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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time for an episode from the Vault. Today we're airing

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Speaker 1: Time Traveler zero, Part one, which originally published on December. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This was I think when we were trying to see

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Speaker 1: how far back we could trace the idea of time

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Speaker 1: travel in speculative fiction, mythology and so forth. Yeah, how

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Speaker 1: far back does the idea of the time traveler go?

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Speaker 1: And what did we have before that? This is a

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Speaker 1: real fun two parter that we put together. And this

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Speaker 1: is part one. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind

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Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to

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Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And we've been adding. Uh, I guess quite

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Speaker 1: a bit about time travel recently on the show, first

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Speaker 1: probably in our our Weird House Cinema episode about the

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine movie Time After Time, and then more

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Speaker 1: recently during our chat with Daniel Whiteson about astrophysics and

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Speaker 1: time travel, and also a little talk about time travel

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Speaker 1: science fiction as well. That's right. One of the main

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Speaker 1: takeaways was that Daniel is is pretty thoroughly against the

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Speaker 1: idea of the plausibility of changing the past. Right. But

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Speaker 1: you know, I think one of the more interesting questions

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Speaker 1: to come back to in this episode of Stuff to

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Speaker 1: put your mind is um is not just thinking about okay,

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Speaker 1: is this possible? And what would you know, what assumptions

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Speaker 1: would we have to make about the universe for this

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Speaker 1: sort of time travel to work, or this sort of

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Speaker 1: time travel? What sorts of time travel are we engaging

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Speaker 1: in all the time? Uh? Instead of asking is this possible?

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Speaker 1: Are we doing it too? Instead look at the question

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Speaker 1: what does this idea reveal about human perspectives of time?

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Speaker 1: Where does the time travel idea and come from? And

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Speaker 1: how far back in time do we see humans engaging

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Speaker 1: in this sort of imaginative thought. It's a great question,

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Speaker 1: and immediately all kinds of uh, secondary questions come to mind, like, okay,

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Speaker 1: so time travel is one of the most popular plot

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Speaker 1: devices of modern fiction. But can you how far back

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Speaker 1: can you think of literature and stories that feature time travel? Suddenly,

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Speaker 1: if you go just more than a few hundred years back,

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Speaker 1: examples start getting very sparse. At least, you know the

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Speaker 1: kind of things you can think of off the top

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Speaker 1: of your head, and it might start to cause you

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Speaker 1: to wonder, like, did something change in in recent centuries

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Speaker 1: that made this idea more more tangible to people? And

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Speaker 1: are the earlier examples and what would what could we

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Speaker 1: learn about our conception of time by looking at those? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I ask yourself the question, what's your favorite ancient myth

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Speaker 1: about time travel? And and it's possible you have an answer,

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Speaker 1: because we will im back to a few possible answers.

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Speaker 1: But for for many of you out there, you might

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Speaker 1: just be a bit dumbfounded, and you might say, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, there are these mythic figures

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Speaker 1: and they're they're traveling all over the place, and they're

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Speaker 1: doing all sorts of amazing things, things that are so

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Speaker 1: outrageous you wouldn't even see it in a comic book today. Um,

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Speaker 1: But traveling through time becomes something of a scarcity. So

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Speaker 1: it leads you to wonder, Yeah, is time travel just

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Speaker 1: this relatively recent cultural invention, this idea of time travel? Um?

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Speaker 1: And why would that be? Because you know, as we

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Speaker 1: try to drive home on the show, humans of centuries

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Speaker 1: and millennia past were deep thinkers. They were deep dreamers,

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Speaker 1: And yet there there are not for the most part,

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Speaker 1: uh you know, large caches of old folk tales about

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Speaker 1: princes going back in time to rescue princesses or traveling

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Speaker 1: into the future and so forth. Um, there are no

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Speaker 1: tales of God's skipping around in different ages of the universe.

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Speaker 1: So obviously time is an undeniable fact of our, of

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Speaker 1: our physical reality. But I was trying to think about, like,

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Speaker 1: how is it that humans first put together a concept

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Speaker 1: of time, a time as a kind of substance that

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Speaker 1: they could talk about and and manipulate with and sort

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Speaker 1: of you know, turn around and look at within the

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Speaker 1: mind and uh so, uh so. One really interesting source

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Speaker 1: that came across addressing this is a section in a

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Speaker 1: book called The Unfolding of Language, An Evolutionary Tour of

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Speaker 1: Mankind's Greatest invention. This is by an author named Guy Deutscher.

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Speaker 1: This book was published by McMillan in two thousand five.

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Speaker 1: Deutscher is an academic linguist. He used to be affiliated

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Speaker 1: with Cambridge and with the University of leyden Um. I'm

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Speaker 1: not sure if he has any affiliations now, but shout

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Speaker 1: out quickly that I came to this connection to Guy

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Speaker 1: Deutscher's work by way of a mention in a Live

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Speaker 1: Science article by Adam Man, which actually pointed me in

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Speaker 1: the direction of two very interesting sources. So so good

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Speaker 1: on article. But the reason I wanted to talk about

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Speaker 1: this book by by Guy Deutscher here is that it

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Speaker 1: addresses what we can learn from metaphors in everyday speech

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Speaker 1: about the way our minds work. And so the entry

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Speaker 1: point here is that he's talking about the contrast between

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Speaker 1: poetic metaphors, metaphors that arouse a sense of strangeness and

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Speaker 1: wonder and utterly mundane metaphors. So a couple of examples

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Speaker 1: we can compare. Imagine you are reading a poem and

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Speaker 1: you come across the line tread softly because you tread

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Speaker 1: on my dreams. This is a famous passage from a

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Speaker 1: poem by William Butler yates uh. And there's a conceptual

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Speaker 1: leap here that makes this image of treading upon dreams striking.

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Speaker 1: You're asked to imagine physically stepping on a purely mental

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Speaker 1: construct without physical form, and I think it's that gap.

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Speaker 1: It's like exactly to the degree that it doesn't quite fit.

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Speaker 1: And yet you can still understand what it means that

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Speaker 1: makes the metaphor striking. Yeah, and now I'm just imagining

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Speaker 1: his dreams as just a big old snack, a big

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Speaker 1: yellow snack on the ground, and U no step on snack.

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Speaker 1: But I'm sure that's not what what the poet originally intended.

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Speaker 1: My dreams are rattling and hissing and bearing fangs. Venom

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Speaker 1: is dripping from the fangs of my dreams. But so anyway,

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Speaker 1: so yeah, this is a good poetic metaphor, and it

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Speaker 1: strikes us as poetic. It's it's like strange. It makes

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Speaker 1: us have that feeling of all you get when you

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Speaker 1: read it and when you read a good poem. But then, uh, deut.

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Speaker 1: Your contrasts that with reading a news article about a

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Speaker 1: senator proposing tough legislation to fight crime. Now, this is

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Speaker 1: not a striking metaphor. It's utterly mundane. And yet if

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Speaker 1: you stop to think about it, the concept of tough

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Speaker 1: legislation is just as much of a leap as treading

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Speaker 1: on dreams. Like you hear, you're saying that this intangible

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Speaker 1: sort of social thing a law, has the quality of

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Speaker 1: a physical material, like it would be difficult to cut

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Speaker 1: or chew, and so why do these phrases feel so different? Well,

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Speaker 1: Deutscher argues that it's mostly because of familiarity. Tough legislation

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Speaker 1: uses a familiar, even cliche, metaphorical understanding of toughness, so

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Speaker 1: it's not surprising or striking in the way that treading

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Speaker 1: on dreams is. And he notes that metaphors that are

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Speaker 1: so familiar that they've lost their vitality and they no

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Speaker 1: longer strike us as poetic are sometimes referred to as

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Speaker 1: dead metaphors, which I think the irony they're maybe not irony.

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Speaker 1: The the interesting thing is that's a literary cliche, dead metaphors,

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Speaker 1: invoking a biological metaphor to describe the effects of words

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Speaker 1: and phrases. One that comes to mind instantly, and perhaps

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Speaker 1: because we're talking about time, is the idea of killing

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Speaker 1: time that all the time, but it it doesn't really

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Speaker 1: do anything like it doesn't like the phrase killing time

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Speaker 1: does not really summon any kind of novel image in

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Speaker 1: my mind. It doesn't make me think about time as

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Speaker 1: an organism or time as the body or anything. It's

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Speaker 1: just this dumb thing people say. But that I think,

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Speaker 1: actually killing time would be an incredibly striking metaphor. If

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Speaker 1: you've never heard that before and you just came across

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Speaker 1: it in a poem, Yeah, the first person who said

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Speaker 1: it was probably a genius. Yeah, Imagining time is a

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Speaker 1: little creature that's being bludgeoned to death by your I

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Speaker 1: don't know, by your youth scrolling your phone. But then

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Speaker 1: jumping off this point, he goes on to make what

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Speaker 1: I think is a really interesting point. So I just

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Speaker 1: want to read from from Deutscher's book here. But there's

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Speaker 1: more familiarity than individual acquaintance. For most metaphors in ordinary

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Speaker 1: language are also familiar on a much deeper level. Suppose,

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Speaker 1: for instance, that during an election campaign, you read in

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Speaker 1: a newspaper that quote critics derided the new election manifesto

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Speaker 1: as nothing more than a sou flay of promises. This

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Speaker 1: phrase is clearly metaphorical by anyone's standards. A sou flay

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Speaker 1: is is properly made of egg whites, not promises. But

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Speaker 1: although you may never have heard this particular metaphor before,

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Speaker 1: it is still unlikely to strike you as a great

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Speaker 1: poetic coup or as something entirely out of the ordinary.

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Speaker 1: The reason must be that su flay of promises belongs

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Speaker 1: to a larger context, which is familiar. And uh so

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Speaker 1: this is because Deutscher argues, quite strangely, metaphors based in food,

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Speaker 1: eating and cooking are very commonly used to describe mental

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Speaker 1: phenomena such as ideas, thoughts, and emotions. And then he

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Speaker 1: goes on to just give a huge laundry list of examples.

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Speaker 1: You can think of anger, simmering, resentment, boiling, or uh,

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Speaker 1: Johnny is chewing over a new concept. You need time

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Speaker 1: to digest this information. Uh you know, the people won't

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Speaker 1: swallow these lies or are you just gonna lap up

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Speaker 1: that pablum from those politicians? People devour books and so forth. Um,

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Speaker 1: he says, we can have sweet dreams, bitter hatreds, sour relations,

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Speaker 1: half baked ideas, and just goes on and on. Once

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Speaker 1: you notice it, it's astonishing how much of the way

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Speaker 1: we talk about feelings and ideas is based in food.

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Speaker 1: M M. Yeah, and of course all the most I

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Speaker 1: think most of these examples we've been rolling through here,

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Speaker 1: or a number of them anyway, have distinct ties to

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Speaker 1: Western cuisine. So of course, you know, we can easily

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Speaker 1: imagine that in in various other uh international cuisines and

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Speaker 1: in other languages you have the same thing going on. Yeah, totally, totally,

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Speaker 1: and in fact, I think we we've even talked about

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Speaker 1: this to some extent on the show before. Like metaphors,

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Speaker 1: you know, sort of mental content, metaphors based in food,

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Speaker 1: They're common in other cultures, not so much in in

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Speaker 1: English speaking ones. I do wonder, though, if the promises

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Speaker 1: is not lost on folks who haven't themselves made or

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Speaker 1: attempted to make a sufflay, because it seems to me

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Speaker 1: like part of it. It's the idea that yes, it's

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Speaker 1: it's it's a laborious process to make, and then it deflat,

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Speaker 1: It can easily deflate. It's kind of an empty dish,

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Speaker 1: and in some regard that even though it looks fantastic,

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Speaker 1: it is mostly air. And if you don't actualize that,

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Speaker 1: then then maybe something of the metaphor is lost. You know, honestly,

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Speaker 1: I did not even consciously make that connection. Maybe unconsciously

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Speaker 1: I did, But you've opened my mind to a new

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Speaker 1: new dimension of the super you. Maybe you're too familiar

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Speaker 1: with the sou fla and you take it for like me.

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Speaker 1: I I rarely make suffla, and when I do, I

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Speaker 1: am intimidated by the process because I know what is

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Speaker 1: involved and what is what is possible, Like I don't

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Speaker 1: trust myself enough. Uh, so I'm ever on guard. You

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Speaker 1: are right to fear it. But anyway, to pick back

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Speaker 1: up with the Deutscher, so he summarizes what he's just

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Speaker 1: been talking about by saying, quote, there's a well established

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Speaker 1: link in our mind between the two domains which unites

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Speaker 1: all the individual images into a broader conceptual metaphor. Ideas

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Speaker 1: are food. And thus when we hear a phrase like

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Speaker 1: su flay of promises, the image to do is not

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Speaker 1: sounds so surprising because it fits neatly into this familiar frame.

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Speaker 1: And so for Deutscher, this is an example of conceptual metaphors.

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Speaker 1: The the quote mappings of one domain onto another and

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Speaker 1: so uh for some reason, maybe it might be interesting

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Speaker 1: to speculate on what that reason would be. It's just

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Speaker 1: very easy for us to think about the domain of

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Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings in terms of the domain of food.

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Speaker 1: But this isn't the only conceptual mapping like this, And

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Speaker 1: here is where we get back to time. Deutscher makes

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Speaker 1: the case that there is a similar natural metaphorical domain

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Speaker 1: overlap between time and space. Now, on one hand, you

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Speaker 1: might think, well, that totally makes sense, because you a

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Speaker 1: twenty one century person who is somewhat literate in the sciences,

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Speaker 1: you know that space and time are actually linked in

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Speaker 1: modern physics. But the point is that these conventions of

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Speaker 1: language long predate Einstein or any knowledge of general relativity

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Speaker 1: or the concept of space time. Since prehistory, there is

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Speaker 1: clear evidence in language itself that humans have naturally tended

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Speaker 1: to think and talk about time as if time were

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Speaker 1: a type of space, or as if the rules of

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Speaker 1: space applied to it. So, once again, Deutscher gives a

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Speaker 1: ton of examples. He writes, quote, consider some of the

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Speaker 1: simplest words we use to describe spatial relations, prepositions such

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Speaker 1: as in at by, from to, behind, within, and through.

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Speaker 1: And then he gives a ton of examples within actual phrases.

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Speaker 1: So the idea of like from London to Paris, you

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Speaker 1: can compare to from Monday to Friday, or in England

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Speaker 1: the same way you would say in January or in

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Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, you can stand at the door or

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Speaker 1: you can arrive at noon. All these prepositions. He's saying

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Speaker 1: a flow originally from the linguistic domain of space and

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Speaker 1: come to be applied to time, uh and beyond this,

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Speaker 1: he argues that this is not just a quirk of English,

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Speaker 1: this is true of literally every language that has ever

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Speaker 1: been studied. There are no exceptions. Every language on Earth

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Speaker 1: talks about time as if it were a type of space,

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Speaker 1: which suggests something if that's true, suggests something very ancient

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Speaker 1: and powerful about that link in our consciousness. I'm reminded

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Speaker 1: of a part of Barry Lopez's book Arctic Dreams where

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Speaker 1: he's talking about this um conversation between an Artic Arctic

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Speaker 1: explorer and uh, an Inuit Uh. And the Inuit man

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Speaker 1: has has asked if this pair of binoculars allows him

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Speaker 1: to see into tomorrow and um and in this particular instance,

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Speaker 1: you know, there's a certain amount of you know, perhaps

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Speaker 1: you know a lot of it about the languages here,

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Speaker 1: you know, and uh and uh. But it it kind

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Speaker 1: of gets to this idea too of in a place

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Speaker 1: where you have wide open space is and uh and

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Speaker 1: and you know a fair amount of moving around and

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Speaker 1: resources are spread out, like you know what the individual

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Speaker 1: was asking, like, well, this binoculars allow me to see

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Speaker 1: something that I would not be able to reach until tomorrow,

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Speaker 1: and that's always just stuck, stuck with me because it

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Speaker 1: it gets into this, it touches on this spatial idea

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Speaker 1: of of time but also within a realm that in

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Speaker 1: a geography that at least for many of us that

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Speaker 1: you know, it makes it a little easier to comprehend

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Speaker 1: that firm connection like tomorrow is not only um, you know,

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Speaker 1: something that will happen to me, It is also it

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Speaker 1: is also a place I will be because I know

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Speaker 1: where I can see potentially see where I will be tomorrow.

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Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Oh yeah, And I think

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Speaker 1: that's a fantastic point that actually connects to something else

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Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about, which is um the idea

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Speaker 1: that Okay, so the metaphorical overlap between space and time

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Speaker 1: appears to only flow in one direction. You might find

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Speaker 1: a stray counter example somewhere, but generally the ideas that

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Speaker 1: our human languages take concepts and metaphors that begin as

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Speaker 1: descriptions of space and then apply them to time, not

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Speaker 1: the other way around. So we talk about the present

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Speaker 1: as if it were spatially here, and we visualize the

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Speaker 1: past as if it were physically behind us. And like,

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Speaker 1: if you stop to think about the physicality even the

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Speaker 1: biology of that, the past we imagine usually as in

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Speaker 1: the direction of our butts. You know, behind us, the

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Speaker 1: future is physically in front of us. And this is

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Speaker 1: one of those great things that like it's so mundane

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Speaker 1: that you don't stop to notice it. But when you

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Speaker 1: pay attention to that, I suspect it's like this and

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Speaker 1: not the other way around. You know, it's not that

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Speaker 1: we imagine the future as behind us, in the past

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Speaker 1: in front of us because of totally contingent facts about

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Speaker 1: how our bodies move. If you're walking in a straight line,

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Speaker 1: the area in front of you is space that you

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Speaker 1: will occupy in the future, and the space behind you

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Speaker 1: is the place you occupied in the past. And so

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Speaker 1: you can think about alternative biology, different body morphology leading

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Speaker 1: to different conceptions of time. Like if crabs evolved to

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Speaker 1: possess abstract intelligence as language, I kind of suspect they

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Speaker 1: might visualize the past and future to the left and right,

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Speaker 1: since they often walk sideways instead of forwards and backwards.

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Speaker 1: And then now is simply the eat I guess. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It also makes you think about the way, you know,

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Speaker 1: eyes are positioned on different organisms, thinking about say, herbivores,

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Speaker 1: whose whose eyes are often positioned more on the sides

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Speaker 1: of the head in a way to provide more panoramic

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Speaker 1: view of what's happening, so they can have a better

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Speaker 1: idea of where the predators are coming in versus the

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Speaker 1: the eyesight of a predator. That is more about what

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Speaker 1: is directly in front of me. What is the thing

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Speaker 1: I am after? Right? Yeah, so that makes me wonder

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Speaker 1: if our conception of time is also so influenced by

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Speaker 1: our heads being shaped more like carnivore heads. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: to wrap up the section about Guy Deutscher's book, I

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Speaker 1: just want to read one more thing. He says, quote.

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Speaker 1: This link between space and time is so entrenched in

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Speaker 1: our cognition that it is extremely difficult to extricate ourselves

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Speaker 1: from it and appreciate that time cannot literally be long

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Speaker 1: or short, unlike sticks or pieces of string, nor can

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Speaker 1: time literally pass unlike a train. Time cannot go forwards

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Speaker 1: and backwards anymore than it goes sideways, diagonally or downwards.

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Speaker 1: Time doesn't actually go anywhere at all. Uh, And I

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Speaker 1: think this is a great point. The link in our

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Speaker 1: language is so deep it's difficult even to talk about

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Speaker 1: it because we don't really have any language for time

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Speaker 1: that is not a metaphor based on space, except maybe

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Speaker 1: in pure mathematical expressions. Yeah, we have this. Yeah, like

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Speaker 1: you said, we have this, this entire suite, multiple suites

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Speaker 1: of of terms we used to talk about time, time,

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Speaker 1: and yet very often we're we're at a lack to

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Speaker 1: to really define time um and and certainly it's it's

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Speaker 1: hard to just really settle in on a definition of

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Speaker 1: what it is. What one that I often come back

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Speaker 1: to is the idea of time is the rate of

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Speaker 1: change in the universe. And if you if you stop

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Speaker 1: yourself and all, if you stop yourself and all of

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Speaker 1: this and start like asking questions about time travel and

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Speaker 1: that like that in regards to the rate of change

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Speaker 1: in the universe, things get silly really quickly, you know, like,

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Speaker 1: like what is time? It's the rate of change in

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Speaker 1: the universe. Well, can I can I do that backwards?

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Speaker 1: Going to do that in reverse? Uh? Can I like

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Speaker 1: travel back? Like? It's like asking is this It's like saying,

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Speaker 1: you know what I really like wet, I would like

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Speaker 1: to travel to Wet. What do you mean you would

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Speaker 1: like to travel to what you want to travel to,

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Speaker 1: somewhere that is wet, because you can't just travel to

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Speaker 1: wet Yeah exactly. I mean, yeah, that's a great metaphor.

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Speaker 1: And even then, I mean it makes you wonder. Okay.

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Speaker 1: So on one hand, I think the rate of change

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Speaker 1: in the universe is a good way of trying to

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Speaker 1: describe what time is. But does the does the idea

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Speaker 1: of rate not itself in a way kind of assume

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Speaker 1: time like it's just yeah, there's it's you can't get

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Speaker 1: under it, right, it is in it in itself. It's

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Speaker 1: also an imperfect definition. Um, but I guess the reason

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Speaker 1: I come back to it is that it is significantly

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Speaker 1: different from this a lot of these metaphors we end

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Speaker 1: up using, so it kind of it kind of throws

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Speaker 1: a wrench into your your cognitive process, you know, totally.

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Speaker 1: Oh and I guess one last thing. This isn't strictly

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Speaker 1: about time, but I just thought I would mention it

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Speaker 1: because I thought it was interesting. Deutscher actually does go

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Speaker 1: beyond this, So he goes from talking about how metaphors

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Speaker 1: of space are applied to time, but then they keep

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Speaker 1: being applied to even deeper levels of of other concepts

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Speaker 1: and language. Uh. So he makes this argument about how

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Speaker 1: about how concepts of space flow through metaphorical use to time,

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Speaker 1: and then from time to causes or reasons and all

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Speaker 1: these other things. So you have something, you have a

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Speaker 1: preposition like from which originally describes space, so you could

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Speaker 1: be from Tucson, Arizona, and then that can be applied

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Speaker 1: to time, so you can remember something from last Tuesday,

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Speaker 1: and then that can be applied to causes or reasons

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Speaker 1: for things. So the example he gives is he shivers

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Speaker 1: from the cold. Anyway, I love stuff like this because

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Speaker 1: there's so much that's fascinating about the way that we

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Speaker 1: use language. I guess it's fascinating to me because we

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Speaker 1: all do it, and we do it all the time,

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Speaker 1: and we don't notice we're doing it. So just being

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Speaker 1: asked to stop and observe the words you're using and

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Speaker 1: what that reveals about how you think is is often

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Speaker 1: extremely eye opening. Yeah, I mean this this linear view

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Speaker 1: of things that it falls into everything. Like even as

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Speaker 1: we talk about ideas, you know, we're building things out

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Speaker 1: of sentences. We're talking about uh forming an idea out

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Speaker 1: of this and uh building up to this idea or

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Speaker 1: riving at this conclusion and so forth. Yeah. Thank as

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Speaker 1: I was thinking about all this, I started thinking about

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Speaker 1: some of the terms used by Merchia eliade Um, who

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Speaker 1: you know, in in his work, you often have this

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Speaker 1: this separation of time into mythic time and profane time.

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Speaker 1: So mythic time is when gods and heroes experience their victories, defeats,

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Speaker 1: and their dramas you know, at the time of of

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Speaker 1: mythic stories playing out, um, during during which these these

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Speaker 1: various exploits shaped the earth shaped our culture. But then

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Speaker 1: during profane time, nothing that we do has any value

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Speaker 1: except to the extent that it recreates or in some

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Speaker 1: way connects us with events that occurred during mythic time. Right.

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Speaker 1: So Eliot was a it was a scholar of religion,

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Speaker 1: and yeah, I understand this was one of his main points.

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Speaker 1: It was that a lot of what we think of

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Speaker 1: his religion either is or is derived from attempts to

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Speaker 1: recreate or re enact things that allegedly took place in

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Speaker 1: this other mythic time. Right. And of course this connection

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Speaker 1: that he's talking about between mythic past and p paining present. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's not quite like a physical journey, uh

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Speaker 1: that you know, via time machine between two times. Though

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Speaker 1: though I suppose characters who venture into a realm of

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Speaker 1: gods or spirits is in some way they are making

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Speaker 1: a journey into mythic time, a realm where mythic time

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Speaker 1: is either still going on or perhaps is has just happened,

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Speaker 1: or is in some way you know, more present. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know. Again, it's not nothing like these modern ideas

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Speaker 1: of time travel, but but it certainly got me thinking

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Speaker 1: about all of this. Oh absolutely, And to stay on

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Speaker 1: the subject of myth and religion, I mean, one thing

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Speaker 1: that I think is kind of interesting and understanding how

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Speaker 1: humans imagine time throughout history is sort of the difference

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Speaker 1: between myth and legend as generally understood by by scholars

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Speaker 1: of religion. Where Uh, the idea is that myth is

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Speaker 1: a story that takes place, uh you know, often telling

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Speaker 1: some kind of origin of something. But it's also a

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Speaker 1: story that takes place, usually in a time that is

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Speaker 1: somehow removed from your own timeline, whereas legend is something

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Speaker 1: that appears to blur into your own your own actual history.

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Speaker 1: So they might both be stories that are not like

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Speaker 1: literal descriptions of things that took place in the past,

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Speaker 1: but myth it's kind of like it would be hard

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Speaker 1: to say when the myth actually took place, whereas you

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Speaker 1: could say a legend is about something that allegedly happened

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Speaker 1: a thousand years ago, right, So like a legendary king,

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Speaker 1: a legendary emperor is in many cases the sort of

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Speaker 1: individual that historians and archaeologists can look to and say, like, well,

430
00:24:52,800 --> 00:24:55,640
Speaker 1: who's the actual person that this may be based upon.

431
00:24:55,920 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 1: Whereas when you get into the mythic mythic kings, mythic emperor's, Uh,

432
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:03,639
Speaker 1: these are figures that are often uh, you know, indecipherable

433
00:25:03,680 --> 00:25:07,520
Speaker 1: from God's not to say that they don't there's not

434
00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:11,400
Speaker 1: a potential for some connection to actual living humans, but uh,

435
00:25:11,480 --> 00:25:14,080
Speaker 1: in many cases, yeah, it is about the things that

436
00:25:14,119 --> 00:25:18,680
Speaker 1: occurred before, the stories that define the world in which

437
00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:21,440
Speaker 1: we live. I think it's interesting that there are different

438
00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:24,280
Speaker 1: ways to imagine the past, whether or not what you're

439
00:25:24,320 --> 00:25:26,960
Speaker 1: imagining is is accurate or not. I mean, that's sort

440
00:25:26,960 --> 00:25:28,720
Speaker 1: of beside the point right now. Just like if you're

441
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:33,359
Speaker 1: imagining what happened long ago, there are sort of different timelines.

442
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:35,040
Speaker 1: You know, is there there's a past that's kind of

443
00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:38,159
Speaker 1: inaccessible to us, and then the past that you can

444
00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:41,320
Speaker 1: at least imagine as being accessible even if you don't

445
00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:44,119
Speaker 1: think you could say, travel back to it. And I

446
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:48,240
Speaker 1: think in a way that has sort of changed maybe

447
00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:52,000
Speaker 1: in twentieth century science fiction at least where one thing

448
00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:55,399
Speaker 1: that seems true maybeing disagree rob about twentieth century science

449
00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:59,719
Speaker 1: fiction is that, uh, this imagines there's a leveling effect

450
00:25:59,760 --> 00:26:03,080
Speaker 1: where okay, no, now there's just there's a timeline and

451
00:26:03,160 --> 00:26:04,960
Speaker 1: if you have a time machine, you can go back

452
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 1: to anything forward or backward that actually happened or will

453
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:13,000
Speaker 1: actually happen. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um. It reminds me of

454
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:15,760
Speaker 1: you know something else that the Iliote was was big

455
00:26:15,800 --> 00:26:20,639
Speaker 1: on this idea of archaic cultures accessing circular sacred time,

456
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:24,719
Speaker 1: a time of origins and creations, while modern cultures use

457
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:27,919
Speaker 1: a linear sacred time that has essentially bolted onto the

458
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:31,680
Speaker 1: timeline of profane time. Um. But but in all of

459
00:26:31,720 --> 00:26:34,320
Speaker 1: the the you know, the origin of things was important.

460
00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:37,840
Speaker 1: Uh So, like just thinking again about mythic time, it

461
00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:41,240
Speaker 1: in some ways it feels like, well, the mythic time

462
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 1: is more real, like it's more of a real place

463
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:47,680
Speaker 1: than uh you know, whatever happened last year was whatever

464
00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:52,480
Speaker 1: happened last year wasn't important at all, at least aside

465
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:56,720
Speaker 1: from any ways in which it recreated mythic time um.

466
00:26:56,800 --> 00:26:58,439
Speaker 1: And so I was I was thinking about, like, well,

467
00:26:58,560 --> 00:27:02,399
Speaker 1: twenty century ideas of all of this, um, and it

468
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:04,239
Speaker 1: made me made me think about, well, some of our

469
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:07,439
Speaker 1: our time travel stories are modern time travel stories. And

470
00:27:07,480 --> 00:27:11,119
Speaker 1: I started thinking about Back to the Future, which I

471
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:14,880
Speaker 1: don't know where this falls in your introduction to time travel, Joe,

472
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:18,240
Speaker 1: but I have a feeling that either Back to the

473
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:22,879
Speaker 1: Future or the old adaptation like the nineteen fifties or

474
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:26,199
Speaker 1: sixties adaptation of the time machine, one of those was

475
00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:29,359
Speaker 1: my first introduction to the idea of time travel, and

476
00:27:29,440 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 1: it was it was probably Back to the Future. Oh yeah,

477
00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 1: I can't say for sure, but Back to the Future

478
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:35,320
Speaker 1: has got to be up there for me. It was

479
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:39,080
Speaker 1: certainly one of the earliest, and it benefits from being

480
00:27:39,080 --> 00:27:42,840
Speaker 1: the kind of movie that feels canonical. Um. You know,

481
00:27:43,280 --> 00:27:45,399
Speaker 1: even when you're a kid, I think you detect some

482
00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:48,160
Speaker 1: kind of differences in the quality of cinema, even at

483
00:27:48,200 --> 00:27:51,000
Speaker 1: that age where I liked every movie I saw, there

484
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:53,240
Speaker 1: are some movies that feel kind of like, Okay, that's

485
00:27:53,280 --> 00:27:55,359
Speaker 1: just some weird thing I saw on TV one time,

486
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:57,760
Speaker 1: And there are other movies that feel like a part

487
00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:00,919
Speaker 1: of the canon of culture and and Back to the

488
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 1: Future felt that way. Yeah. Absolutely, And so it got

489
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 1: me wondering thinking back on it now, to what extent

490
00:28:08,600 --> 00:28:12,160
Speaker 1: any time travel story is essentially taking a particular time

491
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:14,720
Speaker 1: in the past. Obviously, we're just talking about time travel

492
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 1: stories that concerned the past and establishing it as a

493
00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:21,720
Speaker 1: kind of sacred time, one that explains conditions in our

494
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:26,119
Speaker 1: profane present time. And um, you know, in terms of

495
00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:28,359
Speaker 1: Back to the Future, Uh, you know, this is this

496
00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:30,600
Speaker 1: is a story that that doesn't just concern the mid

497
00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:34,720
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. It idolizes the mid nineteen fifties. It fetishizes

498
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:38,200
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. Uh, it's this is a time of

499
00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:42,680
Speaker 1: great admiration for this film, a period of of iconic

500
00:28:42,720 --> 00:28:46,560
Speaker 1: and highly sanitized American nostalgia. Um. And it is also

501
00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:49,760
Speaker 1: the time that defines our characters. You know, this is

502
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:53,800
Speaker 1: the this is the age during which Marty McFly's parents

503
00:28:54,040 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 1: were themselves youths. This is the time during which they

504
00:28:57,640 --> 00:29:02,320
Speaker 1: would come together and eventually create Marty McFly. Well, In

505
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:04,280
Speaker 1: another way, you could almost say that in Back to

506
00:29:04,360 --> 00:29:09,160
Speaker 1: the Future, Marty McFly travels back to a cinematic nineteen

507
00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:12,800
Speaker 1: fifties more than a real nineteen fifties, Like he's traveling

508
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:16,440
Speaker 1: to a mythic time almost, because it's like, yeah, it's

509
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:19,000
Speaker 1: sort of what you're because like the stuff he sees

510
00:29:19,040 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 1: when he gets there are not so much based in history,

511
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:26,880
Speaker 1: but they're based on the images people remember from like

512
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:29,640
Speaker 1: movies and TV of the nineteen fifties, So you know,

513
00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:33,080
Speaker 1: the soda shop with the counter and the you know,

514
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. It is a mythic reality

515
00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 1: that explains the origins of things and uh and and

516
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:44,160
Speaker 1: and and and provides this idea of how things should be. Um.

517
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:46,080
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's it's kind of interesting to think

518
00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: about the Back of the Future in terms of of

519
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:52,080
Speaker 1: Iliades writings. By the way, I had to do the

520
00:29:52,120 --> 00:29:53,680
Speaker 1: math on this because I always find this kind of

521
00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:57,680
Speaker 1: thing um interesting but also um alarming. You know, it

522
00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:00,320
Speaker 1: makes me feel old to realize this. So this is

523
00:30:00,440 --> 00:30:02,720
Speaker 1: a movie Back to the Future that concerned a jaunt

524
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:06,120
Speaker 1: from nineteen eighty five to nineteen fifty five. If you

525
00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:08,800
Speaker 1: were to take an identical jaunt today from the year

526
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 1: one that would take you back to the year nineteen.

527
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:16,040
Speaker 1: That is the year that Highlander two came out. Christof

528
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:19,400
Speaker 1: Lambert goes back thirty years, gives himself a pep talk,

529
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 1: uh you know, like tells him how to stand up

530
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:26,440
Speaker 1: for himself. Ends up with Lambert punching Sean Connery in

531
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:30,040
Speaker 1: the face. Like, yeah, I can see it. Also the

532
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:35,720
Speaker 1: year of dan Ackroyd's Nothing but Trouble, a pivotal time,

533
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 1: mythic time for American culture. They're also cool as Ice,

534
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:43,760
Speaker 1: the Vanilla Ice movie Health there you go, a time

535
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 1: of heroes and gods. Basically, what we're saying was a

536
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:51,160
Speaker 1: weird year for films. It's when you try to look

537
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:53,280
Speaker 1: for the real standouts. I mean there are You've got

538
00:30:53,320 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 1: stuff like Barton Faint going on, um you know, but

539
00:30:56,960 --> 00:30:59,160
Speaker 1: you know, it's also the year of stuff like Freddie's Dead,

540
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:02,040
Speaker 1: the Final Nightmare. There. Oh, we did have a time

541
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:05,040
Speaker 1: travel uh a movie there. We also had Bill and

542
00:31:05,080 --> 00:31:07,760
Speaker 1: Ted came out their Bogus Journey. That would be the

543
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:10,920
Speaker 1: second one. Okay, well we gotta stop this or we'll

544
00:31:10,960 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: just keep going. Okay, the whole episodes, So anyway, just

545
00:31:15,440 --> 00:31:18,000
Speaker 1: getting back at the basic point. Mainstream time travel tropes

546
00:31:18,600 --> 00:31:21,200
Speaker 1: um are not that old, and will explore some examples

547
00:31:21,200 --> 00:31:24,520
Speaker 1: of this shortly. UM. While time travel narratives are in

548
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:27,160
Speaker 1: some ways like other complex ways of thinking about the

549
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:29,560
Speaker 1: past in the present, they're not quite the same, but

550
00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 1: you can easily get into just a whole argument of

551
00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 1: like looking back at old things and old stories and saying,

552
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:37,360
Speaker 1: to what extent is this time travel? To what extent

553
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 1: is it not? Because think about a lot of modern

554
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:44,000
Speaker 1: time travel stories. What happens you have Marty McFly, he

555
00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:45,960
Speaker 1: goes back, what does he do? He meets his dad?

556
00:31:46,360 --> 00:31:48,720
Speaker 1: You know, uh, there there are other tales of this sort.

557
00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:52,239
Speaker 1: You know where you're it's about connecting with ancestors, and

558
00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:56,520
Speaker 1: of course communication and connection with ancestors is widespread in

559
00:31:56,600 --> 00:32:00,640
Speaker 1: religion and myth and folklore, though these only take on

560
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:04,160
Speaker 1: the forum of spirit communication of some sort, not physical

561
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:07,480
Speaker 1: or even holographic journeys. Right, a lot of the time

562
00:32:07,520 --> 00:32:11,320
Speaker 1: travel stories about interacting with ancestors are either there. Uh.

563
00:32:11,640 --> 00:32:13,960
Speaker 1: To recall some of the language we used in our

564
00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema episode about time after time, they're often

565
00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:19,920
Speaker 1: debugging history stories where you're trying to go back and

566
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:22,880
Speaker 1: fix something that went wrong with one of your ancestors,

567
00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:26,600
Speaker 1: to make the present better, or to undo the mischief

568
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:29,240
Speaker 1: of another time traveler who screwed up the future by

569
00:32:29,440 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 1: doing something with your ancestors. And sometimes there are some

570
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:36,320
Speaker 1: stories where they, you know, they try to maintain the

571
00:32:36,360 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: consistent timeline by having a person go back and like

572
00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:43,040
Speaker 1: do something with their ancestors that in turn was necessary

573
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:46,080
Speaker 1: for the present to happen the way it did. You know,

574
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:48,760
Speaker 1: the stories of paradoxes where somebody goes back and they

575
00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:52,960
Speaker 1: become their own grandfather or something creepy. Yeah, Now, for

576
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:55,760
Speaker 1: some answers, Uh, In all this, I look to A

577
00:32:55,800 --> 00:32:58,960
Speaker 1: wonderful book came out in two thousand one by Paul J.

578
00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:02,360
Speaker 1: Nayan and all electrical engineer and science author. It's called

579
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:06,680
Speaker 1: Time Travel, Time Machines, Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and

580
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 1: Science Fiction. And it's a it's a real fun, very

581
00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:12,760
Speaker 1: readable book. You can still get copies of this. I

582
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:14,160
Speaker 1: think there's been a couple of at least a couple

583
00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 1: of editions that have come out over the years. Um

584
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:20,440
Speaker 1: and Uh. It deals with everything that's mentioned in the title,

585
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:23,920
Speaker 1: but probably focusing more here on just gleaning some of

586
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:26,240
Speaker 1: the sci fi references from it, because he does a

587
00:33:26,240 --> 00:33:29,280
Speaker 1: great job about talking about, uh, the different types of

588
00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 1: time travel narratives that we have and what are some

589
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:34,960
Speaker 1: of the earlier examples of them. Uh, And he identifies

590
00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:39,120
Speaker 1: a sort of related precursor to tales of ventures into

591
00:33:39,120 --> 00:33:41,680
Speaker 1: the future um, as well as I guess into the

592
00:33:41,720 --> 00:33:45,720
Speaker 1: past in the form of stories and accounts of visions

593
00:33:45,760 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 1: of the future. So back before the Time Machine by H.

594
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:54,280
Speaker 1: D Wells, you had as early as eighteen fifty six

595
00:33:54,760 --> 00:33:58,560
Speaker 1: popular English language tales that's speculated on the far future,

596
00:33:58,880 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 1: such as an eighteen fifty six Harper's article that pondered

597
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,320
Speaker 1: what the year three thousand would be like. It was

598
00:34:05,400 --> 00:34:09,160
Speaker 1: titled January one a d three thousand, and it was

599
00:34:09,440 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 1: apparently by an anonymous author, but I think it was

600
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:17,279
Speaker 1: at least edited by Alfred A. Gern Say, But I'm

601
00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:19,799
Speaker 1: not not exactly sure if if an actual author has

602
00:34:19,800 --> 00:34:21,920
Speaker 1: ever been attributed to this piece, or if it remains

603
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:27,239
Speaker 1: just anonymous. I bet it was absolutely prophetic. I had

604
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:30,759
Speaker 1: to look it up. Harper's magazine still has it, and

605
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 1: I think it's in their archives. So you have to

606
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 1: be a subscriber that's probably the best way to see it.

607
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:37,040
Speaker 1: I think I was able to find an expert of

608
00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:40,480
Speaker 1: it and google books. Uh, it seems pretty farcical, So

609
00:34:40,520 --> 00:34:44,239
Speaker 1: don't expect anything to sci fi lots of pondering over

610
00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:46,560
Speaker 1: what sorts of stupid things men of the far future

611
00:34:46,680 --> 00:34:50,400
Speaker 1: will where there's some great illustrations from this um this

612
00:34:51,160 --> 00:34:55,440
Speaker 1: article included them here for you, Joe. Everybody looks like

613
00:34:55,719 --> 00:35:01,000
Speaker 1: uh like Scottish warrior dandies. Yes, and anyway, you know,

614
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 1: I don't know, these aren't too far off the off

615
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:07,560
Speaker 1: the mark, I guess, you know, but you know, it

616
00:35:07,600 --> 00:35:10,200
Speaker 1: concerns the very sorts of time travel social commentary you

617
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:12,799
Speaker 1: might expect today, like when a time traveler is a

618
00:35:12,880 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: gas to learn that individual freedom has been um uh

619
00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:23,040
Speaker 1: you know, has been um violated by state sanctioned diets

620
00:35:22,880 --> 00:35:25,600
Speaker 1: as your burgers in the future, right, Yeah, it's it's

621
00:35:25,640 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, so, you know, which is not

622
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:29,680
Speaker 1: to say that you know that this art. You know,

623
00:35:29,680 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 1: I don't mean to criticize this article because again, this

624
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:33,480
Speaker 1: is the sort of thing that still goes on today

625
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:36,000
Speaker 1: and as one can imagine, it can be done well

626
00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:39,480
Speaker 1: and it can also be done you know crudely or ineffectually,

627
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:45,680
Speaker 1: but anyway, it is a noteworthy example. Now, weirdly, a

628
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:52,359
Speaker 1: major nineteenth century example of multidirectional time travel is by

629
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:54,879
Speaker 1: Charles Dickens. You wouldn't have expected him to be one

630
00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:57,920
Speaker 1: of the pioneers in this area. But we have it

631
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:00,480
Speaker 1: in the form of a Christmas Carol, which, you know,

632
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:03,520
Speaker 1: great story. We often missed some of the finer social

633
00:36:03,560 --> 00:36:05,759
Speaker 1: points of it, but it's a it's a story that

634
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:10,239
Speaker 1: has become a part of Western holiday traditions. Like it's

635
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:12,520
Speaker 1: it's a narrative we put up there almost with the

636
00:36:12,560 --> 00:36:15,800
Speaker 1: you know, the tales of Santa Claus and the Baby Jesus.

637
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:20,160
Speaker 1: But it is essentially about time travel visions. You know,

638
00:36:20,200 --> 00:36:22,000
Speaker 1: I guess you can. You can critique and say, well,

639
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 1: it's happening within the context of a dream, and I

640
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:27,760
Speaker 1: don't know to what extent he's actually being visited by spirits,

641
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:29,319
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I always think of them as

642
00:36:29,360 --> 00:36:31,960
Speaker 1: actual spirits. I think of these as actual visions that

643
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 1: are brought to him by supernatural entities. Yeah sure, I

644
00:36:35,080 --> 00:36:38,160
Speaker 1: mean it's fiction, you know. Yeah, the spirits are coming

645
00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:40,520
Speaker 1: to him and uh yeah, he's he gets to see

646
00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:43,520
Speaker 1: the past, the present, and the future. Yeah, I mean, yeah,

647
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:44,920
Speaker 1: I guess that's the great thing about the stories. You

648
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:46,759
Speaker 1: can think of it in different ways. It's like, to

649
00:36:46,840 --> 00:36:50,279
Speaker 1: what extent is Scrooge just simply having this this night

650
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:54,120
Speaker 1: of intense dreaming and and and reflection and pondering about

651
00:36:54,120 --> 00:36:56,719
Speaker 1: the future. He's engaging in mental time travel, which of

652
00:36:56,760 --> 00:37:00,080
Speaker 1: course is something that that that that humans have of

653
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:04,440
Speaker 1: in general, that allows us to form these simulations of

654
00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:08,200
Speaker 1: the past that two varying degrees may be correct, uh,

655
00:37:08,200 --> 00:37:11,120
Speaker 1: and then compare those two simulations of what the future

656
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:14,760
Speaker 1: might hold and and various simulations about how that future

657
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:18,520
Speaker 1: situation will affect us, how will respond, etcetera. So you

658
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:19,960
Speaker 1: can just say that, or you can go with the

659
00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:23,480
Speaker 1: more fun idea that like actual beings from beyond the

660
00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 1: grave came and visited him and took him on journeys,

661
00:37:27,200 --> 00:37:29,839
Speaker 1: you know, through the through through the past and the

662
00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:32,839
Speaker 1: president in the future. Right. And so while a lot

663
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:36,920
Speaker 1: of the modern sci fi time travel I think is

664
00:37:37,200 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: clearly traceable back to two H. G. Wells and the

665
00:37:40,320 --> 00:37:43,279
Speaker 1: stories he wrote in the eighteen nineties and mainly the

666
00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:47,400
Speaker 1: novel The Time the Time Machine, and that right, this

667
00:37:47,440 --> 00:37:50,360
Speaker 1: goes back significantly earlier. Christmas Carol came out in eighteen

668
00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:54,200
Speaker 1: forty three. Yeah, now you have even earlier stories that

669
00:37:54,360 --> 00:37:57,239
Speaker 1: get closer to um a whole trope or or about

670
00:37:57,280 --> 00:38:00,040
Speaker 1: to discuss. There's a Bulgarian tale from eighteen twenty for

671
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:03,560
Speaker 1: about a Russian hero who swept overboard at sea and

672
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:07,600
Speaker 1: he becomes wrapped in an herb known as the uh

673
00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:10,640
Speaker 1: is the root of life and UH and then he

674
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:14,920
Speaker 1: comes to in the year four. I love how some

675
00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:17,400
Speaker 1: of many of these older time travel stories they just

676
00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:20,080
Speaker 1: go for it. They just go like a thousand years

677
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:22,719
Speaker 1: into the future. Um, you don't seem like you don't

678
00:38:22,719 --> 00:38:24,880
Speaker 1: see as much of that. And and I don't know

679
00:38:24,920 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 1: many of the stories we were you know, we grow.

680
00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 1: I guess I fall back to the the pattern set

681
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:31,680
Speaker 1: by Back to the Future, Like what are you looking

682
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:34,840
Speaker 1: at your traveling into the time of your parents, or

683
00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:37,759
Speaker 1: you're traveling into the time of your children, which I

684
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:39,879
Speaker 1: think makes a lot of sense because that's a very

685
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:44,000
Speaker 1: human perspective, individual perspective level of time travel. That's the

686
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:47,040
Speaker 1: that's generally the spectrum that we're most concerned about, or

687
00:38:47,040 --> 00:38:48,600
Speaker 1: should be I guess most concerned about it is like

688
00:38:48,600 --> 00:38:51,520
Speaker 1: where do we come from and what sort of world

689
00:38:51,520 --> 00:38:55,040
Speaker 1: are we leaving for our children. I wonder if the

690
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:58,920
Speaker 1: tendency for for time travel journeys to become more modest

691
00:38:58,960 --> 00:39:01,640
Speaker 1: in scale, you know, going a hundred years into the

692
00:39:01,680 --> 00:39:05,400
Speaker 1: future instead of a thousand. Uh, if that happens in

693
00:39:05,440 --> 00:39:10,280
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, because of the increasing rate of cultural

694
00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:14,080
Speaker 1: and technological change in the twentieth century, like people living

695
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 1: in a time where things see it will seem at

696
00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:17,759
Speaker 1: least and I don't know if there's an objective way

697
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:19,920
Speaker 1: to measure this, but seem at least to be changing

698
00:39:20,040 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 1: faster than ever. Did they start to think like, I

699
00:39:23,160 --> 00:39:25,359
Speaker 1: can't set this a thousand years in the future, because

700
00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:27,960
Speaker 1: like nothing will even be recognizable. I've got to I've

701
00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:30,839
Speaker 1: got to pull the pull the reins back a bit. Yeah,

702
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:33,880
Speaker 1: getting into the concept of future shock, right, the idea

703
00:39:33,920 --> 00:39:35,760
Speaker 1: that it just seems like things are moving at such

704
00:39:36,080 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 1: a terrific level, I can't possibly predict what it's going

705
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:41,919
Speaker 1: to be like in uh, you know, in just ten

706
00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:43,959
Speaker 1: years now. One of the interesting things there is, of course,

707
00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:46,920
Speaker 1: that the concept of future shock, that there could be

708
00:39:46,960 --> 00:39:50,640
Speaker 1: almost this trauma and anxiety associated with the the rate

709
00:39:50,680 --> 00:39:53,799
Speaker 1: of technological advancement. This didn't come about till nine. This

710
00:39:53,880 --> 00:39:59,360
Speaker 1: was American futurist Alvin Toffler and his spouse Adelaide Uh.

711
00:39:59,400 --> 00:40:03,080
Speaker 1: They formulated this concept. So I don't know, it would

712
00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:04,799
Speaker 1: be interesting to look at the sci fi at sci

713
00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:08,440
Speaker 1: fi from the nineteen seventies, was was it less less

714
00:40:08,560 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 1: um likely to look at near future situations and more

715
00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:16,439
Speaker 1: likely to gaze into the far future, you know, sort

716
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:20,000
Speaker 1: of like the early earlier work of Frank Herbert looking

717
00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:22,680
Speaker 1: into the far future Humanity and Dune. Because it seems

718
00:40:22,680 --> 00:40:24,560
Speaker 1: like by the time we get into the nineteen eighties

719
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:27,279
Speaker 1: you have far more of a tendency with sci fi

720
00:40:27,360 --> 00:40:30,960
Speaker 1: authors to look into an immediate future. But I could

721
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:33,400
Speaker 1: be way off off the path there. I'm just probably

722
00:40:33,960 --> 00:40:36,719
Speaker 1: cherry picking thinking about various works from different decades that

723
00:40:36,800 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with than than well. We we teased earlier

724
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: the question of how far back in history the concept

725
00:40:49,560 --> 00:40:52,120
Speaker 1: of time travel actually goes. It's clear again that a

726
00:40:52,120 --> 00:40:55,840
Speaker 1: lot of modern time travel, I think is largely traceable

727
00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:57,839
Speaker 1: back to H. G. Wells and the time machine. Again

728
00:40:57,840 --> 00:41:01,239
Speaker 1: that's the eighteen nineties, but they're our ideas of time

729
00:41:01,280 --> 00:41:04,319
Speaker 1: travel from before that. Like we've been discussing how far

730
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 1: before that? So I was looking around for evidence of

731
00:41:07,680 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 1: the oldest stories of time travel and literature, and I

732
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 1: came across an interesting claim from a professor, actually a

733
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:21,000
Speaker 1: professor at Georgia Tech named Lisa Yazik, who is a

734
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:24,719
Speaker 1: professor of science fiction studies. So I was watching a

735
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:28,960
Speaker 1: video lecture that she did in about She actually wrote

736
00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:32,840
Speaker 1: the preface or introduction to a recent new edition of

737
00:41:32,840 --> 00:41:36,399
Speaker 1: of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, and she's

738
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:39,640
Speaker 1: done a lot of study about the history of time

739
00:41:39,640 --> 00:41:43,560
Speaker 1: travel stories. Actually connected her also by a mention in

740
00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 1: that article by by Adam Man in Life Science. But

741
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:50,640
Speaker 1: Yasick actually has a lot of uh of interesting thoughts

742
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:53,359
Speaker 1: about time travel. She argues that it is not as

743
00:41:53,400 --> 00:41:57,280
Speaker 1: modern a literary concept as we might assume, and in fact,

744
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:01,719
Speaker 1: some forms of time travel are as old as literature itself.

745
00:42:02,160 --> 00:42:04,480
Speaker 1: And so what would be the examples here, Well, she

746
00:42:04,640 --> 00:42:08,760
Speaker 1: gives the example of the ancient Sanskrit epic the Mahabarata,

747
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:12,719
Speaker 1: which describes a form of time travel that yeas it

748
00:42:12,840 --> 00:42:16,400
Speaker 1: calls time dilation. So this would be similar to the

749
00:42:16,719 --> 00:42:19,920
Speaker 1: type of time travel that is quite real. A confirmed

750
00:42:19,960 --> 00:42:22,880
Speaker 1: part of modern physics that we know from general relativity,

751
00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:25,520
Speaker 1: where say, if you are um, if you are near

752
00:42:25,640 --> 00:42:28,440
Speaker 1: an object of great mass, or if you are moving

753
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:32,240
Speaker 1: at great velocity, then relative to other objects in the universe,

754
00:42:32,520 --> 00:42:35,360
Speaker 1: your experience of time will slow down. You will age

755
00:42:35,400 --> 00:42:37,759
Speaker 1: more slowly as as time sort of zips by in

756
00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:41,040
Speaker 1: the broader context. But this story is not about physics.

757
00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:44,000
Speaker 1: So this story in the Mahabarta probably dates back to

758
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:47,520
Speaker 1: sometime in the first millennium b c. E UH and

759
00:42:47,640 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 1: it is the story of a king named Rivada who

760
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:55,640
Speaker 1: is also known as Kakudman and his daughter Ravati. Actually

761
00:42:55,680 --> 00:42:57,600
Speaker 1: found a good text of the story, though, it is

762
00:42:57,640 --> 00:43:00,560
Speaker 1: the version that's told not in the mahabar Rita but

763
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:04,160
Speaker 1: in the Vishnu Puranha. And so this version is from

764
00:43:04,160 --> 00:43:07,040
Speaker 1: the Vishnu Puranha, and it's translated into English in the

765
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:11,200
Speaker 1: nineteenth century by Horace Hayman Wilson. So the story begins

766
00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:14,279
Speaker 1: with this king Ravada, who is the eldest of a

767
00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:20,160
Speaker 1: hundred brethren. And King Ravada has a surpassingly wonderful daughter

768
00:43:20,280 --> 00:43:24,279
Speaker 1: named Ravati, and she is just awesome and lovely in

769
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:28,359
Speaker 1: every possible way. She's like the best princess. Ever, and

770
00:43:28,440 --> 00:43:32,839
Speaker 1: in fact, Ravati is so great that Ravada doesn't know

771
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:35,560
Speaker 1: if there are really any men around who are worthy

772
00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:38,920
Speaker 1: of her hand in marriage. So he gets an idea.

773
00:43:39,360 --> 00:43:42,440
Speaker 1: He is going to consult the heavens. He will travel

774
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:45,920
Speaker 1: to the Brahma realm, the plane of existence where the

775
00:43:45,920 --> 00:43:49,480
Speaker 1: god Brahma dwells, and he will consult with the great God.

776
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:52,480
Speaker 1: He will get the advice of Brahma, because if anybody

777
00:43:52,520 --> 00:43:55,200
Speaker 1: should be able to find him a suitable match for Ravati,

778
00:43:55,280 --> 00:43:58,359
Speaker 1: it should be Brahma. But when the two of them

779
00:43:58,400 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 1: get there, Brahma is in the middle of listening to

780
00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:04,920
Speaker 1: a concert. They're they're a group of of divine singers

781
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:07,839
Speaker 1: who are who are going through a song. And so

782
00:44:08,080 --> 00:44:11,319
Speaker 1: Ravada and Ravati sit and wait patiently for the song

783
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:13,640
Speaker 1: to finish. And here I'm going to quote from the

784
00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:17,600
Speaker 1: Wilson translation. At the end of their singing, Ravada prostrated

785
00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:21,840
Speaker 1: himself before Brahma and explained his Errand whom should you

786
00:44:21,880 --> 00:44:24,520
Speaker 1: wish for a son in law? Demanded Brahma, And the

787
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:27,200
Speaker 1: king mentioned to him various persons with whom he could

788
00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:31,480
Speaker 1: be well pleased, nodding his head gently and graciously smiling,

789
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:34,400
Speaker 1: Brahma said to him, of those whom you have named

790
00:44:34,480 --> 00:44:39,359
Speaker 1: the third or fourth generation no longer survives, for many

791
00:44:39,440 --> 00:44:43,200
Speaker 1: successions of ages have passed away whilst you were listening

792
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:48,360
Speaker 1: to our songsters. Now upon Earth they great age of

793
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: the present Manu is nearly finished, and the Collie period

794
00:44:52,200 --> 00:44:55,640
Speaker 1: is at hand. You must therefore bestow this virgin gym

795
00:44:55,760 --> 00:44:59,319
Speaker 1: upon some other husband, for you are now alone, and

796
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:03,960
Speaker 1: your friend is your minister's servants. Wife, kinsman, armies, and

797
00:45:04,040 --> 00:45:07,400
Speaker 1: treasures have long since been swept away by the hand

798
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:12,160
Speaker 1: of time. So the issue here is that time flows

799
00:45:12,200 --> 00:45:14,960
Speaker 1: at a different rate on Earth than it does in

800
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:18,359
Speaker 1: the Brahma realm. It's as if the Brahma realm were

801
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:22,200
Speaker 1: like near a supermassive black hole. So while the two

802
00:45:22,239 --> 00:45:25,719
Speaker 1: mortals were sitting here listening to this song, presumably the

803
00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:28,880
Speaker 1: songs only a few minutes long, millions of years have

804
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:32,120
Speaker 1: passed on Earth, and everybody they ever knew or knew

805
00:45:32,200 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 1: of is dead. Fortunately, there are some immortal God still around,

806
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:40,800
Speaker 1: and so there is a semi happy ending for Ravati

807
00:45:41,120 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 1: because at the end she gets to she gets paired

808
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:46,800
Speaker 1: up with one of the avatars of the god Vishnu,

809
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:49,960
Speaker 1: who is quite worthy of her hand in marriage, of course,

810
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:52,799
Speaker 1: because he's Vishnu. And then there's a long section of

811
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:56,359
Speaker 1: the story in the Vishnu Puranha version that is just

812
00:45:56,560 --> 00:46:00,480
Speaker 1: a monologue on the nature of Vishnu, who interestingly is

813
00:46:00,600 --> 00:46:05,040
Speaker 1: in places described sort of like a manifestation of time itself.

814
00:46:05,120 --> 00:46:07,080
Speaker 1: So I just want to read some some parts of

815
00:46:07,120 --> 00:46:10,799
Speaker 1: this monologue, not the whole thing. Quote the being of

816
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:15,400
Speaker 1: whose commencement, course, and termination we are ignorant, the unborn

817
00:46:15,480 --> 00:46:18,799
Speaker 1: in omnipresent essence of all things. He who is real

818
00:46:18,880 --> 00:46:21,799
Speaker 1: and infinite nature and essence we do not know, is

819
00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:26,680
Speaker 1: the supreme Vishnu. He is time, made up of moments

820
00:46:26,719 --> 00:46:30,239
Speaker 1: and hours and years, whose influence is the source of

821
00:46:30,280 --> 00:46:34,440
Speaker 1: perpetual change. He is the universal form of all things,

822
00:46:34,480 --> 00:46:38,320
Speaker 1: from birth to death. He is eternal, without name or shape.

823
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:41,440
Speaker 1: And then, skipping ahead of it, he is at once

824
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:45,319
Speaker 1: the creator and that which is created the preserver, and

825
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:49,200
Speaker 1: that which is preserved the destroyer, and as one with

826
00:46:49,239 --> 00:46:53,640
Speaker 1: all things, that which is destroyed, and as the indestructible.

827
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:57,560
Speaker 1: He is distinct from these three vicissitudes. In him is

828
00:46:57,600 --> 00:47:01,080
Speaker 1: the world. He is the world, and he the primeval

829
00:47:01,160 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 1: self born is again present in the world. Wow. Yeah,

830
00:47:05,160 --> 00:47:11,000
Speaker 1: that that reminds me of some translations of of the Geta.

831
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 1: They they they translate the words of Vishnu as as

832
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:19,719
Speaker 1: I am time grown old, which I like that. That yeah,

833
00:47:19,760 --> 00:47:22,480
Speaker 1: that gives me chills. Now there's another interesting thing that

834
00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:25,440
Speaker 1: gets mentioned in this story, which is that, though there

835
00:47:25,520 --> 00:47:29,080
Speaker 1: are some very important differences between this myth and the

836
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:32,799
Speaker 1: dystopian sci fi stories of the modern era, Rivada and

837
00:47:32,880 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 1: Ravati do return to a future Earth that could be

838
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:39,799
Speaker 1: called dystopian, or at least worse off than the one

839
00:47:39,880 --> 00:47:42,279
Speaker 1: they left. I don't know if this has to do

840
00:47:42,360 --> 00:47:44,799
Speaker 1: It might have to do with um what Brahma says

841
00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:47,520
Speaker 1: about the Earth being on the verge of the Collie Age.

842
00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:51,480
Speaker 1: But we are told quote being thus instructed by the

843
00:47:51,520 --> 00:47:55,200
Speaker 1: lotus born divinity. Rivada returned with his daughter to Earth,

844
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:58,520
Speaker 1: where he found the race of men dwindled in stature,

845
00:47:58,719 --> 00:48:03,160
Speaker 1: reduced in vigor, enfeebled in intellect. So they come back

846
00:48:03,239 --> 00:48:05,799
Speaker 1: and people are like worse than when they left. Think

847
00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:09,840
Speaker 1: things have gone downhill. And uh so, I want to

848
00:48:09,840 --> 00:48:13,480
Speaker 1: be clear that the kind of dystopian future described by H. G.

849
00:48:13,640 --> 00:48:18,279
Speaker 1: Wells and the Time Machine is I believe, understood as

850
00:48:18,320 --> 00:48:23,600
Speaker 1: a contingent consequence of bad social and political trends within

851
00:48:23,719 --> 00:48:26,840
Speaker 1: linear time. So I think the important point that Wells

852
00:48:26,960 --> 00:48:29,960
Speaker 1: is trying to make is that if we say, continue

853
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:33,719
Speaker 1: tolerating a society in which the rich relentlessly exploit the

854
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:36,400
Speaker 1: labor of the poor, here's what you're gonna get. You know,

855
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:40,000
Speaker 1: you're gonna get eloi and more locks. Um. I don't

856
00:48:40,120 --> 00:48:43,520
Speaker 1: get that kind of implication in this ancient Indian epic.

857
00:48:44,160 --> 00:48:45,919
Speaker 1: It would be good to hear from listeners with more

858
00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:49,400
Speaker 1: knowledge about ancient Hindu thought. But I think this story

859
00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:54,120
Speaker 1: about Ravata and Ravati is more consistent with a vision

860
00:48:54,160 --> 00:48:56,839
Speaker 1: of a kind of cyclical mythic time in which there

861
00:48:56,840 --> 00:48:59,759
Speaker 1: there are ages of human advancement and than ages of

862
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:03,360
Speaker 1: and retreat, and it's just that they happen to pop

863
00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:06,960
Speaker 1: out of the Brahma realm in one of the bad times. Yeah,

864
00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:09,279
Speaker 1: that's that's my understanding as well. And of course, this

865
00:49:09,440 --> 00:49:12,880
Speaker 1: this view of time matches matches up very very loosely

866
00:49:12,920 --> 00:49:15,839
Speaker 1: with with some of the ideas you see in um

867
00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:20,320
Speaker 1: uh in various Native American tribal cultures and in Mesoamerican

868
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:24,120
Speaker 1: cultures where it's a procession of different ages and catastrophes,

869
00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:27,399
Speaker 1: and we find ourselves and yet another age, and there

870
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:29,920
Speaker 1: will be another catastrophe, but then there will be another

871
00:49:29,960 --> 00:49:32,920
Speaker 1: age beyond that. Now, of course, this raises the question

872
00:49:33,040 --> 00:49:35,360
Speaker 1: people always want to like pick at logical issues in

873
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:38,120
Speaker 1: time travel stories, and and this story has mythic logic,

874
00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:39,840
Speaker 1: so it's pointless to try to pick at it. But

875
00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:42,439
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but think, why didn't they just wait

876
00:49:42,440 --> 00:49:44,760
Speaker 1: a few more minutes with Brahma and maybe like listen

877
00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:46,719
Speaker 1: to another song, and then they could pop out at

878
00:49:46,719 --> 00:49:49,319
Speaker 1: a better time on Earth. I don't know. Now. I

879
00:49:49,400 --> 00:49:52,879
Speaker 1: love the idea that it involves um listening to music though,

880
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:55,080
Speaker 1: because yeah, I gets into this, like, because what happens

881
00:49:55,080 --> 00:49:57,239
Speaker 1: when we listen to listen to music? You know, that's

882
00:49:57,280 --> 00:49:59,960
Speaker 1: just one of the many human experiences that can all

883
00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:02,560
Speaker 1: to our perception of time. You know, you get lost

884
00:50:02,560 --> 00:50:04,920
Speaker 1: in a good song, and I don't know, sometimes that

885
00:50:04,960 --> 00:50:07,200
Speaker 1: good song doesn't seem to last long enough. You've gotta

886
00:50:07,200 --> 00:50:09,880
Speaker 1: put it on repeat and listen to it about six times, um.

887
00:50:10,000 --> 00:50:12,440
Speaker 1: And in other cases, you know, you it seems to

888
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:15,160
Speaker 1: stretch on for a very long time, and you lose

889
00:50:15,200 --> 00:50:18,560
Speaker 1: yourself in it um. And curiously enough, this pops up

890
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:22,080
Speaker 1: in another uh tale. This is a Japanese fairy tale

891
00:50:22,960 --> 00:50:27,399
Speaker 1: of Urashima Taro uh. This tale about a fisherman who

892
00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:30,480
Speaker 1: rescues a turtle and returns it to the dragon palace

893
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 1: beneath the sea. While he's there returning said turtle, he's

894
00:50:34,719 --> 00:50:38,520
Speaker 1: entertained by the princess there as a reward, and you know,

895
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:41,480
Speaker 1: there's music and dancing. It's great uh uh. And then

896
00:50:41,520 --> 00:50:44,080
Speaker 1: he's sent home with a box that he's forbidden to open.

897
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:47,040
Speaker 1: And when he returns to his home village, he finds

898
00:50:47,080 --> 00:50:50,400
Speaker 1: that a hundred years has passed. And when he opens

899
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 1: the box that again he was forbidden to open, he

900
00:50:53,239 --> 00:50:58,680
Speaker 1: immediately ages an entire century. Oh no, don't open the box, dude. Yeah.

901
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:01,960
Speaker 1: I mean, if if God's and goddesses and strange ladies

902
00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:03,960
Speaker 1: under the ocean tell you not to open the box,

903
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:07,239
Speaker 1: don't open that box. You know what, We're in the

904
00:51:07,280 --> 00:51:09,400
Speaker 1: odd situation where I think we need to call this

905
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:12,520
Speaker 1: episode right here. But there's a lot more we want

906
00:51:12,520 --> 00:51:15,480
Speaker 1: to say about the history of of thinking about time travel.

907
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:18,880
Speaker 1: And so what I'm proposing is that on this subject

908
00:51:19,040 --> 00:51:22,279
Speaker 1: we sleep into the future. I don't think we're quite

909
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:24,360
Speaker 1: ready for the next episode of the show to be

910
00:51:24,440 --> 00:51:26,239
Speaker 1: part two of this, so maybe this will be an

911
00:51:26,360 --> 00:51:29,400
Speaker 1: open part one and who knows when the hands of

912
00:51:29,440 --> 00:51:32,719
Speaker 1: time will reach out and feed you the second entry. Yeah,

913
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:37,960
Speaker 1: just don't open any strange boxes in the meantime, all right, well, yes,

914
00:51:38,040 --> 00:51:41,239
Speaker 1: definitely look out for that the next episode. Uh, we

915
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:42,839
Speaker 1: have some we may have. I think we are gonna

916
00:51:42,840 --> 00:51:45,000
Speaker 1: have some other episodes that have to occur before then,

917
00:51:45,080 --> 00:51:47,040
Speaker 1: but we will be back to discuss this topic more

918
00:51:47,480 --> 00:51:49,040
Speaker 1: in the meantime. If you would like to check out

919
00:51:49,040 --> 00:51:51,120
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, well you

920
00:51:51,160 --> 00:51:54,759
Speaker 1: can find all of them trailing back through time in

921
00:51:54,800 --> 00:51:57,440
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. You can

922
00:51:57,440 --> 00:52:00,040
Speaker 1: get that wherever you get your podcasts. Uh. We we

923
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:03,480
Speaker 1: have our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays listener Mail.

924
00:52:03,520 --> 00:52:07,200
Speaker 1: On Mondays, we do a short form artifact on Wednesdays.

925
00:52:07,239 --> 00:52:09,920
Speaker 1: On Friday, we do a little something called Weird House Cinema.

926
00:52:09,960 --> 00:52:12,880
Speaker 1: That's when we set most serious concerns aside and we

927
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:16,120
Speaker 1: just talk about some sort of strange film. And we

928
00:52:16,200 --> 00:52:19,600
Speaker 1: have discussed time travel films, and not only time after time,

929
00:52:19,640 --> 00:52:24,080
Speaker 1: but uh, Oh, what else did we get into? Um transfers,

930
00:52:24,160 --> 00:52:27,440
Speaker 1: transfers to the Hell of the time travel movie, The

931
00:52:27,480 --> 00:52:29,920
Speaker 1: Return of Jack Dad. Yes, tell you it's right. We

932
00:52:29,960 --> 00:52:33,600
Speaker 1: did what we did Transers too. Oh and then on

933
00:52:33,640 --> 00:52:35,560
Speaker 1: the weekends we do a vault episode that's a rerun

934
00:52:35,600 --> 00:52:38,080
Speaker 1: from the previous year Huge Things. As always to our

935
00:52:38,120 --> 00:52:41,120
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like

936
00:52:41,160 --> 00:52:43,040
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this

937
00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:45,680
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

938
00:52:46,080 --> 00:52:48,040
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at

939
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:58,560
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com Stuff

940
00:52:58,560 --> 00:53:01,160
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. It's production I Heart Radio. For

941
00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:03,440
Speaker 1: more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart

942
00:53:03,520 --> 00:53:06,239
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your

943
00:53:06,280 --> 00:53:18,120
Speaker 1: favorite shows.