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Did you know that birds and aquatic mammals have the ability to sleep with one side of their brain wide awake? They do. It's called unihemispheric slow-wave sleep. It's why ducks can sleep with one eye open and why dolphins don't drown while taking naps. Land mammals seem to have lost this ability, maybe because we've learned to build safe enclosures for ourselves, or we sleep in packs, or because sleeping in water is just so annoying and makes our skin prune.

Okay, here's another: have you ever spent all day trying to learn something—a piece of music, for instance—and you just can't seem to get it and then you sleep on it and the next day you can play it perfectly? One theory as to why this happens is that there is a little janitor crew inside your head that comes in and washes your brain clean while you sleep, getting rid of the garbage and leaving behind the important stuff. And the theory makes sense. Figuratively, of course. Though I really wish it were literal, because I went ahead and named my janitors: Elvis and Bigsby.

Oh! Then there's this: have you spent all day doing something like surfing (the ocean variety, not online), and then find yourself dreaming vividly about it that night, so much so that you can actually feel the water against your body? It's your brain's way of making sense of those new problems it was tackling all day (the waves) and what's really interesting is when it takes those problems and mixes them with other problems you've encountered in your life and creates new situations out of them. Which is why you might have a dream about doing yoga on a ski slope. Or riding horses in the middle of the ocean.

If any of this interests you, you might like to listen to last year's May 25th Radiolab episode on sleep.

But be careful, because you might subscribe to their podcast and get sucked in and wind up listening to every episode, back-to-back until your head explodes. Which, luckily has not happened to me, yet. But I'm skirting a very fine line. Because Radiolab is definitely my new favorite show. And I've listened to a good many episodes over the last week. It's sort of like This American Life in that each episode consists of stories; however, all the stories have a scientific slant. Many seem to focus on some aspect of neuroscience, and how studying the brain can shed light on topics such as Stress, Laughter, or "Who Am I?"—all of which are actual episode titles. But there is also an anthropological and philosophical bent to the discussion. (Is laughter, by necessity a social phenomenon? More importantly, is laughter the thing that makes us human?) And sometimes a little physics works it's way in there too, such as the episode on "Time" where they discuss relativity, and how time can slow down or speed up depending on who you are and what you're doing. Not figuratively, but actually.

Or course, this might all sound kind of nerdy and a little too intense for leisure-time listening. But the way the show is done—as this sort of ongoing casual conversation between host/producer Jad Abumrad and co-host Robert Krulwich—it doesn't come across that way at all. Instead, it seems like the hosts are learning (and really struggling with) the topics along with you and you feel a part of the conversation. It's entertaining and—gasp!—informative at the same time. Indeed, Radiolab is helping me to evolve ... in all kinds of ways. Pretty soon, I'm hoping I'll be able to sleep with one eye open again.

link to this | comments (7) | File:  Surfing  Radio  Brain 

Monday it was sunny, but cool, with a pleasant breeze. I grabbed my camera and walked south on 10th. At F, I remembered a recent post Reya had made, and so I jutted over to 8th to take a quick peek at the street painting there. Then I walked by the Navy Memorial, where some elementary school kids were giving a performance of music and dance. I grabbed a sandwich at the FBI Cosi and headed across Pennsylvania, over to 12th and down past the IRS building, across Constitution, to the Mall, where I claimed a park bench just east of the 12th street tunnel. I ate my Ginger Chicken on whole grain and took some pictures and thought about "place" and how it's supposed to be not where, but who you're with that really matters. How for the most part that's true. But sometimes. Sometimes where you are makes all the difference. And it's kind of an inscrutable thing, the sense of connection you can feel with a place. It's not something you can easily point to, and it doesn't always make sense. It's not necessarily a factor of time spent, or nativity, though it could be. It's something about the air in a place - the way it touches your senses. The way it feels.

As I ate, people walked past, and I listened to the strange temporal quality of their footsteps. The way they suddenly came into my aural bubble, and just as suddenly vanished. One moment they were there, in front of me, belonging to that person. These feet on gravel. The next minute they were gone, along with the person who brought them. These footsteps. Now quiet.

A girl stepped up to where I was sitting. She introduced herself and said she was from WAMU, the local NPR station. She asked if I would mind speaking into her digital recorder the answer to two questions: 1) my name and 2) what it means to me to be an American. And I said sure, because why not? Even though I had no real clue what the hell I was going to say. I mean, I knew my name, which was a start. But I had no idea how to respond to the America thing. And the truth is that there was no real answer for that question. It was just one of those fluff questions that people ask on TV or radio shows and it doesn't have any real significance. In order to provide me with a visual cue, she had written the questions in ALL CAPS on a folded piece of lined paper. She handed it to me. I joked about the pressure. "Just use the paper," she said. "But the paper doesn't have the answers," I felt like saying.

Then she pressed a button and I spoke my name into the mic and, after a couple of nervous tongue and teeth clicking noises, which were painfully loud and clear to me, I said that . . . "well, I was sitting here on the Mall in DC on a sunny, but cool afternoon, eating a sandwich I'd bought at Cosi, thinking about this place, and I guess it was that. That was what it meant to me to be an American: the ability to do this thing I was doing, which I didn't do nearly enough, and which I suddenly felt I should have done much more while I lived a twenty-minute walk away, instead of taking this place for granted every day, eating lunch in my apartment alone, using the excuse of not enough time or two much work. And damn, I regret that. And do you ever feel like you're not living life, you know, correctly? Like maybe you're worrying about the wrong things?"

That's what I said. Or something like it. Okay, maybe not those last couple of things about regret and worry. But I was thinking them. Whatever I said, I'm a little embarrassed now to think about it because, well, it didn't get to the heart of the matter. It was fluff. A fluff reply for a fluff question. Oh well, I guess I was feeling fluffy. And who knows, she might have been in the mood for fluff. And my fluff response might be on Metro Connections on NPR around July 4th. Fluff, immortalized. For the sake of radio everywhere, let's hope not.

The girl smiled politely, thanked me and, as we engaged in some small talk, she packed up her recorder and cue card. Then we exchanged farewells and she walked on to the next populated bench. And her footsteps disappeared, just like the others. And before long, I began to question whether or not she and I had even interacted. And as I sat there under the shade of a tree branch, alone, with my camera in my lap, my balled up sandwich bag and bottle of water next to me, looking off toward the Capitol, I felt a little like crying. Because place is never permanent, and sometimes that feels tragic. Because of the lonely temporal quality of, not just footsteps, but just about everything.

link to this | comments (2) | File:  Radio  DC  Chewing 

Now I like NPR, but why do they seem hell-bent on making people cry in the morning? It's too early for this sort of thing. You're still groggy. Still vulnerable. And bam! They hit you with this? C has to bring tissues to work with her. Just listen to the audio. I bet even the most stalwart among you will get a little teary-eyed.

link to this | comments (4) | File:  Radio