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Short Stuff: Why Does Time Speed Up As You Age? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I should say
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Happy New Year and welcome to the short stuff, Chuck.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: It's it is. We're living in the future. Yes, well,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm Josh and there's Chuck, and there is guest producer
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: jj over there, and we're all living in the future.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Time flying. I've got my jet pack, flying car sweet
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: uh and yeah, times flying, Chuck, do you know why
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: it's flying? Hold on him about you see this pill
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: on my plate, about to add water to it to
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: make it into a Thanksgiving dinner. Oh I thought it
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: was a pot roast dinner. Yeah, exactly. It always was
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: pot roast, wasn't it. Yeah, it really is. But Thanksgiving
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: this a close second for sure as far as future
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: food pills go. Okay, I just had it delicious? Was
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: it didn't didn't have any kind of blueberry dessert like
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Willy Wonka. Yeah, that was a compote. So um, you
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: said something. You said time flies or times flying. I
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: agreed time flying, And then I asked to you why
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: time is flying. You didn't answer, so I'm gonna answer
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: for you. It's because we're aged. Yes, we're getting old, Chuck,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: as anyone who has ever gotten old nose the older
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  Speaker 1: you get, the faster time goes. Where you're just your
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: you're working, working, working, and you lift your head up
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, it's March, and then it's July,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and then it's the holidays, and then it's the next
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: March and then the next July pretty much, and you
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: start to get a little panicky because you're like, wait
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: a minute, wait a minute, these these years are important.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: You know, I need to pay attention to them. But uh,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: everybody knows that as you're when you're grown up, you
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: have so many more responsibilities than when your kid. Of course,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: time's gonna fly. The thing is there there seems to
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: be objective evidence that time actually does speed up as
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: you age relative to your experience, Like subjectly, you experienced
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: time moving faster as you age, and that doesn't quite
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: make sense. Yeah, and there's um this has always been
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: an interesting, uh concept to wrap my head around, because
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: it's definitely something that you cannot avoid noticing as you
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: get a little older. Uh. There was one study done
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  Speaker 1: I thought this was kind of interesting in the nineties.
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  Speaker 1: A psychologist named Peter man gun Man Man gun You
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: butchered that Peter mangan there you go, and he had
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: twenty five young people between nine and then fifteen older
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: people between sixty and eighty. I'm sorry real quick. I
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  Speaker 1: also saw that he had some middle aged people too,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: but go ahead, I would think, so, yeah, because that's
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: a big jump. Yeah. Uh to estimate a three minute
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: time interval just by counting out loud, yeah, So he said, hey, you,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: sixteen year old, count out three minutes second by second
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  Speaker 1: by going one one thousand, two, one thousand, right, And
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: so the younger sat at averaged three minutes and three seconds.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: They kind of nailed it. He went over to the
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: older set, he woke them up and they would hey,
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  Speaker 1: what uh, three minutes and forty seconds is what they average.
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  Speaker 1: So they were off by thirty seven seconds from the
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  Speaker 1: younger set, and you know, basically thinking that three minutes
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  Speaker 1: had elapsed. And the thinking here is is that, hey,
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  Speaker 1: your brain's internal clock runs slowly if you're older, right, right, So,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: and that would mean that if your if your internal
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  Speaker 1: clock is running more slowly relative to the actual passage
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  Speaker 1: of time, then to you it would seem like time
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: is speeding up because what you're counting off is way
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: slower than what's actually going on. Which would account for
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: why UM it would seem like time speeds up as
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: we get older, because it actually is relative to our
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: own internal clocks. Yeah, and there's a few ideas behind this. UM.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: One is that um our biological internal clocks do slow down.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Our metabolism slows down. Are breathing our heartbeat. Um. I
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: listened to my daughter's heart beat the other day. I
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: put my ear door chest because she did the same
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  Speaker 1: to me, and her heart was going and we were
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: just hanging out and she listened to mine and it
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  Speaker 1: was like pooop beat and it wheezed and farted between
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: every beat. That's great, made like a cranky gear sound. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So and I heard hers and I was like, did
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  Speaker 1: you just run a sprint? Like what is going on?
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  Speaker 1: And that really hit me, Like it's different when you're
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  Speaker 1: a little kid. Yeah. Kids, metabolisms are way faster. Their
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  Speaker 1: bodies are just operating way faster. And then as you age,
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  Speaker 1: all of these processes start to kind of level off
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  Speaker 1: and then slow down or death basically the exit ramp.
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  Speaker 1: That's another way to put it. UM. But the the
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  Speaker 1: idea behind this is that there's this internal clock, not
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  Speaker 1: our circadian rhythm. Which is, you know, how we know
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  Speaker 1: when to to like wake up or eat or that
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  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. This is at a separate internal clock
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  Speaker 1: that we actually measure time with, and it's theoretical. We've
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: never found it, but they think that it's located in
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  Speaker 1: this dry atom in the midbrain, and that it uses
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  Speaker 1: internal and external cues to measure time. And one of
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  Speaker 1: the internal cues that it uses is something like heartbeat
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  Speaker 1: or breaths. And so if you're a kid and you're
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  Speaker 1: breathing faster and your heart's beating faster, time seems to
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  Speaker 1: pass more slowly because your clock is speeded up. It's
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  Speaker 1: the exact opposite of what would happen if those breaths
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  Speaker 1: in those heartbeats slow down as you age, and your
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: your clock slows down, So it seems like time is
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: speeding rather than going slowly. Yeah, there's another idea. I mean,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: there's a lot to then it's it's probably all of
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  Speaker 1: these things combined. Well, yeah, a lot of them do
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  Speaker 1: have to do with this brain's internal clock thing. Yeah, absolutely. Um.
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  Speaker 1: The another idea is that a child has so many
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  Speaker 1: new experiences every day. You know, you hear about a
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: kid being a sponge and everything is brand new. And
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: as you know, you get to our age and you
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: have a job, and you live in a house and
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: you have a certain commute, and you do certain things
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: and you're walking the dog. It's like it's a repetitive um.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: In many cases, it's a repetitive circumstance of doing the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: same things over and over and over. So there's no
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  Speaker 1: newness there, and so all those new experiences aren't happening
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  Speaker 1: to us like they're happening to children. Uh, this one.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: I wonder if you did a test where you only
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: experience new things still as an adult as if you
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: were a child, if that would counter the time is
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: flying effect. You would think it would. I don't know
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: how you would test that, but you know that theory
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: says probably yeah for sure. Plus also would be like, whatever,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: whatever you're doing to test this, I want to do
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  Speaker 1: because that sounds like a lot of fun. But it's
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: the idea is that you have, like all of these,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: it requires more brain processing to to process these novel
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: stimuli rather than just letting life pass you by because
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: it's all familiar and so kind of in the same
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: way that your heart's beating faster and you're breathing more.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: It um makes your clock run faster, and so time
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: seems to pass more slowly. It's basically the same thing,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: but rather than heartbeat, it's it's processing new experience. And
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: that also really kind of ties into this other thing
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  Speaker 1: that you do notice, in addition to time passing more
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  Speaker 1: quickly when you age, is that it's easy to just
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: kind of be in a rut as you age, too,
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  Speaker 1: because there are so so fewer experiences that are just
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  Speaker 1: brand new to you. It's done it, seen it, done it,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: all right, let's take a break, let's go do something new,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: and uh, we'll come back and see how that feels.
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  Speaker 1: Right after this things, I feel great. I feel like
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  Speaker 1: I'll never never be able to replicate that. We shouldn't
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: even bother telling people about it, because I don't think
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  Speaker 1: anybody could ever do it. That's right, Okay. So one
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  Speaker 1: thing I did want to mention was the notion of uh.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: And this is something I've noticed from being a kid
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  Speaker 1: to being an adult. If you drive to a vacation,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: uh as h it always seemed as a kid like
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: getting to the vacation happened really fast. Is maybe you're
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: excited about things you were gonna do or no, no, no.
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  Speaker 1: It seemed super slow when you were a kid because
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  Speaker 1: the anticipation, uh, and driving on the way home went
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  Speaker 1: super fast. That is reversed for me as an adult
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  Speaker 1: is when I drive to a vacation, it goes pretty
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  Speaker 1: fast because I'm super excited. Um, But on the way
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  Speaker 1: home it's a slog, right because you know you're coming
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: back to a recording session with me. No, not that,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: but it's weird there a switch happens at some point. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and I think that has to do with the same well,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: some of these theories suggest that has to do with
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: the same thing you you are. Um. Actually that that
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  Speaker 1: would be kind of new and on its own huh. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I think it sort of flies in the face of
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, because yeah, I don't
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  Speaker 1: know what the what the answer is, I'm not even
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  Speaker 1: an adventure I guess all right, what about um? This
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: guy Steve Taylor, who wrote a book called Making Time,
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  Speaker 1: He he has a theory that basically, um, because we
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  Speaker 1: become more familiar with everything as we go by, not
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  Speaker 1: only are there fewer experiences new experiences to be had,
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  Speaker 1: but the experiences that we have over and over again
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  Speaker 1: become so familiar to us they barely even register when
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  Speaker 1: they do happen, which makes time seem to pass even
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  Speaker 1: more quickly because we're processing less new information. It kind
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  Speaker 1: of ties into that, um that that brain processing one.
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  Speaker 1: It's just it just kind of really drives home how
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: grim adulthood is. Yeah, and could be aided by the
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: fact that you're not getting as many dopamine hits because
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  Speaker 1: this novel stimuli is not coming along as often, right,
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  Speaker 1: So that all ties back into that brain clock thing
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: again too, which is the idea that um, when we
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: when are that part of our mid brain is learning
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: to to measure time. As it's doing that, it gets
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: little hits a dopamine to help train it. Well, they
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: found that your hits of dopamine decrease as you age,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: which also kind of correlates with the idea that time
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  Speaker 1: seems to um go faster as we age and our
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: biological clocks seem to start to run slower. So they
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: think that maybe that that we us getting less dopamine
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  Speaker 1: is part of that that internal clock slowing down thing. Uh,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: the thing that makes a lot of sense to me,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: and we're not going to get two in the weeds
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: with what logar rhythmic scales are. But let's just say this.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: If you measure an earthquake on the Richter scale, that's
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: a logarhythmic scale, and it's not the same as a
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: linear scale. So if you jump from ten to eleven
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  Speaker 1: on the Richter scale, it's like a tenfold jump, it's
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: not a ten percent jump. Uh is that good enough
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: for that? I think so? Yeah, So I think this, Uh,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: this can apply to life. And this one makes a
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  Speaker 1: lot of sense because if you are a ten year old,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: then you've experienced uh, one year is ten percent of
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: your life, So that's a big chunk. But by the
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: time you get to twenty, it's only five percent. And
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: we could keep going here, and it just gets more
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: and more depressing as you go. But they basically are
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: saying you should think of it in terms of this
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: logarithmic scale as opposed to a linear scale, because by
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: the time you get to you know, sixty seventy eight
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: years old, that's a big chunk of your life. Uh,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: that's gone by at that point, right, And so any
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: new amount of time that goes by is proportional to
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: the increasingly larger amount of time that has gone by.
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  Speaker 1: And so if that's how we process and measure the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: time in our lifetime, then the longer you're alive, the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: longer it takes to seem like a lot of time
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: has passed by. Like this guy, Um Christian Yates from
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: University of Bath. He said, the reason why the summer
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: lasted so long, or it took so long too for
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: a birthday to come and in a new one to
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: come is that that year, if you're like five, like
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: you're saying, that's like a fifth of your life. One
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: year is a fifth of your life. If you're fifty,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: one year is a fiftie of your life. So a
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: year can just start to zip by and zip by
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: and faster and faster the more you age. And he
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: ended with something um, he wrote a good article in
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: the conversation, so shout out to him for that one.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: But he he basically said, for you to experience what
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: seems to you is the same amount of time between
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: the ages of five and ten, would require you to
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: live from age forty to age eighty, depressing proportionately speaking,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: it would be the same suggestion subjective experience of time
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: for you. Yeah, because occasionally I will think like, let's
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: say I got twenty more great years left, and then
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: I think that's not much time. But then I think
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: man from birth to age twenty was forever. Yeah. Uh
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: so I'm good, but that's not how it works. Yeah,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: because forty seemed to zip by a lot faster than
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: zero to twenty. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. I think I think
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: they're onto something with that last one. All right, so
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: I'm thoroughly depressed. Now I am too. Let's go celebrate, buddy. Actually,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: we don't need to be depressed. We need to take
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: this as motivation to go really pay attention and be
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: grateful for this year. Then live life. Well, let's do it,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: all right, Short stuff out Stuff you Should Know is
• 14:21
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