Are you hitting the road for Thanksgiving? Here are some ways to prevent motion sickness: NPR
Millions of Americans are driving to their Thanksgiving holiday, which could lead to a lot of car sickness. If you’re one of these people, NPR’s How To Do Everything podcast is here to help.
AND MARTÍNEZ, GUEST:
This week, millions of Americans will drive home for Thanksgiving, which could mean millions of Americans will experience car sickness. Now, if you’re one of those people, Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag of NPR’s How To Do Everything podcast are here to help. Mike and Ian, I just thought if we were a rap group we could call ourselves MIA.
MIKE DANFORTH, BYLINE: (Laughter).
IAN CHILLAG, BYLINE: Oh, yeah.
MARTÍNEZ: Missed opportunity. Alright, so your podcast is all about helping people understand and manage everyday tasks. So how did the subject of motion sickness come about?
DANFORTH: Well, we got a call from our listener, Ellie (ph), who noticed that now that she’s in her 20s, she gets motion sickness very easily. And that didn’t happen when she was a child. She could ride a roller coaster over and over again without flinching.
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ELLIE: My question is, is there any way I can build that endurance again? Now I can’t look at my phone in the car, otherwise I feel faint. And in a way, what has changed between childhood and today?
CHILLAG: It’s quite common. I don’t know, A, if you’ve been on a playground swing as an adult, but it’s heartbreaking.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. I would need an emergency room visit immediately afterwards, if I ever tried. So how did you help Ellie?
CHILLAG: Well, we wanted to find someone with experience in a high motion sickness environment. So we enlisted the help of beloved Hollywood superstar Kevin Bacon.
DANFORTH: He was in the movie “Apollo 13,” and those scenes where he and Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton are weightless in the spaceship, they weren’t done in CGI. They actually built sets aboard the Vomit Comet. This is the plane NASA uses to simulate weightlessness.
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KEVIN BACON: The pilot makes it go straight up and then straight up. And when you go past what’s called the parabola, you create weightlessness for 26 seconds. And once the sets were set up there, we did it 600 times.
CHILLAG: (Laughs) What?
DANFORTH: Six hundred times?
BACON: Yeah, yeah. We would do 8 p.m. Then we would break for lunch.
(LAUGH)
DANFORTH: Oh, yeah, because you need something to throw up later.
BACON: Exactly. And then we would do 8 p.m.
MARTÍNEZ: So, first of all, I’m impressed that Kevin Bacon answered your call. And secondly, I mean, it seems like it’s really called the Vomit Comet for a reason. So what advice did Kevin Bacon give for avoiding motion sickness?
DANFORTH: He told us that NASA gave them some pretty strong anti-nausea drugs, which made them really drowsy. Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton tried going without medication, but it didn’t work.
CHILLAG: He said, though, that they trained them with helpful advice.
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BACON: We were told not to look from one side to the other. I remember now, especially during the first flights, that Tom Hanks was in front of me. And I looked at a hole in the back of his head. I just remember…
DANFORTH: (Laughter).
BACON: I remember the back of his head so well. I could probably draw you a drawing of the back of Hanks’ head.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughs).
CHILLAG: If you don’t have Tom Hanks sitting in front of you, there’s one more good tip. A recent study from Frontiers In Human Neuroscience found that listening to soft or happy music can actually help relieve symptoms of motion sickness.
DANFORTH: We wanted to give Ellie a piece of music to help her whenever she’s feeling down. So of course we brought in Kenny G. And Kenny G always supplies.
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KENNY G: Ellie, I think this is what you need to listen to when you have motion sickness.
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KENNY G: There you go, Ellie. This will do it for you.
DANFORTH: So there you go. If you feel motion sickness in the car, just look at the person in front of you, preferably if that person is Tom Hanks.
CHILLAG: And once you get motion sickness, you can listen to soft or happy music. It will make you feel better. Or just call Kenny G directly and he’ll play you a little something over the phone.
MARTÍNEZ: You know, guys, I always thought the best advice came from people with only one letter in their name.
CHILLAG: Okay.
MARTÍNEZ: So thank you, Kenny G, for that. They’re Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag from NPR’s How To Do Everything podcast. Thank you very much and have a good trip.
DANFORTH: Thank you, A.
CHILLAG: Thank you, A.
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