Neurologist Oliver Sacks tells us about his fascination with time. As his soon-to-be-published essay in the New Yorker will tell you, he's been fascinated by time and has used photography to get inside it since he was a little boy. We'll hear a recording of a baby becoming a young ...

Both physicist Brian Greene and neurologist Oliver Sacks explain the very strange, very subjective nature of time.

The elasticity of experience is expressed by sound artist Ben Rubin in a piece he produced for The Next Big Thing. We include an excerpt on being in "the zone." ...

The self-declared Independent State of Trolheim does not recognize GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). Jay Griffiths argues that the question of what time it is in inextricably bound up with issues of power and politics. And we'll hear a piece from producer Aaron Ximm on the experience of listening to Beethoven's ...

Hello everyone. I live in the UK and adore radiolab...I am itching to know what the piece of music at the end of the section on the recording of the little girl from birth to twelve is. Can anyone help? Sorry to be a pain if its obvious.

I often listen to music on my iPod on my way to work in the morning, and have discovered a strange phenomenon. Whenever I yawn, the tempo of the music seem to slow down a little. When I have completed the yawn, the music is back to normal tempo. While the pitch of the music has remained constant, during the yawn, I will experience a 127 bpm tune drop to 124 or so bpm (difficult to measure, obviously).

Has anyone else experienced this? I find it fascinating that one can alter the perception of time simply by yawning :-)

Hi
Wonderful article.
For Claus Dinesen, I downloaded the Slow Beethoven from
http://www.park.nl/park_cms/public/index.php?thisarticle=118
Just right click the link, save link as and put it in your music folder.
Go to iTunes and 'add file to library'.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVViiiiiiiiiiiiioooooooooooooollllllllllllllllaaaaaaaa
Thank you so much, RadioLab!

I listen to the show on SAT mornings and am enamored with it. Being a social scientist (sociologist), I appreciate and acknowledge the scientific approach while giggling at the humor and sharp conclusions. This is my favorite NPR show (well, the car dudes aren't far behind ...). The piece on "TIME" was fascinating - absolutely fascinating - even though I would still argue that a large portion of our understanding of "time" is socially constructed. So, I want to leave you guys a "hats off" compliment, and hope there will be many more seasons to listen, but if you ever go back to the issue of time, I wish you'd also talk to some sociologists.

1/7/2012 between 3-3:30pm I heard an (humorous) essay (sort of) on Time, e.g. amount of time in one's life spent filing nails, eating, blinking, laughing, singing, in other words doing innocuous things, as well as important things.
Grand Rapids, MI PBS station perhaps.
Can you identify the essay/poem/reading please?

excellent article on time -
consider that time is three dimensional one (forward and back) is past, present and future- up/down and left/right are alternative probabilities, just as all our three physical dimensions exist so too does all time.

this theory was put forth by Jane Roberts (a mystic) in the 60's.

I've been listening to Radiolab for quite a while now and I still think this episode is my favorite. It has all the greatest qualities of Radiolab; Oliver Sacks, stories, science, and insight. :) Thanks so much, everyone.

This is an absurd and silly thing to say

Try this small experiment that will dissolve your mind's conception of time when run in tandem with your biological clock.

Most people before going to be take a glance and look at the clock...the next time you go to bed, conscientiously think about not looking at the clock or thinking about how many hours of sleep you will get. Simply get in bed put your head down and relax. You will be surprised to find that regardless of the amount of time you sleep 5hrs, 8hrs, etc. your body will feel rejuvenated and you will have deceived your mind from sensing fatigue.

P.S. Radiolab is the new television. Jump on the bandwagon.

Radiolab is cool!

About the thing where time has already written our history and it is just there frozen and waiting to happen? Time is the order those events happen. If it weren't for time, our universe wouldn't work. That is to say that if it weren't for time it could be as if some one were in New York, watching the sunset with the Statue of Liberty, the next thing we know, we're not born yet and the Statue is still being under construction!! Time puts the events into an order that makes sense.

Relating to the section about how time is relative to people, and how people in "the zone" perceive things more slowly than they actually happen: I have this experience while I'm playing music. When I play music, and play it well, it may feel absolutely perfect to me, just the right tempo. Curiously, though, when I listen to recordings of my playing, the music is too fast. Even music I've just played and felt was just right.

What's the name of the bass-heavy song starting at 23 minutes?
Thanks

sorry my bad I meant that time is a tool to measure change

Andrew from Chicago

what you describe is true in a way but you think of the word time in it's poetic meaning

basicly time is nothing more the a different word for change... regerstating that change

For a week in my Senior year in high school I experienced severe time dilation. Everything was moving at normal speed, by my perception was that it all was going super fast. Frustrating, annoying, and overwhelming. Thankfully it went away in a week.

What if time doesn't exist? It seems to me that the goal for all of us is to remain present; to acknowledge that, in fact, all we really have is the present. Sure, our world and sun and lives exist in cyclical motion and things change, but to me the significance of that isn't found by breaking down time into its component parts to "figure it out," but rather, it shows us that the present is never the same. The present is where it's at. As we know, time is relative; subjective. In accepting this, try to just ignore time. Stop thinking about the past, stop thinking about the future. Imagine we are just people moving around in space, with events occurring all around us. Our present automatically encompasses all that has already happened so there is no use in dwelling on it. By accepting that the present is all there is, we realize we have much more time than we ever imagined. As the Zen masters say, "when you wash the dishes, wash the dishes."

Great show, both me and my family were entranced. I think that the part about the faster you go the slower time goes is a little hard to grasp, but still as amazing.
JACOBA

I was wondering if the Oliver Sach's patient Mirin(?) V ( for whom time had slowed) saw the world around him move at a blistering pace and conversely for the female patient Hester Y. Did she see the rest of the world move at a snail-like pace. Any answers?

Great show!
Definitely one of my favorites. Love the segment on Sandusky, Ohio.

So.... my mom always used to say, "The hurrier I go, the behinder I get...", and- she was right! Awesome.

For the best time dilation/compression story I suggest "Dragon's Egg"
by Robert L. Forward.
The "Cheela" live 430,000 times faster than the humans they contact.

I was just listening to some episodes of radiolab that I missed... and well it's a good thing I did. The time episode really explained a lot to my boyfriend and I. We have been together for over a year and a half and really find the other person to be interesting and fascinating but we also have a lot of mis-understandings. What we realized is that we go at different speeds. Be is very speedy and gets a lot done. I am more slow, methodical and detail oriented. We totally operate on different planes! It was quite eye opening to think of things in these terms but at the same time makes us question if we are fundamentally in-compatible.

Thanks for the insite... not that we know what to do with it.

I do heart radiolab and find it to be just the right speed.

Patrick from California:

He considered real noon, i.e. what them cowboys called "high noon," where the sun appears to be at its highest point in the sky. That's when you're facing closest to the sun for that particular day.

The "noon" that we use to refer to a certain time in our standardized time zones is, generally speaking, not the same time as high noon, as it's a rather arbitrarily set time. Standard time zones were invented originally so that places linked by railroads would have synchronized times. Otherwise, they don't really have much significance in terms of positions of the sun, celestial bodies, etc. I know from my own casual observations that at least for part of the year here on the American east coast, high noon is actually around 1 or 2 PM.

Reading a book that talks about how Eratosthenes (ca. 276-194 B.C.) estimated the circumference of the earth by noting the length cast by a shadow at exactly noon in Alexandreia and Syene. He surmised that the difference in shadow length combined with the distance between the cities could tell him the circumference of the earth. My question is this: How did he do this if time was not standardized until the 1900's and train schedules as you mentioned :-)

Heh heh. I would also like to know the name of the song Ty from New York and Victor are after. It sure did give me goosebumps.

The theory with setting two rolexes would work but because a rolex doesn't keep perfect time considering the fact that Rolex watches are self wound automatic peices. Two Rolexes will never keep perfect time. If you lay one down on its side and one on its back the one on its back will be faster than the one on its side. The thoery should have been stated with two quartz battery watches because they will keep better time than a Rolex

Amazing work as always. But someone please answer Ty from New York's question!! Im dying to know the name of that song too. The layering of that over the end of Nancy growing up was fantastically beautiful

Great series. Have always been a Robert Krulwich fan, since discovering him on NPR and on The Newshour.

I was wondering if anyone can tell me what the music is that starts playing at around 9 minute, after the "Nancy Grows Up" piece. Thanks.

Chad, Rob, and company,

You guys failed to touch upon an instance where we all experience time at a significantly accelerated clip: our dreams. Personally, I have always believed this to be because we are unhampered by the physical world. Any thoughts?

Jennifer, I believe what you are looking for is the Japanese musician Nobukazu Takemura. It plays between 21:30 and 23:00? I think it's the song "Kepler" from the album Scope.

What was the music played that was all sorts of chimes? I think it was right before you talked about the clock garden. I would love to use that as an alarm clock!

time is so not interesting to learn about. to bad i got stuck with it. :(

Fantastic show.

Syncronicity = listening to Time yesterday and seeing this long exposure iPad graphics project. One surely sets the context for the other.

Making Future Magic: light painting with the iPad – Blog – BERG http://bit.ly/brOdw9

oops, I see that Leandro from NYC has already found it right. thanks Leandro.

Thank you. I think Borjes was very close, what a beautiful conception of Time.

Like Claus D., I would love to know how to listen to all or some of the slow Beethoven.

Regardless, keep up the good work.

Just listened to the rebroadcast of the "Time" Episode which brought me back to one of my all-time favorite books, "Einstein's Dreams" by Alan Lightman, a great novel about different worlds, each of which has a distinct perception of time. Highly recommended.

So, when we speed up the singing of the whale 60 or 100 times, are they really speaking French and asking where Jacques Cousteau went?

You changed your URL so iTunes fails to update. It is very difficult to find the link to subscribe in iTunes on your site. I'm a professor who just finished teaching a class on "designing usable systems": I could have used this as a (negative) example!

The gods of Google. Check it out: 24/7 stream and an iPhone app. http://www.expandedfield.net/

Cheers,
http://leandroarts.com/

Hello at Radiolab
... superb audio for my ears, thank you. Is it possible to download the slow version(24 hour version) of Bethovens 9 symfoni?

Best regards Claus D./Denmark