Why Time Flies (And How To Slow It Down)

WHY TIME FLIES (AND HOW TO SLOW IT DOWN) (320kbs-m4a/64mb/28mins)
BBC Radio 4 podcast: 4th June 2021

Armando Iannucci travels through time - discovering why it seems to accelerate alarmingly as he gets older and what, if anything, can be done to slow it down.

How exactly does the human brain calculate the passing of time? Why are the results often so distorted, with time either dragging or flying by? Armando meets physicists, psychologists and philosophers who help him unravel the emotional, physical and cultural factors which affect our perception of time.

Along the way he finds out how time flies... for flies.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman explains how he attempted to simulate the experience of time slowing down during a road accident, by throwing participants off a 150 foot high platform. Would they be able to decipher flickering images which would normally flash by too quickly?

Physicist Adrian Bejan suggests that Armando's brain has simply worn out, generating temporal discrepancies. He argues that as people age, the rate at which their brain processes visual information slows down, making time speed up.

Can the phenomenon be explained by mathematics. Kit Yates explains that each moment of our lives, every hour, day or week, becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of our entire life.

Psychologist Ruth Ogden, has conducted experiments to test how people of all ages estimate the passage of time, including under lockdown conditions. She says the reason our perception of time varies so dramatically lies in the way we form memories. Children’s lives are filled with new experiences, creating rich memories which make time seem to pass slowly. As we age, we have fewer new experiences, fewer vivid memories, and time rushes by.

To slow down time we must inject new, exciting experiences into our lives... like listening to this programme for example.

Producer: Brian King
A 7digital production for BBC Radio 4