Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org. Hey, Ellie, what can we help you with? Ellie, I've noticed the same thing. I loved roller coasters when I was a kid, but I recently went to Disney World and I rode Space Mountain and I needed two hours to recover. Driving home from the park. I was just leaning my head against the window and moaning. Yeah, and I should have pointed out this was a work trip. This wasn't like in the privacy of your own family. This was a work event. Yeah, a co-worker was sitting next to me in the car on the way home, patting my back, but also positioning her body to be out of the way if I threw up. And I think you left early from Disney World. No, but everybody else just kept riding rides and I just had to stand outside staring off into the distance. You're just the party pooper. All this is to say, Ellie, I feel your pain. And I would say, Ellie, things are only going to get worse. That's what I'm worried about. I'm still in my 20s, which is where it's like, you know, hangovers. I know we're only going to get worse as I get older. There's a lot of stuff that I'm still in. My body's still on the younger side. You still have elasticity in your brain, I think. Yeah. Oh, man. What if we go away to find an answer to this question and what we come back to you with is, Ellie, enjoy this moment while you can. It's only going to get worse. Ellie, we actually have terrible news. You only have six months. You know who could help with this? Beloved Hollywood superstar Kevin Bacon. Kevin, when you guys were getting ready to shoot Apollo 13, you prepared on the vomit comet, right? Well, not just preparing. We actually shot on the vomit comet. We shot quite a bit of the movie because back in those days, you really couldn't recreate weightlessness using the effects, you know, special effects. I mean, you could probably take out a bunch of wires and have people flying around on harnesses like Peter Pan, but it was never going to work very well. Yeah. Yes. After we did the test run on this airplane, Ron came to us and said, Ron Howard, the director said, you know, so we're going to build the sets up on the vomit and go try to shoot stuff up there. Wait, so what do you remember from that? Like, tell us about what that experience was like. Well, I'm always grateful for all the crazy experiences that I get to have just by the nature of the work that I do, the places that I get to put in the characters and the shoes I get to walk in. But this one was really, really kind of nuts. The KC-135, also known as the vomit comet, is a plane that NASA uses to simulate no gravity on Earth, which a lot of people think there's something as an anti-gravity chamber, but that's literally impossible to do. So what they do is it's a large plane that flies out over the Gulf of Mexico and the pilot makes it climb straight up and then straight down. And as you go over the top of what's called a parabola, the centrifugal force balances that with the gravitational pull of the Earth. And so you create weightlessness for 26 seconds. So if you've ever been on a roller coaster and you go over that, the top of that roller coaster, and there's a big drop, you know what that feels like. Your stomach goes up into your brain. And so we went out and once the sets were built up there, we did it 600 times. 600 times? What? Yeah, yeah, we would do 20 in the morning, then we would break the lunch. Oh yeah, because you need something to barf up later. Exactly. And then we would do 20 in the afternoon. And it was kind of a miracle of film ingenuity. So Kevin, that's a pretty stacked cast. Were any of your castmates, could they not handle it? Did any of them have trouble up there? Well, no, NASA was giving us some serious anti-nausea medication, which definitely helped. I know that Tom and Bill, you know, the drugs were kind of a drag because, you know, I don't know if you've ever taken an anti-nausea medication. Sometimes they work because they sort of, you know, make you sleepy. You know what I mean? They come and you go out and you know what. And so to combat that, we also had to take a stimulant. So like it was like a combination of two and you never really knew which one was going to kick in. But one day, both Bill and Tom decided that they were going to cowboy it out and not, not take it. And they, they were both pretty green. There was a something that's kind of funny. They called it an airman's corsage. When you went up, now we were in our costumes, but everybody else that would go up was required to wear a flight suit. And on the chest are two pockets, you know, with zippers. And so you take the vomit bag and you stuff it in there and then you leave it, you know, you leave the opening kind of poking out and they call it an airman's corsage. So that it's right there. Now I did, so I did never, I never, I never screw up. I did get thrown up on. Keep going. Well, okay. So if you can imagine when you're floating, you can't really use things like the Dolly track or whatever. Basically, it was all handheld. Yeah. Because the cameras, the cameras would float. And so the camera met the guy was operating and it was a, you know, a shot of me and I'm watching him and all of a sudden he sort of pulls his head across from behind the lens and putes. Now the thing about that is that it's floating too. There was nothing for me to do about it. I just saw the pute coming and just, you know, tried to kind of roll out of the way, but it came right down. Well, Kevin, we'll let you go. But I guess, having been through all of this, these 600 flights, do you have any tips for Ellie? I can tell you one thing, Ellie. We were actually trained in this on our very first flight. We were told not to swivel our head, not to look from side to side, but to keep your focus straight ahead. And they say the same thing about being on a boat, that you, if you keep your eyes on the horizon, it'll, it'll help with the nausea. So what's funny about that is I remember now especially on the first few flights, when we went up and down in the parabolas, they kept us strapped in like we didn't leave our chairs. It wasn't until we had kind of gotten used to it that we started taking off our seat belts and started flying around. But the first few flights, you were supposed to just, you know, keep your seat belt on and stay in your chair. And Tom Hanks was in front of me and I stared a hole in the back of his head. I just remember, I remember the back of his head so well because I was just sitting there, you know, white-knuckling it out in the chair before I got used to it and just, you know, staring right through him. I could probably draw your picture of the back of Hanks' head. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for helping Ellie out. Yeah, Ellie, good luck with that. All right, Ellie, we have another solution for you in case, for some reason, you can't get Tom Hanks to sit in front of you every time you're on a roller coaster. We just read this study in frontiers of human neuroscience that says- We're always reading frontiers in human neuroscience. We just love it. We skimmed a study in the frontiers of human neuroscience that says, listening to soft or joyful music after driving reduces car sickness by up to 57%. You know who makes soft and joyful music? Me? Kenny G. Well, that research is very interesting. I was going to say, just make sure you're looking out the window, but I guess there's more to it than that. You know, okay, so I recorded a song, Joy to the World, from one of my Christmas records, because if it's joyful, that's going to be the perfect song. And I think that will probably make you feel good. Even in the middle of July, you'll probably enjoy hearing it. Yeah. Is there something, Kenny, in your vast experience that you think is key to making a song joyful? That's a good question. I don't know, to be honest. I don't know if there's a real thing that makes it joyful. I mean, you could say, well, let's make it up tempo. Well, that doesn't necessarily, to me, make it joyful. I make it faster. Yeah, sure. Maybe- We said there was an answer for it, but I could say, well, if I play a D sharp, you know, five times in a row, that makes the song joyful, but unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Do you have a horn handy there where you could demonstrate for us? I mean, you'd have to give me a few minutes, though, while we're talking. Can I get it ready? I don't have it prepared, but you have to give me a second. We'll give you all the time you need. Well, we can keep talking while we're doing it. I'm going to brush my teeth while we're talking. Wait, are you serious? I'm going to play my saxophone, unless I brush my teeth. That's- Wait, what? Okay. Sorry about that. You've got to have clean saps. Okay. Well, now we have a whole new question. Yeah. Is that ritual or does that actually improve your playing? It doesn't improve my playing. It's just- Listen, I'm brushing my teeth while I'm talking. This is crazy. That's incredible. What happens is that I don't want any food particles or anything to get in my saxophone, so I got to make sure that when I'm blowing it in there, there's no smell of onions or garlic or any of those kinds of things or food particles. We don't want that in the saxophone. Yeah. I guess it would come back to you the next time you played the saxophone. That wouldn't be. Well, you could- Yeah, yeah. You might- I'll tell you. I was going to buy the saxophone. I have my saxophone. It's the same one I've had since I was in high school. It has a serial number. The serial number equates to- I'll tell you when it was born. My saxophone was born on March 17, 1959. I researched. That's my saxophone. Now, so when they made the sax- They also made other saxophones that day, let's say 30 or 40, whatever, and there's a serial number that's two, two more than mine. They did it on the same day. Same day in 1959 in Paris, saw the saxophone, not knowing that it was the same day. I just saw the saxophone and it was in this green rubber case. Now, remember mine came in a green rubber case when I first got it? And I opened it up and said, oh my gosh, this looks like my saxophone. It smells like smoke. Oh. I was a smoker. And I could not- I mean, I wanted to buy it because it was like, oh, I could- my sax could have a brother and I couldn't even stand even having it on my fingers. It's stuck. So, all right, so I'm now trying to take my sax out of the case. Now that my mouth is nice and fresh. You did such an impressive job of talking to us and brushing your teeth at the same time. You can also do- you're a circular breather, right? That's something you know how to do? Of course I know how to do it. So you could do all these things and breathe continuously the whole time. So let's see. All right. So what happens when you put a sax together is the weed has to kind of find itself on the mouthy so it doesn't necessarily play beautifully right off the bat for a minute or two. Okay. So anyway, I've got it out and I'm just kind of doing- Wow. If I was going to play something like- a minor key would be something like- Okay. So you see that's kind of sad. Now we can do something major. So that'll be happier and ellie. I think this is what you need to listen to when you're feeling carsick. There you go, ellie. That'll do it for you. Hey, if you've got a question for us, you can get it to us at how2atnpr.org. We promise no matter how big or small, we will do everything in our power to address your question. If we can do everything in our limited power to help you. Just send us an email at how2atnpr.org. It's entirely possible that you are listening to this episode of How to Do Everything while stuck in traffic on your way somewhere for Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. It doesn't- what I just said suggested is not currently a happy Thanksgiving. Fair enough. Sorry. Yeah. Well, you've got this Thanksgiving. We can't do anything about the traffic, but we might be able to help make you feel a little better. We read about in 2010, there was a traffic jam in China that lasted 12 days. Li Jiajong, you were actually stuck in this traffic jam, right? Yes. We were lucky once. Some of the drivers got stuck there for days. Yeah. Some people got some water from the stream or river, whatever, starting having showers on the roadside. Wow. I mean, good for them. You can't blame them after being trapped in your car for so long. Yes. So what did you end up doing when you were trapped in that traffic jam for so long? Like, how did you guys kill time together? We left Zanadu shortly after early lunch. We were in good spirits. My friend Tatiana, she was a diplomat, and she brought Brazilian biscuits and chocolates. So we were happy for a while until we got stuck for hours on the road. And it was so funny because- and we were hungry. But the Chinese people were very enterprising, and the Chinese people also loved food. So on the roadside, you'll see people setting up dumplings, selling hot pot, noodle pot. Oh, wow. Yeah. And people set up food stores on the roadside. So people selling dumplings in hot pot, people showering with water from the creeks and rivers. Did you see anything else? Or have you heard other stories of ways people dealt with it? I saw people, the lorry drivers just took their shirts off. It was hot summer, and they just sit on stones and start playing cards. Why not? Well, based on now your experience with these traffic jams, what do you bring with you now on trips in your car, just in case you get stuck? Oh, I always, I always, even without the incident, I always bring food. I have nuts, I have dried fruits, I have not Brazilian, but biscuits. Sure. Do you have a deck of cards? No, I don't. Okay. Well, that does it for this week's show. What did you learn, Ian? Why learn that they actually filmed Apollo 13 in zero gravity in the Vomit comet? Yeah, you don't see that kind of stuff anymore. Now it really is just computer generated stuff. I feel like if whatever project I was working on, if I knew that people had brought in NASA to fly a space age vehicle, I would feel a lot of added pressure. I think I would blow a lot of takes if I were performing in Apollo 13. Yeah, it's not funny when you crack and do a funny joke. Let's do it again. We'll just do it again. We've never seen the Apollo 13 bloopers. Tom Hanks, that was hilarious. You just cost us $45 million. I learned that before he plays his instrument, Kenny G has to brush his teeth. Do you think that that's in Kenny G's rider? Like the only thing in his rider is a brand new toothbrush and one gallon of aqua fresh. What kind of toothpaste do you use for that? I feel like he could make a lot of money if he pitched or he'll be with Kenny G. How to Do Everything is produced by Skyler Swenson and Hina Shrivastava, technical direction from Lorna White. You can get us your questions at howtoatnpr.org. I'm Ian. And I'm Mike. Thanks. Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org.
