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