WEBVTT - Time Traveler Zero, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.400 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.880 Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.239 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:20.279 we've been chatting. Uh, I guess quite a bit about 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:23.760 time travel recently on the show, first probably in our 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:26.640 our Weird House Cinema episode about the nineteen seventy nine 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:29.840 movie Time After Time, and then more recently during our 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:33.920 chat with Daniel Whiteson about astrophysics and time travel, and 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:37.640 also a little talk about time travel science fiction as well. 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:40.760 That's right. One of the main takeaways was that Daniel 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:43.680 is is pretty thoroughly against the idea of the plausibility 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:48.519 of changing the past, right. But um, you know, I 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:51.560 think one of the more interesting questions to come back 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:54.560 to in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind is, 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:57.880 um is not just thinking about okay, is this possible? 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:00.200 And what would you know, what assumptions would we have 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:02.120 to make about the universe for this sort of time 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:04.120 travel to work, or this sort of time travel? What 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:07.119 sorts of time travel are we engaging in all the time? Uh? 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:10.440 Instead of asking is this possible? Are we doing it too? 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:14.040 Instead look at the question what does this idea reveal 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:17.760 about human perspectives of time. Where does the time travel 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:21.039 idea even come from? And and how far back in 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:24.520 time do we see humans engaging in this sort of 0:01:25.240 --> 0:01:29.960 imaginative thought. It's a great question, and immediately all kinds 0:01:30.000 --> 0:01:34.240 of uh secondary questions come to mind, like, Okay, so 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:37.360 time travel is one of the most popular plot devices 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:42.120 of modern fiction. But can you how far back can 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:46.480 you think of literature and stories that feature time travel? Suddenly, 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:49.600 if you go just more than a few hundred years back, 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:53.280 examples start getting very sparse at least you know the 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:54.720 kind of things you can think of off the top 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:57.000 of your head, And it might start to cause you 0:01:57.040 --> 0:02:00.800 to wonder, like, did something change in in Reese centuries 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:04.920 that made this idea more more tangible to people? And 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:07.920 are the earlier examples and what would what could we 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:11.359 learn about our conception of time by looking at those? Yeah, 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:14.760 I ask yourself the question, what's your favorite ancient myth 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:18.000 about time travel? And and it's possible you have an answer, 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:20.880 because we will come back to a few possible answers. 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:22.760 But for for many of you out there, you might 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:24.840 just be a bit dumbfounded, and you might say well, 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:27.880 you know, uh, you know, there are these mythic figures 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:30.239 and they're they're traveling all over the place, and they're 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:32.960 doing all sorts of amazing things, things that are so 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:36.679 outrageous you wouldn't even see it in a comic book today. Um. 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:40.760 But traveling through time becomes something of a scarcity. So 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:43.720 it leads you to wonder, Yeah, is time travel just 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:48.919 this relatively recent cultural invention, this idea of time travel? Um? 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:51.400 And and why would that be? Because you know, as 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:53.320 we try to drive home on the show Humans of 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:57.200 centuries and millennia past, we're deep thinkers, they were deep dreamers. 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:00.919 And yet there there are not, for the most part, uh, 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:05.000 you know, large caches of old folk tales about princes 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:08.519 going back in time to rescue princesses or traveling into 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:12.079 the future and so forth. Um, there are no tales 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:15.200 of God's skipping around in different ages of the universe. 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:19.720 So obviously time is an undeniable fact of our of 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:22.480 our physical reality. But I was trying to think about, like, 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:26.280 how is it that humans first put together a concept 0:03:26.320 --> 0:03:29.160 of time, a time as a kind of substance that 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:33.680 they could talk about and and manipulate with and sort of, 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:36.200 you know, turn around and look at within the mind 0:03:37.080 --> 0:03:40.240 and uh so, uh so. One really interesting source that 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:43.600 came across addressing this is a section in a book 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:48.040 called The Unfolding of Language, An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:52.640 greatest invention. This is by an author named Guide Deutscher. 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:55.800 This book was published by McMillan in two thousand five. 0:03:56.280 --> 0:03:59.760 Deutscher is an academic linguist. He used to be affiliated 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:03.240 with Cambridge and with the University of leyden Um. I'm 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:07.120 not sure if he has any affiliations now, but shout 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:09.560 out quickly that I came to this connection to Guy 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:12.800 Deutscher's work by way of a mention in a Live 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:15.480 Science article by Adam Man, which actually pointed me in 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:18.560 the direction of two very interesting sources. So so good 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:20.640 on that article. But the reason I wanted to talk 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:24.200 about this book by by Guy Deutscher here is that 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:29.280 it addresses what we can learn from metaphors in everyday 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:33.159 speech about the way our minds work. And so the 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:37.159 entry point here is that he's talking about the contrast 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:42.279 between poetic metaphors, metaphors that arouse a sense of strangeness 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:46.839 and wonder and utterly mundane metaphors. So a couple of 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:50.480 examples we can compare. Imagine you are reading a poem 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:54.039 and you come across the line tread softly because you 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:57.159 tread on my dreams. This is a famous passage from 0:04:57.160 --> 0:05:01.120 a poem by William Butler Yates. Uh. And there's a 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:05.200 conceptual leap here that makes this image of treading upon 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:10.760 dreams striking. You're asked to imagine physically stepping on a 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:14.839 purely mental construct without physical form, And I think it's 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:17.920 that gap. It's like exactly to the degree that it 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:21.120 doesn't quite fit, and yet you can still understand what 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:24.400 it means that makes the metaphor striking. Yeah, and now 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:27.440 I'm just imagining his dreams as just a big old snack, 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:31.040 big yellow snack on the ground, and uh no, step 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:34.039 on snack. Um. But I'm sure that's not what what 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:37.640 the poet originally intended. My dreams are rattling and hissing 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:41.279 and bearing fangs. Venom is dripping from the fangs of 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:45.160 my dreams. But so anyway, so yeah, this is a 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:49.279 good poetic metaphor, and it strikes us as poetic. It's 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:52.320 it's like strange it makes us have that feeling of 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:54.120 all you get when you read it and when you 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:58.400 read a good poem. But then, uh, deut your contrasts 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:01.240 that with reading a news or goal about a senator 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:06.240 proposing tough legislation to fight crime. Now, this is not 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:09.279 a striking metaphor. It's utterly mundane. And yet if you 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:13.640 stop to think about it, the concept of tough legislation 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:17.760 is just as much of a leap as treading on dreams. 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:21.359 Like you hear, you're saying that this intangible sort of 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:25.400 social thing a law, has the quality of a physical material, 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:28.960 like it would be difficult to cut or chew. And 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:31.480 so why do these phrases feel so different? Well, Deutscher 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:36.279 argues that it's mostly because of familiarity. Tough legislation uses 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:41.800 a familiar, even cliche, metaphorical understanding of toughness, so it's 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:44.760 not surprising or striking in the way that treading on 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:48.520 dreams is. And he notes that metaphors that are so 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:51.520 familiar that they've lost their vitality and they no longer 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:55.479 strike us as poetic are sometimes referred to as dead metaphors, 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:58.640 which I think the irony there maybe not irony the 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:02.680 The interesting thing is that's a literary cliche, dead metaphors, 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:06.719 invoking a biological metaphor to describe the effects of words 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:10.440 and phrases. Oh. One that comes to mind instantly, and 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.160 perhaps because we're talking about time, is the idea of 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:16.000 killing time to do that all the time. But it 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:18.920 it doesn't really do anything like it doesn't. I feel 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:22.560 like the phrase killing time does not really summon any 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:25.360 kind of novel image in my mind. It doesn't make 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:28.800 me think about time as an organism, or time as 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:31.480 the body or anything. It's just this dumb thing people say. 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:33.920 But that I think, actually killing time would be an 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:36.960 incredibly striking metaphor. If you've never heard that before and 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:39.240 you just came across it in a poem. Yeah, the 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:41.840 first person who said it was probably a genius. Yeah, 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:45.160 imagining time is a little creature that's being bludgeoned to 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:47.960 death by your I don't know, by your youth scrolling 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:51.320 your phone. But then jumping off this point, he goes 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:53.360 on to make what I think is a really interesting point. 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:55.400 So I just want to read from from Deutscher's book here. 0:07:56.000 --> 0:08:00.080 But there's more familiarity than individual acquaintance. For most to 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:03.320 force in ordinary language, are also familiar on a much 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:07.800 deeper level. Suppose, for instance, that during an election campaign, 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.160 you read in a newspaper that quote critics derided the 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.920 new election manifesto as nothing more than a sou flay 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:20.040 of promises. This phrase is clearly metaphorical, since by anyone's standards, 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:22.960 a sou flay is is properly made of egg whites, 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:26.520 not promises. But although you may never have heard this 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:30.720 particular metaphor before, it is still unlikely to strike you 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:33.080 as a great poet at coup or as something entirely 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:36.080 out of the ordinary. The reason must be that sous 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:40.719 flay of promises belongs to a larger context, which is familiar. 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:45.679 And uh so this is because Deutscher argues, quite strangely, 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:51.679 metaphors based in food, eating and cooking are very commonly 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:56.640 used to describe mental phenomena such as ideas, thoughts, and emotions. 0:08:57.040 --> 0:08:59.400 And then he goes on to just give a huge 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:04.760 laundry list of examples. You can think of anger, simmering, resentment, boiling, 0:09:05.360 --> 0:09:09.440 or uh, Johnny is chewing over a new concept. You 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:12.960 need time to digest this information. Uh. You know the 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:15.920 people won't swallow these lies or are you just gonna 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:20.400 lap up that pablum from those politicians? People devour books 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:23.800 and so forth. Um, he says. We can have sweet dreams, 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:29.000 bitter hatreds, sour relations, half baked ideas and just goes 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:33.040 on and on. Once you notice it. It's astonishing how 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:36.360 much of the way we talk about feelings and ideas 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:39.880 is based in food. M m. Yeah, and of course 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:41.559 all the most I think most of these examples we've 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:44.120 been rolling through here or an over them anyway, have 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:48.160 distinct ties to Western cuisine, so of course we can 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:52.800 easily imagine that in in various other uh international cuisines 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:56.840 and in other languages, you have the same thing going on. Yeah, totally, totally, 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:58.880 and in fact, I think we we've even talked about 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:01.880 this to some extent on the show before. Like metaphors, 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:05.000 you know, sort of mental content, metaphors based in food. 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:07.880 They're common in other cultures, not so much in English 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:11.000 speaking ones. I do wonder though, if the sufflet of 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:14.840 promises is not lost on folks who haven't themselves made 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:18.439 or attempted to make a soufflay, because it seems to 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:19.959 me like part of it is the idea that yes, 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:23.840 it's it's it's a laborious process to make, and then 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:27.760 it deflates, can easily deflate. It's kind of an empty dish, 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:30.120 and in some regard that even though it looks fantastic, 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:32.600 it is mostly air. And if you don't actualize that, 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:36.560 then then maybe something of the metaphor is lost. You know, honestly, 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:39.760 I did not even consciously make that connection. Maybe unconsciously 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:42.000 I did, But you've opened my mind to a new 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:45.280 new dimension of the super You. Maybe you're too familiar 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:47.120 with the souflay and you take it for like me. 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:49.559 I I rarely make sufflay, and when I do, I 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:52.080 am intimidated by the process because I know what is 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:54.200 involved and what is what is possible, Like I don't 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:58.120 trust myself enough. Uh, I'm ever on guard. You are 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:01.200 right to fear it. Anyway. To pick back up with 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:03.679 the Deutscher, so he summarizes what he's just been talking 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:06.480 about by saying, quote, there's a well established link in 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:09.680 our mind between the two domains which unites all the 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:14.720 individual images into a broader conceptual metaphor. Ideas are food. 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:17.600 And thus, when we hear a phrase like suffle of 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:21.120 promises the image does not sound so surprising because it 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:25.120 fits neatly into this familiar frame. And so for Deutscher, 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:29.440 this is an example of conceptual metaphors. The the quote 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:35.480 mappings of one domain onto another, and so uh, for 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:38.520 some reason, maybe it might be interesting to speculate on 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:42.240 what that reason would be. It's just very easy for 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:45.359 us to think about the domain of thoughts and feelings 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:48.800 in terms of the domain of food. But this isn't 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:51.400 the only conceptual mapping like this. And here's where we 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:54.480 get back to time. Deutscher makes the case that there 0:11:54.600 --> 0:12:02.000 is a similar natural metaphorical domain overlap between time and space. Now, 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:04.640 on one hand, you might think, well, that totally makes sense, 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:07.760 because you a twenty one century person who is somewhat 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:10.720 literate in the sciences, you know that space and time 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:14.240 are actually linked in modern physics. But the point is 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:18.640 that these conventions of language long predate Einstein or any 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:22.199 knowledge of general relativity or the concept of space time. 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:27.559 Since prehistory, there is clear evidence in language itself that 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:31.120 humans have naturally tended to think and talk about time 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:35.439 as if time were a type of space, or as 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:38.960 if the rules of space applied to it. So once 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:41.520 again Deutscher gives a ton of examples. He writes, quote, 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:44.439 consider some of the simplest words we use to describe 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:52.520 spatial relations, prepositions such as in at by, from to, behind, within, 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:55.960 and through, And then he gives a ton of examples 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:59.000 within actual phrases. So the idea of like from London 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:03.240 to Paris, you can compare to from Monday to Friday, 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:06.000 or in England the same way you would say in 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:10.480 January or in the sixteenth century, you can stand at 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:14.560 the door or you can arrive at noon. All these prepositions, 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:19.880 He's saying a flow originally from the linguistic domain of 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:23.600 space and come to be applied to time. Uh. And 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:25.559 beyond this, he argues that this is not just a 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:28.680 quirk of English. This is true of literally every language 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:32.080 that has ever been studied. There are no exceptions. Every 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:35.360 language on Earth talks about time as if it were 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:39.079 a type of space, which suggests something. If that's true, 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:42.160 suggests something very ancient and powerful about that link in 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:47.800 our consciousness. I'm reminded of a part of Barry Lopez's 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:52.280 book Arctic Dreams, where he's talking about this um conversation 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:56.000 between an Arctic Arctic explorer and uh an Inuit uh 0:13:56.040 --> 0:13:59.120 and the Inuit man has has asked of this pair 0:13:59.120 --> 0:14:04.320 of binoculars allows him to see into tomorrow and um 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:06.520 and in this particular instance, you know, there's a certain 0:14:06.559 --> 0:14:09.240 amount of you know, perhaps a lot of it's about 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:13.679 the languages here, you know, and uh and uh. But 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:16.000 it it kind of gets to this idea too of 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:20.000 in a place where you have wide open spaces and 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:22.000 uh and and you know a fair amount of moving 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:25.600 around and resources are spread out, like you know what 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:28.480 the individual is asking like, well, this binoculars allow me 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:31.000 to see something that I would not be able to 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:35.400 reach until tomorrow. And that's always just stuck stuck with 0:14:35.440 --> 0:14:38.160 me because it it gets into this it touches on 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:42.920 this spatial idea of of time but also within a 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:47.000 realm that in a geography that at least for many 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:48.280 of us that you know, it makes it a little 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:51.960 easier to comprehend that firm connection like tomorrow is not 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:55.400 only um, you know, something that will happen to me, 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:58.320 It is also it is also a place I will 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:00.960 be because I know where I can see potentially see 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:02.960 where I will be tomorrow. You know what I'm saying, 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:05.320 oh yeah, and I think that's a fantastic point that 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:07.720 actually connects to something else I wanted to talk about, 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:11.280 which is um the idea that, Okay, so the metaphorical 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:15.480 overlap between space and time appears to only flow in 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:18.640 one direction. You might find a stray counter example somewhere, 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:22.480 but generally the idea is that our human languages take 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:26.520 concepts and metaphors that begin as descriptions of space and 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:29.440 then apply them to time, not the other way around. 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:33.000 So we talk about the present as if it were 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:37.000 spatially here, and we visualize the past as if it 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:39.720 were physically behind us. And like, if you stop to 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:43.280 think about the physicality even the biology of that, the 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:47.400 past we imagine usually as in the direction of our butts, 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:51.360 you know, behind us. The future is physically in front 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:53.600 of us. And this is one of those great things 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:56.600 that like it's so mundane that you don't stop to 0:15:56.800 --> 0:15:59.560 notice it. But when you pay attention to that, I 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:02.360 suspect it's like this and not the other way around. 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:04.480 You know, it's not that we imagine the future as 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:07.320 behind us, in the past in front of us because 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:11.200 of totally contingent facts about how our bodies move. If 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:14.560 you're walking in a straight line, the area in front 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:17.640 of you is space that you will occupy in the future, 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:21.200 and the space behind you is the place you occupied 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:24.680 in the past. And so you can think about alternative biology, 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:29.040 different body morphology leading to different conceptions of time. Like 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:34.240 if crabs evolved to possess abstract intelligence as language, I 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:37.360 kind of suspect they might visualize the past and future 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:40.200 to the left and right since they often walk sideways 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:43.880 instead of forwards and backwards. And then now is simply 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:48.280 the heat, I guess. Yeah. It also makes you think 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:52.760 about the way you know, eyes are positioned on different organisms, 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:57.120 thinking about say, herbivores, whose whose eyes are often positioned 0:16:57.120 --> 0:16:59.640 more on the sides of the head in a way 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:03.640 to per vide more panoramic view of what's happening, so 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:06.480 they can have a better idea of where the predators 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:10.440 are coming in versus the the eyesight of a predator. 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:12.919 That is more about what is directly in front of me, 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:15.600 what is the thing I am after? Right? Yeah, So 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:18.520 that makes me wonder if our conception of time is 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:22.000 also influenced by our heads being shaped more like carnivore heads. 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:25.640 But anyway. To wrap up the section about Guy Deutscher's book, 0:17:25.720 --> 0:17:27.600 I just want to read one more thing, he says, quote. 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:30.960 This link between space and time is so entrenched in 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:34.919 our cognition that it is extremely difficult to extricate ourselves 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:38.800 from it and appreciate that time cannot literally be long 0:17:39.080 --> 0:17:43.080 or short, unlike sticks or pieces of string. Nor can 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:48.520 time literally pass unlike a train. Time cannot go forwards 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:52.760 and backwards anymore than it goes sideways, diagonally, or downwards. 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:57.040 Time doesn't actually go anywhere at all. Uh. And I 0:17:57.040 --> 0:17:59.040 think this is a great point. The link in our 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.920 language is so deep it's difficult even to talk about 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:05.760 it because we don't really have any language for time 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:09.840 that is not a metaphor based on space, except maybe 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:13.560 in pure mathematical expressions. Yeah, we have this, Yeah, like 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.360 you said, we have this, This entire suite, multiple suites 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:19.399 of of terms we used to talk about time, and 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:22.080 yet very often we're we're at a lack to to 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:25.920 really define time. Um and and certainly it's it's hard 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:28.399 to just really settle in on a definition of what 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:30.080 it is. What one that I often come back to 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:32.639 is the idea of time is the rate of change 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:35.800 in the universe. And if you if you stop yourself 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:38.359 and all, if you stop yourself and all of this 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:41.600 and start like asking questions about time travel in that, 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:45.200 like in regards to the rate of change in the universe, 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:48.480 things get silly really quickly, you know, like, like what 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:50.560 is time? It's the rate of change in the universe? Well, 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:52.879 can I can I do that backwards? Going to do 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:56.120 that in reverse? Uh? Can I like travel back? Like 0:18:56.320 --> 0:19:00.080 it's like asking is this It's like saying, you know it, 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:02.760 I really like wet I would like to travel to wet. 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:04.359 What do you mean you would like to travel to? 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:06.400 What you want to travel to? Somewhere that is wet 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:10.960 because you can't just travel to wet Yeah exactly. I mean, yeah, 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:13.280 that's a great metaphor. And even then, I mean it 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:16.880 makes you wonder. Okay. So on one hand, I think 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:18.640 the rate of change in the universe is a good 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:21.320 way of trying to describe what time is. But does 0:19:21.520 --> 0:19:24.359 the does the idea of rate not itself in a 0:19:24.400 --> 0:19:28.160 way kind of assume time Like it's just yeah, there's 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:30.800 it's you can't get under it, right, it's it is 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:34.280 in it in itself it's also an imperfect definition. UM, 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:35.960 but I guess the reason I come back to it 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:39.520 is that it is significantly different from this a lot 0:19:39.560 --> 0:19:41.359 of these metaphors that we end up using. So it 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:43.840 kind of it kind of throws a wrench into your 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:47.760 your cognitive process, you know, totally. Oh and I guess 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:50.439 one last thing. This isn't strictly about time, but I 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:51.919 just thought I would mention it because I thought it 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:54.960 was interesting. Deutscher actually does go beyond this. So he 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:58.920 goes from talking about how metaphors of space are applied 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:02.160 to time, but then they keep being applied to even 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:07.000 deeper levels of uh of other concepts and language. Uh. 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:10.920 So he makes this argument about how about how concepts 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:15.640 of space flow through metaphorical use to time, and then 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:19.960 from time to causes or reasons and all these other things. 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:23.360 So you have something you have a preposition like from 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:27.800 which originally describes space, so you could be from Tucson, Arizona, 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:30.840 and then that can be applied to time, so you 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:34.520 can remember something from last Tuesday, and then that can 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:37.919 be applied to causes or reasons for things. So the 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:42.320 example he gives is he shivers from the cold Anyway, 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:45.480 I love stuff like this because there's so much that's 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:49.480 fascinating about the way that we use language. I guess 0:20:49.480 --> 0:20:51.639 it's fascinating to me because we all do it, and 0:20:51.680 --> 0:20:53.560 we do it all the time, and we don't notice 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:56.359 we're doing it. So just being asked to stop and 0:20:56.400 --> 0:20:59.920 observe the words you're using and what that reveals about 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.640 how you think is is often extremely eye opening. Yeah, 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:06.040 I mean this this linear view of things that it 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:09.200 falls into everything, like even as we talk about ideas, 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:11.640 you know, we we're building things out of sentences. We're 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.800 talking about uh forming an idea out of this and 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:20.600 uh building up to this idea, arriving at this conclusion 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:29.600 and so forth. Yeah. Thank As I was thinking about 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:31.919 all this, I started thinking about some of the terms 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:37.800 used by Merchia eliade Um, who you know, in in 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:40.520 his work, you often have this this separation of time 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:45.200 into mythic time and profane time. So mythic time is 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:49.320 when gods and heroes experience their victories, defeats, and their 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:53.080 dramas you know, at the time of of mythic stories 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:57.520 playing out um, during during which these these various exploits 0:21:57.640 --> 0:22:01.439 shaped the earth, shaped our culture. But then during profane time, 0:22:02.040 --> 0:22:04.439 nothing that we do has any value except to the 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:08.440 extent that it recreates or in some way connects us 0:22:08.440 --> 0:22:12.720 with events that occurred during mythic time. Right. So Eliote 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:15.240 was a was a scholar of religion, and yeah, I 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:17.320 understand this was one of his main points. It was 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:19.760 that a lot of what we think of as religion 0:22:20.880 --> 0:22:25.879 either is or is derived from attempts to recreate or 0:22:26.000 --> 0:22:29.919 re enact uh, things that allegedly took place in this 0:22:30.040 --> 0:22:34.280 other mythic time. Right. And of course this connection that 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:37.280 he's talking about between mythic past and propain present, uh, 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:40.600 you know, it's not quite like a physical journey, uh, 0:22:40.960 --> 0:22:44.280 you know, via time machine between two times, though, though 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:47.560 I suppose characters who venture into a realm of gods 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:50.320 or spirits is in some way they are making a 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:53.520 journey into mythic time, a realm where mythic time is 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:57.600 either still going on or perhaps is has just happened, 0:22:57.680 --> 0:23:00.560 or is in some way you know, more present. Um. 0:23:00.600 --> 0:23:03.040 You know. Again, it's not nothing like these modern ideas 0:23:03.040 --> 0:23:05.679 of time travel, but um, but it certainly got me 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:08.320 thinking about all of this, oh absolutely. And to stay 0:23:08.320 --> 0:23:10.400 on the subject of myth and religion. I mean, one 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:13.720 thing that I think is kind of interesting and understanding 0:23:13.720 --> 0:23:17.080 how humans imagine time throughout history is sort of the 0:23:17.119 --> 0:23:21.640 difference between myth and legend as generally understood by by 0:23:21.640 --> 0:23:25.520 scholars of religion, where uh, the idea is that myth 0:23:25.800 --> 0:23:29.600 is a story that takes place, uh, you know, often 0:23:29.760 --> 0:23:32.960 telling some kind of origin of something, but it's also 0:23:33.000 --> 0:23:35.920 a story that takes place, usually in a time that 0:23:36.080 --> 0:23:41.679 is somehow removed from your own timeline, whereas legend is 0:23:41.760 --> 0:23:45.800 something that appears to blur into your own, your own 0:23:45.840 --> 0:23:49.840 actual history. So they might both be stories that are 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:52.399 not like literal descriptions of things that took place in 0:23:52.440 --> 0:23:55.160 the past, but myth it's kind of like it would 0:23:55.160 --> 0:23:57.840 be hard to say when the myth actually took place, 0:23:58.119 --> 0:24:00.200 whereas you could say a legend is about some thing 0:24:00.240 --> 0:24:03.720 that allegedly happened a thousand years ago, right, So like 0:24:03.760 --> 0:24:08.040 a legendary king, a legendary emperor is in many cases 0:24:08.160 --> 0:24:10.960 the sort of individual that historians and archaeologists can look 0:24:10.960 --> 0:24:13.199 to and say, like, well, who's the actual person that 0:24:13.280 --> 0:24:15.640 this may be based upon. Whereas when you get into 0:24:15.680 --> 0:24:19.720 the mythic mythic kings mythic emperors. These are figures that 0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:23.720 are often uh, you know, indecipherable from God's not to 0:24:23.760 --> 0:24:27.159 say that they don't uh there's not a potential for 0:24:27.240 --> 0:24:31.240 some connection to actual living humans, but uh, in many cases, yeah, 0:24:31.320 --> 0:24:35.240 it is about the things that occurred before the stories 0:24:35.280 --> 0:24:38.640 that define the world in which we live. I think 0:24:38.640 --> 0:24:42.040 it's interesting that there are different ways to imagine the past, 0:24:42.200 --> 0:24:45.080 whether or not what you're imagining is is accurate or not. 0:24:45.160 --> 0:24:46.760 I mean, that's sort of beside the point right now. 0:24:46.920 --> 0:24:50.520 Just like if you're imagining what happened long ago, there 0:24:50.560 --> 0:24:53.000 are sort of different timelines. You know, is there there's 0:24:53.000 --> 0:24:55.920 a past that's kind of inaccessible to us, and then 0:24:55.920 --> 0:24:59.360 the past that you can at least imagine as being accessible, 0:24:59.400 --> 0:25:01.639 even if you don't think you could say, travel back 0:25:01.680 --> 0:25:04.880 to it. And I think in a way that has 0:25:04.960 --> 0:25:08.879 sort of changed maybe in twentieth century science fiction at 0:25:08.960 --> 0:25:12.400 least where one thing that seems true may being disagree 0:25:12.440 --> 0:25:16.560 rob about twentieth century science fiction is that, uh, this 0:25:16.680 --> 0:25:20.040 imagines there's a leveling effect where okay, no, now there's 0:25:20.080 --> 0:25:23.000 just there's a timeline, and if you have a time machine, 0:25:23.040 --> 0:25:25.760 you can go back to anything forward or backward that 0:25:25.840 --> 0:25:30.080 actually happened or will actually happen. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um. 0:25:30.720 --> 0:25:33.399 It reminds me of you know something else that the 0:25:33.400 --> 0:25:37.119 iliat was was big on this idea of archaic cultures 0:25:37.160 --> 0:25:42.280 accessing circular sacred time, a time of origins and creations, 0:25:42.280 --> 0:25:45.280 while modern cultures use a linear sacred time that is 0:25:45.359 --> 0:25:49.960 essentially bolted onto the timeline of profane time. Um. But 0:25:49.960 --> 0:25:51.880 but in all of the the you know, the origin 0:25:51.920 --> 0:25:55.120 of things was important. Uh. So, like, just thinking again 0:25:55.160 --> 0:25:58.840 about mythic time, it in some ways it feels like, well, 0:25:59.160 --> 0:26:01.840 the mythic time is more real, like it's more of 0:26:01.840 --> 0:26:05.520 a real place than uh, you know, whatever happened last 0:26:05.600 --> 0:26:08.480 year was whatever happened last year wasn't important at all, 0:26:09.600 --> 0:26:13.160 at least aside from any ways in which it recreated 0:26:13.560 --> 0:26:17.199 mythic time. Um. And so I was I was thinking about, like, well, 0:26:17.320 --> 0:26:21.159 twenty century ideas of all of this, um. And it 0:26:21.200 --> 0:26:23.040 made me made me think about, well, some of our 0:26:23.080 --> 0:26:26.199 our time travel stories are modern time travel stories. And 0:26:26.240 --> 0:26:29.920 I started thinking about back to the future, which I 0:26:30.200 --> 0:26:33.680 don't know where this falls in your introduction to time travel, Joe, 0:26:33.680 --> 0:26:37.000 but I have a feeling that either back to the 0:26:37.040 --> 0:26:41.679 future or the old adaptation like the nineteen fifties or 0:26:41.680 --> 0:26:44.959 sixties adaptation of the time Machine. One of those was 0:26:45.040 --> 0:26:48.160 my first introduction to the idea of time travel, and 0:26:48.240 --> 0:26:50.800 it was it was probably Back to the Future. Oh yeah, 0:26:50.840 --> 0:26:52.320 I can't say for sure, but Back to the Future 0:26:52.320 --> 0:26:54.080 has got to be up there for me. It was 0:26:54.359 --> 0:26:57.840 certainly one of the earliest, and it benefits from being 0:26:57.840 --> 0:27:01.600 the kind of movie that feels can nicle. Um. You know, 0:27:02.040 --> 0:27:04.159 even when you're a kid, I think you detect some 0:27:04.280 --> 0:27:06.879 kind of differences in the quality of cinema, even at 0:27:06.960 --> 0:27:09.760 that age where I liked every movie I saw, there 0:27:09.760 --> 0:27:12.040 are some movies that feel kind of like, Okay, that's 0:27:12.040 --> 0:27:14.120 just some weird thing I saw on TV one time, 0:27:14.160 --> 0:27:16.520 And there are other movies that feel like a part 0:27:16.640 --> 0:27:19.560 of the canon of of culture and and Back to 0:27:19.600 --> 0:27:22.840 the Future felt that way. Yeah, absolutely, And so it 0:27:23.160 --> 0:27:26.280 got me wondering thinking back on it now, to what 0:27:26.440 --> 0:27:30.720 extent any time travel story is essentially taking a particular 0:27:30.760 --> 0:27:33.200 time in the past. Obviously, we're just talking about time 0:27:33.240 --> 0:27:36.520 travel stories that concerned the past and establishing it is 0:27:36.560 --> 0:27:40.280 a kind of sacred time, one that explains conditions in 0:27:40.320 --> 0:27:44.800 our profane present time and m you know, in terms 0:27:44.800 --> 0:27:46.919 of Back to the Future, Uh, you know, this is 0:27:47.000 --> 0:27:49.360 this is a story that doesn't just concern the mid 0:27:49.480 --> 0:27:53.480 nineteen fifties. It idolizes the mid nineteen fifties, It fetishizes 0:27:53.520 --> 0:27:56.959 the nineteen fifties. Uh, it's this is a time of 0:27:57.119 --> 0:28:01.440 great admiration for this film, a period of of iconic 0:28:01.520 --> 0:28:05.359 and highly sanitized American nostalgia. Um. And it is also 0:28:05.440 --> 0:28:08.520 the time that defines our characters. You know, this is 0:28:08.560 --> 0:28:12.600 the this is the age during which Marty McFly's parents 0:28:12.800 --> 0:28:16.399 were themselves youth. This is the time during which they 0:28:16.400 --> 0:28:21.119 would come together and eventually create Marty McFly. Well, in 0:28:21.119 --> 0:28:23.080 another way, you could almost say that in Back to 0:28:23.160 --> 0:28:27.920 the Future, Marty McFly travels back to a cinematic nineteen 0:28:28.000 --> 0:28:31.560 fifties more than a real nineteen fifties, Like he's traveling 0:28:31.560 --> 0:28:35.240 to a mythic time almost because it's like, yeah, it's 0:28:35.240 --> 0:28:37.760 sort of what you're because like the stuff he sees 0:28:37.800 --> 0:28:41.280 when he gets there are not so much based in history, 0:28:41.320 --> 0:28:45.640 but they're based on the images people remember from like 0:28:45.800 --> 0:28:48.440 movies and TV of the nineteen fifties. So you know, 0:28:48.480 --> 0:28:51.840 the soda shop with the counter and the you know, 0:28:51.960 --> 0:28:54.960 all that kind of stuff. It is a mythic reality 0:28:55.000 --> 0:28:58.720 that explains the origins of things and uh and and 0:28:58.720 --> 0:29:02.920 and and and provides the idea of how things should be. Um. 0:29:03.000 --> 0:29:04.840 So it's yeah, it's it's kind of interesting to think 0:29:04.840 --> 0:29:07.400 about the Back of the Future in terms of of 0:29:07.480 --> 0:29:10.880 Iliades writings. By the way, I had to do the 0:29:10.880 --> 0:29:12.440 math on this because I always find this kind of 0:29:12.480 --> 0:29:16.440 thing um interesting but also um alarming. You know, it 0:29:16.480 --> 0:29:19.080 makes me feel old to realize this. So this is 0:29:19.200 --> 0:29:21.480 a movie back to the Future that concerned a jaunt 0:29:21.520 --> 0:29:25.080 from night five to nineteen fifty five. If you were 0:29:25.080 --> 0:29:28.520 to take an identical jaunt today from the year one, 0:29:28.840 --> 0:29:31.480 that would take you back to the year nineteen one, 0:29:31.920 --> 0:29:34.800 that is the year that Highlander two came out. Christof 0:29:34.880 --> 0:29:38.880 Lambert goes back thirty years, gives himself a pep talk, uh, 0:29:39.600 --> 0:29:42.280 you know, like tells him how to stand up for himself. 0:29:43.080 --> 0:29:46.480 Ends up with Lambert punching Sean Connery in the face. Like, yeah, 0:29:46.520 --> 0:29:49.960 I can see it. Also the year of dan Ackroid's 0:29:50.000 --> 0:29:57.520 nothing but Trouble, pivotal time, mythic time for American culture. 0:29:57.560 --> 0:30:01.160 They're also cool as Ice, the Vanilla Ice movie. Well, hell, 0:30:01.240 --> 0:30:05.960 there you go, a time of heroes and gods. Basically, 0:30:06.000 --> 0:30:08.840 what we're saying was a weird year for films. It's 0:30:09.160 --> 0:30:11.200 when you try to look for the real standouts. I 0:30:11.200 --> 0:30:14.840 mean there are You've got stuff like Barton Faint going on. Um, 0:30:14.880 --> 0:30:16.720 you know, but you know it's also the year of 0:30:16.720 --> 0:30:20.360 stuff like Freddie's Dead, the Final Nightmare. Oh, we did 0:30:20.480 --> 0:30:23.280 have a time travel a movie there. We also had 0:30:23.480 --> 0:30:26.360 Bill and Ted came out their Bogus Journey. That would 0:30:26.360 --> 0:30:29.320 be the second one. Okay, well we gotta stop this 0:30:29.440 --> 0:30:33.960 or we'll just keep going. Okay, the whole episodes. So anyway, 0:30:34.120 --> 0:30:36.360 just getting back at the basic point, mainstream time travel 0:30:36.400 --> 0:30:39.440 tropes um are not that old, and we'll explore some 0:30:39.520 --> 0:30:43.160 examples of this shortly. Um. While time travel narratives are 0:30:43.160 --> 0:30:45.840 in some ways like other complex ways of thinking about 0:30:45.880 --> 0:30:47.720 the past and the present, they're not quite the same. 0:30:48.160 --> 0:30:51.000 But you can easily get into just a whole argument 0:30:51.000 --> 0:30:52.960 of like looking back at old things and old stories 0:30:52.960 --> 0:30:55.560 and saying, to what extent is this time travel? To 0:30:55.640 --> 0:30:59.040 what extent is it not? Because think about a lot 0:30:59.080 --> 0:31:02.560 of modern time travel stories. What happens you have Marty McFly, 0:31:02.720 --> 0:31:04.760 he goes back, what does he do he meets his dad. 0:31:05.160 --> 0:31:07.480 You know, uh, there are other tales of this sort. 0:31:07.520 --> 0:31:11.040 You know where you're it's about connecting with ancestors, and 0:31:11.080 --> 0:31:15.280 of course communication and connection with ancestors is widespread in 0:31:15.360 --> 0:31:19.400 religion and myth and folklore, though these generally take on 0:31:19.440 --> 0:31:22.920 the forum of spirit communication of some sort, not physical 0:31:23.080 --> 0:31:26.280 or even holographic journeys. Right, a lot of the time 0:31:26.280 --> 0:31:30.120 travel stories about interacting with ancestors are either there, uh, 0:31:30.400 --> 0:31:32.720 to recall some of the language we used in our 0:31:32.880 --> 0:31:35.800 Weird House Cinema episode about time after time, they're often 0:31:35.960 --> 0:31:38.720 debugging history stories where you're trying to go back and 0:31:38.760 --> 0:31:41.680 fix something that went wrong with one of your ancestors, 0:31:41.680 --> 0:31:45.360 to make the present better, or to undo the mischief 0:31:45.400 --> 0:31:48.040 of another time traveler who screwed up the future by 0:31:48.240 --> 0:31:51.840 doing something with your ancestors. And sometimes there are some 0:31:51.880 --> 0:31:55.120 stories where they, you know, they try to maintain the 0:31:55.160 --> 0:31:58.239 consistent timeline by having a person go back and like 0:31:58.320 --> 0:32:01.800 do something with their ancestors that in turn was necessary 0:32:01.880 --> 0:32:04.880 for the present to happen the way it did. You know, 0:32:04.960 --> 0:32:07.480 the stories of paradoxes where somebody goes back and they 0:32:07.600 --> 0:32:11.720 become their own grandfather or something creepy. Yeah. Now for 0:32:11.800 --> 0:32:14.360 some answers, UH, in all of this, I look to 0:32:14.480 --> 0:32:17.160 a wonderful book came out in two thousand one by 0:32:17.240 --> 0:32:20.800 Paul J. Nayan, an electrical engineer and science author. It's 0:32:20.880 --> 0:32:25.360 called Time Travel, Time Machines, Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics 0:32:25.360 --> 0:32:28.960 and Science Fiction. And it's a it's a real fun, 0:32:29.240 --> 0:32:31.240 very readable book. You can still get copies of this. 0:32:31.480 --> 0:32:32.720 I think there's been a couple of at least a 0:32:32.720 --> 0:32:34.600 couple of editions that have come out over the years. 0:32:35.240 --> 0:32:38.720 UM and UH. It deals with everything that's mentioned in 0:32:38.760 --> 0:32:42.480 the title, but probably focusing more here on just gleaning 0:32:42.480 --> 0:32:44.760 some of the sci fi references from it, because he 0:32:44.800 --> 0:32:47.600 does a great job about talking about, uh, the different 0:32:47.640 --> 0:32:50.320 types of time travel narratives that we have and what 0:32:50.400 --> 0:32:53.040 are some of the earlier examples of them. Uh. And 0:32:53.080 --> 0:32:57.120 he identifies a sort of related precursor to tales of 0:32:57.200 --> 0:33:00.080 ventures into the future UM, as well as I guess 0:33:00.080 --> 0:33:03.520 into the past in the form of stories and accounts 0:33:03.520 --> 0:33:08.600 of visions of the future. So back before the Time 0:33:08.640 --> 0:33:11.840 Machine by H. D Wells, you had as early as 0:33:11.960 --> 0:33:16.480 eighteen fifty six popular English language tales that's speculated on 0:33:16.520 --> 0:33:20.040 the far future, such as an eighteen fifty six Harper's 0:33:20.280 --> 0:33:23.760 article that pondered what the year three thousand would be like. 0:33:23.840 --> 0:33:27.600 It was titled January one a d three thousand, and 0:33:27.640 --> 0:33:30.680 it was apparently by an anonymous author, but I think 0:33:30.680 --> 0:33:34.880 it was at least edited by Alfred A. Gern Say, 0:33:35.320 --> 0:33:38.040 But I'm not not exactly sure if if an actual 0:33:38.080 --> 0:33:40.080 author has ever been attributed to this piece, or if 0:33:40.120 --> 0:33:44.000 it remains just anonymous. I bet it was absolutely prophetic. 0:33:45.720 --> 0:33:49.360 I had to look it up. Harper's magazine still has it, 0:33:49.440 --> 0:33:51.280 and I think it's in their archives, so you have 0:33:51.320 --> 0:33:53.480 to be a subscriber. That's probably the best way to 0:33:53.520 --> 0:33:55.240 see it. I think I was able to find an 0:33:55.240 --> 0:33:59.080 exert of it and google books. Uh, it seems pretty farcical, 0:33:59.160 --> 0:34:02.239 so don't expect any thing to sci fi. Lots of 0:34:02.280 --> 0:34:04.760 pondering over what sorts of stupid things men of the 0:34:04.760 --> 0:34:08.640 far future will where. There's some great illustrations from this um. 0:34:09.120 --> 0:34:14.040 This article included them here for you, Joe. Everybody looks 0:34:14.080 --> 0:34:19.239 like uh like Scottish warrior dandies. Yes, and in a 0:34:19.280 --> 0:34:21.560 way you know, I don't know, these aren't too far 0:34:21.680 --> 0:34:25.480 off the off the mark. I guess you know, but 0:34:26.080 --> 0:34:28.040 you know it concerns the very sorts of time travel 0:34:28.080 --> 0:34:30.799 social commentary you might expect today, like when a time 0:34:30.840 --> 0:34:34.120 traveler is a gas to learn that individual freedom has 0:34:34.160 --> 0:34:39.400 been um, you know, has been um violated by state 0:34:39.480 --> 0:34:43.879 sanctioned diets and actually get your burgers in the future. Right, Yeah, 0:34:43.880 --> 0:34:46.120 it's it's that sort of thing, so, you know, which 0:34:46.120 --> 0:34:47.920 is not to say that you know that this art. 0:34:48.320 --> 0:34:50.319 You know, I don't mean to criticize this article because again, 0:34:50.320 --> 0:34:52.280 this is the sort of thing that still goes on today. 0:34:52.560 --> 0:34:54.760 And as one can imagine, it can be done well, 0:34:54.840 --> 0:34:58.239 and it can also be done you know, crudely or ineffectually, 0:34:59.120 --> 0:35:04.480 but anyway, it is a noteworthy example. Now, weirdly, a 0:35:04.520 --> 0:35:11.160 major nineteenth century example of multidirectional time travel is by 0:35:11.280 --> 0:35:13.640 Charles Dickens. You wouldn't have expected him to be one 0:35:13.680 --> 0:35:16.680 of the pioneers in this area, but we have it 0:35:16.760 --> 0:35:19.239 in the form of a Christmas carol, which, you know, 0:35:19.360 --> 0:35:22.280 great story. We often missed some of the finer social 0:35:22.320 --> 0:35:24.560 points of it, but it's a it's a story that 0:35:24.640 --> 0:35:29.000 has become a part of Western holiday traditions. Like it's 0:35:29.320 --> 0:35:31.319 it's a narrative we put up there almost with the 0:35:31.320 --> 0:35:34.560 you know, the tales of Santa Claus and the Baby Jesus. 0:35:35.320 --> 0:35:38.920 But it is essentially about time travel visions, you know. 0:35:38.960 --> 0:35:40.759 I guess you can you can critique and say, well, 0:35:40.760 --> 0:35:43.520 it's happening within the context of a dream. And I 0:35:43.560 --> 0:35:46.560 don't know to what extent he's actually being visited by spirits, 0:35:46.560 --> 0:35:48.120 But I don't know. I always think of them as 0:35:48.120 --> 0:35:50.719 actual spirits. I think of these as actual visions that 0:35:50.760 --> 0:35:53.840 are brought to him by supernatural entities. Yeah. Sure, I 0:35:53.840 --> 0:35:56.919 mean it's fiction, you know. Yeah, the spirits are coming 0:35:56.920 --> 0:35:59.279 to him and uh, yeah, he's he gets to see 0:35:59.320 --> 0:36:02.319 the past, the present, and the future. Yeah, I mean yeah, 0:36:02.320 --> 0:36:03.719 I guess that's the great thing about the stories. You 0:36:03.719 --> 0:36:05.520 can think of it in different ways. It's like, to 0:36:05.600 --> 0:36:09.080 what extent is Scrooge just simply having this this night 0:36:09.120 --> 0:36:12.640 of intense dreaming and and and and reflection and pondering 0:36:12.640 --> 0:36:15.279 about the future. He's engaging in mental time travel, which 0:36:15.400 --> 0:36:18.600 of course is something that that that that humans have 0:36:19.760 --> 0:36:23.200 in general, that allows us to form these simulations of 0:36:23.239 --> 0:36:26.960 the past that too varying degrees may be correct. Uh, 0:36:27.000 --> 0:36:29.920 And then compare those two simulations of what the future 0:36:30.000 --> 0:36:33.560 might hold and and various simulations about how that future 0:36:33.680 --> 0:36:37.319 situation will affect us, how will respond, etcetera. So you 0:36:37.320 --> 0:36:38.719 can just say that, or you can go with the 0:36:38.760 --> 0:36:42.239 more fun idea that like actual beings from beyond the 0:36:42.280 --> 0:36:45.440 grave came and visited him and took him on journeys, 0:36:45.960 --> 0:36:48.600 you know, through the through, through the past, and the 0:36:48.640 --> 0:36:51.600 president in the future. Right, and so, while a lot 0:36:51.680 --> 0:36:55.680 of the modern sci fi time travel I think is 0:36:56.000 --> 0:36:58.800 clearly traceable back to two H. G. Wells and the 0:36:59.080 --> 0:37:01.800 stories he wrote in the eighteen nineties and uh, mainly 0:37:01.920 --> 0:37:06.160 the novel The Time the Time Machine in right, this 0:37:06.239 --> 0:37:09.120 goes back significantly earlier. Christmas Carol came out in eighteen 0:37:09.200 --> 0:37:13.000 forty three. Yeah, now you have even earlier stories. They 0:37:13.160 --> 0:37:16.560 get closer to a whole trope or or about to discuss. 0:37:16.719 --> 0:37:19.200 There's a Bulgarian tale from eighteen twenty four about a 0:37:19.239 --> 0:37:22.880 Russian hero who swept overboard at sea and he becomes 0:37:22.880 --> 0:37:26.799 wrapped in an herb known as the UH is the 0:37:26.880 --> 0:37:29.880 root of life and UH, and then he comes to 0:37:30.160 --> 0:37:34.160 in the year four. I love how some of many 0:37:34.200 --> 0:37:36.920 of these older time travel stories they just go for it. 0:37:36.960 --> 0:37:40.399 They just go like a thousand years into the future. Um, 0:37:40.600 --> 0:37:42.200 you don't seem like you don't see as much of that, 0:37:42.520 --> 0:37:44.440 and and I don't know many of the stories we 0:37:44.440 --> 0:37:46.239 were you know, we grow even I guess I fall 0:37:46.280 --> 0:37:49.360 back to the patterns set by Back to the Future, 0:37:49.640 --> 0:37:51.640 Like what are you looking at your traveling into the 0:37:51.680 --> 0:37:54.919 time of your parents, or you're traveling into the time 0:37:55.000 --> 0:37:57.560 of your children, which I think makes a lot of 0:37:57.560 --> 0:38:01.360 sense because that's a very human perspective of individual perspective 0:38:01.440 --> 0:38:04.480 level of time travel. That's the that's generally the spectrum 0:38:04.480 --> 0:38:06.399 that we're most concerned about, or should be I guess 0:38:06.440 --> 0:38:08.960 most concerned about it is like where do we come from? 0:38:09.000 --> 0:38:11.600 And what sort of world are we leaving for our children? 0:38:12.280 --> 0:38:16.600 I wonder if the tendency for for time travel journeys 0:38:16.640 --> 0:38:19.200 to become more modest in scale, you know, people going 0:38:19.480 --> 0:38:22.760 a hundred years into the future instead of a thousand. Uh, 0:38:22.960 --> 0:38:27.160 if that happens in the twentieth century because of the 0:38:27.320 --> 0:38:31.560 increasing rate of cultural and technological change in the twentieth century, 0:38:31.680 --> 0:38:34.160 like people living in a time where things see it 0:38:34.200 --> 0:38:35.839 will seem at least and I don't know if there's 0:38:35.840 --> 0:38:38.000 an objective way to measure this, but seem at least 0:38:38.000 --> 0:38:41.759 to be changing faster than ever. Did they start to think, like, 0:38:41.800 --> 0:38:43.840 I can't set this a thousand years in the future, 0:38:43.880 --> 0:38:46.560 because like nothing will even be recognizable. I've got to 0:38:46.600 --> 0:38:49.680 I've got to pull the pull the reins back a bit. Yeah, 0:38:49.760 --> 0:38:52.640 getting into the concept of future shock, right, the idea 0:38:52.719 --> 0:38:54.520 that it just seems like things are moving at such 0:38:54.840 --> 0:38:58.360 a terrific level, I can't possibly predict what it's going 0:38:58.440 --> 0:39:00.719 to be like in uh, you know, in just ten 0:39:00.800 --> 0:39:02.719 years now. One of the interesting things there is, of course, 0:39:02.719 --> 0:39:05.680 that the concept of future shock, that there could be 0:39:05.719 --> 0:39:09.399 almost this trauma and anxiety associated with the the rate 0:39:09.440 --> 0:39:12.400 of technological advancement. This didn't come about till nineteen seventy. 0:39:12.480 --> 0:39:18.120 This was American futurist Alvin Toffler and his spouse Adelaide. Uh. 0:39:18.160 --> 0:39:21.640 They they formulated this concept. So, I don't know, it 0:39:21.640 --> 0:39:23.360 would be interesting to look at the sci fi. At 0:39:23.400 --> 0:39:26.279 sci fi from the nineteen seventies, was was it less 0:39:26.920 --> 0:39:31.480 less um likely to look at near future situations and 0:39:31.560 --> 0:39:35.000 more likely to gaze into the far future, you know, 0:39:35.040 --> 0:39:38.560 sort of like the early earlier work of Frank Herbert 0:39:38.560 --> 0:39:41.120 looking into the far future Humanity and Dune. Because it 0:39:41.160 --> 0:39:43.320 seems like by the time we get into the nineteen eighties, 0:39:43.520 --> 0:39:46.080 you have far more of a tendency with sci fi 0:39:46.120 --> 0:39:49.719 authors to look into an immediate future. But I could 0:39:49.760 --> 0:39:52.160 be way off off the path there. I'm just probably 0:39:52.719 --> 0:39:55.480 cherry picking thinking about various works from different decades that 0:39:55.560 --> 0:40:05.000 I'm familiar with. Well, we we teased earlier the question 0:40:05.120 --> 0:40:08.719 of how far back in history the concept of time 0:40:08.719 --> 0:40:11.160 travel actually goes. It's clear again that a lot of 0:40:11.200 --> 0:40:15.239 modern time travel, I think is largely traceable back to H. G. 0:40:15.360 --> 0:40:17.920 Wells and The Time Machine. Again, that's the eighteen nineties, 0:40:17.960 --> 0:40:21.080 but there are ideas of time travel from before that. 0:40:21.120 --> 0:40:24.840 Like we've been discussing how far before that. So I 0:40:24.880 --> 0:40:28.359 was looking around for evidence of the oldest stories of 0:40:28.440 --> 0:40:32.320 time travel and literature, and I came across an interesting 0:40:32.400 --> 0:40:37.279 claim from a professor, actually a professor at Georgia Tech 0:40:37.480 --> 0:40:41.600 named Lisa Yazik, who is a professor of science fiction studies. 0:40:41.960 --> 0:40:45.120 So I was watching a video lecture that she did 0:40:45.120 --> 0:40:49.799 in about She actually wrote the preface or introduction to 0:40:49.840 --> 0:40:53.720 a recent new edition of of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, 0:40:54.480 --> 0:40:57.200 and she's done a lot of study about the history 0:40:57.400 --> 0:41:01.800 of time travel stories actually connected her also by a 0:41:01.880 --> 0:41:05.000 mentioned in that article by by Adam Man in Life Science. 0:41:05.320 --> 0:41:09.399 But Yesik actually has a lot of of interesting thoughts 0:41:09.400 --> 0:41:12.120 about time travel. She argues that it is not as 0:41:12.200 --> 0:41:16.080 modern a literary concept as we might assume, and in fact, 0:41:16.440 --> 0:41:20.520 some forms of time travel are as old as literature itself. 0:41:20.960 --> 0:41:23.279 And so what would be the examples here? Well, she 0:41:23.400 --> 0:41:27.520 gives the example of the ancient Sanskrit epic the Mahabarita, 0:41:28.160 --> 0:41:31.480 which describes a form of time travel that yeas it 0:41:31.640 --> 0:41:35.160 calls time dilation. So this would be similar to the 0:41:35.480 --> 0:41:38.680 type of time travel that is quite real a confirmed 0:41:38.760 --> 0:41:41.640 part of modern physics that we know from general relativity, 0:41:41.640 --> 0:41:44.280 where say, if you are um, if you are near 0:41:44.400 --> 0:41:47.200 an object of great mass, or if you are moving 0:41:47.239 --> 0:41:51.000 at great velocity, then relative to other objects in the universe, 0:41:51.320 --> 0:41:54.120 your experience of time will slow down. You will age 0:41:54.160 --> 0:41:56.520 more slowly, as as time sort of zips by in 0:41:56.560 --> 0:41:59.800 the broader context. But this story is not about physics, 0:41:59.800 --> 0:42:02.680 so uh. This story in the Mahabarata probably dates back 0:42:02.719 --> 0:42:06.080 to sometime in the first millennium b c. E UH, 0:42:06.120 --> 0:42:08.920 and it is the story of a king named Rivada, 0:42:09.040 --> 0:42:13.759 who is also known as Kakudman and his daughter Ravati 0:42:14.080 --> 0:42:16.200 actually found a good text of this story, though it 0:42:16.320 --> 0:42:19.279 is the version that's told not in the Mahabarata but 0:42:19.440 --> 0:42:22.880 in the Vishnu Puranha. And so this version is from 0:42:22.960 --> 0:42:25.800 the Vishnu Puranha, and it's translated into English in the 0:42:25.880 --> 0:42:30.000 nineteenth century by Horace Hayman Wilson. So the story begins 0:42:30.080 --> 0:42:33.040 with this king Ravada, who is the eldest of a 0:42:33.120 --> 0:42:38.920 hundred brethren. And King Ravada has a surpassingly wonderful daughter 0:42:39.080 --> 0:42:43.040 named Ravati, and she is just awesome and lovely in 0:42:43.120 --> 0:42:47.160 every possible way. She's like the best princess ever. And 0:42:47.239 --> 0:42:51.600 in fact, Ravati is so great that Rivada doesn't know 0:42:51.760 --> 0:42:54.320 if there are really any men around who are worthy 0:42:54.360 --> 0:42:57.680 of her hand in marriage. So he gets an idea. 0:42:58.160 --> 0:43:01.200 He is going to consult the heads. He will travel 0:43:01.680 --> 0:43:04.680 to the Brahma realm, the plane of existence where the 0:43:04.680 --> 0:43:08.279 god Brahma dwells, and he will consult with the great God. 0:43:08.320 --> 0:43:11.280 He will get the advice of Brahma, because if anybody 0:43:11.280 --> 0:43:14.000 should be able to find him a suitable match for Ravati, 0:43:14.040 --> 0:43:17.120 it should be Brahma. But when the two of them 0:43:17.200 --> 0:43:19.920 get there, Brahma is in the middle of listening to 0:43:19.960 --> 0:43:23.680 a concert. They're they're a group of of divine singers 0:43:23.719 --> 0:43:26.600 who are who are going through a song. And so 0:43:26.840 --> 0:43:30.120 Ravada and Ravati sit and wait patiently for the song 0:43:30.160 --> 0:43:32.160 to finish. And here I'm going to quote from the 0:43:32.400 --> 0:43:36.399 Wilson translation. At the end of their singing, Ravada prostrated 0:43:36.480 --> 0:43:40.600 himself before Brahma and explained his Errand whom should you 0:43:40.640 --> 0:43:43.319 wish for a son in law? Demanded Brahma, And the 0:43:43.400 --> 0:43:46.000 King mentioned to him various persons with whom he could 0:43:46.040 --> 0:43:50.240 be well pleased. Nodding his head gently and graciously smiling, 0:43:50.560 --> 0:43:53.160 Brahma said to him, of those whom you have named, 0:43:53.239 --> 0:43:58.160 the third or fourth generation no longer survives, for many 0:43:58.239 --> 0:44:02.000 successions of ages have passed away whilst you were listening 0:44:02.000 --> 0:44:07.200 to our songsters. Now upon earth, the great age of 0:44:07.239 --> 0:44:10.880 the present Manu is nearly finished, and the Collie period 0:44:10.960 --> 0:44:14.399 is at hand. You must therefore bestow this virgin gym 0:44:14.520 --> 0:44:18.080 upon some other husband, for you are now alone, and 0:44:18.160 --> 0:44:23.440 your friends, your minister's servants, wife, kinsman, armies, and treasures 0:44:23.560 --> 0:44:26.760 have long since been swept away by the hand of time. 0:44:27.960 --> 0:44:31.239 So the issue here is that time flows at a 0:44:31.360 --> 0:44:35.240 different rate on Earth than it does in the Brahma realm. 0:44:35.280 --> 0:44:37.880 It's as if the Brahma realm were like near a 0:44:37.960 --> 0:44:42.200 supermassive black hole. So while the two mortals were sitting 0:44:42.239 --> 0:44:45.080 here listening to this song, presumably the song's only a 0:44:45.120 --> 0:44:48.600 few minutes long, millions of years have passed on Earth, 0:44:48.680 --> 0:44:54.000 and everybody they ever knew or knew of is dead. Fortunately, 0:44:54.239 --> 0:44:57.440 there are some immortal god still around, and so there 0:44:57.520 --> 0:45:00.400 is a semi happy ending for Ravati because at the 0:45:00.520 --> 0:45:03.719 end she gets too She gets pared up with one 0:45:03.719 --> 0:45:06.840 of the avatars of the god Vishnu, who is quite 0:45:06.840 --> 0:45:10.000 worthy of her hand in marriage, of course, because he's Vishnu. 0:45:10.160 --> 0:45:12.319 And then there's a long section of the story in 0:45:12.400 --> 0:45:16.239 the Vishnu Puranha version that is just a monologue on 0:45:16.239 --> 0:45:20.879 the nature of Vishnu, who interestingly is in places described 0:45:21.040 --> 0:45:24.080 sort of like a manifestation of time itself. So I 0:45:24.120 --> 0:45:26.560 just want to read some some parts of this monologue, 0:45:26.600 --> 0:45:30.640 not the whole thing. Quote the being of whose commencement, 0:45:30.880 --> 0:45:35.200 course and termination we are ignorant, the unborn and omnipresent 0:45:35.320 --> 0:45:38.640 essence of all things, He who's real and infinite nature 0:45:38.640 --> 0:45:42.160 and essence we do not know is the supreme Vishnu. 0:45:42.360 --> 0:45:47.080 He is time, made up of moments and hours and years, 0:45:47.120 --> 0:45:51.080 whose influence is the source of perpetual change. He is 0:45:51.160 --> 0:45:54.240 the universal form of all things, from birth to death. 0:45:54.680 --> 0:45:58.200 He is eternal, without name or shape, and then skipping 0:45:58.200 --> 0:46:01.439 ahead of it. He is at once the creator, and 0:46:01.560 --> 0:46:04.799 that which is created the preserver, and that which is 0:46:05.000 --> 0:46:08.960 preserved the destroyer, and as one with all things, that 0:46:09.040 --> 0:46:13.480 which is destroyed, and as the indestructible. He is distinct 0:46:13.520 --> 0:46:17.359 from these three vicissitudes. In him is the world. He 0:46:17.600 --> 0:46:20.920 is the world, and he the primeval self born is 0:46:20.960 --> 0:46:24.640 again present in the world. Wow. Yeah, that that reminds 0:46:24.640 --> 0:46:31.720 me of some translations of of the Geta. They they 0:46:31.800 --> 0:46:34.680 translate the words of Ishnu as as I am time 0:46:34.800 --> 0:46:38.879 grown old, which I like that. That yeah, that gives 0:46:38.880 --> 0:46:41.880 me chills. Now. There's another interesting thing that gets mentioned 0:46:41.920 --> 0:46:44.600 in this story, which is that, though there are some 0:46:44.719 --> 0:46:48.879 very important differences between this myth and the dystopian sci 0:46:48.920 --> 0:46:52.520 fi stories of the modern era, Rivada and Ravati do 0:46:52.719 --> 0:46:56.480 return to a future earth that could be called dystopian, 0:46:56.680 --> 0:47:00.000 or at least worse off than the one they left at. 0:47:00.000 --> 0:47:01.719 Don't know if this has to do, it might have 0:47:01.760 --> 0:47:04.479 to do with um what Brahma says about the Earth 0:47:04.520 --> 0:47:07.520 being on the verge of the Collie age. But we 0:47:07.600 --> 0:47:11.440 are told quote being thus instructed by the Lotus born divinity. 0:47:11.640 --> 0:47:15.040 Ravada returned with his daughter to Earth, where he found 0:47:15.040 --> 0:47:18.560 the race of men dwindled in stature, reduced in vigor, 0:47:18.680 --> 0:47:22.560 and enfeebled in intellect. So they come back and people 0:47:22.600 --> 0:47:25.040 are like worse than when they left. Things things have 0:47:25.120 --> 0:47:28.959 gone downhill. And uh So I want to be clear 0:47:29.000 --> 0:47:32.239 that the kind of dystopian future described by H. G. 0:47:32.400 --> 0:47:37.040 Wells in The Time Machine is I believe understood as 0:47:37.080 --> 0:47:42.360 a contingent consequence of bad social and political trends within 0:47:42.520 --> 0:47:45.600 linear time. So I think the important point that Wells 0:47:45.719 --> 0:47:48.760 is trying to make is that if we say, continue 0:47:48.800 --> 0:47:52.520 tolerating a society in which the rich relentlessly exploit the 0:47:52.560 --> 0:47:55.200 labor of the poor, here's what you're gonna get. You know, 0:47:55.239 --> 0:47:59.200 you're gonna get Eloi and morlocks. Um, I don't get 0:47:59.239 --> 0:48:03.000 that kind of implication in this ancient Indian epic. It 0:48:03.000 --> 0:48:05.080 would be good to hear from listeners with more knowledge 0:48:05.080 --> 0:48:08.520 about ancient Hindu thought. But I think the story about 0:48:09.160 --> 0:48:13.000 Ravata and Ravati is more consistent with a vision of 0:48:13.000 --> 0:48:15.759 a kind of cyclical mythic time in which there there 0:48:15.800 --> 0:48:18.960 are ages of human advancement and then ages of human 0:48:19.040 --> 0:48:22.359 retreat and it's just that they happen to pop out 0:48:22.400 --> 0:48:25.719 of the Brahma realm in one of the bad times. Yeah, 0:48:25.760 --> 0:48:28.040 that's that's my understanding as well. And of course, this 0:48:28.200 --> 0:48:30.759 this view of time um that is um matches a 0:48:30.920 --> 0:48:33.480 very very loosely with with some of the ideas you 0:48:33.560 --> 0:48:38.040 see in um uh in various Native American tribal cultures 0:48:38.120 --> 0:48:41.440 and in Mesoamerican cultures, where it's a procession of different 0:48:41.480 --> 0:48:45.920 ages and catastrophes and we find ourselves and yet another age, 0:48:45.920 --> 0:48:48.319 and there will be another catastrophe, but then there will 0:48:48.320 --> 0:48:51.240 be another age beyond that. Now, of course this raises 0:48:51.280 --> 0:48:53.640 the question people always want to like pick at logical 0:48:53.640 --> 0:48:56.160 issues in time travel stories, and and this story has 0:48:56.239 --> 0:48:58.520 mythic logic, so it's pointless to try to pick at it. 0:48:58.560 --> 0:49:00.960 But I couldn't help but think, why didn't they just 0:49:01.000 --> 0:49:03.200 wait a few more minutes with Brahma and maybe like 0:49:03.280 --> 0:49:05.359 listen to another song, and then they could pop out 0:49:05.400 --> 0:49:07.839 at a better time on Earth? I don't know. Now. 0:49:08.000 --> 0:49:10.759 I love the idea that it involves um listening to 0:49:10.760 --> 0:49:13.200 to music though, because yeah, I gets into this, like, 0:49:13.239 --> 0:49:15.560 because what happens when we listen to listen to to music? 0:49:15.600 --> 0:49:17.719 You know, that's just one of the many human experiences 0:49:17.800 --> 0:49:20.840 that can alter our perception of time. You know, you 0:49:20.880 --> 0:49:23.080 get lost in a good song, and I don't know, 0:49:23.200 --> 0:49:25.640 sometimes that good song doesn't seem to last long enough. 0:49:25.640 --> 0:49:27.080 You've gotta put it on repeat and listen to it 0:49:27.120 --> 0:49:29.960 about six times um. And in other cases, you know, 0:49:30.040 --> 0:49:33.040 you it seems to stretch on for a very long 0:49:33.080 --> 0:49:36.759 time and you lose yourself in it. Um. And curiously enough, 0:49:36.760 --> 0:49:39.480 this pops up in another UH tale. This is a 0:49:39.560 --> 0:49:45.479 Japanese fairy tale of Urashima Taro Uh. This tale about 0:49:45.480 --> 0:49:48.200 a fisherman who rescues a turtle and returns it to 0:49:48.239 --> 0:49:52.120 the dragon palace beneath the sea. While he's there returning 0:49:52.160 --> 0:49:55.960 said turtle, he's entertained by the princess there as a reward, 0:49:56.600 --> 0:50:00.000 and you know, there's music and dancing. It's great, uh. 0:50:00.040 --> 0:50:01.960 And then he's sent home with a box that he's 0:50:01.960 --> 0:50:05.000 forbidden to open. And when he returns to his home village, 0:50:05.239 --> 0:50:08.560 he finds that a hundred years has passed, and when 0:50:08.560 --> 0:50:11.520 he opens the box that again he was forbidden to open, 0:50:11.840 --> 0:50:16.080 he immediately ages an entire century. Oh no, don't open 0:50:16.120 --> 0:50:18.799 the box, dude. Yeah. I mean, if if gods and 0:50:18.880 --> 0:50:21.840 goddesses and strange ladies under the ocean tell you not 0:50:21.920 --> 0:50:25.440 to open the box, don't open that box. You know what. 0:50:25.680 --> 0:50:27.600 We're in the odd situation where I think we need 0:50:27.640 --> 0:50:30.759 to call this episode right here. But there's a lot 0:50:30.800 --> 0:50:32.960 more we want to say about the history of of 0:50:33.000 --> 0:50:36.480 thinking about time travel, and so what I'm proposing is 0:50:36.560 --> 0:50:40.040 that on this subject, we sleep into the future. I 0:50:40.280 --> 0:50:42.600 don't think we're quite ready for the next episode of 0:50:42.600 --> 0:50:44.320 the show to be part two of this, so maybe 0:50:44.320 --> 0:50:47.479 this will be an open part one, and who knows 0:50:47.520 --> 0:50:49.520 when the hands of time will reach out and feed 0:50:49.560 --> 0:50:52.800 you the second entry. Yeah, just don't open any strange 0:50:52.840 --> 0:50:57.399 boxes in the meantime, all right, well, yes, definitely look 0:50:57.400 --> 0:51:00.200 out for that in the next episode. Uh, we have 0:51:00.239 --> 0:51:01.640 some we may have. I think we are gonna have 0:51:01.680 --> 0:51:03.920 some other episodes that have to occur before then, but 0:51:04.000 --> 0:51:06.360 we will be back to discuss this topic more. In 0:51:06.400 --> 0:51:08.440 the meantime, you would like to check out other episodes 0:51:08.480 --> 0:51:10.440 of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Will You can find 0:51:10.520 --> 0:51:13.960 all of them trailing back through time in the Stuff 0:51:14.000 --> 0:51:16.440 to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. You can get that 0:51:16.480 --> 0:51:19.800 wherever you get your podcasts. Uh. We have our core 0:51:19.880 --> 0:51:23.279 episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays listener mail. On Mondays we 0:51:23.360 --> 0:51:26.880 do a short form artifact on Wednesdays. On Friday we 0:51:26.920 --> 0:51:29.000 do a little something called Weird House Cinema. That's when 0:51:29.040 --> 0:51:32.040 we set most serious concerns aside and we just talk 0:51:32.120 --> 0:51:35.640 about some sort of strange film. And we have discussed 0:51:35.640 --> 0:51:39.439 time travel films and not only time after time, but uh, oh, 0:51:39.719 --> 0:51:43.440 what else did we get into? Um uh, Transfers. Transfers 0:51:43.440 --> 0:51:46.600 is a hell of a time travel movie, The Return 0:51:46.640 --> 0:51:49.239 of Jack Dad. Yes, TEUs right, we did, we did 0:51:49.239 --> 0:51:53.040 Transfers to Oh and then on the weekends we do 0:51:53.080 --> 0:51:55.200 a vault episode that's a rerun from the previous year. 0:51:55.600 --> 0:51:58.359 Huge Things. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth 0:51:58.440 --> 0:52:00.600 Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch 0:52:00.640 --> 0:52:02.799 with us with feedback on this episode or any other, 0:52:02.880 --> 0:52:05.200 to suggest a topic for the future, or just to 0:52:05.280 --> 0:52:08.000 say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff 0:52:08.040 --> 0:52:17.759 to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your 0:52:17.760 --> 0:52:20.680 Mind is production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts 0:52:20.719 --> 0:52:22.799 for My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, 0:52:22.960 --> 0:52:34.520 Apple podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.