The Best of Coast to Coast AM Perception of Time - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 3/17/26
Mar 18, 2026
Lisa Broderick, researcher and author who studies time and behavior, shares what sparked her fascination with time. She explores how athletes experience slowed time, how memory shapes subjective time, and imagination’s role in envisioning the future. She examines scientific ideas like wormholes and block time and describes a simple daily practice from her book Permanence for lasting behavior change.
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Perception Can Slow Time In High Performance
- People can subjectively slow down their perception of time, enabling feats like athletes 'slowing the field' or catching a falling glass by its stem.
- Lisa Broderick links this to brain processing speed and examples like Michael Jordan and sports hitters who mentally slow fast events.
Brain Memory Shapes The Flow Of Time
- Time may be a mental construct: we perceive flow because we remember the past and not the future, so subjective time can vary between people.
- Broderick uses Einstein's anecdotes and déjà vu to show memory and brain snapshots create our sense of forward time.
Relativity Offers A Practical Route To Time Effects
- Physical relativity gives objective ways time differs: high speed or intense gravity slows subjective time relative to others.
- Broderick notes we lack machines to exploit this, but advanced aliens might manipulate time to travel interstellar distances.
