WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Why Does Time Speed Up As You Age? 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:06.200 Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I should say 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:08.479 Happy New Year and welcome to the short stuff, Chuck. 0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:11.719 It's it is. We're living in the future. Yes, well, 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:15.080 I'm Josh and there's Chuck, and there is guest producer 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.000 jj over there, and we're all living in the future. 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:23.439 Time flying. I've got my jet pack, flying car sweet 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:26.720 uh and yeah, times flying, Chuck, do you know why 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:29.280 it's flying? Hold on him about you see this pill 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:31.400 on my plate, about to add water to it to 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:33.839 make it into a Thanksgiving dinner. Oh I thought it 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:37.000 was a pot roast dinner. Yeah, exactly. It always was 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:41.200 pot roast, wasn't it. Yeah, it really is. But Thanksgiving 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:43.160 this a close second for sure as far as future 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:46.360 food pills go. Okay, I just had it delicious? Was 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.080 it didn't didn't have any kind of blueberry dessert like 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:54.240 Willy Wonka. Yeah, that was a compote. So um, you 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:58.000 said something. You said time flies or times flying. I 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:00.440 agreed time flying, And then I asked to you why 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:03.280 time is flying. You didn't answer, so I'm gonna answer 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:09.720 for you. It's because we're aged. Yes, we're getting old, Chuck, 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:15.800 as anyone who has ever gotten old nose the older 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:20.000 you get, the faster time goes. Where you're just your 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:22.880 you're working, working, working, and you lift your head up 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:25.960 and all of a sudden, it's March, and then it's July, 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:29.240 and then it's the holidays, and then it's the next 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:32.560 March and then the next July pretty much, and you 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:34.720 start to get a little panicky because you're like, wait 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:36.880 a minute, wait a minute, these these years are important. 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:39.600 You know, I need to pay attention to them. But uh, 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:42.800 everybody knows that as you're when you're grown up, you 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:45.800 have so many more responsibilities than when your kid. Of course, 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:50.680 time's gonna fly. The thing is there there seems to 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:56.080 be objective evidence that time actually does speed up as 0:01:56.160 --> 0:02:01.520 you age relative to your experience, Like subjectly, you experienced 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:06.120 time moving faster as you age, and that doesn't quite 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:09.960 make sense. Yeah, and there's um this has always been 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:13.480 an interesting, uh concept to wrap my head around, because 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:17.120 it's definitely something that you cannot avoid noticing as you 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:21.000 get a little older. Uh. There was one study done 0:02:21.040 --> 0:02:22.720 I thought this was kind of interesting in the nineties. 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:27.280 A psychologist named Peter man gun Man Man gun You 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:31.520 butchered that Peter mangan there you go, and he had 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:36.880 twenty five young people between nine and then fifteen older 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:39.640 people between sixty and eighty. I'm sorry real quick. I 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:41.839 also saw that he had some middle aged people too, 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:44.119 but go ahead, I would think, so, yeah, because that's 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:48.320 a big jump. Yeah. Uh to estimate a three minute 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:52.760 time interval just by counting out loud, yeah, So he said, hey, you, 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:55.680 sixteen year old, count out three minutes second by second 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:58.720 by going one one thousand, two, one thousand, right, And 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:03.160 so the younger sat at averaged three minutes and three seconds. 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:05.800 They kind of nailed it. He went over to the 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:11.320 older set, he woke them up and they would hey, 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:15.519 what uh, three minutes and forty seconds is what they average. 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:18.520 So they were off by thirty seven seconds from the 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:22.520 younger set, and you know, basically thinking that three minutes 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:26.320 had elapsed. And the thinking here is is that, hey, 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:33.280 your brain's internal clock runs slowly if you're older, right, right, So, 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:36.520 and that would mean that if your if your internal 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:41.480 clock is running more slowly relative to the actual passage 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:44.520 of time, then to you it would seem like time 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:47.520 is speeding up because what you're counting off is way 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:51.160 slower than what's actually going on. Which would account for 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:55.000 why UM it would seem like time speeds up as 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:58.360 we get older, because it actually is relative to our 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:02.880 own internal clocks. Yeah, and there's a few ideas behind this. UM. 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:09.360 One is that um our biological internal clocks do slow down. 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:13.960 Our metabolism slows down. Are breathing our heartbeat. Um. I 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:16.480 listened to my daughter's heart beat the other day. I 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:18.440 put my ear door chest because she did the same 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:22.800 to me, and her heart was going and we were 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:25.520 just hanging out and she listened to mine and it 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:31.760 was like pooop beat and it wheezed and farted between 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:36.640 every beat. That's great, made like a cranky gear sound. Yeah. 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:38.760 So and I heard hers and I was like, did 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:40.720 you just run a sprint? Like what is going on? 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:43.560 And that really hit me, Like it's different when you're 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:47.400 a little kid. Yeah. Kids, metabolisms are way faster. Their 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:51.440 bodies are just operating way faster. And then as you age, 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:53.920 all of these processes start to kind of level off 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:58.440 and then slow down or death basically the exit ramp. 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:01.480 That's another way to put it. UM. But the the 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:05.279 idea behind this is that there's this internal clock, not 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:09.680 our circadian rhythm. Which is, you know, how we know 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:13.160 when to to like wake up or eat or that 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:16.880 kind of stuff. This is at a separate internal clock 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:20.719 that we actually measure time with, and it's theoretical. We've 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:23.160 never found it, but they think that it's located in 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:27.480 this dry atom in the midbrain, and that it uses 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:32.159 internal and external cues to measure time. And one of 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:35.279 the internal cues that it uses is something like heartbeat 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:38.160 or breaths. And so if you're a kid and you're 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:42.680 breathing faster and your heart's beating faster, time seems to 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:47.720 pass more slowly because your clock is speeded up. It's 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:51.320 the exact opposite of what would happen if those breaths 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:54.520 in those heartbeats slow down as you age, and your 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:57.080 your clock slows down, So it seems like time is 0:05:57.080 --> 0:06:01.080 speeding rather than going slowly. Yeah, there's another idea. I mean, 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:03.039 there's a lot to then it's it's probably all of 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:05.520 these things combined. Well, yeah, a lot of them do 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:09.160 have to do with this brain's internal clock thing. Yeah, absolutely. Um. 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:12.480 The another idea is that a child has so many 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:15.640 new experiences every day. You know, you hear about a 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:18.359 kid being a sponge and everything is brand new. And 0:06:18.400 --> 0:06:20.800 as you know, you get to our age and you 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:23.240 have a job, and you live in a house and 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:25.800 you have a certain commute, and you do certain things 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:30.120 and you're walking the dog. It's like it's a repetitive um. 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:33.560 In many cases, it's a repetitive circumstance of doing the 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:36.680 same things over and over and over. So there's no 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:40.960 newness there, and so all those new experiences aren't happening 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:44.640 to us like they're happening to children. Uh, this one. 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:48.760 I wonder if you did a test where you only 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:51.839 experience new things still as an adult as if you 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:54.960 were a child, if that would counter the time is 0:06:54.960 --> 0:06:58.279 flying effect. You would think it would. I don't know 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:00.800 how you would test that, but you know that theory 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:05.200 says probably yeah for sure. Plus also would be like, whatever, 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:07.280 whatever you're doing to test this, I want to do 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:09.520 because that sounds like a lot of fun. But it's 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:12.160 the idea is that you have, like all of these, 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:18.640 it requires more brain processing to to process these novel 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:21.200 stimuli rather than just letting life pass you by because 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:24.120 it's all familiar and so kind of in the same 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:26.760 way that your heart's beating faster and you're breathing more. 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:30.320 It um makes your clock run faster, and so time 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:32.960 seems to pass more slowly. It's basically the same thing, 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:37.520 but rather than heartbeat, it's it's processing new experience. And 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:40.560 that also really kind of ties into this other thing 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:43.800 that you do notice, in addition to time passing more 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:47.200 quickly when you age, is that it's easy to just 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:50.320 kind of be in a rut as you age, too, 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:54.600 because there are so so fewer experiences that are just 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:58.520 brand new to you. It's done it, seen it, done it, 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:00.880 all right, let's take a break, let's go do something new, 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:03.640 and uh, we'll come back and see how that feels. 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:33.280 Right after this things, I feel great. I feel like 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:36.200 I'll never never be able to replicate that. We shouldn't 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:38.600 even bother telling people about it, because I don't think 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:42.360 anybody could ever do it. That's right, Okay. So one 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:45.600 thing I did want to mention was the notion of uh. 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:47.480 And this is something I've noticed from being a kid 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:50.079 to being an adult. If you drive to a vacation, 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:55.000 uh as h it always seemed as a kid like 0:08:55.200 --> 0:09:00.520 getting to the vacation happened really fast. Is maybe you're 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:03.520 excited about things you were gonna do or no, no, no. 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:06.559 It seemed super slow when you were a kid because 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:09.960 the anticipation, uh, and driving on the way home went 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:12.959 super fast. That is reversed for me as an adult 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:15.960 is when I drive to a vacation, it goes pretty 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:19.920 fast because I'm super excited. Um, But on the way 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:22.959 home it's a slog, right because you know you're coming 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:25.920 back to a recording session with me. No, not that, 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:29.600 but it's weird there a switch happens at some point. Yeah, 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:31.880 and I think that has to do with the same well, 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:33.680 some of these theories suggest that has to do with 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:37.680 the same thing you you are. Um. Actually that that 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:40.400 would be kind of new and on its own huh. Yeah. 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:41.880 I think it sort of flies in the face of 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:45.280 that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, because yeah, I don't 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:47.719 know what the what the answer is, I'm not even 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:51.520 an adventure I guess all right, what about um? This 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:54.960 guy Steve Taylor, who wrote a book called Making Time, 0:09:55.800 --> 0:10:00.840 He he has a theory that basically, um, because we 0:10:01.000 --> 0:10:04.960 become more familiar with everything as we go by, not 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:08.520 only are there fewer experiences new experiences to be had, 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:12.200 but the experiences that we have over and over again 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:16.199 become so familiar to us they barely even register when 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:20.400 they do happen, which makes time seem to pass even 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:24.160 more quickly because we're processing less new information. It kind 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:28.000 of ties into that, um that that brain processing one. 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:30.959 It's just it just kind of really drives home how 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:33.880 grim adulthood is. Yeah, and could be aided by the 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:37.800 fact that you're not getting as many dopamine hits because 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:41.200 this novel stimuli is not coming along as often, right, 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:44.320 So that all ties back into that brain clock thing 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:48.000 again too, which is the idea that um, when we 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:50.800 when are that part of our mid brain is learning 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:53.720 to to measure time. As it's doing that, it gets 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:56.679 little hits a dopamine to help train it. Well, they 0:10:56.760 --> 0:11:00.000 found that your hits of dopamine decrease as you age, 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:02.760 which also kind of correlates with the idea that time 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:05.560 seems to um go faster as we age and our 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:08.200 biological clocks seem to start to run slower. So they 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:12.120 think that maybe that that we us getting less dopamine 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:17.240 is part of that that internal clock slowing down thing. Uh, 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:18.760 the thing that makes a lot of sense to me, 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:21.400 and we're not going to get two in the weeds 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:25.560 with what logar rhythmic scales are. But let's just say this. 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:28.199 If you measure an earthquake on the Richter scale, that's 0:11:28.200 --> 0:11:31.080 a logarhythmic scale, and it's not the same as a 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:34.360 linear scale. So if you jump from ten to eleven 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:37.040 on the Richter scale, it's like a tenfold jump, it's 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.360 not a ten percent jump. Uh is that good enough 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:43.840 for that? I think so? Yeah, So I think this, Uh, 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:45.680 this can apply to life. And this one makes a 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:49.040 lot of sense because if you are a ten year old, 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:53.880 then you've experienced uh, one year is ten percent of 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:56.720 your life, So that's a big chunk. But by the 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.319 time you get to twenty, it's only five percent. And 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:01.280 we could keep going here, and it just gets more 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:05.200 and more depressing as you go. But they basically are 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:06.720 saying you should think of it in terms of this 0:12:06.800 --> 0:12:09.880 logarithmic scale as opposed to a linear scale, because by 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:12.000 the time you get to you know, sixty seventy eight 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:15.400 years old, that's a big chunk of your life. Uh, 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:18.640 that's gone by at that point, right, And so any 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:22.080 new amount of time that goes by is proportional to 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:25.880 the increasingly larger amount of time that has gone by. 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:29.360 And so if that's how we process and measure the 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:34.160 time in our lifetime, then the longer you're alive, the 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.200 longer it takes to seem like a lot of time 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:40.439 has passed by. Like this guy, Um Christian Yates from 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:45.760 University of Bath. He said, the reason why the summer 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:48.560 lasted so long, or it took so long too for 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:50.960 a birthday to come and in a new one to 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:55.240 come is that that year, if you're like five, like 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:57.600 you're saying, that's like a fifth of your life. One 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:00.960 year is a fifth of your life. If you're fifty, 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:03.640 one year is a fiftie of your life. So a 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:06.120 year can just start to zip by and zip by 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:09.160 and faster and faster the more you age. And he 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:11.800 ended with something um, he wrote a good article in 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:14.640 the conversation, so shout out to him for that one. 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:18.320 But he he basically said, for you to experience what 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:22.000 seems to you is the same amount of time between 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:26.240 the ages of five and ten, would require you to 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:32.240 live from age forty to age eighty, depressing proportionately speaking, 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:36.000 it would be the same suggestion subjective experience of time 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:39.319 for you. Yeah, because occasionally I will think like, let's 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:42.480 say I got twenty more great years left, and then 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:44.560 I think that's not much time. But then I think 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:49.600 man from birth to age twenty was forever. Yeah. Uh 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:52.520 so I'm good, but that's not how it works. Yeah, 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:55.679 because forty seemed to zip by a lot faster than 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:59.040 zero to twenty. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. I think I think 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:01.480 they're onto something with that last one. All right, so 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:06.000 I'm thoroughly depressed. Now I am too. Let's go celebrate, buddy. Actually, 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:08.160 we don't need to be depressed. We need to take 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:11.840 this as motivation to go really pay attention and be 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:16.320 grateful for this year. Then live life. Well, let's do it, 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:21.600 all right, Short stuff out Stuff you Should Know is 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:24.400 a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:28.080 podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:29.880 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.