Childhood summers crawled by for weeks, but somehow the last ten years of your life vanished in what feels like a long weekend.
Quick Take
- StarTalk Plus released a video featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly interviewing neuroscientist David Eagleman on why time speeds up with age.
- Eagleman argues the effect is a memory illusion tied to novelty, not an actual change in how fast time moves.
- Peer-reviewed research backs part of this idea but shows age alone explains only a small piece of the puzzle.
- Scientists still debate whether routine, attention, or brain chemistry deserves more credit than memory alone.
The Question Every Birthday Raises
Every year that passes seems to go by quicker than the last, and almost everyone notices it by middle age. StarTalk Plus tackled the question directly in a video where Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly sat down with neuroscientist David Eagleman to explain why minutes drag during fear but years blur together as we age. The pairing of a scary-movie slowdown with a decades-long speedup turns out to share one surprising root cause.
How Eagleman Explains The Brain’s Trick
Eagleman’s answer centers on memory density. He has written that people develop what he calls compressed representations of events as they age, meaning the brain stores less rich detail about each passing day. Fewer vivid memories mean less material for your mind to review later, so when you look back, the stretch of time feels thinner and faster than it actually was.
In an earlier interview, Eagleman put it in plainer terms. Children lay down enormous amounts of new memory because everything they encounter is unfamiliar, he said, while adults who already understand how the world works simply write less down. The clock on the wall never changes speed. What changes is how much your brain bothers to record.
Why Childhood Summers Felt Endless
This idea connects to something psychologists have discussed for well over a century. Nineteenth-century psychologist William James wrote that adulthood brings fewer memorable events, which makes stretches of time feel like they pass faster in hindsight. Novelty forces the brain to pay closer attention and build detailed memories, and detailed memories feel like they took longer to happen, even when the clock says otherwise.
That explains why a two-week vacation somewhere new can feel longer in memory than six ordinary months at home. New smells, new routes, new faces all demand mental bandwidth. Routine, on the other hand, lets the brain coast. Fewer new memories get filed away, and when you glance back at the year later, it looks shorter because there is simply less to look at.
What The Research Actually Finds
The science, though, is not fully settled. A broad review published in late 2025 found the field is still fragmented and that age alone accounts for no more than about 10 percent of the variation in how fast people say time feels. Other researchers have found the acceleration effect is strongest only when people actively stop to reflect on how quickly a decade passed, rather than something felt moment to moment. One peer-reviewed study on memory and cognition confirmed the well-known pattern that older adults report the past decade moving faster, but pointed to reduced cognitive sharpness, not novelty alone, as a likely driver. Other researchers have proposed that slower internal body clocks, lower arousal, and metabolic changes with age also shape how briskly time feels, suggesting memory is one piece of a larger puzzle rather than the whole answer.
Slowing The Clock Without Turning Back Time
None of this means getting older guarantees a blur of forgettable years. If novelty genuinely shapes memory density, then seeking out new places, skills, and routines could, in theory, thicken the mental record of a year and make it feel fuller in hindsight. The science does not promise a fix, but it does offer a practical nudge: breaking routine may be the closest thing to a dial for your internal clock.
The StarTalk conversation lands at an interesting moment, since curiosity about memory, aging, and the brain’s quirks keeps drawing large audiences online. Whether the final answer turns out to be memory compression, attention, arousal, or some mix of all three, the underlying lesson holds up. Time is not speeding up around you. Your brain is simply deciding what is worth remembering, and that decision is shaping how your life feels in review.
Sources:
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