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Speaker 1: dot com. It has long been accepted that time as
Speaker 1: we know it, or at the very least in the
Speaker 1: sense that we experience it, is not what it seems, or,
Speaker 1: as Albert Einstein put it, the past, the present, and
Speaker 1: the future is but a stubborn, persistent illusion. It would
Speaker 1: seem that we have long been mesmerized by the notion
Speaker 1: of traveling through time, whether it be to write a
Speaker 1: past wrong or merely to escape our present reality. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until Einstein's special relativity introduced us to the
Speaker 1: tantalizing concept of space, time, and the fourth dimension that
Speaker 1: such notions were given mathematical credibility. No longer was time
Speaker 1: a mere subjective unit of measurement, but suddenly we were
Speaker 1: invited to imagine it as a space within which we
Speaker 1: might move, a theory that, as the earlier quote suggests,
Speaker 1: did away entirely with any notion of past, present, and future. Or,
Speaker 1: to be clearer, as physicist Max Tegmark notes, time is
Speaker 1: not an illusion, but the flow of time is for
Speaker 1: much in the way that matter may appear differently from
Speaker 1: one observer to the next, So two, according to Einstein,
Speaker 1: does time. Incidentally, although the concept of space time is
Speaker 1: often linked with Einstein, it was actually his teacher Hermann Minkowski,
Speaker 1: who first proposed the idea back in nineteen oh eight
Speaker 1: in a paper titled Space and Time. Remarkably, author Edgar
Speaker 1: Allan Poe is believed to have come to the same
Speaker 1: realization himself as far back as eighteen forty eight, writing
Speaker 1: in an essay titled Eureka, that space and duration are one. Certainly,
Speaker 1: it is an area that has been well explored in fiction.
Speaker 1: The oddly Unsettling nineteen seventies television show Sapphire and Steele
Speaker 1: and Joan Lindsay's Haunting and Mesmeric Picnic at Hanging Rock
Speaker 1: are two of my favorite accounts of one such temporal
Speaker 1: corruption that is equal parts fascinating and terrifying. The notion
Speaker 1: of the time slip you're listening to unexplained and I'm
Speaker 1: Richard McClean smith. To paranormal researchers, the fabled time slip
Speaker 1: is considered to be the rarest of all documented paranormal experience,
Speaker 1: the most well known account of such an event being
Speaker 1: the Mobile jur Dan incident. The event is alleged to
Speaker 1: have occurred on Saturday August tenth, nineteen o one, at
Speaker 1: the Palace of Versailles. In France, when two British women
Speaker 1: visiting the palace on a day trip claimed to have
Speaker 1: found themselves inexplicably transported back to the late eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: to be surrounded by Pallace courtiers and even at one
Speaker 1: point crossing paths with Mary Antoinette. The women, Charlotte Mobiley
Speaker 1: and Eleanor Jourdan, were both well educated and had no
Speaker 1: obvious reason to fabricate the events, and published a book
Speaker 1: of their account in nineteen eleven, which was predictably met
Speaker 1: with much ridicule. There are two accounts of alleged time
Speaker 1: slips that took place in Britain in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: The writer and longtime member of the Society of Psychical
Speaker 1: Research Andrew McKenzie documented both the events in his nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven book Adventures in Time. For McKenzie, the accounts
Speaker 1: were nothing less than two of the most convincing that
Speaker 1: he had ever come across, mysteries that remained to this
Speaker 1: day unexplained. On Monday, January the second, nineteen fifty as
Speaker 1: the new decade entered its third day, so too did
Speaker 1: the New Year's celebrations, as is customary in Scotland. In
Speaker 1: a small house in the town of Brecon in the
Speaker 1: eastern County of Angus. A cocktail party is coming to
Speaker 1: an end. Sensing that the party was beginning to wind down,
Speaker 1: one of the guests, fifty five year old Miss Elizabeth Smith,
Speaker 1: decided to call it a night. It was, after all,
Speaker 1: getting late, and Elizabeth wasn't much relishing the ten mile
Speaker 1: drive back to her house in Leatham. After saying good
Speaker 1: bye to her friends, she collected her small terrier dog
Speaker 1: that she had brought with her, and together they climbed
Speaker 1: into her car in preparation for the journey home. It
Speaker 1: had been a relatively mild winter, but the last few
Speaker 1: days had seen a light dusting of snow along much
Speaker 1: of the East Coast, snow that by nightfall on the
Speaker 1: second had turned steadily to ice. Undeterred, Elizabeth switched on
Speaker 1: the engine and pulled off into the night. A short
Speaker 1: time later, not more than two miles outside of Brecon,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth lost control of the car, spun off the road
Speaker 1: and plummeted straight into a ditch. Miraculously, neither Elizabeth nor
Speaker 1: her small canine companion were harmed, but the car was
Speaker 1: completely written off. Relieved and more than a little dazed,
Speaker 1: but the temperature outside steadily dropping, Elizabeth knew she had
Speaker 1: only two options, returned to her friend's home or strike
Speaker 1: out on the eight mile journey back to leathm Deciding
Speaker 1: on the latter, Elizabeth gathered her things and, together with
Speaker 1: her dog, she set out on the long walk home.
Speaker 1: At first, Elizabeth was at ease taking the deserted country
Speaker 1: lane back towards her village. She felt safe with her
Speaker 1: dog by her side, cheerily keeping her company. But it
Speaker 1: was hard to ignore the strange sense of foreboding that
Speaker 1: is wont to arise when you are out in the wilderness,
Speaker 1: with no light to be seen, and even the moon
Speaker 1: declines to reveal itself. Such was the thickness of cloud
Speaker 1: it was difficult even to make out the contours of
Speaker 1: the surrounding fields save for the dark silhouettes of hedgerows
Speaker 1: and trees dotted about like thick, formless shadows. It wasn't
Speaker 1: long before the eerie quietude of the night started to
Speaker 1: gnaw away at her nerves, so much so that Elizabeth
Speaker 1: neglected to take the well trodden shortcut through the field.
Speaker 1: Better to stick to the open country, she thought, than
Speaker 1: venture nearer to the ominous looking woodlands to her left.
Speaker 1: With the temperature dropping even further, Elizabeth and her little
Speaker 1: dog plowed on gallantly towards their destination. Roughly too miles
Speaker 1: from leatherm Elizabeth's dog began to tire, leaving Smith with
Speaker 1: little choice but to pick him up and carry him
Speaker 1: on her shoulders. Less than half a mile later, Smith
Speaker 1: was hugely relieved when she was able to make out
Speaker 1: the distant rise of Dunichen Hill, a clear sign that
Speaker 1: she was almost home. And so it was with little
Speaker 1: surprise when she saw a few small lights in the distance.
Speaker 1: Only there was something odd about them. Firstly, it was strange,
Speaker 1: she thought, why so many lights would be on when
Speaker 1: it was almost two o'clock in the morning. But what
Speaker 1: was perhaps even more unusual was that the lights, unless
Speaker 1: she was mistaken, appeared to be moving. A short time later,
Speaker 1: not only had the number of lights increased dramatically, but
Speaker 1: she soon realized with some surprise that each of the
Speaker 1: lights were being held aloft in the air by strange,
Speaker 1: shadowy figures. The lights were in fact flaming torches being
Speaker 1: held aloft by men wearing dark tunics with roll collars
Speaker 1: and tights. What was also odd was the manner in
Speaker 1: which they were moving. Rather than walking straight across the field,
Speaker 1: they seemed to be skirting in a semicircle around the
Speaker 1: bottom of it. But then the figures disappeared, only to
Speaker 1: be replaced by another set of men in the field
Speaker 1: to her left, who were this time close enough for
Speaker 1: her to notice that the torches seemed to be strangely
Speaker 1: red in color. At this point, Elizabeth's dog, sensing the
Speaker 1: peculiarity of the occasion, began to bark, much to Elizabeth's alarm.
Speaker 1: Trying to ignore the strange men, she hurried on towards home.
Speaker 1: But the most extraordinary vision was yet to come. Not
Speaker 1: long after, a third set of men appeared, even closer
Speaker 1: than the previous groups. She could see them clearly now
Speaker 1: as they made their way through the field, just like before,
Speaker 1: with their burning torches held aloft. But they weren't merely
Speaker 1: marching as she had first thought. This group seemed to
Speaker 1: be moving much more diligently and with purpose throughout the field.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth wondered why it was that they would stop from
Speaker 1: time to time, bringing the torches close to the ground,
Speaker 1: and that was when she saw them. The bloodied corpses
Speaker 1: of the dead. It was as if she had wandered
Speaker 1: into the aftermath of some great and ancient battle. The
Speaker 1: field was littered with them. The men with torches were
Speaker 1: clearly scouring the ground to see if anyone was left alive,
Speaker 1: turning the bodies over in the darkness to check for
Speaker 1: signs of life. Smith and her dog eventually made it
Speaker 1: home safe and sound, but unsurprisingly, the ghosts of those
Speaker 1: dead never truly left her. However, it wasn't until a
Speaker 1: further twenty years later that Smith's account of the extraordinary
Speaker 1: event was formerly recorded. The task was taken up by
Speaker 1: fifty four year old doctor James mc carg, a much
Speaker 1: respected and well loved psychologist and contemporary of Andrew McKenzie
Speaker 1: at the Society for Psychical Research. In the intervening years,
Speaker 1: Smith had come to the realization that what she had
Speaker 1: seen had indeed something to do with an ancient battle
Speaker 1: once fought on the very land she had walked across.
Speaker 1: After spending some considerable time interviewing Smith, mac carg was
Speaker 1: left with little doubt that she had somehow slipped back
Speaker 1: in time and witnessed the aftermath of a brutal and
Speaker 1: bloody battle known as the Battle of Necton's Mere. The
Speaker 1: battle occurred in six hundred and eighty five, a d
Speaker 1: between the Picks, an enigmatic tribal people from what is
Speaker 1: now the north and east of Scotland, and the Northumbrians.
Speaker 1: Fifty years previously, the Kingdom of Northumbria, led by King Edwin,
Speaker 1: had risen to become the most powerful in all of
Speaker 1: the British isles, but by the end of the seventh
Speaker 1: century the kingdom had diminished considerably, thanks largely to the
Speaker 1: disastrous defeat they suffered at the hands of the Picks
Speaker 1: at the Battle of Necton's Mere. McCarg found Smith, who
Speaker 1: at one time had been the president of her local
Speaker 1: women's rural Institute, to be an extremely credible witness, concluding
Speaker 1: that her recollections of the Knight's events were at the
Speaker 1: very least genuine to her, and a few elements of
Speaker 1: the story stood out. In particular, Smith's insistence that the
Speaker 1: torches had been read was puzzling at first, until Andrew
Speaker 1: McKenzie later made a discovery that was believed to have
Speaker 1: not been known by Smith at the time. He discovered
Speaker 1: that torches of that era were often made from the
Speaker 1: resinous roots of Scott's fir, which in their natural state
Speaker 1: do indeed have a distinctive red color. Macag was especially
Speaker 1: intrigued by Smith's description of the movement of the men
Speaker 1: who seemed to be walking in a curve around the field,
Speaker 1: and so it was with some surprise when he discovered
Speaker 1: that back in the seventh century, the field had in
Speaker 1: fact been a small lock that had later been drained
Speaker 1: and turned into farmland. His startling conclusion was that perhaps
Speaker 1: the apparitions had merely been walking around the lock to
Speaker 1: get to their fallen comrades. This revelation, he believed, was
Speaker 1: ultimate proof of Smith's story, since it demonstrated that the
Speaker 1: apparitions must have come from a time before the lock
Speaker 1: had been drained. Are you always taking care of your family?
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Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast today to get started. That's teladoc dot com
Speaker 1: slash Unexplained podcast. Our Second Tale take place only seven
Speaker 1: years later in the County of Suffolk, in the southeast
Speaker 1: of England. It is the birthplace of the Infamous, which
Speaker 1: find a General Matthew Hopkins, whose reign of terror in
Speaker 1: the sixteen forties resulted in many local women being murdered
Speaker 1: due to egregious accusations of witchcraft. Nowadays, however, it is
Speaker 1: perhaps better known for its tranquil wetlands and rich arable soil.
Speaker 1: It is a county that echoes with bird song and
Speaker 1: the music of Raye Fawn Williams, a place where the
Speaker 1: earth is as dark and rich as the sky is wide,
Speaker 1: a place perhaps best summed up by W. G. Seaboard's
Speaker 1: exquisite travelog The Rings of Saturn. And so it is
Speaker 1: to that place that we now travel. It is Sunday
Speaker 1: morning in October nineteen fifty seven. Up above the skylarks ascend, chirrup, whistle,
Speaker 1: and shake as below them, three young boys, uipped with
Speaker 1: a map and a compass are steadily making their way
Speaker 1: across the countryside. They are taking part in an orienteering
Speaker 1: exercise organized by the Royal Navy Cadets. The boys, who
Speaker 1: are all fifteen and brand new recruits, are William Lange
Speaker 1: from Perthshire in Scotland, Bray Baker from London, and Michael
Speaker 1: Crowley from the County of Worcestershire. Today their task is
Speaker 1: to locate a specific waypoint, record their findings and then
Speaker 1: returned to base camp to report back to their superiors. Finally,
Speaker 1: after a few miles of trekking, the boys were excitedly
Speaker 1: homing in on their mysterious destination. They had been coming
Speaker 1: up a slight rise when they first heard the sound
Speaker 1: of church bells. As they approached the top of the hill,
Speaker 1: they noticed smoke rising from chimneys and the spire of
Speaker 1: a church towering prominently above a small village. As they
Speaker 1: finally made it over the hill, the rest of the
Speaker 1: small community was revealed to them below, and with the
Speaker 1: boys in agreement that this was indeed where they were
Speaker 1: supposed to be, they continued their journey down into the village.
Speaker 1: But as they got nearer, something very peculiar happened. Part
Speaker 1: Way into the village was a small stream that flowed
Speaker 1: over the road. As they approached it, they became aware
Speaker 1: that something wasn't quite right. It was Michael who noticed
Speaker 1: it first, the silence. Only moments ago, the church bells
Speaker 1: had been ringing and the sound of bird's song had
Speaker 1: filled the air, But now, as they entered the village,
Speaker 1: the place was eerily silent, save for the gentle trickling
Speaker 1: of the stream. As they carried on over the ford,
Speaker 1: William noted that even the ducks seemed unmoved by their arrival,
Speaker 1: and as for any sign of people, the place was
Speaker 1: completely deserted. It was then that they noticed the trees.
Speaker 1: Only a few minutes earlier, they were surrounded by a
Speaker 1: countryside decorated with the reddish golden browns of autumnal leaves,
Speaker 1: but the leaves on the trees in the village were
Speaker 1: anything but. Here, the leaves appeared to be vibrantly green,
Speaker 1: almost as if it were springtime. As the boys walked on,
Speaker 1: a strange picture was beginning to emerge. All of the
Speaker 1: houses looked as if they were from another age, hand
Speaker 1: built and slightly crooked in design. Some were timber framed,
Speaker 1: and others looked positively medieval. Looking around, they saw no
Speaker 1: sign of street lights or even aerials on the houses.
Speaker 1: There was also no smoke coming from the chimneys as
Speaker 1: they had seen before entering the village, and absolutely no
Speaker 1: sign of the church that had been so visible from
Speaker 1: the hill. What's more, the wind had completely dropped, with
Speaker 1: not even the leaves rustling in the trees, and there
Speaker 1: was no sign of anybody anywhere. The boys made their
Speaker 1: way over to a building with a green door and
Speaker 1: a large front window split into smaller panes that had
Speaker 1: not been washed in some time. They pressed their noses
Speaker 1: to the glass. Just like the rest of the village,
Speaker 1: the shop was deserted, but at the back of the room,
Speaker 1: hanging on meat hooks were the skinned carcasses of three
Speaker 1: large cows. The meat green and moldy, having long ago
Speaker 1: turned putrid. Unnerved by what they had seen, and somewhat
Speaker 1: in a daze, the boys soon found themselves staring through
Speaker 1: the window of another building, but again found no sign
Speaker 1: of life inside, the rooms completely emptied of all furniture.
Speaker 1: Ray and Michael suggested did knocking on some of the doors,
Speaker 1: but William refused to move. Ever since entering the village,
Speaker 1: a strange feeling had fallen over him. It was an
Speaker 1: overwhelming sense of sadness and the unmistakable sensation that they
Speaker 1: were being watched by unseen and unfriendly eyes. The three
Speaker 1: boys hurriedly made their way back up the track to
Speaker 1: the top of the hill. Finally satisfied that they had
Speaker 1: reached a safe distance, the boys turned back and were
Speaker 1: amazed to find the village just as they had seen
Speaker 1: it before. The smoke was again rising from the chimneys,
Speaker 1: and the church spire stood tall and proud. The autumnal
Speaker 1: colors had returned to the trees, and once more the
Speaker 1: sound of the bells and bird song could be heard
Speaker 1: all around a short time later, the boys returned to
Speaker 1: base camp and relayed their experiences to their skeptical superiors.
Speaker 1: Despite their baffling description, the petty officers confirmed the boys
Speaker 1: had indeed reached their designated waypoint. What they had supposedly
Speaker 1: seen was the picturesque village of Cursey. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: thirty years later that Michael Crowley and William Lange, who
Speaker 1: by then were both living in Australia, contacted McKenzie and
Speaker 1: relayed their extraordinary story. A few years later, McKenzie revisited
Speaker 1: the village with Lange, and together they retraced just what
Speaker 1: exactly had occurred that day, Much like doctor mc hark
Speaker 1: had been with Miss Smith in Scotland. McKenzie was impressed
Speaker 1: by Lange's sincerity and the detail of his description of
Speaker 1: the events. McKenzie ultimately came to the conclusion that what
Speaker 1: the boys had experienced was not the Cursey of nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven, but rather the village as it had been
Speaker 1: in the fourteen twenties in the aftermath of the Great Plague.
Speaker 1: Is it really possible that both the young Cadets and
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Smith, and anyone else for that matter, could slip
Speaker 1: unwittingly into another time? Perhaps not in the manner suggested
Speaker 1: by McKenzie, but in two thousand and eleven, one man
Speaker 1: was to make a remarkable claim that we might all,
Speaker 1: in a sense be slipping in and out of time constantly.
Speaker 1: In March of that year, a paper was published in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Personality and Psychology titled Feeling the Future
Speaker 1: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Effect.
Speaker 1: It had been written by a brilliant but controversial social
Speaker 1: psychologist of Cornell University in the States called Professor Daryl Bemm.
Speaker 1: The paper was extraordinary from its opening line to its
Speaker 1: mind boggling conclusion. After all, it isn't often that a
Speaker 1: paper published in an elite journal begins with a definition
Speaker 1: of PSI, which he described as the anomalous processes of
Speaker 1: information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms
Speaker 1: of known physical or biological mechanisms. It is even more
Speaker 1: of a rarity that a paper would then go on
Speaker 1: to prove that such phenomena, an area most associated with telepathy, clairvoyance,
Speaker 1: and psychokinesis, might actually be real. The paper presented the
Speaker 1: results from a number of experiments involving over one thousand volunteers.
Speaker 1: One such test was to have the volunteers study a
Speaker 1: list of words, from which they would later be asked
Speaker 1: to try and recall as many of the words as possible.
Speaker 1: Having completed this part of the experiment, the volunteers were
Speaker 1: then given random words from the list that they were
Speaker 1: then asked to type out as a counterintuitive act of reinforcement. Incredibly,
Speaker 1: ben results seemed to suggest a direct correlation between the
Speaker 1: words that the students had been able to recall and
Speaker 1: the words that they were later asked to type out.
Speaker 1: In essence, Bem had turned the notion of cause and
Speaker 1: effect completely on its head. In another test, volunteers were
Speaker 1: shown two curtain graphics on a computer screen, behind one
Speaker 1: of which was a highly stimulant, erotic image. The volunteers
Speaker 1: were then tasked with selecting correctly which curtain hid the
Speaker 1: image completely. Random guesses would return a roughly fifty percent
Speaker 1: success rate, but amazingly, Professor Bem recorded a fifty three
Speaker 1: point one success rate. The difference may sound minimal, but
Speaker 1: in statistical terms, it is dramatically significant. What Bem's paper
Speaker 1: seemed to be saying was that everything we thought we
Speaker 1: knew about the unidirectional nature of time was a fallacy.
Speaker 1: Before long, however, there were suspicious rumblings amongst the scientific community.
Speaker 1: Questions were asked about the validity of Bem's methodology and
Speaker 1: the lack of any other findings that might link with
Speaker 1: Bem's extraordinary claims, and ultimately, what distinguishes scientific theory from
Speaker 1: fact is the reproducibility of the results. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and twelve, psychologists Stuart Ritchie, Richard Wiseman, and Chris French
Speaker 1: of the Universities of Edinburgh, Hertfordshire and Goldsmith's respectively made
Speaker 1: an unsuccessful attempt to replicate Professor Bem's findings. Their attempts
Speaker 1: were repeated in the same year by Jeff Gallick of
Speaker 1: Carnegie Mellon University, who also failed to replicate Professor Bem's results.
Speaker 1: It remains to be seen whether Bem's findings will gain
Speaker 1: a wider credibility. For what its worth, Bem stands resolutely
Speaker 1: by his fine one perhaps more rational, but in some
Speaker 1: ways no less extraordinary. Explanation for the bizarre accounts of
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Smith and the Three Cadets is a phenomenon known
Speaker 1: as derealization. The experience is thought to be brought on
Speaker 1: by a dysfunction in the occipital or temporal lobe of
Speaker 1: the brain. The condition can often leave sufferers with a
Speaker 1: sense of disassociation from the external world, whereby familiar places
Speaker 1: suddenly become alien and surreal. Regardless of whether such a
Speaker 1: condition had afflicted Smith or the young boys, the suggestion
Speaker 1: brings to mind an intriguing concept that I believe strikes
Speaker 1: at the heart of our fascination with the notion of
Speaker 1: traveling back in time. The term horntology was coined by
Speaker 1: French philosopher Jacques Reader in his nineteen ninety three book
Speaker 1: Specters of Mars, The State of the Debt, the Work
Speaker 1: of Mourning, and the New International. The word is a
Speaker 1: portmanteau of the words haunting and ontology, the philosophical study
Speaker 1: of the nature of being. For Derida, the term is
Speaker 1: essentially a play on the temporality of ideas, or more precisely,
Speaker 1: the impossibility of eradicating knowledge or ideas, in this case,
Speaker 1: as they would pertain to Marxist philosophy. Once they have
Speaker 1: been conceived, from the moment they exist, they remain forever
Speaker 1: a part of our collective knowledge, haunting our perception of
Speaker 1: both the past and the future. The implication being that
Speaker 1: only by returning to a time before the idea could
Speaker 1: we hope to imagine an alternate future unshaped by that idea.
Speaker 1: And it is this that I believe most resonates with
Speaker 1: us when fantasizing about the possibility of traveling back in time.
Speaker 1: Not the fantasy that we might exist in a different
Speaker 1: and more agreeable past, but that by returning to that
Speaker 1: past we might realize a different future. What tantalizes is
Speaker 1: the promise that our fate could somehow be changed for
Speaker 1: the better, this currently being an impossibility. To paraphrase the
Speaker 1: composer William Bazinski, we find ourselves perversely left pining for
Speaker 1: futures that can never happen, but continue to haunt us. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: a concept that you might say achieves physical form in
Speaker 1: the architecture around us, perhaps no more strikingly than in
Speaker 1: places like the Barbican Center in London, a place now
Speaker 1: extant as a literal Ballardian testament to a vision of
Speaker 1: the future that never materialized. Of course, change for the better,
Speaker 1: like all things, is a relative term. For example, it
Speaker 1: is through concepts such as horntology that we might better understand,
Speaker 1: at least the despotic fixation for burning books, or, in
Speaker 1: the recent case of Isissel, their destruction of ancient cultural artifacts.
Speaker 1: Such practices formed the practical reality of attempts to expunge
Speaker 1: the past in the hope of creating a different future.
Speaker 1: The concept of horntology was reinvigorated in the naughties by
Speaker 1: a number of cultural theorists eager to apply the term
Speaker 1: to emergent trends in art and pop culture, in particular
Speaker 1: with regards to the growing sense that Western music and
Speaker 1: especially electronic music, had reached an evolutionary could sac. Perhaps
Speaker 1: most prominent among them was the writer and theorist Mark Fisher,
Speaker 1: who saw in the music of artists such as Burial
Speaker 1: or the groups perform under the ghost Box label, an
Speaker 1: attempt to navigate away out of the cul de sac.
Speaker 1: Fisher also recognized an unsettled nostalgia for the past that
Speaker 1: in some ways was merely serving to reinvigorate the specters
Speaker 1: of what those musicians saw as their many lost futures.
Speaker 1: But what Fisher found most troubling, as mentioned in a
Speaker 1: piece for the fall two thousand and twelve edition of
Speaker 1: Film Quarterly, was the sense that we were losing the
Speaker 1: capacity to conceive of a world radically different from the
Speaker 1: one in which we currently live, that escape from the
Speaker 1: cul de sac was an impossibility. And yet for those
Speaker 1: left despondent at this notion, who pine for an escape
Speaker 1: from an uncertain present, it is worth bearing in mind
Speaker 1: some of the thoughts of Arthur Kessler, as addressed in
Speaker 1: his seminal work The Ghost in the Machine. In a
Speaker 1: concept he refers to as drawback to Leap, Kessler demonstrates
Speaker 1: that not only is the history of evolution littered with
Speaker 1: cul de sacs and dead ends, but that some of
Speaker 1: the greatest revolutions in science, art, and biology were dependent
Speaker 1: on them. That it isn't until periods of cumulative progress
Speaker 1: reached their inevitable stagnation that we are left with no
Speaker 1: alternative but to go back and find a new way out,
Speaker 1: as exemplified, for example, by the way in which Pablo
Speaker 1: Picasso's reversal to primitivism enabled him to forge a brand
Speaker 1: new paradigm in Cubism. So for anyone feeling afraid that
Speaker 1: the future they invested so much hope in seems to
Speaker 1: be disappearing before their eyes, worry not that it is
Speaker 1: the end. Not only might it merely be the draw
Speaker 1: back before the leap, but also remember that the past, present,
Speaker 1: and future is now. Perhaps those lost futures aunt specters
Speaker 1: after all, but real attainable spaces just waiting for you
Speaker 1: to arrive. All elements of Unexplained are produced by me
Speaker 1: Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes.
Speaker 1: Feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or
Speaker 1: ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps
Speaker 1: you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.
Speaker 1: You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com
Speaker 1: or on Twitter at Unexplained Pod. Now. It's time to
Speaker 1: take care of yourself. To make time for you. Tell
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