English transcript

Look closely at what these people are doing. This is like a mosh pit at an Olympic concert,

but that's not what's important. Look at how they're moving. And I'm not kidding when I say

that this could save your life one day. Because, weirdly enough, they're doing the same thing

these people are doing at the Olympics. And what these race cars are doing. Humans have

a weird tendency to want to move in a counterclockwise circle. This is why most

grocery stores are set up like this with the entrance on the right. It guides you through

the produce section with the assumption that you're going to want to go in a counterclockwise

circle. See, some of you might say that my racing examples were ridiculous because that's the way

the track goes, but this tendency came first. Racers, of all types, tend to only want to turn

left. Even people playing in bumper cars, you'll generally see them trying to do the counter

circle until they run into somebody that disrupts it. I said earlier that this could save your life,

and here's the thing. When people get lost, like if they've been out hiking,

they tend to just walk in circles. Even when they find hikers who have been missing for an entire

day, they're usually found less than a mile from the trail. Like, they can walk for 18 straight

hours and never get very far away from where they started because they are just going in circles,

usually a counterclockwise circle. And no one knows why we do it. All of the simple answers

seem to be wrong. For example, it is not just a cultural thing. This is something you find

across cultures. And humans are not the only animals that do this. We've observed cattle

preferring to go in a counterclockwise circle. Now, if you didn't know any better, you might

assume that it's because most people are right-handed. You know, since your right side

is dominant, if that leg is stronger, then maybe that will push itself forward a little bit,

forcing you to veer to your left. But in experiments, they observed the exact same

tendency in left-handed people. Scientists actually have no idea why we do this. But what

you need to take from this are two things. One, if you are planning an event where a lot of people

are going to be moving around in open space, keep in mind that's the direction they're probably

going to go. And two, if you are walking somewhere and you are trying to find a landmark and it seems

like you've been walking long enough to have found it by now, there's a good chance it is off somewhere

to your right.