway and it's not coming.

SINDHU: ... do something super-boring.

LULU: Hmm.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Is that the life that you would want?

SINDHU: No. No, it's not! [laughs]

SINDHU: But fortunately, according to David and Marc, there's this whole other way to extend time, too.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: The retrospective one, where I think, "What a year I've had. This happened, that happened. Amazing! Wow!"

SINDHU: And I was like, "Yes, that's the one! Like, that's what I want."

LULU: You want it to feel like it was longer when you look back.

SINDHU: Yeah. Yeah. When I'm in my deathbed, I want to look back and be like, "Wow, that was a long and meaningful life."

LULU: Okay.

SINDHU: And stretching time out that way, Marc and David say, is all about ...

MARC WITTMANN: Memory, memory, memory.

SINDHU: ... collecting memories.

LULU: Huh.

SINDHU: Like, that's how our brain measures time.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: It says, "Oh wait, how long has it been since X?" And then it says, "Oh, all right, well let's see. This, this, this. Okay great, so it must have been a week, or a month, or 10 years."

SINDHU: So then I was like, okay, I need memories. How do I make more memories?

LULU: Good question.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: The only reason you have memory at all is so that you can navigate your future. And so when you're writing stuff down, it's something that your brain feels is important.

SINDHU: So you brushing your teeth this morning, do you remember?

LULU: Um, probably not, no.

MARC WITTMANN: Why would you want to memorize your toothbrushing when you've done this for 365 times each morning, the last year?

SINDHU: Which is why for many people, the pandemic years were sort of a blur.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: There was nothing new happening.

SINDHU: And it's also why time seems to move faster as we get older.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: Sometimes people say, "Oh, I think this has to do with the fraction of your life hypothesis," which is just that, you know, a year when you're eight years old is a big chunk of your life, but a year when you're 80 years old is a smaller chunk.

LULU: That's what I always heard.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: That's not—that's not the whole story.

LULU: Hmm.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: As you get older and older, there are fewer reasons to lay down memory because essentially, your brain has got the schtick, and there's no corrections that need to be made there.

LULU: Oh.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: But, when you're 80 years old, if you go on some great new adventure that you weren't expecting, that seems to have lasted longer. And whatever age you are now, if you have an incredible weekend, and you look back you think, "Oh my gosh, it's been forever since I was at work on Friday," but if you have a boring weekend you think, "Oh my gosh, I was just here." And so this can happen at any age, that if you force your brain to lay down new memories, then retrospectively, that makes it seem as though more time has passed.

SINDHU: Hmm.

MARC WITTMANN: And so you could say having a life with a lot of novelty, change, with emotions, such a life will imprint more deeply in your memory, and then, looking back at your last day, your last week, your last 10 years, even your lifetime, then the longer, subjectively, time stretches or time feels.

SINDHU: So according to my scientists, if I want to make my life feel longer?

MARC WITTMANN: Avoid routine, and seek novelty in your life. That will be like the formula.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: You know, you can brush your teeth with the other hand. You can shave with your other hand.

SINDHU: David gave me a bunch of these, like, little ...

DAVID EAGLEMAN: When you get out of the shower, try to towel yourself off in a different way, because I've noticed people always towel themselves off like unconscious zombies.

SINDHU: [laughs]

SINDHU: ... life-hack-y tricks.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: I mean, easy. Go unplug your coffee machine, put it somewhere else. Rearrange the food in your fridge. Put your dishes in a different cabinet, and your silverware in a different drawer.

SINDHU: Seriously, a bunch of them.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: You pull this one off its nail here, this one off its nail here, you swap 'em.

SINDHU: Wow.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: You switch 'em. You push your desk over to the other wall.

LULU: Okay.

SINDHU: But now that I understand how this works ...

LULU: Yeah?

SINDHU: ... like, I don't just want to make life a little bit longer here and there. I want to see if I can stretch time apart completely.

LULU: Yeah.

SINDHU: Like, how long can I actually make it feel?

LULU: Ooh. Okay!

SINDHU: So Lulu?

LULU: Mm-hmm?

SINDHU: I have actually come here to tell you that for the next week, I'm gonna live the most novel life that I possibly can.

LULU: Wait, what do you mean? [laughs]

SINDHU: Well, I have some rules. I'm gonna wake up in a different bed every day. Not my own bed, a new bed.

LULU: Whoa! Okay.

SINDHU: I will eat only things I've never eaten before.

LULU: Okay.

SINDHU: And outside of the non-negotiable things of being human ...

LULU: Yeah?

SINDHU: ... I will only do things I've never done before.

LULU: Wait, how—okay, what? Wait, you're about to go on, like, a crazy experiment?

SINDHU: Yeah, exactly. Like, I want to see, can I make a week feel like two weeks? That's my goal.

LULU: All right, well I'm excited for you.

SINDHU: [laughs] Thanks. I'm excited too.

LULU: Sindhu will be back in a week, and we'll be back in about two minutes, because on the radio we can do that.

LULU: Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Lulu. We're talking about how to make your life feel longer with our producer Sindhu Gnanasambandan, and whether it's possible to make a single week feel like two weeks by doing only novel things. Sindhu?

SINDHU: Hello, Lulu.

LULU: Oh, my goodness! Okay, where have you traveled? What have you done? Throw the pastiche at me.

SINDHU: Okay, I'm just gonna—I'm going through the list.

LULU: Yeah, love it.

SINDHU: Okay, novelty, here I come. Do you know where I go to volunteer for lunch?

SINDHU: I volunteered at a soup kitchen.

LULU: Ooh!

MAN: What's the job? Radio Shack? Radio ...?

SINDHU: I convinced a man on the street ...

SINDHU: Are you gonna let me try one?

SINDHU: ... to teach me how to skateboard.

LULU: Oh my God, fun!

SINDHU: Can you just eat it like that?

WOMAN: Yellowfoot.

SINDHU: Found some of these little golden berries in Chinatown.

WOMAN: Yeah yeah, $25 pound.

MAN: You gotta make sure to turn off your phone.

SINDHU: Turn off your phone, okay.

SINDHU: I went to the New York State Supreme Court and watched a couple trials.

LULU: Huh!

SINDHU: So who are you?

JAE: I'm Jae.

SINDHU: I attended a dating app mixer with my boyfriend, Jae.

JAE: I think this is an app for novelty-seekers.

SINDHU: Hi.

SINDHU: Talked to a bunch of strangers there.

WOMAN: I went on a date with someone who revealed to me that his mom might've gotten murdered the weekend beforehand.

SINDHU: Just person after person.

WOMAN: The flow of time.

MAN: It just flows.

WOMAN: It does.

MAN: Yes.

WOMAN: Sometimes it flows faster, sometimes it's slower.

MAN: Like a river!

SINDHU: I, like, needed to leave that, like, an hour ago. And I don't want to go to a random person's house right now, and I don't want to wake up at 7:00 am to go surfing. Like, I'm not—and I haven't eaten basically all day, because, like, I can't find food that I haven't eaten before.

JAE: Sounds like you're novelty-ed out.

SINDHU: I'm just—I'm tired! [laughs]

JAE: We're experiencing your dark night of the soul but it's day one.

SINDHU: [laughs] I just want to go home.

SINDHU: I kind of fell apart. But I made it to the place I was gonna stay that night.

SINDHU: Is this your room?

HUSSAIN: Yeah, I stay here. You can stay here.

SINDHU: Which was this place I found on Couchsurfing. It was essentially the top bunk in the bed of this very nice Turkish man. And the next day ...

SINDHU: I woke up feeling good.

SINDHU: ... I felt ready to keep going.

SINDHU: I'm looking for New York Surf School.

SINDHU: I went surfing.

CHILD: Make sure you pick the right wave.

SINDHU: With a bunch of 12 year olds.

CHILD: Because there might be a small one, and then you take the small one and then like four big ones come and you miss them.

SINDHU: That feels like good general life advice: wait for the right wave.

CHILD: Yeah.

SINDHU: I'm not a swimmer. Like, I can survive for a little bit, but I can't really swim.

LULU: Wait, you can't swim and you went surfing?

SINDHU: Yeah. Yeah.

LULU: Uh, were you wearing a lifejacket?

SINDHU: No, but I mean, the surfboard is float-y, right? Like, you just kinda float on the surfboard.

LULU: Okay, Sindhu. Yeah, but like, the ocean—you can't—okay.

SINDHU: So this is just a little memo, mid-surf lesson. I'm, like, good at surfing.

SINDHU: The very first time I did it, I made it through the entire wave. And the 12 year olds were watching me and I was like, "Oh yeah!" They thought I was some old lady who's just going to fall on my face.

SINDHU: Hussain, Hussain, Hussain.

SINDHU: Later that day I met up with Hussain. He was my Couchsurfing host from the night before. He's this pedicab driver actually, in Central Park, and he offered me a ride.

LULU: Fun! Okay.

SINDHU: Oh, watch out. [laughs] That was close! He's sitting on the bike sideways, facing me.

HUSSAIN: You should see me on the street. [laughs]

SINDHU: At one point he made me start driving the pedicab.

SINDHU: I love that we just traded jobs.

LULU: [laughs] That's amazing!

SINDHU: Oh, wait wait wait, I'm not stopping! I'm not good at stopping.

SINDHU: I hit the curb multiple times, almost crashed into people.

SINDHU: Okay, maybe I shouldn't do this.

HUSSAIN: No, no. One more time.

SINDHU: And then on day three ...

MAN: I don't know if you know anything about atmospheric perspective.

SINDHU: Nothing.

MAN: Okay.

SINDHU: ... I learned how to paint with acrylics ...

SINDHU: How hot is this?

WOMAN: You know, 2,000 degrees.

SINDHU: Ooh, there! It's a bubble. Ooh, it's growing.

WOMAN: It grows.

SINDHU: ... and blow glass. And later that night I went to this, like, performance art spa thing. It was just like a lot of naked people and gongs.

LULU: What?

SINDHU: Mm-hmm.

LULU: Okay.

SINDHU: Hello, hello? Okay, so it is Friday. No, no, it's not Friday. It is Wednesday night, and I'm gonna sleep on my roof. My brain is shutting down. It's like, I can't make eye contact and ask questions that make any sense. I can't—I think my whole—my whole system is just, like, exhausted, the system that is just, like, on high alert because everything is different all the time. I don't know. But then there are moments like this, where I'm lying on my roof, staring up at the beautiful sky on a perfect night, and wondering how I have never done this before, you know? It's just, like, so many things I just haven't done. Okay, I should go to bed. Good night.

LULU: Okay, how's time feeling for you at this point?

SINDHU: It's—it's stretching. It definitely felt like more than three days. But I don't know, I was, like, starting to hit this sort of—it almost felt like a monotonous pace. Like, I'd do a new thing, and take the subway across town and do a new thing and take the subway again, and it almost felt like I was making a sort of routine out of novelty or something.

LULU: Oh, like, the novelty itself was becoming old?

SINDHU: A little bit. And I was like, "Okay, I need to change something up here." You know, Marc did tell me that, like, doing emotionally rich things with the people you love, that also becomes memories. So the next day ...

SINDHU: Oh my God! The sun is already kind of out.

SINDHU: ... I decided to go find some of those.

SINDHU: Okay, I'm just getting packed up. Just gotta walk over to my rental car.

SINDHU: So I rented a car and I got out of New York City.

SINDHU: I'm on a bridge. There's water everywhere.

LULU: She's crossing state lines, people.

SINDHU: [laughs] Crossing state lines.

SINDHU: Amazing view of the skyline.

SINDHU: Which was actually pretty novel for me. Like, I've never done a solo road trip before.

SINDHU: I'm at a rest stop in Milford, Connecticut.

SINDHU: Oh, oh, ooh, ooh!

SINDHU: Did the massage chair.

LULU: Mm-hmm.

GPS: Continue for 66 miles.

SINDHU: [singing] And time makes you bolder, even children get older, and I'm ...

SINDHU: Okay, we're going to Tasha's house.

SINDHU: And eventually, I made it up to Vermont where I met my friend's baby for the first time.

LULU: Aww!

SINDHU: Also hung out with her toddler.

CHILD: If you want to hold it you can. But be gentle not to drop it.

SINDHU: Who'd just found a newt. This child's world was constant novelty.

CHILD: I just wanted to discover him a little.

SINDHU: Her time probably moving slower than for any of us.

GPS: Continue for 56 miles.

SINDHU: Then I looped back down south.

SINDHU: Another cowboy song.

SINDHU: Drove east, east, east, super east ...

SINDHU: Yeah, I've been listening to country music for four and a half hours straight. Um, I'm into it.

SINDHU: ... to one of the tips of our continent, Cape Cod.

LULU: Okay.

GPS: Your destination's on the right.

SINDHU: Oh my God, I think his dad's outside.

SINDHU: To meet Jae's parents.

LULU: Oh, that's a big new thing.

SINDHU: Hi!

DAD: Hello, how are you?

SINDHU: Good, nice to meet you.

DAD: We do have several novel things for you to do, only if you want.

SINDHU: They were, like, in on the adventure from the beginning, which was so sweet.

LULU: Yeah.

SINDHU: This is like the biggest bag of potato chips I've ever seen.

SINDHU: You know the Cape Cod potato chips?

LULU: Yeah.

SINDHU: The echo of the lighthouse.

SINDHU: The lighthouse on that bag? We ate the chips inside it together.

LULU: Meta.

JAE: Okay, dad.

SINDHU: Is that a clam?

DAD: Yay! Yay!

SINDHU: I caught my first clam.

DAD: You got the big one.

MOM: I hear the water boiling. Here we go.

SINDHU: So they're dead by now?

JAE: They're not dead until they open.

MOM: Until they open.

SINDHU: Oh God! The clam part is like, the chewier part?

MOM: Mm-hmm.

SINDHU: I also ate my first clams.

SINDHU: I'm so grateful that you put breadcrumbs and cheese in it. [laughs]

MOM: Everything's free. Free! Can you imagine?

SINDHU: And our last stop together was the dump.

DAD: This is like Christmas morning all the time.

SINDHU: Where they have this little swap shop.

MOM: Two squirt guns. A ball for the dogs.

SINDHU: A whole corner of crutches.

JAE: Okay.

SINDHU: So lovely.

MOM: Lovely. Thank you for coming.

DAD: This was great. Thanks. All right, bro.

MOM: This was such a delight.

DAD: Be safe.

SINDHU: Thank you. I'll see you both hopefully soon.

SINDHU: Anyway, I think that's—that's—yeah, I mean, that's ...

LULU: And then did—you come home from Cape Cod yesterday, on Sunday?

SINDHU: No. There was one more day, but I think I might save telling you about that day.

LULU: Ooh! Was it an action-packed day?

SINDHU: [laughs] Um, no. It wasn't.

LULU: Okay. Like, just to circle back to your investigation, you just lived this week with, like, easily at least 40 new things, a ton a day, like, pretty big things. Like, new ways of moving through the world—surfing, skating. Multiple state lines—Massachusetts, Vermont. Like, new ways of moving matter—glass-blowing. Like, you have this, like, incredible range.

SINDHU: Yeah.

LULU: Like, overall, when you look back on the past week, did it feel stretched longer than a typical week? Shorter? Like, how did it make time work?

SINDHU: Yeah. I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm exaggerating, but it truly was time expanding beyond what I even imagined. Very long. Very long. Yeah. It worked. Yeah, it worked with, like, flying colors. It really worked.

LULU: [laughs] Did the week feel like two?

SINDHU: Probably two or three weeks. I mean okay, look, it's actually hard to say exactly. Like, that's not how my brain is processing it.

LULU: Mm-hmm.

SINDHU: But, like, okay, we do know that the mechanism here is memory.

LULU: Right.

SINDHU: And I started to think about it almost as like control-save moments. Like, how many moments did I do a little control-save on?

LULU: Hmm, that's interesting.

SINDHU: And that, I feel like I have more of a sense of.

LULU: Yeah. That's interesting. And it's weird, like, how many control-saves when you're just, like, living your life on autopilot?

SINDHU: Yeah.

LULU: How many do you think you'd get a day or a week?

SINDHU: Very few. Very few.

LULU: Like, are there entire days that don't even get a control-save?

SINDHU: I think so. Yeah, most days, right? Like, I don't think I could come up with a memory for every day of my life. Like, most of them are not recollectable, like, they're gone.

LULU: And I know you're fresh off of it right now but, like, how many control-saves do you think this week got?

SINDHU: Oh my God, it's hard because again it's fresh. I'd be curious how I answer this, like, in a year.

LULU: Yeah. Or like a month.

SINDHU: But right now, there's like hundreds.

LULU: Hundreds. Wow!

SINDHU: I would say hundreds.

LULU: Yeah. Were there—when you look at the spread of the week, like, were there parts that felt particularly stretched out?

SINDHU: Yeah, actually. There was this, like, one-hour stretch that honestly felt like a whole day.

SINDHU: Wait, that's insane. You have four radios.

SINDHU: It was the second night.

SINDHU: And whose art is this?

ADAM: Children's art.

SINDHU: You're a teacher.

SINDHU: I went over to the home of my second Couchsurfing host.

ADAM: What side does the snack want to go to?

SINDHU: His name's Adam.

SINDHU: Right.

ADAM: That's for me too, yeah.

SINDHU: We had this long, leisurely tea time.

SINDHU: Is that a problem, that we're always moving our food to the right first? Like, are our teeth gonna ...

ADAM: Maybe they already have.

SINDHU: And then at some point he was like, "Okay ..."

ADAM: I have an idea. I wanted to see what you think about my idea.

SINDHU: He says today is a full moon, and technically the full moon should rise at about the same time as the sun sets.

LULU: Okay.

SINDHU: And so he's like, "Should we go see it?" I'm like, "Yeah, that sounds fun." So ...

ADAM: We're here in Riverside Park now.

SINDHU: We went up this giant rock hill, but ...

ADAM: We don't have that good of a view of the east.

SINDHU: We could see the sunset. We could not see—there's too many buildings in New York City, like, we could not see the other side, the east side.

LULU: Okay.

ADAM: So now we have another quest.

SINDHU: We have 20 minutes.

SINDHU: And then at some point, it was like ...

ADAM: What's the width of Manhattan?

SINDHU: Okay, well one of us probably just has to go to the east side.

ADAM: The bus is right there. I'm very fast.

SINDHU: And so—so he instantly saw this bus and started, like, chasing it down.

LULU: [laughs]

SINDHU: Oh my God, he's just sprinting. No!

SINDHU: He doesn't make it. So then I grab a Citi Bike.

SINDHU: I'm gonna go that way, okay? Stay here.

SINDHU: And I just start going for it. Like, I'll go across Manhattan to see the moonrise, while he just stays and watches the sunset.

SINDHU: I keep getting stopped on the way, but I think I'm pretty close. What time is it?

[phone rings]

SINDHU: Hello?

ADAM: Hi.

SINDHU: Okay, here's the situation.

ADAM: Okay.

SINDHU: So I made it across town, and I'm looking out onto the East River, so that's the good news, right? But the thing is, I'm looking into Roosevelt Island, which honestly is not the worst, but there are trees, so I'm gonna—you know, there's like a good few inches that I'm seeing above the horizon.

ADAM: I think it just set. I think it just set.

SINDHU: You think it just set?

SINDHU: So we missed it. But then I see some other people there, so I'm like, "Hey, are you guys here to see the moon?"

MAN: Pardon me?

SINDHU: Are you here to see the moon?

MAN: No, there's a rocket launch.

MAN: I think that's it, actually.

SINDHU: There's a rocket launch?

MAN: There's a rocket launch from Virginia tonight.

SINDHU: Wait, wait, wait. No way. Wait, Adam, can you hear this?

SINDHU: Like a NASA rocket launch.

ADAM: What?

LULU: What?

SINDHU: What type of rocket is it?

MAN: It's a resupply ship to the International Space Station.

ADAM: That's even cooler.

SINDHU: [laughs] I know!

SINDHU: But then ...

SINDHU: I'm so sorry, look at the moon!

MAN: Oh my God!

SINDHU: The moon finally appeared over the buildings, and it was a supermoon, Lulu.

LULU: Oh, so it's huge?

SINDHU: Like, this giant orange moon.

SINDHU: Wait, can you describe the moon?

MAN: It's—it's so big. [laughs]

WOMAN: It's very orange.

MAN: That's what you came to this side of the island for, so ...

SINDHU: And I got so much more!

SINDHU: And I guess technically during that hour, seconds on Earth were moving like this. [tick-tick-tick] But as I look back on it now, I can feel the wind on my face as I'm pedaling across the city. I can see the man pointing out that rocket, the craters on that giant orange moon. And again, I look back at my tape and it was all just about an hour, but it feels so much longer than that, and it'll probably always stay with me that way.

LULU: Hmm. So it seems like there's also a power in expectation getting broken, like, things not going to expectation.

SINDHU: Yeah.

LULU: Like, that seems to get a control-save.

SINDHU: I think you're totally right, yeah. Surprise. Like, being surprised by the world.

LULU: Hmm. You know, this is making me want to also ask you, now that you've successfully extended time, are you sure that's something you want? Are you so sure that's something you want?

SINDHU: Yeah. Okay, this might be a good time for me to tell you about that last day.

LULU: Okay. Okay, so yeah. Okay, so tell me about your last day.

SINDHU: So on Saturday night, Jae and I drove back from Cape Cod.

LULU: Mm-hmm?

SINDHU: And by the end of the eight-hour drive, we decided to part ways.

LULU: Like, break up?

SINDHU: Yeah.

LULU: Oh! I'm sorry! What do you want to share about—about that?

SINDHU: Well, not much about that.

LULU: Okay.

SINDHU: Actually, I don't want to share anything about that.

LULU: Okay.

SINDHU: But it did mean that I stopped the experiment. Like, I went home to my same old bed, and ended up just, like, curling up with my little stuffed animal monkey.

LULU: Aww!

SINDHU: And then the next day ...

SINDHU: We are at the monastery.

SINDHU: ... I went upstate to my monastery.

LULU: Hmm.

JULIA: The Zen marching band practice.

WOMAN: Hi!

SINDHU: Oh, it's Julia!

SINDHU: With, like, a bunch of my best friends.

SINDHU: I know, it was a last-minute ...

SINDHU: We, like, did this little ceremony.

[applause]

SINDHU: Wow, those tomatoes!

SINDHU: And then we'd all brought food, so we had this, like, potluck. And then we just, like, chatted and hung out and someone played the guitar.

SINDHU: It's kind of the perfect day.

MAN: The magic worked.

WOMAN: Back to the city.

SINDHU: Are you driving us?

WOMAN: No, I wish.

SINDHU: Oh. Bye!

WOMAN: Sindhu, will you come up for harvest week with us?

SINDHU: This last day showed me, like, I need days like that. Like, I need ...

LULU: Yeah.

SINDHU: ... comfortable, familiar days. I mean, sometimes they're just necessary.

LULU: Right.

SINDHU: But now I know that those days are more likely to feel shorter, to get deleted. And I guess, Lulu, we've talked about how your life right now has a lot of routine—kids, a wife, a house. Do you ...

LULU: [laughs] My boring-ass life. My life-deleting life.

SINDHU: Well, no. I mean, look, I want those things too. But you are at a stage where you've made certain choices that, like, the research says, really ...

LULU: Yes, out with it.

SINDHU: ... shorten your felt sense of time. Like, having kids is ...

LULU: As you put it, "deleting my time." Just bloop! Okay.

SINDHU: Okay, maybe that word choice is loaded. But shortening your felt sense of time. Like, how are you processing this research?

LULU: You mean do I regret, like, getting married and having kids? Um, no, but it does make me think about the time inside those choices differently. Like, it makes me mourn all those little moments—just, you know, like my kid last night dancing to Green Day and saying, "Come here, come say hi to my friends," and pointing to a blank wall and me being confused. And there were, like, these four shadows. And he made me say hi to each one. Like, that's gonna get wiped. That'll be gone. Like, hundreds of thousands of seconds and moments just gone. And so I respect and I appreciate your going out and testing and sharing the knowledge of how to extend time, but I also hold a candle to all that time, all those moments getting lost.

LATIF: Oh, come on! Okay, sorry to barge in here, but no way! That to me is, like, antithetical to the whole spirit of this—of this story. Like, that's the predictable bone you toss at the end to people so that we're not, like, judging the status quo normies who are just doing the same thing over and over again. Like, it's like, no, go try a new food. Go to a new restaurant, go do a new thing. I want people to wake up and feel bad about, like, just being on autopilot for their lives. Like, you have one life. Like, wake up!

LULU: Okay, like—okay, point taken, and I think there's some admitted self-reassurance of, like, attempting to tell myself that my life isn't boring, and point taken.

LATIF: Yeah. Okay.

LULU: But also, I just question the value system. Like, it's only remembering the stuff where some expectation gets broken and, like, who decided? It's like evolution decided that the things that we're gonna remember, that we're gonna privilege, that are gonna keep us awake, have to be novel, have to be—like, have to be breaking some rule, which to me just smacks of fear and, like, self-preservation. And what if we could, like, rebel against our master wirer to also hold the little, like, moments that normally get wiped?

LATIF: How can you rebel against your own brain? What does that even mean?

SINDHU: Well, actually, I mean I do feel like that's sort of what I do when I meditate.

PRIEST: There's another way to go about this than just insisting on novelty your whole life, which could get kind of expensive.

SINDHU: I actually called up my Zen Buddhist priest Kosen from that monastery, and he told me that having novel experiences, that's actually just a shortcut to the thing that actually makes memories.

PRIEST: All that what we call novelty does is force us to pay attention.

SINDHU: And when we pay attention, he says, we discover that ...

PRIEST: There is nothing that is not new. Everything is novel.

LATIF: Hmm!

DAVID EAGLEMAN: So I can look at a scene that's absolutely familiar to me, like the desk in front of me, but I can say, "God, I've really never noticed the way the light falls here, and the way I've got this thing from 10 years ago that I've never touched or moved."

SINDHU: David Eagleman again.

DAVID EAGLEMAN: You know, I can really pay attention to it and take in my desk in a different way. I can make things novel. Now it's probably not as good as actually going out and experiencing meaningful novelty that really changes your life, but you can certainly do it from the inside.

LULU: Take that, big guy. That was just a bagel.

LATIF: The big guy is you. You're talking to yourself.

LULU: Yeah, my brain. That was just a bagel that I ate this morning, but my goodness! The flake of salt and the flake of pepper mixed into the everything, with the cherry tomato on top of the cream cheese was, like, a divine—was, like, as sacred as Sindhu seeing a supermoon with, like, an astronaut chaser. And, like, you know what? Moons are orange, cherry tomatoes are orange. They're both circles, and I'm gonna remember them both.

LATIF: Enjoy your bagel, and I'm gonna go skydiving with my new pet koala that I'm gonna adopt, and we'll—let's check back in on our deathbeds.

LULU: [laughs] Okay. All right, that's it for this week. This episode was reported and produced by Sindhu Gnanasambandan and edited by Pat Walters, with sound design by Jeremy Bloom and mixing help from Arianne Wack. Special thanks to Joe Eidman, Nathan Peereboom, Kristin Lin, Stacy Reiman, Ash Sanders, Soiyaa Shockley, Toshia Myers, Glenn Smith, Adam Aharoni and Hussain Asif. And also a very extra-special thanks to Jae Minard for recording and editorial support. If you'd like a life calendar—I'm not sure why you would, but maybe you would—actually, okay, if you listen to this piece, you might—you can find them on Tim Urban's blog, it's called "Wait, But Why?" Thanks for listening. Catch you in a week, which will be up to you to either let pass you by quickly or slowly. Bye!

[LISTENER: Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad, and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachael Cusick, Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Anna Rascouët-Paz, Alyssa Jeong Perry, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster, with help from Timmy Broderick. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Tamara from Pasadena, California. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

SINDHU: Back to my poster, and another week done.

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