Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we've been chatting. Uh, I guess quite a bit about
Speaker 1: time travel recently on the show, first probably in our
Speaker 1: our Weird House Cinema episode about the nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: movie Time After Time, and then more recently during our
Speaker 1: chat with Daniel Whiteson about astrophysics and time travel, and
Speaker 1: also a little talk about time travel science fiction as well.
Speaker 1: That's right. One of the main takeaways was that Daniel
Speaker 1: is is pretty thoroughly against the idea of the plausibility
Speaker 1: of changing the past, right. But um, you know, I
Speaker 1: think one of the more interesting questions to come back
Speaker 1: to in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind is,
Speaker 1: um is not just thinking about okay, is this possible?
Speaker 1: And what would you know, what assumptions would we have
Speaker 1: to make about the universe for this sort of time
Speaker 1: travel to work, or this sort of time travel? What
Speaker 1: sorts of time travel are we engaging in all the time? Uh?
Speaker 1: Instead of asking is this possible? Are we doing it too?
Speaker 1: Instead look at the question what does this idea reveal
Speaker 1: about human perspectives of time. Where does the time travel
Speaker 1: idea even come from? And and how far back in
Speaker 1: time do we see humans engaging in this sort of
Speaker 1: imaginative thought. It's a great question, and immediately all kinds
Speaker 1: of uh secondary questions come to mind, like, Okay, so
Speaker 1: time travel is one of the most popular plot devices
Speaker 1: of modern fiction. But can you how far back can
Speaker 1: you think of literature and stories that feature time travel? Suddenly,
Speaker 1: if you go just more than a few hundred years back,
Speaker 1: examples start getting very sparse at least you know the
Speaker 1: kind of things you can think of off the top
Speaker 1: of your head, And it might start to cause you
Speaker 1: to wonder, like, did something change in in Reese centuries
Speaker 1: that made this idea more more tangible to people? And
Speaker 1: are the earlier examples and what would what could we
Speaker 1: learn about our conception of time by looking at those? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I ask yourself the question, what's your favorite ancient myth
Speaker 1: about time travel? And and it's possible you have an answer,
Speaker 1: because we will come back to a few possible answers.
Speaker 1: But for for many of you out there, you might
Speaker 1: just be a bit dumbfounded, and you might say well,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, there are these mythic figures
Speaker 1: and they're they're traveling all over the place, and they're
Speaker 1: doing all sorts of amazing things, things that are so
Speaker 1: outrageous you wouldn't even see it in a comic book today. Um.
Speaker 1: But traveling through time becomes something of a scarcity. So
Speaker 1: it leads you to wonder, Yeah, is time travel just
Speaker 1: this relatively recent cultural invention, this idea of time travel? Um?
Speaker 1: And and why would that be? Because you know, as
Speaker 1: we try to drive home on the show Humans of
Speaker 1: centuries and millennia past, we're deep thinkers, they were deep dreamers.
Speaker 1: And yet there there are not, for the most part, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, large caches of old folk tales about princes
Speaker 1: going back in time to rescue princesses or traveling into
Speaker 1: the future and so forth. Um, there are no tales
Speaker 1: of God's skipping around in different ages of the universe.
Speaker 1: So obviously time is an undeniable fact of our of
Speaker 1: our physical reality. But I was trying to think about, like,
Speaker 1: how is it that humans first put together a concept
Speaker 1: of time, a time as a kind of substance that
Speaker 1: they could talk about and and manipulate with and sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, turn around and look at within the mind
Speaker 1: and uh so, uh so. One really interesting source that
Speaker 1: came across addressing this is a section in a book
Speaker 1: called The Unfolding of Language, An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's
Speaker 1: greatest invention. This is by an author named Guide Deutscher.
Speaker 1: This book was published by McMillan in two thousand five.
Speaker 1: Deutscher is an academic linguist. He used to be affiliated
Speaker 1: with Cambridge and with the University of leyden Um. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if he has any affiliations now, but shout
Speaker 1: out quickly that I came to this connection to Guy
Speaker 1: Deutscher's work by way of a mention in a Live
Speaker 1: Science article by Adam Man, which actually pointed me in
Speaker 1: the direction of two very interesting sources. So so good
Speaker 1: on that article. But the reason I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about this book by by Guy Deutscher here is that
Speaker 1: it addresses what we can learn from metaphors in everyday
Speaker 1: speech about the way our minds work. And so the
Speaker 1: entry point here is that he's talking about the contrast
Speaker 1: between poetic metaphors, metaphors that arouse a sense of strangeness
Speaker 1: and wonder and utterly mundane metaphors. So a couple of
Speaker 1: examples we can compare. Imagine you are reading a poem
Speaker 1: and you come across the line tread softly because you
Speaker 1: tread on my dreams. This is a famous passage from
Speaker 1: a poem by William Butler Yates. Uh. And there's a
Speaker 1: conceptual leap here that makes this image of treading upon
Speaker 1: dreams striking. You're asked to imagine physically stepping on a
Speaker 1: purely mental construct without physical form, And I think it's
Speaker 1: that gap. It's like exactly to the degree that it
Speaker 1: doesn't quite fit, and yet you can still understand what
Speaker 1: it means that makes the metaphor striking. Yeah, and now
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining his dreams as just a big old snack,
Speaker 1: big yellow snack on the ground, and uh no, step
Speaker 1: on snack. Um. But I'm sure that's not what what
Speaker 1: the poet originally intended. My dreams are rattling and hissing
Speaker 1: and bearing fangs. Venom is dripping from the fangs of
Speaker 1: my dreams. But so anyway, so yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: good poetic metaphor, and it strikes us as poetic. It's
Speaker 1: it's like strange it makes us have that feeling of
Speaker 1: all you get when you read it and when you
Speaker 1: read a good poem. But then, uh, deut your contrasts
Speaker 1: that with reading a news or goal about a senator
Speaker 1: proposing tough legislation to fight crime. Now, this is not
Speaker 1: a striking metaphor. It's utterly mundane. And yet if you
Speaker 1: stop to think about it, the concept of tough legislation
Speaker 1: is just as much of a leap as treading on dreams.
Speaker 1: Like you hear, you're saying that this intangible sort of
Speaker 1: social thing a law, has the quality of a physical material,
Speaker 1: like it would be difficult to cut or chew. And
Speaker 1: so why do these phrases feel so different? Well, Deutscher
Speaker 1: argues that it's mostly because of familiarity. Tough legislation uses
Speaker 1: a familiar, even cliche, metaphorical understanding of toughness, so it's
Speaker 1: not surprising or striking in the way that treading on
Speaker 1: dreams is. And he notes that metaphors that are so
Speaker 1: familiar that they've lost their vitality and they no longer
Speaker 1: strike us as poetic are sometimes referred to as dead metaphors,
Speaker 1: which I think the irony there maybe not irony the
Speaker 1: The interesting thing is that's a literary cliche, dead metaphors,
Speaker 1: invoking a biological metaphor to describe the effects of words
Speaker 1: and phrases. Oh. One that comes to mind instantly, and
Speaker 1: perhaps because we're talking about time, is the idea of
Speaker 1: killing time to do that all the time. But it
Speaker 1: it doesn't really do anything like it doesn't. I feel
Speaker 1: like the phrase killing time does not really summon any
Speaker 1: kind of novel image in my mind. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: me think about time as an organism, or time as
Speaker 1: the body or anything. It's just this dumb thing people say.
Speaker 1: But that I think, actually killing time would be an
Speaker 1: incredibly striking metaphor. If you've never heard that before and
Speaker 1: you just came across it in a poem. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: first person who said it was probably a genius. Yeah,
Speaker 1: imagining time is a little creature that's being bludgeoned to
Speaker 1: death by your I don't know, by your youth scrolling
Speaker 1: your phone. But then jumping off this point, he goes
Speaker 1: on to make what I think is a really interesting point.
Speaker 1: So I just want to read from from Deutscher's book here.
Speaker 1: But there's more familiarity than individual acquaintance. For most to
Speaker 1: force in ordinary language, are also familiar on a much
Speaker 1: deeper level. Suppose, for instance, that during an election campaign,
Speaker 1: you read in a newspaper that quote critics derided the
Speaker 1: new election manifesto as nothing more than a sou flay
Speaker 1: of promises. This phrase is clearly metaphorical, since by anyone's standards,
Speaker 1: a sou flay is is properly made of egg whites,
Speaker 1: not promises. But although you may never have heard this
Speaker 1: particular metaphor before, it is still unlikely to strike you
Speaker 1: as a great poet at coup or as something entirely
Speaker 1: out of the ordinary. The reason must be that sous
Speaker 1: flay of promises belongs to a larger context, which is familiar.
Speaker 1: And uh so this is because Deutscher argues, quite strangely,
Speaker 1: metaphors based in food, eating and cooking are very commonly
Speaker 1: used to describe mental phenomena such as ideas, thoughts, and emotions.
Speaker 1: And then he goes on to just give a huge
Speaker 1: laundry list of examples. You can think of anger, simmering, resentment, boiling,
Speaker 1: or uh, Johnny is chewing over a new concept. You
Speaker 1: need time to digest this information. Uh. You know the
Speaker 1: people won't swallow these lies or are you just gonna
Speaker 1: lap up that pablum from those politicians? People devour books
Speaker 1: and so forth. Um, he says. We can have sweet dreams,
Speaker 1: bitter hatreds, sour relations, half baked ideas and just goes
Speaker 1: on and on. Once you notice it. It's astonishing how
Speaker 1: much of the way we talk about feelings and ideas
Speaker 1: is based in food. M m. Yeah, and of course
Speaker 1: all the most I think most of these examples we've
Speaker 1: been rolling through here or an over them anyway, have
Speaker 1: distinct ties to Western cuisine, so of course we can
Speaker 1: easily imagine that in in various other uh international cuisines
Speaker 1: and in other languages, you have the same thing going on. Yeah, totally, totally,
Speaker 1: and in fact, I think we we've even talked about
Speaker 1: this to some extent on the show before. Like metaphors,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of mental content, metaphors based in food.
Speaker 1: They're common in other cultures, not so much in English
Speaker 1: speaking ones. I do wonder though, if the sufflet of
Speaker 1: promises is not lost on folks who haven't themselves made
Speaker 1: or attempted to make a soufflay, because it seems to
Speaker 1: me like part of it is the idea that yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a laborious process to make, and then
Speaker 1: it deflates, can easily deflate. It's kind of an empty dish,
Speaker 1: and in some regard that even though it looks fantastic,
Speaker 1: it is mostly air. And if you don't actualize that,
Speaker 1: then then maybe something of the metaphor is lost. You know, honestly,
Speaker 1: I did not even consciously make that connection. Maybe unconsciously
Speaker 1: I did, But you've opened my mind to a new
Speaker 1: new dimension of the super You. Maybe you're too familiar
Speaker 1: with the souflay and you take it for like me.
Speaker 1: I I rarely make sufflay, and when I do, I
Speaker 1: am intimidated by the process because I know what is
Speaker 1: involved and what is what is possible, Like I don't
Speaker 1: trust myself enough. Uh, I'm ever on guard. You are
Speaker 1: right to fear it. Anyway. To pick back up with
Speaker 1: the Deutscher, so he summarizes what he's just been talking
Speaker 1: about by saying, quote, there's a well established link in
Speaker 1: our mind between the two domains which unites all the
Speaker 1: individual images into a broader conceptual metaphor. Ideas are food.
Speaker 1: And thus, when we hear a phrase like suffle of
Speaker 1: promises the image does not sound so surprising because it
Speaker 1: fits neatly into this familiar frame. And so for Deutscher,
Speaker 1: this is an example of conceptual metaphors. The the quote
Speaker 1: mappings of one domain onto another, and so uh, for
Speaker 1: some reason, maybe it might be interesting to speculate on
Speaker 1: what that reason would be. It's just very easy for
Speaker 1: us to think about the domain of thoughts and feelings
Speaker 1: in terms of the domain of food. But this isn't
Speaker 1: the only conceptual mapping like this. And here's where we
Speaker 1: get back to time. Deutscher makes the case that there
Speaker 1: is a similar natural metaphorical domain overlap between time and space. Now,
Speaker 1: on one hand, you might think, well, that totally makes sense,
Speaker 1: because you a twenty one century person who is somewhat
Speaker 1: literate in the sciences, you know that space and time
Speaker 1: are actually linked in modern physics. But the point is
Speaker 1: that these conventions of language long predate Einstein or any
Speaker 1: knowledge of general relativity or the concept of space time.
Speaker 1: Since prehistory, there is clear evidence in language itself that
Speaker 1: humans have naturally tended to think and talk about time
Speaker 1: as if time were a type of space, or as
Speaker 1: if the rules of space applied to it. So once
Speaker 1: again Deutscher gives a ton of examples. He writes, quote,
Speaker 1: consider some of the simplest words we use to describe
Speaker 1: spatial relations, prepositions such as in at by, from to, behind, within,
Speaker 1: and through, And then he gives a ton of examples
Speaker 1: within actual phrases. So the idea of like from London
Speaker 1: to Paris, you can compare to from Monday to Friday,
Speaker 1: or in England the same way you would say in
Speaker 1: January or in the sixteenth century, you can stand at
Speaker 1: the door or you can arrive at noon. All these prepositions,
Speaker 1: He's saying a flow originally from the linguistic domain of
Speaker 1: space and come to be applied to time. Uh. And
Speaker 1: beyond this, he argues that this is not just a
Speaker 1: quirk of English. This is true of literally every language
Speaker 1: that has ever been studied. There are no exceptions. Every
Speaker 1: language on Earth talks about time as if it were
Speaker 1: a type of space, which suggests something. If that's true,
Speaker 1: suggests something very ancient and powerful about that link in
Speaker 1: our consciousness. I'm reminded of a part of Barry Lopez's
Speaker 1: book Arctic Dreams, where he's talking about this um conversation
Speaker 1: between an Arctic Arctic explorer and uh an Inuit uh
Speaker 1: and the Inuit man has has asked of this pair
Speaker 1: of binoculars allows him to see into tomorrow and um
Speaker 1: and in this particular instance, you know, there's a certain
Speaker 1: amount of you know, perhaps a lot of it's about
Speaker 1: the languages here, you know, and uh and uh. But
Speaker 1: it it kind of gets to this idea too of
Speaker 1: in a place where you have wide open spaces and
Speaker 1: uh and and you know a fair amount of moving
Speaker 1: around and resources are spread out, like you know what
Speaker 1: the individual is asking like, well, this binoculars allow me
Speaker 1: to see something that I would not be able to
Speaker 1: reach until tomorrow. And that's always just stuck stuck with
Speaker 1: me because it it gets into this it touches on
Speaker 1: this spatial idea of of time but also within a
Speaker 1: realm that in a geography that at least for many
Speaker 1: of us that you know, it makes it a little
Speaker 1: easier to comprehend that firm connection like tomorrow is not
Speaker 1: only um, you know, something that will happen to me,
Speaker 1: It is also it is also a place I will
Speaker 1: be because I know where I can see potentially see
Speaker 1: where I will be tomorrow. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, and I think that's a fantastic point that
Speaker 1: actually connects to something else I wanted to talk about,
Speaker 1: which is um the idea that, Okay, so the metaphorical
Speaker 1: overlap between space and time appears to only flow in
Speaker 1: one direction. You might find a stray counter example somewhere,
Speaker 1: but generally the idea is that our human languages take
Speaker 1: concepts and metaphors that begin as descriptions of space and
Speaker 1: then apply them to time, not the other way around.
Speaker 1: So we talk about the present as if it were
Speaker 1: spatially here, and we visualize the past as if it
Speaker 1: were physically behind us. And like, if you stop to
Speaker 1: think about the physicality even the biology of that, the
Speaker 1: past we imagine usually as in the direction of our butts,
Speaker 1: you know, behind us. The future is physically in front
Speaker 1: of us. And this is one of those great things
Speaker 1: that like it's so mundane that you don't stop to
Speaker 1: notice it. But when you pay attention to that, I
Speaker 1: suspect it's like this and not the other way around.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not that we imagine the future as
Speaker 1: behind us, in the past in front of us because
Speaker 1: of totally contingent facts about how our bodies move. If
Speaker 1: you're walking in a straight line, the area in front
Speaker 1: of you is space that you will occupy in the future,
Speaker 1: and the space behind you is the place you occupied
Speaker 1: in the past. And so you can think about alternative biology,
Speaker 1: different body morphology leading to different conceptions of time. Like
Speaker 1: if crabs evolved to possess abstract intelligence as language, I
Speaker 1: kind of suspect they might visualize the past and future
Speaker 1: to the left and right since they often walk sideways
Speaker 1: instead of forwards and backwards. And then now is simply
Speaker 1: the heat, I guess. Yeah. It also makes you think
Speaker 1: about the way you know, eyes are positioned on different organisms,
Speaker 1: thinking about say, herbivores, whose whose eyes are often positioned
Speaker 1: more on the sides of the head in a way
Speaker 1: to per vide more panoramic view of what's happening, so
Speaker 1: they can have a better idea of where the predators
Speaker 1: are coming in versus the the eyesight of a predator.
Speaker 1: That is more about what is directly in front of me,
Speaker 1: what is the thing I am after? Right? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: that makes me wonder if our conception of time is
Speaker 1: also influenced by our heads being shaped more like carnivore heads.
Speaker 1: But anyway. To wrap up the section about Guy Deutscher's book,
Speaker 1: I just want to read one more thing, he says, quote.
Speaker 1: This link between space and time is so entrenched in
Speaker 1: our cognition that it is extremely difficult to extricate ourselves
Speaker 1: from it and appreciate that time cannot literally be long
Speaker 1: or short, unlike sticks or pieces of string. Nor can
Speaker 1: time literally pass unlike a train. Time cannot go forwards
Speaker 1: and backwards anymore than it goes sideways, diagonally, or downwards.
Speaker 1: Time doesn't actually go anywhere at all. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: think this is a great point. The link in our
Speaker 1: language is so deep it's difficult even to talk about
Speaker 1: it because we don't really have any language for time
Speaker 1: that is not a metaphor based on space, except maybe
Speaker 1: in pure mathematical expressions. Yeah, we have this, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you said, we have this, This entire suite, multiple suites
Speaker 1: of of terms we used to talk about time, and
Speaker 1: yet very often we're we're at a lack to to
Speaker 1: really define time. Um and and certainly it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to just really settle in on a definition of what
Speaker 1: it is. What one that I often come back to
Speaker 1: is the idea of time is the rate of change
Speaker 1: in the universe. And if you if you stop yourself
Speaker 1: and all, if you stop yourself and all of this
Speaker 1: and start like asking questions about time travel in that,
Speaker 1: like in regards to the rate of change in the universe,
Speaker 1: things get silly really quickly, you know, like, like what
Speaker 1: is time? It's the rate of change in the universe? Well,
Speaker 1: can I can I do that backwards? Going to do
Speaker 1: that in reverse? Uh? Can I like travel back? Like
Speaker 1: it's like asking is this It's like saying, you know it,
Speaker 1: I really like wet I would like to travel to wet.
Speaker 1: What do you mean you would like to travel to?
Speaker 1: What you want to travel to? Somewhere that is wet
Speaker 1: because you can't just travel to wet Yeah exactly. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great metaphor. And even then, I mean it
Speaker 1: makes you wonder. Okay. So on one hand, I think
Speaker 1: the rate of change in the universe is a good
Speaker 1: way of trying to describe what time is. But does
Speaker 1: the does the idea of rate not itself in a
Speaker 1: way kind of assume time Like it's just yeah, there's
Speaker 1: it's you can't get under it, right, it's it is
Speaker 1: in it in itself it's also an imperfect definition. UM,
Speaker 1: but I guess the reason I come back to it
Speaker 1: is that it is significantly different from this a lot
Speaker 1: of these metaphors that we end up using. So it
Speaker 1: kind of it kind of throws a wrench into your
Speaker 1: your cognitive process, you know, totally. Oh and I guess
Speaker 1: one last thing. This isn't strictly about time, but I
Speaker 1: just thought I would mention it because I thought it
Speaker 1: was interesting. Deutscher actually does go beyond this. So he
Speaker 1: goes from talking about how metaphors of space are applied
Speaker 1: to time, but then they keep being applied to even
Speaker 1: deeper levels of uh of other concepts and language. Uh.
Speaker 1: So he makes this argument about how about how concepts
Speaker 1: of space flow through metaphorical use to time, and then
Speaker 1: from time to causes or reasons and all these other things.
Speaker 1: So you have something you have a preposition like from
Speaker 1: which originally describes space, so you could be from Tucson, Arizona,
Speaker 1: and then that can be applied to time, so you
Speaker 1: can remember something from last Tuesday, and then that can
Speaker 1: be applied to causes or reasons for things. So the
Speaker 1: example he gives is he shivers from the cold Anyway,
Speaker 1: I love stuff like this because there's so much that's
Speaker 1: fascinating about the way that we use language. I guess
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to me because we all do it, and
Speaker 1: we do it all the time, and we don't notice
Speaker 1: we're doing it. So just being asked to stop and
Speaker 1: observe the words you're using and what that reveals about
Speaker 1: how you think is is often extremely eye opening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this this linear view of things that it
Speaker 1: falls into everything, like even as we talk about ideas,
Speaker 1: you know, we we're building things out of sentences. We're
Speaker 1: talking about uh forming an idea out of this and
Speaker 1: uh building up to this idea, arriving at this conclusion
Speaker 1: and so forth. Yeah. Thank As I was thinking about
Speaker 1: all this, I started thinking about some of the terms
Speaker 1: used by Merchia eliade Um, who you know, in in
Speaker 1: his work, you often have this this separation of time
Speaker 1: into mythic time and profane time. So mythic time is
Speaker 1: when gods and heroes experience their victories, defeats, and their
Speaker 1: dramas you know, at the time of of mythic stories
Speaker 1: playing out um, during during which these these various exploits
Speaker 1: shaped the earth, shaped our culture. But then during profane time,
Speaker 1: nothing that we do has any value except to the
Speaker 1: extent that it recreates or in some way connects us
Speaker 1: with events that occurred during mythic time. Right. So Eliote
Speaker 1: was a was a scholar of religion, and yeah, I
Speaker 1: understand this was one of his main points. It was
Speaker 1: that a lot of what we think of as religion
Speaker 1: either is or is derived from attempts to recreate or
Speaker 1: re enact uh, things that allegedly took place in this
Speaker 1: other mythic time. Right. And of course this connection that
Speaker 1: he's talking about between mythic past and propain present, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not quite like a physical journey, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, via time machine between two times, though, though
Speaker 1: I suppose characters who venture into a realm of gods
Speaker 1: or spirits is in some way they are making a
Speaker 1: journey into mythic time, a realm where mythic time is
Speaker 1: either still going on or perhaps is has just happened,
Speaker 1: or is in some way you know, more present. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. Again, it's not nothing like these modern ideas
Speaker 1: of time travel, but um, but it certainly got me
Speaker 1: thinking about all of this, oh absolutely. And to stay
Speaker 1: on the subject of myth and religion. I mean, one
Speaker 1: thing that I think is kind of interesting and understanding
Speaker 1: how humans imagine time throughout history is sort of the
Speaker 1: difference between myth and legend as generally understood by by
Speaker 1: scholars of religion, where uh, the idea is that myth
Speaker 1: is a story that takes place, uh, you know, often
Speaker 1: telling some kind of origin of something, but it's also
Speaker 1: a story that takes place, usually in a time that
Speaker 1: is somehow removed from your own timeline, whereas legend is
Speaker 1: something that appears to blur into your own, your own
Speaker 1: actual history. So they might both be stories that are
Speaker 1: not like literal descriptions of things that took place in
Speaker 1: the past, but myth it's kind of like it would
Speaker 1: be hard to say when the myth actually took place,
Speaker 1: whereas you could say a legend is about some thing
Speaker 1: that allegedly happened a thousand years ago, right, So like
Speaker 1: a legendary king, a legendary emperor is in many cases
Speaker 1: the sort of individual that historians and archaeologists can look
Speaker 1: to and say, like, well, who's the actual person that
Speaker 1: this may be based upon. Whereas when you get into
Speaker 1: the mythic mythic kings mythic emperors. These are figures that
Speaker 1: are often uh, you know, indecipherable from God's not to
Speaker 1: say that they don't uh there's not a potential for
Speaker 1: some connection to actual living humans, but uh, in many cases, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is about the things that occurred before the stories
Speaker 1: that define the world in which we live. I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting that there are different ways to imagine the past,
Speaker 1: whether or not what you're imagining is is accurate or not.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's sort of beside the point right now.
Speaker 1: Just like if you're imagining what happened long ago, there
Speaker 1: are sort of different timelines. You know, is there there's
Speaker 1: a past that's kind of inaccessible to us, and then
Speaker 1: the past that you can at least imagine as being accessible,
Speaker 1: even if you don't think you could say, travel back
Speaker 1: to it. And I think in a way that has
Speaker 1: sort of changed maybe in twentieth century science fiction at
Speaker 1: least where one thing that seems true may being disagree
Speaker 1: rob about twentieth century science fiction is that, uh, this
Speaker 1: imagines there's a leveling effect where okay, no, now there's
Speaker 1: just there's a timeline, and if you have a time machine,
Speaker 1: you can go back to anything forward or backward that
Speaker 1: actually happened or will actually happen. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of you know something else that the
Speaker 1: iliat was was big on this idea of archaic cultures
Speaker 1: accessing circular sacred time, a time of origins and creations,
Speaker 1: while modern cultures use a linear sacred time that is
Speaker 1: essentially bolted onto the timeline of profane time. Um. But
Speaker 1: but in all of the the you know, the origin
Speaker 1: of things was important. Uh. So, like, just thinking again
Speaker 1: about mythic time, it in some ways it feels like, well,
Speaker 1: the mythic time is more real, like it's more of
Speaker 1: a real place than uh, you know, whatever happened last
Speaker 1: year was whatever happened last year wasn't important at all,
Speaker 1: at least aside from any ways in which it recreated
Speaker 1: mythic time. Um. And so I was I was thinking about, like, well,
Speaker 1: twenty century ideas of all of this, um. And it
Speaker 1: made me made me think about, well, some of our
Speaker 1: our time travel stories are modern time travel stories. And
Speaker 1: I started thinking about back to the future, which I
Speaker 1: don't know where this falls in your introduction to time travel, Joe,
Speaker 1: but I have a feeling that either back to the
Speaker 1: future or the old adaptation like the nineteen fifties or
Speaker 1: sixties adaptation of the time Machine. One of those was
Speaker 1: my first introduction to the idea of time travel, and
Speaker 1: it was it was probably Back to the Future. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't say for sure, but Back to the Future
Speaker 1: has got to be up there for me. It was
Speaker 1: certainly one of the earliest, and it benefits from being
Speaker 1: the kind of movie that feels can nicle. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: even when you're a kid, I think you detect some
Speaker 1: kind of differences in the quality of cinema, even at
Speaker 1: that age where I liked every movie I saw, there
Speaker 1: are some movies that feel kind of like, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: just some weird thing I saw on TV one time,
Speaker 1: And there are other movies that feel like a part
Speaker 1: of the canon of of culture and and Back to
Speaker 1: the Future felt that way. Yeah, absolutely, And so it
Speaker 1: got me wondering thinking back on it now, to what
Speaker 1: extent any time travel story is essentially taking a particular
Speaker 1: time in the past. Obviously, we're just talking about time
Speaker 1: travel stories that concerned the past and establishing it is
Speaker 1: a kind of sacred time, one that explains conditions in
Speaker 1: our profane present time and m you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of Back to the Future, Uh, you know, this is
Speaker 1: this is a story that doesn't just concern the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. It idolizes the mid nineteen fifties, It fetishizes
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. Uh, it's this is a time of
Speaker 1: great admiration for this film, a period of of iconic
Speaker 1: and highly sanitized American nostalgia. Um. And it is also
Speaker 1: the time that defines our characters. You know, this is
Speaker 1: the this is the age during which Marty McFly's parents
Speaker 1: were themselves youth. This is the time during which they
Speaker 1: would come together and eventually create Marty McFly. Well, in
Speaker 1: another way, you could almost say that in Back to
Speaker 1: the Future, Marty McFly travels back to a cinematic nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties more than a real nineteen fifties, Like he's traveling
Speaker 1: to a mythic time almost because it's like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: sort of what you're because like the stuff he sees
Speaker 1: when he gets there are not so much based in history,
Speaker 1: but they're based on the images people remember from like
Speaker 1: movies and TV of the nineteen fifties. So you know,
Speaker 1: the soda shop with the counter and the you know,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. It is a mythic reality
Speaker 1: that explains the origins of things and uh and and
Speaker 1: and and and provides the idea of how things should be. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's it's kind of interesting to think
Speaker 1: about the Back of the Future in terms of of
Speaker 1: Iliades writings. By the way, I had to do the
Speaker 1: math on this because I always find this kind of
Speaker 1: thing um interesting but also um alarming. You know, it
Speaker 1: makes me feel old to realize this. So this is
Speaker 1: a movie back to the Future that concerned a jaunt
Speaker 1: from night five to nineteen fifty five. If you were
Speaker 1: to take an identical jaunt today from the year one,
Speaker 1: that would take you back to the year nineteen one,
Speaker 1: that is the year that Highlander two came out. Christof
Speaker 1: Lambert goes back thirty years, gives himself a pep talk, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like tells him how to stand up for himself.
Speaker 1: Ends up with Lambert punching Sean Connery in the face. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see it. Also the year of dan Ackroid's
Speaker 1: nothing but Trouble, pivotal time, mythic time for American culture.
Speaker 1: They're also cool as Ice, the Vanilla Ice movie. Well, hell,
Speaker 1: there you go, a time of heroes and gods. Basically,
Speaker 1: what we're saying was a weird year for films. It's
Speaker 1: when you try to look for the real standouts. I
Speaker 1: mean there are You've got stuff like Barton Faint going on. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, but you know it's also the year of
Speaker 1: stuff like Freddie's Dead, the Final Nightmare. Oh, we did
Speaker 1: have a time travel a movie there. We also had
Speaker 1: Bill and Ted came out their Bogus Journey. That would
Speaker 1: be the second one. Okay, well we gotta stop this
Speaker 1: or we'll just keep going. Okay, the whole episodes. So anyway,
Speaker 1: just getting back at the basic point, mainstream time travel
Speaker 1: tropes um are not that old, and we'll explore some
Speaker 1: examples of this shortly. Um. While time travel narratives are
Speaker 1: in some ways like other complex ways of thinking about
Speaker 1: the past and the present, they're not quite the same.
Speaker 1: But you can easily get into just a whole argument
Speaker 1: of like looking back at old things and old stories
Speaker 1: and saying, to what extent is this time travel? To
Speaker 1: what extent is it not? Because think about a lot
Speaker 1: of modern time travel stories. What happens you have Marty McFly,
Speaker 1: he goes back, what does he do he meets his dad.
Speaker 1: You know, uh, there are other tales of this sort.
Speaker 1: You know where you're it's about connecting with ancestors, and
Speaker 1: of course communication and connection with ancestors is widespread in
Speaker 1: religion and myth and folklore, though these generally take on
Speaker 1: the forum of spirit communication of some sort, not physical
Speaker 1: or even holographic journeys. Right, a lot of the time
Speaker 1: travel stories about interacting with ancestors are either there, uh,
Speaker 1: to recall some of the language we used in our
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema episode about time after time, they're often
Speaker 1: debugging history stories where you're trying to go back and
Speaker 1: fix something that went wrong with one of your ancestors,
Speaker 1: to make the present better, or to undo the mischief
Speaker 1: of another time traveler who screwed up the future by
Speaker 1: doing something with your ancestors. And sometimes there are some
Speaker 1: stories where they, you know, they try to maintain the
Speaker 1: consistent timeline by having a person go back and like
Speaker 1: do something with their ancestors that in turn was necessary
Speaker 1: for the present to happen the way it did. You know,
Speaker 1: the stories of paradoxes where somebody goes back and they
Speaker 1: become their own grandfather or something creepy. Yeah. Now for
Speaker 1: some answers, UH, in all of this, I look to
Speaker 1: a wonderful book came out in two thousand one by
Speaker 1: Paul J. Nayan, an electrical engineer and science author. It's
Speaker 1: called Time Travel, Time Machines, Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics
Speaker 1: and Science Fiction. And it's a it's a real fun,
Speaker 1: very readable book. You can still get copies of this.
Speaker 1: I think there's been a couple of at least a
Speaker 1: couple of editions that have come out over the years.
Speaker 1: UM and UH. It deals with everything that's mentioned in
Speaker 1: the title, but probably focusing more here on just gleaning
Speaker 1: some of the sci fi references from it, because he
Speaker 1: does a great job about talking about, uh, the different
Speaker 1: types of time travel narratives that we have and what
Speaker 1: are some of the earlier examples of them. Uh. And
Speaker 1: he identifies a sort of related precursor to tales of
Speaker 1: ventures into the future UM, as well as I guess
Speaker 1: into the past in the form of stories and accounts
Speaker 1: of visions of the future. So back before the Time
Speaker 1: Machine by H. D Wells, you had as early as
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty six popular English language tales that's speculated on
Speaker 1: the far future, such as an eighteen fifty six Harper's
Speaker 1: article that pondered what the year three thousand would be like.
Speaker 1: It was titled January one a d three thousand, and
Speaker 1: it was apparently by an anonymous author, but I think
Speaker 1: it was at least edited by Alfred A. Gern Say,
Speaker 1: But I'm not not exactly sure if if an actual
Speaker 1: author has ever been attributed to this piece, or if
Speaker 1: it remains just anonymous. I bet it was absolutely prophetic.
Speaker 1: I had to look it up. Harper's magazine still has it,
Speaker 1: and I think it's in their archives, so you have
Speaker 1: to be a subscriber. That's probably the best way to
Speaker 1: see it. I think I was able to find an
Speaker 1: exert of it and google books. Uh, it seems pretty farcical,
Speaker 1: so don't expect any thing to sci fi. Lots of
Speaker 1: pondering over what sorts of stupid things men of the
Speaker 1: far future will where. There's some great illustrations from this um.
Speaker 1: This article included them here for you, Joe. Everybody looks
Speaker 1: like uh like Scottish warrior dandies. Yes, and in a
Speaker 1: way you know, I don't know, these aren't too far
Speaker 1: off the off the mark. I guess you know, but
Speaker 1: you know it concerns the very sorts of time travel
Speaker 1: social commentary you might expect today, like when a time
Speaker 1: traveler is a gas to learn that individual freedom has
Speaker 1: been um, you know, has been um violated by state
Speaker 1: sanctioned diets and actually get your burgers in the future. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's that sort of thing, so, you know, which
Speaker 1: is not to say that you know that this art.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't mean to criticize this article because again,
Speaker 1: this is the sort of thing that still goes on today.
Speaker 1: And as one can imagine, it can be done well,
Speaker 1: and it can also be done you know, crudely or ineffectually,
Speaker 1: but anyway, it is a noteworthy example. Now, weirdly, a
Speaker 1: major nineteenth century example of multidirectional time travel is by
Speaker 1: Charles Dickens. You wouldn't have expected him to be one
Speaker 1: of the pioneers in this area, but we have it
Speaker 1: in the form of a Christmas carol, which, you know,
Speaker 1: great story. We often missed some of the finer social
Speaker 1: points of it, but it's a it's a story that
Speaker 1: has become a part of Western holiday traditions. Like it's
Speaker 1: it's a narrative we put up there almost with the
Speaker 1: you know, the tales of Santa Claus and the Baby Jesus.
Speaker 1: But it is essentially about time travel visions, you know.
Speaker 1: I guess you can you can critique and say, well,
Speaker 1: it's happening within the context of a dream. And I
Speaker 1: don't know to what extent he's actually being visited by spirits,
Speaker 1: But I don't know. I always think of them as
Speaker 1: actual spirits. I think of these as actual visions that
Speaker 1: are brought to him by supernatural entities. Yeah. Sure, I
Speaker 1: mean it's fiction, you know. Yeah, the spirits are coming
Speaker 1: to him and uh, yeah, he's he gets to see
Speaker 1: the past, the present, and the future. Yeah, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that's the great thing about the stories. You
Speaker 1: can think of it in different ways. It's like, to
Speaker 1: what extent is Scrooge just simply having this this night
Speaker 1: of intense dreaming and and and and reflection and pondering
Speaker 1: about the future. He's engaging in mental time travel, which
Speaker 1: of course is something that that that that humans have
Speaker 1: in general, that allows us to form these simulations of
Speaker 1: the past that too varying degrees may be correct. Uh,
Speaker 1: And then compare those two simulations of what the future
Speaker 1: might hold and and various simulations about how that future
Speaker 1: situation will affect us, how will respond, etcetera. So you
Speaker 1: can just say that, or you can go with the
Speaker 1: more fun idea that like actual beings from beyond the
Speaker 1: grave came and visited him and took him on journeys,
Speaker 1: you know, through the through, through the past, and the
Speaker 1: president in the future. Right, and so, while a lot
Speaker 1: of the modern sci fi time travel I think is
Speaker 1: clearly traceable back to two H. G. Wells and the
Speaker 1: stories he wrote in the eighteen nineties and uh, mainly
Speaker 1: the novel The Time the Time Machine in right, this
Speaker 1: goes back significantly earlier. Christmas Carol came out in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty three. Yeah, now you have even earlier stories. They
Speaker 1: get closer to a whole trope or or about to discuss.
Speaker 1: There's a Bulgarian tale from eighteen twenty four about a
Speaker 1: Russian hero who swept overboard at sea and he becomes
Speaker 1: wrapped in an herb known as the UH is the
Speaker 1: root of life and UH, and then he comes to
Speaker 1: in the year four. I love how some of many
Speaker 1: of these older time travel stories they just go for it.
Speaker 1: They just go like a thousand years into the future. Um,
Speaker 1: you don't seem like you don't see as much of that,
Speaker 1: and and I don't know many of the stories we
Speaker 1: were you know, we grow even I guess I fall
Speaker 1: back to the patterns set by Back to the Future,
Speaker 1: Like what are you looking at your traveling into the
Speaker 1: time of your parents, or you're traveling into the time
Speaker 1: of your children, which I think makes a lot of
Speaker 1: sense because that's a very human perspective of individual perspective
Speaker 1: level of time travel. That's the that's generally the spectrum
Speaker 1: that we're most concerned about, or should be I guess
Speaker 1: most concerned about it is like where do we come from?
Speaker 1: And what sort of world are we leaving for our children?
Speaker 1: I wonder if the tendency for for time travel journeys
Speaker 1: to become more modest in scale, you know, people going
Speaker 1: a hundred years into the future instead of a thousand. Uh,
Speaker 1: if that happens in the twentieth century because of the
Speaker 1: increasing rate of cultural and technological change in the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: like people living in a time where things see it
Speaker 1: will seem at least and I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: an objective way to measure this, but seem at least
Speaker 1: to be changing faster than ever. Did they start to think, like,
Speaker 1: I can't set this a thousand years in the future,
Speaker 1: because like nothing will even be recognizable. I've got to
Speaker 1: I've got to pull the pull the reins back a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: getting into the concept of future shock, right, the idea
Speaker 1: that it just seems like things are moving at such
Speaker 1: a terrific level, I can't possibly predict what it's going
Speaker 1: to be like in uh, you know, in just ten
Speaker 1: years now. One of the interesting things there is, of course,
Speaker 1: that the concept of future shock, that there could be
Speaker 1: almost this trauma and anxiety associated with the the rate
Speaker 1: of technological advancement. This didn't come about till nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: This was American futurist Alvin Toffler and his spouse Adelaide. Uh.
Speaker 1: They they formulated this concept. So, I don't know, it
Speaker 1: would be interesting to look at the sci fi. At
Speaker 1: sci fi from the nineteen seventies, was was it less
Speaker 1: less um likely to look at near future situations and
Speaker 1: more likely to gaze into the far future, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of like the early earlier work of Frank Herbert
Speaker 1: looking into the far future Humanity and Dune. Because it
Speaker 1: seems like by the time we get into the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: you have far more of a tendency with sci fi
Speaker 1: authors to look into an immediate future. But I could
Speaker 1: be way off off the path there. I'm just probably
Speaker 1: cherry picking thinking about various works from different decades that
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with. Well, we we teased earlier the question
Speaker 1: of how far back in history the concept of time
Speaker 1: travel actually goes. It's clear again that a lot of
Speaker 1: modern time travel, I think is largely traceable back to H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells and The Time Machine. Again, that's the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: but there are ideas of time travel from before that.
Speaker 1: Like we've been discussing how far before that. So I
Speaker 1: was looking around for evidence of the oldest stories of
Speaker 1: time travel and literature, and I came across an interesting
Speaker 1: claim from a professor, actually a professor at Georgia Tech
Speaker 1: named Lisa Yazik, who is a professor of science fiction studies.
Speaker 1: So I was watching a video lecture that she did
Speaker 1: in about She actually wrote the preface or introduction to
Speaker 1: a recent new edition of of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells,
Speaker 1: and she's done a lot of study about the history
Speaker 1: of time travel stories actually connected her also by a
Speaker 1: mentioned in that article by by Adam Man in Life Science.
Speaker 1: But Yesik actually has a lot of of interesting thoughts
Speaker 1: about time travel. She argues that it is not as
Speaker 1: modern a literary concept as we might assume, and in fact,
Speaker 1: some forms of time travel are as old as literature itself.
Speaker 1: And so what would be the examples here? Well, she
Speaker 1: gives the example of the ancient Sanskrit epic the Mahabarita,
Speaker 1: which describes a form of time travel that yeas it
Speaker 1: calls time dilation. So this would be similar to the
Speaker 1: type of time travel that is quite real a confirmed
Speaker 1: part of modern physics that we know from general relativity,
Speaker 1: where say, if you are um, if you are near
Speaker 1: an object of great mass, or if you are moving
Speaker 1: at great velocity, then relative to other objects in the universe,
Speaker 1: your experience of time will slow down. You will age
Speaker 1: more slowly, as as time sort of zips by in
Speaker 1: the broader context. But this story is not about physics,
Speaker 1: so uh. This story in the Mahabarata probably dates back
Speaker 1: to sometime in the first millennium b c. E UH,
Speaker 1: and it is the story of a king named Rivada,
Speaker 1: who is also known as Kakudman and his daughter Ravati
Speaker 1: actually found a good text of this story, though it
Speaker 1: is the version that's told not in the Mahabarata but
Speaker 1: in the Vishnu Puranha. And so this version is from
Speaker 1: the Vishnu Puranha, and it's translated into English in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century by Horace Hayman Wilson. So the story begins
Speaker 1: with this king Ravada, who is the eldest of a
Speaker 1: hundred brethren. And King Ravada has a surpassingly wonderful daughter
Speaker 1: named Ravati, and she is just awesome and lovely in
Speaker 1: every possible way. She's like the best princess ever. And
Speaker 1: in fact, Ravati is so great that Rivada doesn't know
Speaker 1: if there are really any men around who are worthy
Speaker 1: of her hand in marriage. So he gets an idea.
Speaker 1: He is going to consult the heads. He will travel
Speaker 1: to the Brahma realm, the plane of existence where the
Speaker 1: god Brahma dwells, and he will consult with the great God.
Speaker 1: He will get the advice of Brahma, because if anybody
Speaker 1: should be able to find him a suitable match for Ravati,
Speaker 1: it should be Brahma. But when the two of them
Speaker 1: get there, Brahma is in the middle of listening to
Speaker 1: a concert. They're they're a group of of divine singers
Speaker 1: who are who are going through a song. And so
Speaker 1: Ravada and Ravati sit and wait patiently for the song
Speaker 1: to finish. And here I'm going to quote from the
Speaker 1: Wilson translation. At the end of their singing, Ravada prostrated
Speaker 1: himself before Brahma and explained his Errand whom should you
Speaker 1: wish for a son in law? Demanded Brahma, And the
Speaker 1: King mentioned to him various persons with whom he could
Speaker 1: be well pleased. Nodding his head gently and graciously smiling,
Speaker 1: Brahma said to him, of those whom you have named,
Speaker 1: the third or fourth generation no longer survives, for many
Speaker 1: successions of ages have passed away whilst you were listening
Speaker 1: to our songsters. Now upon earth, the great age of
Speaker 1: the present Manu is nearly finished, and the Collie period
Speaker 1: is at hand. You must therefore bestow this virgin gym
Speaker 1: upon some other husband, for you are now alone, and
Speaker 1: your friends, your minister's servants, wife, kinsman, armies, and treasures
Speaker 1: have long since been swept away by the hand of time.
Speaker 1: So the issue here is that time flows at a
Speaker 1: different rate on Earth than it does in the Brahma realm.
Speaker 1: It's as if the Brahma realm were like near a
Speaker 1: supermassive black hole. So while the two mortals were sitting
Speaker 1: here listening to this song, presumably the song's only a
Speaker 1: few minutes long, millions of years have passed on Earth,
Speaker 1: and everybody they ever knew or knew of is dead. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: there are some immortal god still around, and so there
Speaker 1: is a semi happy ending for Ravati because at the
Speaker 1: end she gets too She gets pared up with one
Speaker 1: of the avatars of the god Vishnu, who is quite
Speaker 1: worthy of her hand in marriage, of course, because he's Vishnu.
Speaker 1: And then there's a long section of the story in
Speaker 1: the Vishnu Puranha version that is just a monologue on
Speaker 1: the nature of Vishnu, who interestingly is in places described
Speaker 1: sort of like a manifestation of time itself. So I
Speaker 1: just want to read some some parts of this monologue,
Speaker 1: not the whole thing. Quote the being of whose commencement,
Speaker 1: course and termination we are ignorant, the unborn and omnipresent
Speaker 1: essence of all things, He who's real and infinite nature
Speaker 1: and essence we do not know is the supreme Vishnu.
Speaker 1: He is time, made up of moments and hours and years,
Speaker 1: whose influence is the source of perpetual change. He is
Speaker 1: the universal form of all things, from birth to death.
Speaker 1: He is eternal, without name or shape, and then skipping
Speaker 1: ahead of it. He is at once the creator, and
Speaker 1: that which is created the preserver, and that which is
Speaker 1: preserved the destroyer, and as one with all things, that
Speaker 1: which is destroyed, and as the indestructible. He is distinct
Speaker 1: from these three vicissitudes. In him is the world. He
Speaker 1: is the world, and he the primeval self born is
Speaker 1: again present in the world. Wow. Yeah, that that reminds
Speaker 1: me of some translations of of the Geta. They they
Speaker 1: translate the words of Ishnu as as I am time
Speaker 1: grown old, which I like that. That yeah, that gives
Speaker 1: me chills. Now. There's another interesting thing that gets mentioned
Speaker 1: in this story, which is that, though there are some
Speaker 1: very important differences between this myth and the dystopian sci
Speaker 1: fi stories of the modern era, Rivada and Ravati do
Speaker 1: return to a future earth that could be called dystopian,
Speaker 1: or at least worse off than the one they left at.
Speaker 1: Don't know if this has to do, it might have
Speaker 1: to do with um what Brahma says about the Earth
Speaker 1: being on the verge of the Collie age. But we
Speaker 1: are told quote being thus instructed by the Lotus born divinity.
Speaker 1: Ravada returned with his daughter to Earth, where he found
Speaker 1: the race of men dwindled in stature, reduced in vigor,
Speaker 1: and enfeebled in intellect. So they come back and people
Speaker 1: are like worse than when they left. Things things have
Speaker 1: gone downhill. And uh So I want to be clear
Speaker 1: that the kind of dystopian future described by H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells in The Time Machine is I believe understood as
Speaker 1: a contingent consequence of bad social and political trends within
Speaker 1: linear time. So I think the important point that Wells
Speaker 1: is trying to make is that if we say, continue
Speaker 1: tolerating a society in which the rich relentlessly exploit the
Speaker 1: labor of the poor, here's what you're gonna get. You know,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get Eloi and morlocks. Um, I don't get
Speaker 1: that kind of implication in this ancient Indian epic. It
Speaker 1: would be good to hear from listeners with more knowledge
Speaker 1: about ancient Hindu thought. But I think the story about
Speaker 1: Ravata and Ravati is more consistent with a vision of
Speaker 1: a kind of cyclical mythic time in which there there
Speaker 1: are ages of human advancement and then ages of human
Speaker 1: retreat and it's just that they happen to pop out
Speaker 1: of the Brahma realm in one of the bad times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's my understanding as well. And of course, this
Speaker 1: this view of time um that is um matches a
Speaker 1: very very loosely with with some of the ideas you
Speaker 1: see in um uh in various Native American tribal cultures
Speaker 1: and in Mesoamerican cultures, where it's a procession of different
Speaker 1: ages and catastrophes and we find ourselves and yet another age,
Speaker 1: and there will be another catastrophe, but then there will
Speaker 1: be another age beyond that. Now, of course this raises
Speaker 1: the question people always want to like pick at logical
Speaker 1: issues in time travel stories, and and this story has
Speaker 1: mythic logic, so it's pointless to try to pick at it.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't help but think, why didn't they just
Speaker 1: wait a few more minutes with Brahma and maybe like
Speaker 1: listen to another song, and then they could pop out
Speaker 1: at a better time on Earth? I don't know. Now.
Speaker 1: I love the idea that it involves um listening to
Speaker 1: to music though, because yeah, I gets into this, like,
Speaker 1: because what happens when we listen to listen to to music?
Speaker 1: You know, that's just one of the many human experiences
Speaker 1: that can alter our perception of time. You know, you
Speaker 1: get lost in a good song, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: sometimes that good song doesn't seem to last long enough.
Speaker 1: You've gotta put it on repeat and listen to it
Speaker 1: about six times um. And in other cases, you know,
Speaker 1: you it seems to stretch on for a very long
Speaker 1: time and you lose yourself in it. Um. And curiously enough,
Speaker 1: this pops up in another UH tale. This is a
Speaker 1: Japanese fairy tale of Urashima Taro Uh. This tale about
Speaker 1: a fisherman who rescues a turtle and returns it to
Speaker 1: the dragon palace beneath the sea. While he's there returning
Speaker 1: said turtle, he's entertained by the princess there as a reward,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's music and dancing. It's great, uh.
Speaker 1: And then he's sent home with a box that he's
Speaker 1: forbidden to open. And when he returns to his home village,
Speaker 1: he finds that a hundred years has passed, and when
Speaker 1: he opens the box that again he was forbidden to open,
Speaker 1: he immediately ages an entire century. Oh no, don't open
Speaker 1: the box, dude. Yeah. I mean, if if gods and
Speaker 1: goddesses and strange ladies under the ocean tell you not
Speaker 1: to open the box, don't open that box. You know what.
Speaker 1: We're in the odd situation where I think we need
Speaker 1: to call this episode right here. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: more we want to say about the history of of
Speaker 1: thinking about time travel, and so what I'm proposing is
Speaker 1: that on this subject, we sleep into the future. I
Speaker 1: don't think we're quite ready for the next episode of
Speaker 1: the show to be part two of this, so maybe
Speaker 1: this will be an open part one, and who knows
Speaker 1: when the hands of time will reach out and feed
Speaker 1: you the second entry. Yeah, just don't open any strange
Speaker 1: boxes in the meantime, all right, well, yes, definitely look
Speaker 1: out for that in the next episode. Uh, we have
Speaker 1: some we may have. I think we are gonna have
Speaker 1: some other episodes that have to occur before then, but
Speaker 1: we will be back to discuss this topic more. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, you would like to check out other episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Will You can find
Speaker 1: all of them trailing back through time in the Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. You can get that
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Uh. We have our core
Speaker 1: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays listener mail. On Mondays we
Speaker 1: do a short form artifact on Wednesdays. On Friday we
Speaker 1: do a little something called Weird House Cinema. That's when
Speaker 1: we set most serious concerns aside and we just talk
Speaker 1: about some sort of strange film. And we have discussed
Speaker 1: time travel films and not only time after time, but uh, oh,
Speaker 1: what else did we get into? Um uh, Transfers. Transfers
Speaker 1: is a hell of a time travel movie, The Return
Speaker 1: of Jack Dad. Yes, TEUs right, we did, we did
Speaker 1: Transfers to Oh and then on the weekends we do
Speaker 1: a vault episode that's a rerun from the previous year.
Speaker 1: Huge Things. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
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