This American Life - 214: Family Physics

Broadcast on: 31 May 2002

From W.B. E.C. Chicago, it's This American Life, and, of course, every week here we try to describe and understand the world by listening to all kinds of people that we interview and to reporters and writers, and it's occurred to us lately that maybe this is wrong-headed. Maybe if we want real understanding, real explanations, we need to turn to science. Consider this story, lab partners. When Dennis was a kid, his stepfather always thought that wherever they lived was lousy. He thought the only place we were living was New York City. This is a man, by the way, who had grown up in a town of a few thousand in Indiana. He loves the symphony and opera and art movies, and he never felt like he fit. He thought that there were people in New York where all loved classical music and loved to read, and he would just show up and say smart things, and that people would say, "Well, Mr. Cass, we are so glad you are here." So they moved to New York, the whole family, and Dennis was 12. It was awful. I mean, it was a disaster from the moment we touched down. None of the elements that he had fantasized about were there. I think we went to the symphony once. It's expensive. I mean, just the pace of the city and the competitiveness of it. He couldn't handle it. He just couldn't handle it. During our first year, he started breaking out in hives, covered in hives from head to toe, essentially an allergic reaction to his life in New York. Now, science can help us understand this story. There's a notion in physics called the mediocrity principle. It declares that no place in the universe is more special than any other place. The ancients, remember, thought that we are at the center of the universe. The sun and the stars revolved around us. Mediocrity principle says, "No, no, that's wrong. No place is special, and there's nothing special about us." Dennis says, by the way, that all this was obvious to him even when he was 12, back when his stepdad was itching to move to New York. When I first heard about the mediocrity principle, it made me really happy. It almost felt like I had discovered a law of science as a 12-year-old all by myself. How so? Because when you think about the fact that where you are is not really different than anywhere else you could be, you don't have to move. What can the laws of physics tell us about our everyday lives? Instead of please, this experiment in human relations, kiddie and Lars each needed a roommate, they got a place together on July 1st. By July 28th, it was good both of them that they should be more than just roommates. By August 3rd, Lars had told kiddie that he wanted to marry her. They've been together for years now. They're incredibly happy, and they both said that if they hadn't actually lived together as roommates, if they'd only dated, it never would have worked out. Probably not. Yeah, probably not. We wouldn't have spent that much time with each other. The weekends, we would spend pretty much the entire days with each other, and we're pretty different people.

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