Editor’s note: This column is part of ‘Why Do We?’ — a weekly video series hosted by culture expert Martin Lindstrom that untangles unique quirks of human behavior. Click here for the series page.
Why do we believe without question that there are billions of stars in the universe but put up a “Wet Paint” sign and can’t resist touching it?
I’ll be the first to admit it: I love watching people. I can sit at a café for hours watching people go by, getting lost in thoughts about their stories and aspirations.
It was through such idle watching that I started to take note of just how wonderfully erratic our behavior can be. Take, for example, how we scold a computer for not working fast enough, beg inanimate traffic lights to change faster, or press the elevator button repeatedly — as if the elevator would take notice, speed up, and zoom up to our destination at express speed.
This brings me back to the ‘wet paint’ paradox.
To dive deeper into this phenomena, I’ve teamed up with one of the world’s most decorated astronauts, commander Chris Hadfield, whose 2,700 trips around the world — once even while playing David Bowie’s Space Oddity live on his guitar mid-orbit — have given him a truly unique perspective both on the cosmos and the world he was able to watch from above.
In our conversation, he shared his firsthand experience of watching the planet change, from seeing rivers dry up to oceans seemingly disappear. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. There was a beautiful poetry in his portrait of how ‘Mother Earth’ — as he lovingly called our planet — breathed through the seasons, evolving before his very eyes in the course of a single 90-minute orbit.
One of the most fascinating things he shared with me, however, had nothing to do with actually being in space.
As he explained, the process of becoming an astronaut is one of the most rigorous and involved training programs of any profession in the world. Imagine spending 25 years training day in and day out for something that ultimately lasts less than a week. It was during this conversation that I began to grasp how irrational even the most rational people on planet earth (and in orbit) can be.
Spoiler alert: look no further than the secret shirt Chris wore on his last mission at the risk of being fired. And then, of course, there’s that wet paint question. If you’re curious to discover the answer (and much more) join me, commander Chris Hadfield and Liza Donnelly and be ready for a true ride.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.