This July 4th, are you a thrill- or chill-seeker?
Short Wave
NPR
4.7 • 6.6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 July 2026
⏱️ 13 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
Imagine if someone has procured illegal fireworks from a couple of states over. Are you:
1. first in line to light them?
2. content to watch while others set them off?
3. going to find a fire extinguisher — just in case — while loudly condemning the activity?
Ken Carter, a psychologist at Oxford College of Emory University, says everyone has a different level of sensation-seeking. This episode, we get into the factors at play, like people's brain chemistry, when deciding whether or not to do an activity, like setting off fireworks.
For low and average sensation-seekers, very thrilling activities like large, self-run fireworks displays can cause their bodies to produce a lot of cortisol, a stress hormone.
On the other hand, high sensation-seekers, Carter says, "don't tend to produce that much cortisol when they're in those highly chaotic experiences. So when they're seeing those fireworks, they actually produce higher amounts of another chemical called dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter or a chemical messenger that's involved in pleasure."
Carter has developed a 40-point self-assessment survey for people to figure out how much of a sensation-seeker they are. The survey can be found in his book, Buzz!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. |
| 0:06.3 | As a kid on the 4th of July, Ken Carter's family would always get together, have a picnic, and light fireworks. |
| 0:12.6 | His brother loved that part. |
| 0:15.0 | Ken, not so much. |
| 0:16.6 | I remember sort of thinking about what I would do if something went wrong. |
| 0:21.9 | Like where the emergency room was going to be, hoping I wasn't going to blow my hand up, that kind of stuff. |
| 0:28.9 | I was a very cautious kid. |
| 0:30.6 | Ken is a clinical psychologist at Oxford College of Emory University where he studies sensation seekers, people who may enjoy risk, |
| 0:39.9 | thrill, or a new sensation. The types who on the 4th of July have probably driven across |
| 0:45.9 | state lines to buy fireworks that might not be legal in your current state, looking for the largest |
| 0:52.8 | explosions, the most beautiful colors, and have invited |
| 0:56.4 | the neighborhood people over to their house to witness that. |
| 1:00.4 | Ken, by comparison, is a self-described chill seeker, the types of people who are looking at the |
| 1:07.1 | fireworks, wondering whether or not those are legal in the state and being prepared. |
| 1:12.8 | The kind of people who might bring something to put out the fire. |
| 1:17.1 | Most people, Ken says, are probably in the middle. |
| 1:19.5 | Who are going to enjoy it, but may be nervous every now and then. |
| 1:22.5 | And this spectrum of personality on display as fireworks burst overhead has always intrigued him. |
| 1:30.6 | I've always been amazed how two people can have the same experience, but kind of have a different |
| 1:35.5 | emotional reaction from it. As a psychologist, Ken uses a 40-point scale to measure someone's |
| 1:41.7 | sensation-seeking behavior. And he has met people who score 38, |
| 1:45.6 | even 40. I'm actually at an 8 out of 40. Oh, that's quite low. That is quite low. |
... |
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