Time
Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire." And it’s still as close a definition as we have. This hour of Radiolab, we try our hand at unlocking the mysteries of time. We stretch and bend it, wrestle with its subjective nature, and wrap our minds around strategies to standardize it...stopping along the way at a 19th-century railroad station in Ohio, a track meet, and a Beethoven concert.
- Duration
- 58m
- Broadcast on
- 29 May 2007
- Audio Format
- other
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire." And it’s still as close a definition as we have. This hour of Radiolab, we try our hand at unlocking the mysteries of time. We stretch and bend it, wrestle with its subjective nature, and wrap our minds around strategies to standardize it...stopping along the way at a 19th-century railroad station in Ohio, a track meet, and a Beethoven concert.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
(swoosh) (electronic music) - [Announcer] Listener supported. WNYC Studios. (laughing) - You're listening to Radio Map. - On New York Public Radio. - Public Radio. WNYC. - WNYC. - WNYC. (electronic music) (ethereal music) - You know this music. Trust me, you've heard it your entire life. The reason you can't recognize it now is because the composer born in 1770 intended for this moment, the one you're hearing, to last two seconds. (yelling) Like that, however had he been a whale, Beethoven might have written his ninth symphony this way. (ethereal music) Changes that for us would take an instant, would transpire over minutes and a movement might last six hours. That's in fact what this is. Beethoven's ninth symphony digitally stretched from its normal 60-some-odd minutes to last an entire day, 24 hours. And if you sit for the entire 24-hour duration of the piece, as people do from time to time, you realize that this music is not simply slower. The slowness unlocks something in the original. Maybe it was there all long and we couldn't hear it. We play with the meter. The music is mostly about meter after all. And the music has a different story to tell. A secret, perhaps. Locked up inside the routine, changed the routine. You make new discoveries. That's what we'll do this hour. We'll look at times so closely, we'll discover new things about it. This is Radio Lab, I'm Jad Abumrod. My guest tonight for the next hour to help me wrestle with time is the Science Correspondent Robert Crow, which of ABC News, Nova, and Nightline. How are you, sir?
Transcription truncated.
Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire." And it’s still as close a definition as we have. This hour of Radiolab, we try our hand at unlocking the mysteries of time. We stretch and bend it, wrestle with its subjective nature, and wrap our minds around strategies to standardize it...stopping along the way at a 19th-century railroad station in Ohio, a track meet, and a Beethoven concert.