A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
This week, millions of Americans will be driving home for Thanksgiving, which could mean millions of Americans will be getting carsick. Now, if you're one of those people, Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag from 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 be called MIA.
MIKE DANFORTH, BYLINE: (Laughter).
IAN CHILLAG, BYLINE: Oh, yeah.
MARTÍNEZ: Missed opportunity. All right, so your podcast is all about helping people figure out and navigate everyday tasks. So how did the topic of car sickness come up?
DANFORTH: Well, we got a call from our listener, Ellie (ph), who noticed that now that she's in her 20s, she gets carsick really easily. And this didn't happen when she was a kid. She could ride roller coasters over and over again without flinching.
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ELLIE: My question is just sort of like, is there a way I could build up that stamina again? Now, I can't look at my phone in the car, or I feel like I get kind of ill-feeling. And just sort of, like, what changed from childhood to now?
CHILLAG: That's pretty common. I don't know, A, if you have been on a swing at the playground as a grown man, but it is harrowing.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. I would need an ER visit immediately after, if I ever tried. So how did you go about helping Ellie?
CHILLAG: Well, we wanted to find someone with experience in a high-motion-sickness environment. So we called up 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 spacecraft, they weren't done with CGI. They actually built sets onboard the Vomit Comet. That's the airplane NASA uses to simulate weightlessness.
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KEVIN BACON: The pilot makes it climb straight up and then straight down. And as you go over the top of what's called the parabola, you create weightlessness for 26 seconds. And once the sets were built up there, we did it 600 times.
CHILLAG: (Laughter) What?
DANFORTH: Six hundred times?
BACON: Yeah, yeah. We would do 20 in the morning. Then we would break for lunch.
(LAUGHTER)
DANFORTH: Oh, yeah, 'cause you need something to barf up later.
BACON: Exactly. And then we would do 20 in the afternoon.
MARTÍNEZ: So, first off, I'm impressed that Kevin Bacon took your call. And second, I mean, it sounds like it's really definitely called the Vomit Comet for a reason. So what advice did Kevin Bacon have for staving off motion sickness?
DANFORTH: He told us that NASA gave them pretty powerful anti-nausea drugs, which made them real sleepy. And Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton tried to go without the drugs, and it did not work.
CHILLAG: He did say they trained them with some useful advice, though.
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BACON: We were told not to look from side to side. I remember now, especially on the first few flights, Tom Hanks was in front of me. And I stared 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 picture of the back of Hanks' head.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
CHILLAG: If you don't have Tom Hanks sitting in front of you, there is one more good piece of advice. There's a recent study from Frontiers In Human Neuroscience that found listening to soft or joyful music can actually help relieve the symptoms of car sickness.
DANFORTH: We wanted to get Ellie a piece of music to help her out whenever she's feeling queasy. So, of course, we called up Kenny G. And Kenny G always provides.
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KENNY G: Ellie, I think this is what you need to listen to when you're feeling carsick.
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KENNY G: There you go, Ellie. That'll do it for you.
DANFORTH: So there you have it. If you feel motion sickness in the car, just stare straight ahead at the person in front of you, preferably if that person is Tom Hanks.
CHILLAG: And once you are carsick, you can listen to some soft or joyful music. That'll 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've always felt that the best advice comes from people with one letter in their name.
CHILLAG: OK.
MARTÍNEZ: So thank you, Kenny G, for that. That's Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag from NPR's How To Do Everything podcast. Thank you very much, and safe travels.
DANFORTH: Thanks, A.
CHILLAG: Thanks, A. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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