Curiosity Killed the Adage

Key takeaways

Common adages carry subjective truths that often reflect personal biases, requiring scientific exploration to reveal their complexities.
Research indicates that while people believe shared misery alleviates suffering, subjective experiences may assert otherwise.
Mind-wandering, often seen as unproductive, is essential for creativity and problem-solving, providing cognitive benefits.
The notion that 'what goes up must come down' is challenged by scientific phenomena showing that many objects defy this expectation, leading to an understanding of continuous motion and existence.

Summary

Exploring Adages: Truth or Myth?

The episode dives into the common adages that permeate our lives, asking if they hold any objective truth. The hosts discuss the process of fact-checking various sayings, highlighting how subjective interpretations can lead to surprising revelations. They engage a variety of experts to explore the validity of phrases like 'misery loves company' and 'idle hands are the devil's workshop.' This inquiry illustrates how seemingly simple insights can be steeped in complexity and nuance.

Misery Loves Company: A Closer Look

The discussion on whether 'misery loves company' takes center stage, as presenters share findings from psychological experiments. Despite many believing this adage to be true, studies reveal that while people think they will feel better in shared misery, personal experiences suggest otherwise. Surprisingly, researchers find that feeling happy can actually discourage sharing that happiness, challenging conventional wisdom surrounding emotional experiences.

The Value of Idleness: A Workshop for the Brain

A significant portion of the episode focuses on the concept of idleness, challenging the idea that an 'idle mind is the devil's workshop.' Experts in psychology and neuroscience provide insight into the benefits of a wandering mind. Mind-wandering is linked to creativity, memory reinforcement, and problem-solving potential, indicating that times of idleness may foster essential cognitive processes essential for well-being.

The Gravity of Our Existence: 'What Goes Up Must Come Down'

The hosts engage in a thought-provoking discussion regarding the adage 'what goes up must come down,' starting with a humorous experiment involving an egg. They explore the concept of gravity and orbital mechanics, revealing that many things traditionally thought to come down may indeed remain suspended in the sky for longer than anticipated. Drawing connections to astronomical phenomena and our own existence, they illustrate how everything is caught in a continuous state of falling.

Show notes

The early bird gets the worm. What goes around, comes around. It’s always darkest just before dawn. We carry these little nuggets of wisdom—these adages—with us, deep in our psyche. But recently we started wondering: are they true? Like, objectively, scientifically, provably true?

So we picked a few and set out to fact check them. We talked to psychologists, neuroscientists, runners, a real estate agent, skateboarders, an ornithologist, a sociologist and an astrophysicist, among others, and we learned that these seemingly simple, clear-cut statements about us and our world, contain whole universes of beautiful, vexing complexity and deeper, stranger bits of wisdom than we ever imagined.

Special thanks to Pamela D’Arc, Daniela Murcillo, Amanda Breen, Akmal Tajihan, Patrick Keene, Stephanie Leschek and Alexandria Iona from the Upright Citizens Brigade, We Run Uptown, Coaches Reph and Patty from Circa ‘95, Julia Lucas and Coffey from the Noname marathon training program.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites here: https://radiolab.org/moon

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Alex Neason, Simon Adler, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Annie McEwen, Maria Paz Gutierrez, and W. Harry Fortuna
Produced by - Simon Adler, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Maria Paz Gutierrez, and Sindhu Gnanasambandan
Original music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom
Fact-checking by - Emily Krieger and Diane A. Kelly
and Edited by - Pat Walters and Alex Neason

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