@Magnifico

Yeah. I've listened to this show about 3 times and each time I get annoyed by that part. The heavens are merciful? There is cosmic justice? What did that guy do to deserve to die? :/

Re listening to this episode and it really I mean REALLY bothers me how they celebrate the death of a human being, Instead of placing blame on the culture of the time that let Anne go without fame you place it on this man who also dared to go down the falls in a barrel a decade later.

Karma is a concept made up to help some get to sleep at night.

Being an applied physicist myself, I have to point out something that counter against the opinion of the famous astrophysicist. I agree with him regarding the biased data sample, but on the point of weightless feeling during the fall, he was not quite right. On the first few seconds of fall when the cat was accelerating, the cat was weightless (all gravity force was translated to accelation, and all cat's internal organs and external body are falling at the same rate), but once the cat reaches the terminal speed (air bouyance or resistance balances the gravity), the cat not longer felt weightless. The air resistance functions like a support (as if the cat were crouching on an invisible bench, and the cat's external boy feels no net force and his internal organ feels the gravitational pull, which is what we normally feel while walking and sitting naturally). At the terminal speed (uniform rate with zero accelation), the cat would indeed feel more "natural" and hence probably less panic and more prepared for landing. So the animal behavior scientist actually has a point, and I believe he is right, although I consider myself a physicist. Personally, I felt awful when I was sitting on the pirate ship at the amusement park. The "simulated" weightless situation makes me feel sick. But in the simulated parachuting in a wind tunnel where the wind force balance the gravity, you do not feel sick at all, which also proves the point.

@Adam the music is Tortoise from Chicago.

Interesting story on cat terminal velocity, but probably not accurate. I am a Math teacher and used the radiolab story when I did a lab involving terminal velocity. It turned out to be a great opportunity to talk about random sampling when this textbook example was shown to me by a colleague.

https://documents.ku.edu/users2/m600d171/tv%20cat%20example.pdf

I made a video about the cat section in the falling piece for my 7th grade science class.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPbc9Os--bI

No actual cats were harmed in this production!

I loved the stories, but a brief perusal of Wikipedia (high-rise syndrome) links to a more recent study of falling cats that contradicts the 1987 findings. Ted's comment on sampling bias makes a lot more sense than cats doing better when falling from higher stories.

I thought I understood the concept of the warping of space-time but now I'm confused. If we are constantly falling, then so too should be the chairs upon which we sit. But if we (the chair and I) *are* both constantly falling (presumably at the same speed), would that not be more akin to the hypo of "standing" on a scale in a falling elevator? If it is more akin to that hypo because we are falling at the same speed, then the chair would not be "pushing" up on me (which the story analogized to the elevator pulling up on me). In the elevator pulling up on me hypo, the elevator is accelerating upward faster than I, hence the "change" in my weight. Were it not, my "weight" would be normal. So, at the end of the day, I don't understand how gravity is explained by saying I'm constantly falling. Needless to say, I'm very confused....

I want to agree with Ted. I remember in high school reading that same paper also as an example of sampling bias. If the cat falls from less than five floors and walks away, the owner may not take him to the vet. If the cat falls and dies instantly, again why waste money on a vet? So the cats that fall and get hurt or fall and should have gotten hurt but didn't are the only cats in this sample.

It is unfortunate that the falling cats story aired on RadioLab. The particular paper that is the source of that story is commonly used in graduate-level biology courses as an example of sampling bias. Because the data is volunteered as opposed to sampled randomly, it appears like cats that fall from very high heights are safer than cats that fall from intermediate heights. However, it is more likely that most cats that fall from very high are too mangled when they hit the ground to even be brought into a vet. So the ones that do make it into see the vet are not a representative sample.

Jad, Jad, Jad, Jad,

Not only is celebrating "that guy's" death sick and disgusting, but claiming karma as retribution for the actions Annie Taylor's manager is wrong.

According to The Rules of Karma Handbook, Section 22.8, using the six degrees of connectivity gambit like that makes you "karmically responsible" for the words and actions of Rush Limbaugh and his myrmidons.

May God have mercy on your soul.

@Marian from New Orleans, the curvature of space-time describes gravity within the framework of General Relativity. The graviton, a theoretical particle, mediates the interactions of gravity within a Quantum Mechanics framework. (Althought not completely comparable, think of a graviton as being to gravity as a photon is to electromagnetism, or the gluon to the strong force).

I loved this show, but I have just one bone to pick. Everyone cheered when we found out that the guy who toured the world riding on the fame afforded to him because of his Niagra Falls stunt, lost his life.

I don't think he deserved death did he? Was it his fault that this woman ended up in the poor house? Seems a little unfair to use him as a whipping boy.

Why does Garret Soden sounds exactly like George Clooney?
Also, great show! This is one of my favorites :)

At 41:00 of the podcast, just as they find Annie Taylor alive in the barrel, what song is that guitar from? It sounds very familiar, but can't put my finger on it. Thanks.

Loved this, but the episode with Brian Greene leaves me at the same level as high school physics. If gravity is nothing but the deformation of space, why are people still looking of graviton? Can gravity be both the curving of space and a particle?