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 are picking up with our our second episode about
Speaker 1: time travel as a concept, time travel as it appears,
Speaker 1: especially in fiction and the human imagination. The first episode
Speaker 1: was Time Traveler zero Part one. Uh. Then we had
Speaker 1: a little break and did another episode, and now we're
Speaker 1: back with Time Traveler zero Part two. Now, I thought
Speaker 1: this was going to be in one, but I guess
Speaker 1: we wait, no, we're already in one. I get all
Speaker 1: confused about years. I thought it was going to be
Speaker 1: next year. But yeah, yeah, but then we ended up
Speaker 1: shuffling some stuff around. So here we are earlier than
Speaker 1: we thought. Yeah. Yeah, so we were just traveling back
Speaker 1: and forth, uh, between past and future. Uh, though within
Speaker 1: the the artificial confines of of our publication schedule. Now,
Speaker 1: in the last episode, we talked about some of the
Speaker 1: earliest possible appearances of forms of time travel in mythology
Speaker 1: and literature, such as in the the Mahabarata and in
Speaker 1: some say Japanese folk tales, where the way you could
Speaker 1: probably describe the time travel mechanism is something like time dilations.
Speaker 1: So uh so, for example, the the story of King
Speaker 1: Ravada and his daughter Ravati in the in the Sanskrit
Speaker 1: epics that would you know, they travel up to the
Speaker 1: Brahma realm and they stay there for a few minutes.
Speaker 1: But then they find because time moves differently in the
Speaker 1: Brahma realm than it does down on Earth, millions of
Speaker 1: years have passed and whoops, like that, their entire civilization
Speaker 1: has gone and it's on to a different age. But
Speaker 1: I think today we're going to look at a similar
Speaker 1: but slightly different mechanism that appears in the history of
Speaker 1: time travel mythology and literature, which is sleeping into the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is this is one of the concepts that's
Speaker 1: discussed in Paul J. Nayan's book Time Machines, Time Travel
Speaker 1: in Physics, Metaphysics and Science Fiction, which is a book
Speaker 1: that I I cited in the first episode. And we'll
Speaker 1: continue to decide from this if you if you're looking
Speaker 1: for a good time travel book that deals with like
Speaker 1: the concept of time travel but also gets into some
Speaker 1: of the heavier scientific contemplations of the topic. It's a
Speaker 1: great book. To pick up. So Naan discusses that time
Speaker 1: travel by dreaming was once a common literary device. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that it's closely related to this idea of sleeping into
Speaker 1: the future, the and and and this is something I
Speaker 1: love because this is something that we can all relate
Speaker 1: to because we all do it every night. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: we lay our head down on the pillow, and you know,
Speaker 1: there might be a little bit of struggle getting the
Speaker 1: time machine activated. But once the once sleep mode is
Speaker 1: in place, um, you were able to skip for word
Speaker 1: in time. Now depending on how you sleep in the
Speaker 1: nature of your dreams. Uh, you know, not every journey
Speaker 1: is going to be the same. Some of these journeys
Speaker 1: are a little round about, um, you know where suddenly
Speaker 1: we have to you know, stop and how to to
Speaker 1: to steal a joke from Mitch Hedberg, we have to
Speaker 1: let um uh build a toy playing with our boss
Speaker 1: or something before getting to our destination. Uhart with my
Speaker 1: landlord was go kart with the landlord. That was a
Speaker 1: um yeah it say so. There might be some distractions
Speaker 1: on the way, but when you wake up, it will
Speaker 1: be tomorrow, it will be the next day, it will
Speaker 1: be the next morning. Though one thing that's interesting about
Speaker 1: that is, uh that I think if you ever have
Speaker 1: the experience of going under general anesthesia and being able
Speaker 1: to compare that experience to the normal experience of sleep,
Speaker 1: at least for me, and I think this is pretty
Speaker 1: common for others as well, the comparison to anesthesia makes
Speaker 1: you aware that you are sort of semi conscious of
Speaker 1: the passage of time during sleep in a way that
Speaker 1: you're not really for the like the pure deep unconsciousness
Speaker 1: of anesthesia, where I mean under the drugs, it's just
Speaker 1: sort of like, you know, you snap your fingers and
Speaker 1: then you're awake hours later, or at least that that's
Speaker 1: sort of what I recall. But with with sleeping, you know,
Speaker 1: you're not really conscious of the passage of time, but
Speaker 1: you're you're sort of maybe liminally conscious that something is
Speaker 1: going on. Time is somehow passing. It's not quite as
Speaker 1: much of a pause and then play as as anesthesia is. Oh,
Speaker 1: I agree, absolutely, That's been my experience. Um. I guess
Speaker 1: when you sleep and when you dream, time gets weird, uh,
Speaker 1: and it may it may feel like it passes very quickly,
Speaker 1: but when you go into anesthesia, um, time just disappears. Completely.
Speaker 1: It is, like you said, just the like the snap
Speaker 1: of a finger. Um. So, so yeah, that's something important
Speaker 1: to keep in mind. But but but obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: people for you know, thousands and thousands of years would
Speaker 1: have been privy to this, this we good situation. And
Speaker 1: maybe it's not even that weird because it does happen
Speaker 1: every night. Though I would argue that the world of
Speaker 1: dreams always offers a little weirdness. Uh. People would be
Speaker 1: familiar with this, um this phenomena, and so we see
Speaker 1: a play out in various stories. Uh. Probably the most
Speaker 1: famous of these um still to this day is is
Speaker 1: going to be Washington Irving's eighteen nineteen story Rip van Winkle,
Speaker 1: in which a man sleeps his way twenty years into
Speaker 1: the future. Now, of course, this this would become a
Speaker 1: pretty standard trope of of of science fiction, especially when
Speaker 1: you get into the realm of suspended animation. Uh. This
Speaker 1: of course was parodied in the long running sci fi
Speaker 1: animated series Futurama, where Fry essentially sleeps into the future
Speaker 1: via cryogenics, but you as also find it in various
Speaker 1: other works. One that Nayan mentions is um it was
Speaker 1: is H. G. Wells when the Sleeper awakes from eighteen
Speaker 1: nine nine, which is is not what I've read, not
Speaker 1: when I was from eliar with But this one involves
Speaker 1: a sleep jaunt from the year eighteen ninety seven to
Speaker 1: the year so you wake up and there are some
Speaker 1: giant flying machines that look kind of like skeletal butterflies
Speaker 1: or something. Oh yeah, there's some wonderful illustrations from this
Speaker 1: that I was able to look up that I believe
Speaker 1: we're part of the original published story. And yeah, they're
Speaker 1: black and white, and yeah, there's like they're like enormous structures.
Speaker 1: They are these flying machines that look like the they
Speaker 1: look kind of like the ornithopters that the Wookies are
Speaker 1: using in the Star Wars movies. Uh, really cool looking stuff.
Speaker 1: There was also a seventeen seventy one tale by L. S.
Speaker 1: Mercy Or about an eighteenth century sleeper who awakes in
Speaker 1: the twenty five century. And I just have to say,
Speaker 1: I love how so many of these time travel yarns
Speaker 1: they're just really jumping out there. You know, they're going, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of years into the future. I wonder again,
Speaker 1: I think I contemplated this a little bit in our
Speaker 1: last episode, like, what does it say about a give
Speaker 1: and time period, how far into the future time their
Speaker 1: fictional time travelers are going now. One of the things
Speaker 1: that Nan points out is that sleeping into the future
Speaker 1: is quite an old trope, and uh it might well
Speaker 1: be the oldest time travel concept in human storytelling. I
Speaker 1: don't think any of the examples we're looking at would
Speaker 1: go back farther than the Maha Barta, which did not
Speaker 1: involve sleeping and was more of the time dilation version.
Speaker 1: But but certainly it does go way back. I'm going
Speaker 1: to cite a an example of sleeping into the future
Speaker 1: from the ancient world in just a minute here. Well,
Speaker 1: the one that that Naan shares is from around six D.
Speaker 1: Gregory of Tours told a story titled the Seven Sleepers
Speaker 1: of Ephesus, who traveled three hundred and seventy two years
Speaker 1: via sleep whoa sometimes known as the Seven Sleepers. This
Speaker 1: is a medieval tale told about a group of Christian
Speaker 1: youths who hide in a cave outside of of the
Speaker 1: city around to fifty c in order to escape Roman persecution,
Speaker 1: and they emerge. I think that the exact number of
Speaker 1: years they sleep varies I've seen three, I've seen three
Speaker 1: seventy two. But they they wake up and they find
Speaker 1: that the that everything has changed. The city is now
Speaker 1: a city of believers and um and and a version
Speaker 1: of this tale is also found in the Qoran. Now
Speaker 1: that's interesting because it shows one of the things that
Speaker 1: time travel is sometimes used to do in literature and
Speaker 1: folk tales, which is to, uh, to sort of vindicate
Speaker 1: a person's reputation or point of view, to to show
Speaker 1: sort of like, yep, the future acknowledged they were right.
Speaker 1: So these people go and fall asleep in a cave
Speaker 1: as a persecuted minority and then come out and their
Speaker 1: side is finally vindicated and has taken over. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and I guess on on a simpler level, it's it's
Speaker 1: about using the time travel story to compare the past
Speaker 1: and the future or the past in the present, whichever
Speaker 1: compare two points of time, and have some character or
Speaker 1: characters involved as the bridge between the two that can
Speaker 1: provide a point of view. Yeah, that's right. So the
Speaker 1: stories uh allow a level of perspective that doesn't occur
Speaker 1: in reality. That you know that you can see two
Speaker 1: things that a person in reality can can never see.
Speaker 1: Both of two different ages. UH. But I found an
Speaker 1: example I thought was really interesting because it turns out
Speaker 1: sleeping into the future actually goes back even farther than,
Speaker 1: uh than the seven Sleepers of Ephesus. I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about a really interesting example I came across in
Speaker 1: the stories of the first century b c. E. Jewish
Speaker 1: scholar and a legend miracle worker named Honey the Circle Maker. Now,
Speaker 1: I think his best historians can tell Honey was a
Speaker 1: real person. This is not like a purely legendary figure,
Speaker 1: though I think some of the accounts of his life
Speaker 1: are obviously probably legendary. But but it seems like this
Speaker 1: was a real guy. He was a real scholar who
Speaker 1: lived in the first century b c. E. He's not
Speaker 1: mentioned in the he Brew Bible or the Tannock. He
Speaker 1: he lived after the books of the Tannock were composed,
Speaker 1: but stories about him are preserved in the Talmud, the
Speaker 1: collection of of Jewish law and uh commentary known as
Speaker 1: the Talmud. And he gets his epithet the circle Maker
Speaker 1: or sometimes the circle drawer from the most famous story
Speaker 1: about his life, which which I will tell now. And
Speaker 1: I'm summarizing the version that appears in the Babylonian Talmud,
Speaker 1: which I found in full text English translation with a
Speaker 1: nice searchable online version called the William Davidson Digital Edition
Speaker 1: of the Talmud. It's got both English and modern Hebrew
Speaker 1: side by side, so it looks like a very usable edition.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the story of the most famous miracle goes
Speaker 1: like this. So there's this Jewish scholar named Honey Uh
Speaker 1: and he is living in a time of drought, and
Speaker 1: the people come to him and ask Honey to pray
Speaker 1: to God that rain might fall. And Hony seems very
Speaker 1: confident that he's going to get results be because he
Speaker 1: tells the people that they need to go and bring
Speaker 1: their clay ovens inside because there's about to be so
Speaker 1: much rain that the clay will dissolve in the downpour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want that happen. So Hony prays, but no
Speaker 1: rain comes, and in response, Hony steps it up. So
Speaker 1: he draws a circle in the dust on the ground,
Speaker 1: and he stands inside the circle, and then he says, quote,
Speaker 1: Master of the Universe, your children have turned to their
Speaker 1: faces towards me, as I am like a member of
Speaker 1: your household. Therefore I take an oath by your great name,
Speaker 1: that I will not move from here until you have
Speaker 1: mercy upon your children and answer their prayers for rain.
Speaker 1: And apparently it works, because a little sprinkling of rain
Speaker 1: then begins, but it's a weak rain. So Hony is
Speaker 1: not satisfied, and he prays to God again, saying quote,
Speaker 1: I did not ask for this, but for rain to
Speaker 1: fill the cisterns, ditches and caves with enough water to
Speaker 1: last the entire year. So then the rain picks up
Speaker 1: and it starts to pour violently, mightily rushing rain. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Hony isn't quite happy with this either, so he says, quote,
Speaker 1: I did not ask for this damaging rain either, but
Speaker 1: for rain of benevolence, blessing and generosity. I kind of
Speaker 1: like that he's, uh, he's kind of standing up to
Speaker 1: the Hebraic God in a way that you know, you
Speaker 1: don't see in in various other stories, certainly you don't
Speaker 1: see and say, like the Book of job right, there's
Speaker 1: a very different attitude. Yeah, with Tony here and and
Speaker 1: his sort of almost rudeness with God is is something
Speaker 1: that does come up in a controversy in the epilogue
Speaker 1: to the story, but just to quickly finish the story. Uh,
Speaker 1: the narrative says quote. Subsequently, the rains fell in their
Speaker 1: standard manner, but continued unabated, filling the city with water
Speaker 1: until all of the Jews exited the residential areas of
Speaker 1: Jerusalem and went to the Temple Mount due to the rain.
Speaker 1: So he calls for rain and God provides it. But
Speaker 1: then there's sort of an epilogue where there's like contraver
Speaker 1: vers see about several things. First of all, the people
Speaker 1: ask is it writing too much? Should should Hony pray
Speaker 1: to God to make it stop now? And they have
Speaker 1: a back and forth about that. But then also it's
Speaker 1: the question is raised, you know, was there kind of
Speaker 1: something wrong with the way Hony was was nagging God
Speaker 1: for rain? Like the text, actually the English translation I
Speaker 1: was looking at uses the word nag. But ultimately the
Speaker 1: scholars conclude that, you know, Hony is okay because God
Speaker 1: responded to his please without reprimand, and so it seems
Speaker 1: like Hony's relationship with God is good. Well he was
Speaker 1: like a member of his households. Yeah, exactly, they go
Speaker 1: way back. So that's Hony the circle maker. But how
Speaker 1: it becomes relevant to time travel is there is actually
Speaker 1: a story of Hony sleeping into the future. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this story is also from the Babylonian Talmud. It is
Speaker 1: attributed to a Rabbi Johannan and I just want to
Speaker 1: read it here and then we can talk about it
Speaker 1: a bit quote. All the days of the life of
Speaker 1: that righteous man Hony, he was destroy rest over the
Speaker 1: meaning of this verse A song of a sense. When
Speaker 1: the Lord brought back those who returned to Zion, we
Speaker 1: were like those who dream Psalms one one. He said
Speaker 1: to himself, is there really a person who can sleep
Speaker 1: and dream for seventy years? How is it possible to
Speaker 1: compare the seventy year exile in Babylonia to a dream.
Speaker 1: One day he was walking along the road when he
Speaker 1: saw a certain man planting a carab tree. Honey said
Speaker 1: to him, this tree, after how many years will it
Speaker 1: bear fruit? The man said to him, it will not
Speaker 1: produce fruit until seventy years have passed. Honey said to him,
Speaker 1: is it obvious to you that you will live seventy
Speaker 1: years that you expect to benefit from this tree? He
Speaker 1: said to him, that man himself found a world full
Speaker 1: of carab trees just as my ancestors planted for me,
Speaker 1: I too, implanting for my descendants. Okay, so you know
Speaker 1: it takes this tree seventy years to grow. He's but
Speaker 1: he's not planting it, hoping to read up the fruits himself.
Speaker 1: I guess these would be legum pods that grow off
Speaker 1: of the charab tree um. You know, he's planting for
Speaker 1: for future generations, his his descendants. But the story goes on.
Speaker 1: So it says Honey sat and ate bread. Sleep overcame
Speaker 1: him and he slept. A cliff formed around him, and
Speaker 1: he disappeared from sight and slept for seventy years. When
Speaker 1: he awoke, he saw a certain man gathering caribs from
Speaker 1: that tree. Honey said to him, are you the one
Speaker 1: who planted this tree? The man said to him, I
Speaker 1: am his son's son. Honey said to him, I can
Speaker 1: learn from this that I have slept for seventy years.
Speaker 1: And indeed he saw his donkey had sired several herds
Speaker 1: during those many years. Hony went home and said to
Speaker 1: the members of the household, is the son of Hony
Speaker 1: the circle Maker alive? They said to him, his son
Speaker 1: is no longer with us, but his son's son is alive.
Speaker 1: He said to them, I am Hony the circle Maker.
Speaker 1: They did not believe him. They went to the study hall,
Speaker 1: where he heard the sages say about one scholar his halicot.
Speaker 1: And I think this word means um like religious laws
Speaker 1: or writings of or about religious laws. His halicott are
Speaker 1: as enlightening and as clear as in the years of
Speaker 1: Hony the circle Maker. For when Tony would enter the
Speaker 1: study hall, he would resolve for the stages any difficulty
Speaker 1: they had. Honey said to them, I am he. But
Speaker 1: they did not believe him and did not pay him
Speaker 1: proper respect. Honey became very upset, prayed for mercy, and died.
Speaker 1: And then it offers a bit of commentary. Rava said,
Speaker 1: this explains the folk saying where when people say either
Speaker 1: friendship or death, as one who has no friends is
Speaker 1: better off dead. Oh wow, I thought this was a
Speaker 1: really interesting story, and so there are a bunch of
Speaker 1: things about it. One is that it ties into a
Speaker 1: common theme of sleeping into the future, which is the
Speaker 1: passing away of everything that one cares about in the presence.
Speaker 1: So Hony sleeps seventy years into the future, but he's
Speaker 1: not confronted with You know, when we think of like
Speaker 1: time travel and science fiction going into the future, a
Speaker 1: lot of it is it is like people want to
Speaker 1: see amazing new types of technology or some kind of
Speaker 1: noticeable progress or or you know, or regress, you know,
Speaker 1: something some kind of change in the world that is notable.
Speaker 1: But but I don't think Hony really notices any um
Speaker 1: change to the scenario of the world. There's nothing to
Speaker 1: be amazed at. Instead, it's just that the unnoticed passage
Speaker 1: of time is loss and life without your friends and
Speaker 1: family is not worth living. Yeah, it's it's a nice's
Speaker 1: a nice message. Um. Yeah, But but it's interesting too,
Speaker 1: Like you said that the world hasn't really changed. There's
Speaker 1: no indication that technology has changed. Um, And I guess
Speaker 1: for a lot of people throughout history that probably seemed
Speaker 1: to be the case. I mean that the basic technology
Speaker 1: you're using and your understanding of the world has not changed.
Speaker 1: This is just the way things are. These are the
Speaker 1: tools we have. The things that will change, and you
Speaker 1: know that they'll change, will be um. You know the
Speaker 1: lifespans of of of human activity. You know that that
Speaker 1: people will will live and die and be born and
Speaker 1: grow old, and then also you know that uh uh,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance that as as people live and die,
Speaker 1: so will kings, so will rulers, and so there will
Speaker 1: be the you know, the app and flow of dynasties
Speaker 1: as as well as wars and so forth. Right, Another
Speaker 1: interesting thing I thought about this is that Hony gets
Speaker 1: to see his own posthumous reputation as a scholar, which
Speaker 1: apparently is going very strong. Like he goes and finds
Speaker 1: in the study hall that people really appreciate the teachings
Speaker 1: of him, of Hony the Circle Maker, but he can't
Speaker 1: really enjoy that that positive reputation now because people don't
Speaker 1: believe he's really that guy that they respect. In principle,
Speaker 1: that raises an interesting question about what we value and reputation.
Speaker 1: Like most people want to be I want to have
Speaker 1: a good reputation, want people to like them. But would
Speaker 1: it be would you be happy to have a good
Speaker 1: reputation if people didn't recognize you as yourself, if they
Speaker 1: didn't connect you in your current body to the bearer
Speaker 1: of that reputation. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty pretty interesting. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it makes you think about like legendary people and indeed,
Speaker 1: what if you had time travel scenarios where they got
Speaker 1: to travel into the future and they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm famous. But also that that image of me has
Speaker 1: grown so and is and it is so revered that
Speaker 1: you know, me just standing here, they're not even gonna
Speaker 1: identify me with that person right well, So anyway, I
Speaker 1: think this story would not be as old as the
Speaker 1: time dilation story in the Mahabar Toa, But otherwise I
Speaker 1: think this may be the oldest time travel story that
Speaker 1: that I been able to come across, And it's definitely
Speaker 1: the oldest sleeping into the future story that I found. Now,
Speaker 1: this wouldn't know this wouldn't be older, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: I did run across some some interesting additional time weirdness
Speaker 1: stories here, um uh. In between the publication of part
Speaker 1: one in this series and the recording of Part two,
Speaker 1: a listener by the name of Ahmed wrote in. Ahmed
Speaker 1: has written in before with some interesting content, but this
Speaker 1: time Amed wrote into share a couple of time travel
Speaker 1: tales related to Islamic tradition. One of them and he
Speaker 1: ends up mentioning the Seven Sleepers. Again, we had not
Speaker 1: actually recorded this episode yet, so he did not know
Speaker 1: that seven seven sleepers were coming, but he also shared
Speaker 1: the following us. So I'm going to read from Ahmed's
Speaker 1: email quote. According to Muslim tradition, Mohammed ascends to Heaven
Speaker 1: from Mecca on the back of a winged mount with
Speaker 1: the angel Gabriel as his guide. There, he individually meets
Speaker 1: with the prophets who came before him, ending with Moses
Speaker 1: and Abraham. Finally, he has an audience with God, who
Speaker 1: tells him to instruct Muslims to pray fifty times per day.
Speaker 1: After some back and forth, at the urging of Moses,
Speaker 1: who says that fifty is far too onerous, Muhammed leaves
Speaker 1: with the current five day prayers for Buslims. Notably, many
Speaker 1: Muslims sources say that when Mohammed returns from this journey,
Speaker 1: his door is still swinging back and forth, suggesting either
Speaker 1: a complete stoppage of time or at least a considerable dilation.
Speaker 1: That is very interesting and plays once again on the
Speaker 1: idea that that time passes differently in the heavens or
Speaker 1: in the realm of God or the Gods than it
Speaker 1: does here on earth. That maybe you know that you know,
Speaker 1: I guess it's similar to the idea that a day
Speaker 1: is as a thousand years and a thousand years as
Speaker 1: a day. Yeah. So there's something about the story that
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, this this sounds familiar. I think I've
Speaker 1: I've read this before, or I've I've heard something like
Speaker 1: this before. So I looked into it a little bit
Speaker 1: and then I realized, oh, yes, there is a there's
Speaker 1: a wonderful creature involved in some of these tellings. Um
Speaker 1: and and again um um ahm Ed mentioned that there's
Speaker 1: a winged mount uh that that the prophet rides on,
Speaker 1: and this creature is sometimes described as alba rock um,
Speaker 1: which means the shining or resplendent one um. Those were
Speaker 1: those translations were were provided by Jorge Luis Borges in
Speaker 1: his book Imaginary Beings and Carol Rose the Folklore's also
Speaker 1: provides the translation the lightning. So it's kind of a
Speaker 1: winged centaur in many artist depictions. You can look up
Speaker 1: images of of this. It's you know, sometimes spelled bu
Speaker 1: r a q or b o r a k in English,
Speaker 1: and Rose ads that it is. It's generally described as
Speaker 1: being pure white. Uh. Sometimes it's covered with jewels and
Speaker 1: precious stones that might be of varying colors, its breath
Speaker 1: is perfume, and it can understand human speech, but sources
Speaker 1: on are split on whether the creature can actually talk
Speaker 1: itself where they can just understand. Um. But I wanted
Speaker 1: to read just a bit from Borges his book here. Uh,
Speaker 1: he shares a bit about about al baraq. Quote. One
Speaker 1: Islamic Haadif tells us that his barak flew upward from
Speaker 1: the earth. It kicked over a jar filled with water.
Speaker 1: The prophet was taken up to the seventh Heaven, where
Speaker 1: he spoke with each of the patriarchs and angels that
Speaker 1: reside there, crossed the oneness, and felt a chill that
Speaker 1: froze his heart when the hand of God patted him
Speaker 1: on the shoulder. The time of men is not the
Speaker 1: time of God. When he returned to earth, the prophet
Speaker 1: caught the jar before a single drop of water had
Speaker 1: spilled out of it. Wow. That Yeah, that's time dilation again.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, the door is still swinging back
Speaker 1: and forth. The jar of water that was dropped as
Speaker 1: not yet hit the ground. Uh so so yeah, I
Speaker 1: love this account and I love that we have this
Speaker 1: wonderful uh fantastic beast here. Um. By the way, if
Speaker 1: you pick up a copy of the Book of Imaginary Beings,
Speaker 1: the version that's in print right now with illustrations by
Speaker 1: Peter Siss, al Baraque is on the cover, or a
Speaker 1: depiction of al Baraque is on the cover. But but
Speaker 1: also look up some of the various art art artistic
Speaker 1: ways that this creature has been brought to life in
Speaker 1: different Islamic cultures. Because it's pretty fabulous. Yeah, this illustration
Speaker 1: is great because it is it's almost like a mix
Speaker 1: between a pegasus and a megalithic sculpture. Yeah. Now, another
Speaker 1: possible example of time travel and old texts, um can
Speaker 1: be found in the sixteenth century Ming Dynasty text from
Speaker 1: China Journey into the West. Um. And I actually had
Speaker 1: not thought to look here until you mentioned it to Joe,
Speaker 1: and so I ended up, uh checking it out. See
Speaker 1: what exactly the Monkey King was up to that relates
Speaker 1: to time travel. Oh okay, So I think I came
Speaker 1: across a mention of time travel in the supplement to
Speaker 1: the Journey to the West. But there, but there's time
Speaker 1: travel in the original as well. Um. Yes, both to
Speaker 1: a certain extent. So um. So if if you're Wondering
Speaker 1: Journey into into the West Chinese classic. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: a classic work and has been adapted many times in
Speaker 1: many different forms. Uh and and it generally concerns the
Speaker 1: exploits of the Monkey King or Soon Willkong, the Great
Speaker 1: Sage equal to Heaven. Um. So there's uh and that's
Speaker 1: so that's the main work. But yes, there's also this
Speaker 1: supplemental work, supplement to the Journey to the West. And
Speaker 1: in both cases the episodes concerned the time warping experience
Speaker 1: of dream so in the In the original there's basically
Speaker 1: just a section where years of training for Monkey are
Speaker 1: compressed by a time trance. But yeah, when you get
Speaker 1: into the supplement that's where things get really interesting. This
Speaker 1: second work is also known as the Tower of Myriad
Speaker 1: Mirrors in it, which I think Borges would would would
Speaker 1: surely have loved that title. Uh. And it takes this
Speaker 1: fantastic travelog style of the original and gives us even
Speaker 1: more time weirdness. I was reading about this in an
Speaker 1: article by Dr I ching Wang of the University of
Speaker 1: Liverpool titled Tower of Myriad Mirrors, and so I want
Speaker 1: to read just a quote from this quote in the
Speaker 1: narrative Upon leaving the Flaming Mountain, the monkey uh I e.
Speaker 1: Monkey King or Sugu and Kong is trapped in a
Speaker 1: hallucinatory world of mirrors evoked by ching fish, a monster
Speaker 1: epitomizing desire, and a negative force proportionate to the monkeys
Speaker 1: innate morality, though a tower of myriad of mirrors is
Speaker 1: in disparate identities. The monkey embarks on an array of
Speaker 1: adventures to various time points, ranging from the immemorial Chin
Speaker 1: to twenty one through two oh six BC dynasty to
Speaker 1: the Song through twelve seventy dynasty that is preceded by
Speaker 1: the story setting i e. The Tang dynasty six eighteen
Speaker 1: through d Upon returning to his own era, the monkey
Speaker 1: discovers that his master, the Priest, defies the abstinence from
Speaker 1: sex and becomes a general, and the monkey is entangled
Speaker 1: in a gargantuan war, during which he encounters his own offspring.
Speaker 1: In the end, the monkey is awakened by the original
Speaker 1: time traveler and kills the ching fish as the embodiment
Speaker 1: of desire that entraps his altruism, thereby eliminating the negative
Speaker 1: traits from his psyche or self. Okay, so if this
Speaker 1: counts as a type of time travel. You might say
Speaker 1: that it is time travel as a weapon, like a
Speaker 1: weapon of distraction against the hero of the of this story. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I guess in this, I mean, in this it
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of of the time travel that
Speaker 1: we in a Christmas Carol, right, because it's all within
Speaker 1: a dream essentially, it's all within the nighttime headspace of
Speaker 1: a character. Uh. Though in the case of the Christmas Carol,
Speaker 1: it is um it is being pulled off by a
Speaker 1: ghost in order to try and save that individual from damnation,
Speaker 1: and uh and in this case it is being orchestrated
Speaker 1: by a demon in an attempt to u to distract
Speaker 1: and corrupt our our hero. But so, because this novel,
Speaker 1: the the Supplement to the Journey to the West is
Speaker 1: written in the future about a previous era, it can
Speaker 1: have its protagonist at least in this hallucinatory distraction thing
Speaker 1: going through the air, looking through these mirrors, are going
Speaker 1: through these mirrors and journeying two times into the past
Speaker 1: and future from where he began. Yeah, it sounds pretty
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Um again, I have I haven't I haven't
Speaker 1: read I have not read this work. But I was
Speaker 1: running across some other papers that we're talking about UM
Speaker 1: time travel potentially being used in some of the Monkey
Speaker 1: King films that have come out, and there have been many. Again,
Speaker 1: there have been many Monkey King films and TV shows
Speaker 1: UH and the adaptations of Journey into the West. So
Speaker 1: if anyone out there is has seen a bunch of them,
Speaker 1: I think I've seen one or two. I don't remember
Speaker 1: there being any time travel narratives, but it stands to
Speaker 1: reason that time travel pops up in some of those adaptations.
Speaker 1: So if you've seen one, that's pretty cool, let us know.
Speaker 1: I'd love to know about it. Well, I'd at least
Speaker 1: say that this is also notable for being UM, even
Speaker 1: though you could say that there's some big caveats on
Speaker 1: it because it's like a hallucinatory kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: to the extent that you would consider this time travel,
Speaker 1: it is one of the earliest examples I can think
Speaker 1: of we've looked at that involves traveling backward, because all
Speaker 1: of the others we've looked at so far, the time
Speaker 1: dilation or the sleeping into the future, tend to just
Speaker 1: involve traveling forward relative to the normal UH rate at
Speaker 1: which time would pass or at which you would age. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's um it's interesting to sort of try and
Speaker 1: and and figure out like why that is the case.
Speaker 1: And the best I can come up with is that
Speaker 1: is probably what the author is um is touching on here,
Speaker 1: the dynastic progression. Uh, the idea that like that that
Speaker 1: history is important enough that you would want to comment
Speaker 1: on it through through time travel. Um. Um so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know that. I'm sure there's more to the
Speaker 1: story there, but but at any rate, Uh, here's here's
Speaker 1: the Monkey King popping up as a one of our
Speaker 1: our many older time travelers. Maybe not time Traveler zero,
Speaker 1: but if it's still notable. You know, while we're on
Speaker 1: the subject of um Chinese conceptualization of time, this reminds
Speaker 1: me of an interesting email that we got, So maybe
Speaker 1: we can we'll do a couple of listener mails within
Speaker 1: this episode itself, which is actually I think very cool
Speaker 1: that the time gap in between part one and two
Speaker 1: has allowed us to incorporate some listener feedback into part
Speaker 1: two itself here. But um so, so this is a
Speaker 1: message we got from Bjorn. So this is responding to
Speaker 1: the part of part one of this series where we
Speaker 1: talked about visualizing time as a type of space, which
Speaker 1: appears to be extremely common, maybe even universal, or if not,
Speaker 1: it's nearly universal across languages on Earth. Uh. That that
Speaker 1: we talk about time as if it were a type
Speaker 1: of space, or a dimension of space, or a sort
Speaker 1: of range within space. And uh. And then Rob, you
Speaker 1: and I ended up talking about how how common it
Speaker 1: is to discuss the future as if it is physically
Speaker 1: in the space in front of us, in the past
Speaker 1: as if it's physically in the space behind us. Uh.
Speaker 1: This also appears to be pretty common cross culturally, but
Speaker 1: apparently this is not universal. And this is really interesting.
Speaker 1: So Biorn was passing along some comment from his girlfriend
Speaker 1: who is from Hong Kong, and she apparently says, quote,
Speaker 1: when you think of the future, you see it as
Speaker 1: something in front of you, something you are moving towards.
Speaker 1: The past, on the other hand, is something you have
Speaker 1: left behind. In Cantonese. In the Cantonese language, the concepts
Speaker 1: are reversed. The past is in front of you because
Speaker 1: these are things which happened and you can now see clearly.
Speaker 1: The future, on the other hand, is behind your back.
Speaker 1: You can sense it but not perceive it with any clarity.
Speaker 1: So I thought that was really interesting. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I don't know how common or if that's near
Speaker 1: a universal for Cantonese speakers, but I would be interested
Speaker 1: to hear more about that, uh and that that makes
Speaker 1: its own logical sense in a way, so you would
Speaker 1: still be conceptualizing time as a type of space, but
Speaker 1: just flipping the polls with respect to your body. But
Speaker 1: but certainly, I mean, we were talking about metaphors in
Speaker 1: the first episode. You know, it's like the way we
Speaker 1: talk about time and in the way we think about
Speaker 1: time like these these are the things that end up
Speaker 1: affecting the way we construct our time travel narratives. Well,
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder like if this is it, if
Speaker 1: this is actually more common or there are there are
Speaker 1: at least some languages in which it's more common to
Speaker 1: uh to build metaphors where the space behind you is
Speaker 1: the future, in the space in front of you is
Speaker 1: the past. With that effect, how people who speak those
Speaker 1: languages design uh time machines and science fictions? Are they
Speaker 1: less likely to be sort of forward facing vehicles like
Speaker 1: you you often see in you know, the DeLorean and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah, that's interesting now, you know, thinking
Speaker 1: back to you, especially talking I was talking about this,
Speaker 1: but also talking about not dreaming and sleeping. Um. For
Speaker 1: the most part, we're talking about baseline human experience here
Speaker 1: kind of extrapolated into into the fantastic um. But obviously
Speaker 1: if you've add various other conditions and substances into the mix, uh,
Speaker 1: time can seem even weirder. I know there's at least
Speaker 1: one time travel story that Nayan mentions, uh, some early
Speaker 1: work of literature in which somebody's hit on the head. Oh, no,
Speaker 1: I know what it is. It was, of course, Mark
Speaker 1: Twain's can Can Confederate Yankee and King Arthur's Court. I
Speaker 1: believe the time travel What did I say, Confederate Yankee
Speaker 1: Confederate Yankee? Well, yes, um, Connecticut Yankee. Rather uh in
Speaker 1: In uh in in King or this court. Uh that
Speaker 1: book which I think I read a long time ago.
Speaker 1: I've forgotten all of it, but but I believe time
Speaker 1: travel is achieved by that character being hit on the
Speaker 1: back of the head with something. I think he is
Speaker 1: the foreman in a factory and one of his workers
Speaker 1: wax him on the head with a wrench. I think
Speaker 1: that's right. And then travels back in time. So but
Speaker 1: it is a reminder that, yes, when you start talking
Speaker 1: about altered um, altered experiences of the brain, that adds
Speaker 1: a different dimension to your contemplations of time travel um.
Speaker 1: And you know this is the case too when you
Speaker 1: start throwing in various substances. You know, we did a
Speaker 1: whole series on psychedelics a couple of years back, and
Speaker 1: one of the commonly sided effects there is the altered
Speaker 1: perception of time. And you know we see this in
Speaker 1: literature as well as far back as like Thomas de
Speaker 1: Quincy's Two Confessions of an English opiameter. Oh yeah, Now
Speaker 1: Nayan doesn't spend a lot of time with this. He
Speaker 1: points out the quote smoking marijuana or taking amphetamines and
Speaker 1: or LSD to achieve a non linear hallucinogenic experience of
Speaker 1: time travel. Uh. He says that's sometimes used by writers
Speaker 1: as a way of exploring the concept of time travel,
Speaker 1: but it's not something that he set out to explore
Speaker 1: extensively in the book. So I was thinking, well, who
Speaker 1: who might have talked about psychedelics and time travel? I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, I wonder what Terence McKenna had to
Speaker 1: say about this. So I started looking around for Terence
Speaker 1: McKenna talking about time travel. And the weird thing was
Speaker 1: is I ran across an interview with McKenna from Night
Speaker 1: nine in which he mentions that he is currently reading
Speaker 1: Nayan's book on time travel. Oh that's weird. I thought
Speaker 1: for some reason, I thought that that Naan book came
Speaker 1: out in like two thousand one. Well, there have been
Speaker 1: different editions of it. Oh okay, yeah, let me see okay,
Speaker 1: first published Okay, okay, okay, okay, so it is possible. Good,
Speaker 1: Maybe the interview is from nine right right, yes, and
Speaker 1: the book would have first come out. Sorry for all
Speaker 1: the unnecessary time traveling, uh listeners, but at any rate,
Speaker 1: uh they the short too late for the short version
Speaker 1: on this. But basically I found it amusing that that
Speaker 1: McKenna was talking about the very book that I had
Speaker 1: been reading for this episode. Um and uh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Mckinnay didn't have a lot ex extra to add, but
Speaker 1: he did talk a little bit about time travel and
Speaker 1: some of his talks, mentioning that he liked the idea
Speaker 1: that you can only travel back as far as the
Speaker 1: time machine exists, so you can only go back as
Speaker 1: far as like day one of the time machine existing
Speaker 1: as a time machine. Um and you know, intend to
Speaker 1: explore it as kind of a fantasy scenario. But he
Speaker 1: also lays out a scenario in which time travel is
Speaker 1: more hyper spatial rather than linear. And uh and n asked, like,
Speaker 1: what have you pushed the button on your time machine
Speaker 1: and simply made all future events seem to occur at once?
Speaker 1: Uh so the time machine would be more like a
Speaker 1: doorway to eternity rather than a gateway into the future.
Speaker 1: Oh so, rather than actually transporting you, it just like
Speaker 1: breaks the person inside's perception of time. Yeah, in a way.
Speaker 1: You know this this reminds me of the movie uh
Speaker 1: Jack Frost that we just recently talked about for Weird
Speaker 1: howth Cinema um in in that there's that you know,
Speaker 1: that wonderful scene where she uh, where Nastinka begs uh
Speaker 1: ruby ruby finger down to reverse itself like gets the
Speaker 1: sun to to go back down over the horizon so
Speaker 1: that she has a little more time to finish her
Speaker 1: chore by dawn. And uh and there's a lot there's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun to be made on mystery science
Speaker 1: theater riffing on that about Oh, well, you know this
Speaker 1: is going to bring about tidal waves and global destruction,
Speaker 1: to have the Sun suddenly stop uh and reverse itself,
Speaker 1: or the planet you know, reverse itself, whichever, uh you know,
Speaker 1: to just to totally screw up the celestial mc annex
Speaker 1: of everything um in a way you could you could say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it would be the same thing with the time machine.
Speaker 1: Say you did somehow create a machine that allowed you
Speaker 1: to travel in time, that allows you to uh to
Speaker 1: move around like this, Well, what if it just wrecked everything?
Speaker 1: What if it just or if it didn't wreck everything,
Speaker 1: you just like permanently screwed up your human perception of time. Well,
Speaker 1: this is the idea that uh, that we talked about
Speaker 1: with Daniel Whiteson where he was saying, you know, if
Speaker 1: you were really trying to think about a machine that
Speaker 1: would allow you to travel into the past and try
Speaker 1: to make it work, he says, it would make more
Speaker 1: sense the machine reverses the flow of time for the
Speaker 1: entire universe around you than that it does anything for you.
Speaker 1: And so time continues to pass normally for you, but
Speaker 1: somehow it it makes time go backwards for the for
Speaker 1: the entire rest of the world. Now, in the book
Speaker 1: Nan goes into greater detail with lots of examples that
Speaker 1: are definitely worth looking for for fans of old school
Speaker 1: time traveler yarns. But I think it's safe to say
Speaker 1: that you know they're there are older ideas and perhaps
Speaker 1: ancient ideas, you know, understanding that time passes in weird ways,
Speaker 1: and that there's something particularly human about reflecting on the past,
Speaker 1: worrying about the future, and engaging in patterns of thought
Speaker 1: and systems of behavior that can connect us to different
Speaker 1: times and even deliver us to different times. Certainly in
Speaker 1: the When We When We Sleep into the Future now,
Speaker 1: um Nan writes a little bit about time machines, of course,
Speaker 1: and uh he says, the machines entered the scenario because
Speaker 1: they represent reason and of course science, and they indicate
Speaker 1: the belief that there may be some sort of way
Speaker 1: to make possible what it is to varying degrees thought possible,
Speaker 1: at least under certain circumstances. Um particularly if you're talking
Speaker 1: about time travel into the future. Yeah, this is interesting,
Speaker 1: and this brings me back to um some thoughts that
Speaker 1: that I was reading and listen to an a lecture
Speaker 1: by a scholar that I'm in and in the previous
Speaker 1: part who is a professor of science fiction studies at
Speaker 1: Georgia Tech named Lisa Yazik, And you know, she draws
Speaker 1: some connections between specific developments in technology and not just technology,
Speaker 1: technology and transportation infrastructure. In the late nineteenth century, that
Speaker 1: sort of pushed forward the idea that you could create
Speaker 1: a time machine. Now, of course we know that H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells The Time Machine published in eighteen This was a
Speaker 1: hugely influential work of science fiction that I think would
Speaker 1: inspire a lot of the time travel stories that came afterward.
Speaker 1: But it was by no means the first story about
Speaker 1: time travel. But one thing you can say is that
Speaker 1: almost all of the time travel stories before Wells, we're
Speaker 1: not really science fiction, and that the time travel mechanic
Speaker 1: was almost always a sort of inexplicable, uh, fantasy thing,
Speaker 1: and it was like the action of a god or
Speaker 1: an angel or some kind of supernatural imposition, or it
Speaker 1: was some type of time dilation by going to different
Speaker 1: planes of existence or something. But but with Wells, you
Speaker 1: get a time machine, a vehicle that is created by science. Now,
Speaker 1: I think it's not even the very first example of
Speaker 1: that that I want to mention. Another example I came
Speaker 1: across that that I think is very funny and it
Speaker 1: will be fun to read a little bit from. But
Speaker 1: I was just watching a lecture by Yazik where she
Speaker 1: she mentions a couple of things. One is that before
Speaker 1: you get to the time machine, um a number of
Speaker 1: the time travel stories from the nineteenth century that involved
Speaker 1: traveling through time based on some kind of device used
Speaker 1: not vehicles but clocks. And a classic example here is
Speaker 1: a story called the Clock that Went Backward by Edward
Speaker 1: Page Mitchell that was published in eighteen eighty one. And
Speaker 1: this is about this is also kind of a fantasy story.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like a clock that was designed
Speaker 1: to do this by and a scientist, inventor or something
Speaker 1: who wanted to travel through time. It's just like there's
Speaker 1: a weird clock and when you wind it up, people
Speaker 1: nearby can get sent back in time. But the thing
Speaker 1: that I thought was interesting was that he Asik mentioned,
Speaker 1: you know, these stories about technological time travel arising in
Speaker 1: an age of standardization of time measures h for for
Speaker 1: industry and politics. So in this era of industrialization, coordination
Speaker 1: of rapid transport through train stations and shipping ports in
Speaker 1: in the late nineteenth century. Um, something happens in people's
Speaker 1: consciousness that makes them think about time differently, and this
Speaker 1: maybe helps give rise to the proliferation of time travel
Speaker 1: stories that would follow than now. I was also reading
Speaker 1: a short introduction that that Laci Azik wrote to a
Speaker 1: recent new edition of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
Speaker 1: It was the dred And twenty fifth anniversary edition, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that would have been last year, right, and
Speaker 1: published in eighteen came out in Karence McKenna read it
Speaker 1: in Yeah exactly, Okay, you come more of an inside
Speaker 1: joke for us, okay, uh. But so she writes about
Speaker 1: how so The Time Machine the novel was published in
Speaker 1: eighteen uh, and that was sort of the work that
Speaker 1: launched H. G. Wells literary career. He was born in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six, so I guess he was only like
Speaker 1: twenty nine at the time that it came out. Though.
Speaker 1: The Time Machine the Novel was actually based on a
Speaker 1: short story that Wells had written seven years before, called
Speaker 1: and I Love this the Chronic Argonauts. Have you read
Speaker 1: this one? Rob? I have not. I have not either,
Speaker 1: So it's it's sort of I think a shorter earlier
Speaker 1: version of the time Machine where the hero is not
Speaker 1: so much a hero, he's more of a mad science
Speaker 1: tist who gets into trouble by creating a time machine
Speaker 1: and unleashs havoc that goes on for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: But interesting fact I learned from from Yazak's intro here.
Speaker 1: Apparently Wells published this story in his college lipmag. So
Speaker 1: let this be an inspiration to you college lipmag editors
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah. Yeah, it could be the place where you, um,
Speaker 1: you published the garbage version of your future it um.
Speaker 1: But yeah. So in subsequent years, Wells revised and expanded
Speaker 1: the short story until it developed into the novel that
Speaker 1: we know today. Um and so. Wells apparently wrote in
Speaker 1: later years that he believed there was a rule for
Speaker 1: writing good science fiction. I'm not sure if I agree
Speaker 1: with this, but but it's interesting. So he says, to
Speaker 1: have good sci fi, you need to give the story
Speaker 1: only one fantastical element, and then make everything else as grounded,
Speaker 1: realistic and human as you possibly can. So how would
Speaker 1: that apply to the time Machine? Well An example is
Speaker 1: that in the original short story The Chronic Argonauts, Wells
Speaker 1: had the protagonists living in a Gothic mansion in the countryside.
Speaker 1: And so I think the implication here is that it
Speaker 1: would invite readers to think of other tropes of Gothic literature,
Speaker 1: the mysterious, the uncanny. I think the association I would
Speaker 1: have would be with like Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre.
Speaker 1: But in the Time Machine and the novel version, he
Speaker 1: he rewrote it to uh to locate the protagonist in
Speaker 1: a bourgeois neighborhood of London, basically as mundane an uninteresting
Speaker 1: as setting as he could think of. But you go
Speaker 1: into this mundane uh, you know, bourgeois household, and here's
Speaker 1: the time Machine. It's interesting how you don't think about
Speaker 1: the setting of the time Machine being mundane today because
Speaker 1: it is. It is now an historical work. So the
Speaker 1: idea that it's it's set uh in um in this
Speaker 1: neighborhood in London, like that's part of it's such as charm,
Speaker 1: it's appeal. Like essentially you have you have two different
Speaker 1: elements that are that are foreign to the to the reader,
Speaker 1: more than two. But the time Machine becomes a novelist
Speaker 1: full of a strange and wonderful places that are not
Speaker 1: our own reality. Right. I guess the idea today would
Speaker 1: be like, uh, what if you went into a house
Speaker 1: like a McMansion in the suburbs and in the subdivision
Speaker 1: here and here it is, here's the time machine. Now
Speaker 1: we've already mentioned that the time Machine is by no
Speaker 1: means the first story to depict time travel. Obviously, if
Speaker 1: you include time dilation and sleeping into the future, time
Speaker 1: travel stories can be found here and there, well into
Speaker 1: the ancient past, and even some stories of more direct
Speaker 1: time travel, such as being delivered documents from the future.
Speaker 1: I think that's something that happens in a story called
Speaker 1: Memoirs of the Twentieth Century written by Samuel Madden and
Speaker 1: published in the eighteenth century. I think this was like
Speaker 1: seventeen thirty three, and basically the story is an angel
Speaker 1: appears from the future and delivers some letters from future
Speaker 1: people to people living at the time. Yeah, from the
Speaker 1: years nine and nineteen. And then of course you get
Speaker 1: these nineteenth century examples we've been talking about, like the
Speaker 1: clock that went backwards and stuff that there are still
Speaker 1: and uh and Christmas Carol and kinnec Yankee and King
Speaker 1: Arthur's Court that are still basically fantasies, but Yeas, it
Speaker 1: makes the distinction that the Wells is really the first
Speaker 1: to popularize time travel as a convention of of realistically
Speaker 1: grounded science fiction, and to popularize the idea of the
Speaker 1: time machine as a piece of technology, specifically a vehicle
Speaker 1: that is deliberately designed to allow people to navigate time
Speaker 1: in the same way that people use regular vehicles to
Speaker 1: navigate space. And I think she says, you know, the
Speaker 1: obvious comparison if you look at this, uh, at its
Speaker 1: historical setting. This is in the eighteen nineties. This would
Speaker 1: have been when we're seeing bicycles and early automobiles, so
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of vehicular consciousness at the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I was wondering, Okay, are there earlier examples of
Speaker 1: actual time machines like science fiction time machines. Well, it
Speaker 1: depends on what you count, Like do you count the
Speaker 1: clock that went backwards? Probably not really, that's just kind
Speaker 1: of a weird little fantasy object. Um. But I did
Speaker 1: find at least one thing that looks pretty much like
Speaker 1: a conventional time machine that does just barely pre date Wells,
Speaker 1: and this would be the nineteenth century Spanish author Enrique
Speaker 1: Gaspar's novel L Anacronopete, which was apparently published one year
Speaker 1: before Wells story The Chronic Argonauts, so this would have
Speaker 1: been in eighteen eighties seven. And this novel describes a
Speaker 1: an inventor who creates this device that I think is
Speaker 1: basically a giant sealed metal box that is equipped with
Speaker 1: huge pneumatic apparatus is that allow you to travel through time,
Speaker 1: including traveling backwards through time. And I haven't read this
Speaker 1: novel in full, but I was scanning through an English
Speaker 1: translation and I came across a part that I thought
Speaker 1: was so good that I wanted to share it here
Speaker 1: because it's it's where the inventor is explaining his theory
Speaker 1: of time via the example of sardines and canned peppers. Robert,
Speaker 1: are you ready for this? Okay? So the inventor says,
Speaker 1: it's common knowledge that to preserve sardines from nantes or
Speaker 1: peppers from calahora, we must remove the air from their
Speaker 1: tin cans. Wrong, we must remove the atmosphere, and consequently
Speaker 1: the time you see the air is no more than
Speaker 1: a compound of nitrogen and oxygen, whereas the atmosphere, in
Speaker 1: addition to consisting of eighty parts nitrogen to twenty parts.
Speaker 1: Oxygen also contains an amount of water, vapor and carbonic
Speaker 1: acid elements that are never left behind when forming a vacuum.
Speaker 1: But never mind the science, let's speak to common sense.
Speaker 1: Imagine the world is a tin of red peppers from
Speaker 1: which we have not extracted the atmosphere. What happens when
Speaker 1: the hand is sealed without this precaution, Time begins to
Speaker 1: exert its influence and carry out its work. First, a
Speaker 1: few molecules adhere to the sides of the container, agglomerating
Speaker 1: and solidifying, only to petrify with the passage of years
Speaker 1: and yield those substances in which we would find the
Speaker 1: mineral beginnings of primitive rock. We then note that the
Speaker 1: substance is covered with a kind of scum that is
Speaker 1: none other than rudimentary vegetation. And finally, microscopic organisms in
Speaker 1: the water vapor come to life, reproduce, and develop like
Speaker 1: maggots in our tin of preserves, enriching it with the
Speaker 1: unending variety of the animal kingdom. Can you still doubt
Speaker 1: that the atmosphere is time? This is one of those
Speaker 1: things that's like wrong, but genius, Yeah, like this is
Speaker 1: it's he really thought long and hard. Uh. And well
Speaker 1: on this, this this thoroughly uh incorrect mechanism for time. Well,
Speaker 1: I like that. It's it's sort of making the intuitive
Speaker 1: connection again between time and entropy, which we talked about
Speaker 1: in our interview with Daniel, because it's saying like, okay,
Speaker 1: so things in a can, they don't rot you, if
Speaker 1: you don't know any better, you might presume this because
Speaker 1: the time has been removed from the can and it
Speaker 1: takes time for things to rot. Well, you know, it's
Speaker 1: coming back to that idea of of time as a
Speaker 1: as a measure of change in the universe, and if
Speaker 1: in the can things are not changing, what does that
Speaker 1: say about about time? Uh? And in a way it
Speaker 1: kind of serves as a nice you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: ridiculous and it takes a second to really think about
Speaker 1: what it's even trying to say with with this atmosphere
Speaker 1: is time. But but in a way it kind of
Speaker 1: serves as an It kind of throws you off out
Speaker 1: of your your your back of the future line of thinking,
Speaker 1: where you think about time as this linear thing that
Speaker 1: you could conceivably move about in um. But but this
Speaker 1: is an entirely different model. So I had a hard
Speaker 1: time finding. Scrolling through the book trying to find details
Speaker 1: on exactly how how the time travel itself works, like
Speaker 1: when you're going backward, I couldn't find that part, but
Speaker 1: at least according to the wiki summary, what it says
Speaker 1: is that the machine flies backward through the atmosphere against
Speaker 1: the rotation of the earth, and this is what allows
Speaker 1: time travel into the past. That would seem to fit
Speaker 1: with the other part about the atmosphere, but I'm not
Speaker 1: positive on this. So but maybe one day I will
Speaker 1: just read this book in full, because it looks like
Speaker 1: it might be kind of bad but pretty fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that that concept is pretty uh, it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: I like it. Also, just while I'm on the subject
Speaker 1: of of an a macronopete, I gotta say that I
Speaker 1: skipped ahead to the end of the story to see
Speaker 1: what happens, and it apparently involves the inventor going mad
Speaker 1: and accelerating the time machine all the way back to
Speaker 1: the beginning of time. Oh wow, do you mind if
Speaker 1: I read this part too? Yeah? No, I want to
Speaker 1: know what he does there? What do you what do
Speaker 1: you do? Okay? So, uh, I guess he's arguing with
Speaker 1: the other passengers in the in the time machine, and
Speaker 1: he says, it's useless, continued the lunatic, laughing convulsively. Don't
Speaker 1: you see that our speed has increased fivefold? Nothing can
Speaker 1: stop us. I have destroyed the controls, and l n
Speaker 1: Acronopete runs headlong into the primordial white hot essence. And
Speaker 1: then people cry out horrors. Death awaits us in the chaos. Chaos. Look,
Speaker 1: and then it says, And indeed through the porthole glowed
Speaker 1: a dim light that marked the beginning of the natural
Speaker 1: world and the end of formless emptiness. But continuing backward,
Speaker 1: chaos gradually but persistently increased, and soon not even thick
Speaker 1: pork glass would be enough to hold back the flood
Speaker 1: of water, earth, and fire, all agitated in a suspension
Speaker 1: of air via periodic violent collisions that propelled the floating
Speaker 1: vehicle through that incandescent matter. The inalterabile at the procedure
Speaker 1: that they'd all undergone had lost its potency. Asphyxia was
Speaker 1: overtaking the travelers. The walls could no longer stop the heat,
Speaker 1: and finally the glass melted, letting forth a torrent of
Speaker 1: igneous substances. With the boom of a hundred volcanoes, and
Speaker 1: then there's like a like an eight line ellipsis, and
Speaker 1: then and then the inventor wakes up having fallen asleep
Speaker 1: at a play and it was a dream. And I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if I'm not sure if the entire novel
Speaker 1: was a dream, or if only part of it leading
Speaker 1: up to that end point was a dream. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'll have to go in and read the whole thing someday.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's almost like there there used to be
Speaker 1: a law. That's sad. Look, you can explore the concept
Speaker 1: of time travel all you like, provided everything takes place
Speaker 1: within the space of a dream or vision. Why are
Speaker 1: they always doing the dream? I mean, why does it
Speaker 1: need to be a dream? Again? I guess it comes
Speaker 1: back to just the basic understanding that the dream dreams
Speaker 1: or where time is weird. Therefore that's where time ravel
Speaker 1: is going to happen. I mean, does the author think, Wow,
Speaker 1: if people get to the end of this book and
Speaker 1: I don't say it was all a dream, They're gonna
Speaker 1: think I'm nuts. So I've got to just say, well,
Speaker 1: that didn't actually happen. Or maybe they were thinking, look,
Speaker 1: they're gonna actually invent time travel in like ten fifteen
Speaker 1: years top, and I don't want my work to them date.
Speaker 1: But if it's all within the context of a dream,
Speaker 1: you can't say I got it wrong. That's good, that's
Speaker 1: very good. So let's see. We've looked at various concepts
Speaker 1: of time travel here, time travel by machine, time travel
Speaker 1: involving um manipulation of the atmosphere, time travel by magical beast,
Speaker 1: time travel by a drug, by head wound um. Oh man,
Speaker 1: there's so many ways to think about it. Time travel
Speaker 1: by cave, time travel by sleep. The cave is an
Speaker 1: interesting one too, because, of course the cave also makes
Speaker 1: one think of the tomb uh, time travel via via
Speaker 1: death and it um. Yeah, I guess it also reminds
Speaker 1: me of like all these various other stories of like
Speaker 1: characters of venturing into realms, beyond life for realms, even
Speaker 1: beyond death, venturing into the underworld or into you know,
Speaker 1: to purgatory or paradise. You know, they're all these fantastic
Speaker 1: stories about somebody traveling elsewhere, learning something and then eventually
Speaker 1: coming back or trying to come back anyway, and and ultimately,
Speaker 1: like time travel stories are of the same mold, right,
Speaker 1: It's about somebody traveling into the fantastic realm and then
Speaker 1: returning and that fantastic realm it might be hell, it
Speaker 1: might be um the nineteen fifties, you know, it might
Speaker 1: be uh, you know, seven years into the future. It
Speaker 1: might be all a dream, but let's hope it's not.
Speaker 1: But regarding the l en Acrono Pete, I do want
Speaker 1: to say, well, it looks like a great story. And
Speaker 1: while it does appear to predate Wells short story by
Speaker 1: one year, I think it's probably still fair to say
Speaker 1: that that Wells is probably the major popularizer of of
Speaker 1: the idea of the time machine as technology and science fiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Wells as Wells time machine is hard to be. Like
Speaker 1: we said before on the show, like it's it's a
Speaker 1: great book. It's still very readable, very enjoyable. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and close this episode out, but
Speaker 1: obviously we'd love to continue to hear from everyone out
Speaker 1: there insights you have about time travel stories and myths
Speaker 1: and legends, traditions, and of course books and movies. What
Speaker 1: are some of your favorites right in let us know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the smartest time travel or to time travel
Speaker 1: stories that are just a lot of fun, even if
Speaker 1: you you don't dare think about them too hard? Can
Speaker 1: you find earlier examples of of of intentionally created vehicles
Speaker 1: for time travel? I want to know, does it go
Speaker 1: back earlier than yeah, yeah, or other time traveling magical creatures?
Speaker 1: Obviously I want to hear about that. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, you can find them in the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed, available wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcast us. We have Artifact episodes on Wednesdays,
Speaker 1: Core episodes of the show on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On
Speaker 1: Monday's we do listener mail, and on Friday we do
Speaker 1: Weird How Cinema. That's our time to set aside most
Speaker 1: serious matters and just focus in on a weird film.
Speaker 1: And we do occasionally cover time travel films. There we did, uh,
Speaker 1: we did what troys and transfers to time after time?
Speaker 1: And was there another one? I don't know if you
Speaker 1: count Morosco with the Sun going backward, but well we'll
Speaker 1: take it. We'll take That's That's three time travel movies,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure there will be more in the future.
Speaker 1: Guess what's coming up next? Transfers nine uh. Transfers nine uh.
Speaker 1: The atmosphere is time where they for they put Jack
Speaker 1: Death in a sardine can. I would do, I would do.
Speaker 1: Transfers three. Trances three is pretty fun anyway. Huge thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind dot car. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.