These days, instead of listening to music while I work, I listen to this amazing podcast called “RadioLab” that was introduced to me by Julia. Radiolab, produced by WNYC and NPR, is hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, and each episode is sort of an exploration into a theme that intrigues and fascinates them, typically something scientific or philosophical. In addition, the podcast is woven together in a storylike manner, with Jad and Robert narrating a sort of script, interjected with audio clips of interviews, sound effects, and the bantering between two hosts. Essentially, it’s a perfect geek podcast. The ideas they explore are incredibly interesting, for example, what life would be like without words or numbers, or the intricacies of time, or how we can get better at fighting addiction or temptation.
Here are just some small tidbits that I learned from the podcast.
A Ulysses Pact is a freely made decision designed to bind oneself in the future. This is named after Ulysses (Odysseus) from the Odyssey, where he commands his men to lash him to the mast of his ship, stay their course, and prevent him from escaping as they sail past the Sirens. To prevent his men from falling under their spell, he orders them to stuff their ears with wax. In the context of the podcast, it was a cognitive method to prevent oneself from being tempted into doing something, for example, smoking a cigarette. The person who was interviewed promised herself that, if she smoked another cigarette, she would donate $5,000 to the hated KKK. In doing this, she was no longer pitting the temptation to smoke against her desire for future health. Instead, it’s pitting two PRESENT tense ideals, and her disgust with the KKK was more influential than her desire to smoke another cigarette. By tying together the immediate feeling and her future desire (to quit smoking), it turns the cognitive battle into one about the present, things that matter RIGHT NOW to her; the “right now” is always a stronger influence than the “later”… that’s why it’s so easy to be tempted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disulfiram
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia
Did you know that, before the railroad, there was no universal sense of time. There was only “local time”, which varied even in the same town. However, when the railroad began running through much of the country, the timetable that the trains ran on became a unifying “time” that people all over the country used, regardless of where the sun was in the sky (which, of course, was the old method for determining time; noon happened when the sun was directly above you, dusk and dawn being reference points for when the day would start, etc).
