Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: text stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Last night, Darth Vader came down from Planet Vulcan and
Speaker 1: told me if I didn't take Lorraine out that he'd
Speaker 1: melt my brain. You got that one, Okay? Good, Hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna start it's your no, never mind, we're gonna
Speaker 1: We're gonna start this off with a little Facebook feedback.
Speaker 1: This comes from Kevin, who says podcast Idea, who is
Speaker 1: John Tyder, the time traveler from twenty six who posted
Speaker 1: on discussion boards back in two thousands, would love to
Speaker 1: hear you guys talk about him slash hoax slash time traveler. Well, Kevin,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get your wish. But before we get to John,
Speaker 1: let's talk about about some other time traveling stories that
Speaker 1: hit the internet over Actually the ones I'm talking about
Speaker 1: hit recently. Yeah, I think that's why? Uh why John
Speaker 1: has been in the news or on people's minds lately.
Speaker 1: It's because of these other stories that have been in
Speaker 1: the news. Yeah, so there's a there's a website called
Speaker 1: Virtual Museum, and yes, Virtual Museum has a photo up
Speaker 1: of the reopening of the South Fork Bridge after flood
Speaker 1: in November nineteen. Now, in this photo you'll see a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of typical nineteen forties style folks, mostly in
Speaker 1: you know, like the men are all in suits and
Speaker 1: the women are all in dresses, and they're all looking
Speaker 1: off to the opening of the bridge, the reopening of
Speaker 1: the bridge. Right in the towards the back of the group,
Speaker 1: in the middle is a fellow who does not look
Speaker 1: like he belongs with everybody else. So wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: wait does he have a red and white striped shirt
Speaker 1: and a hat with it? Is not Waldo? Um, I
Speaker 1: keep looking for that guy. He never found it. He
Speaker 1: looks mortal. He looks more like a racer head than Waldo.
Speaker 1: Now he has he has medium to longish hair, but
Speaker 1: it's not like down, you know, it's not worn down.
Speaker 1: It's actually sticking up a bit. And he's got these
Speaker 1: sunglasses on that have these weird uh side panels on them,
Speaker 1: and he looks like he's wearing a sweater over a
Speaker 1: silk screened T shirt. Okay, so it looks like, you know,
Speaker 1: he's dressed down and his hairstyles a little funky for
Speaker 1: the time period, and um, he just he doesn't look
Speaker 1: like he fits well. There were some people who said,
Speaker 1: is this is this a time traveler or was it
Speaker 1: photoshopped in? It had to be photoshopped in, right, it
Speaker 1: had to be. Uh. Upon closer examination, it did not
Speaker 1: look like it had been photoshopped in. It looked like
Speaker 1: this guy literally was there at that time. However, upon
Speaker 1: even further examination, it was discovered this wasn't really a
Speaker 1: mystery that the the elements that that people identified as
Speaker 1: being from out of that time we're not actually uh anachronisms. Uh.
Speaker 1: The glasses, for example, were these these hinged glasses that
Speaker 1: had these little side panels on sunglasses that had been
Speaker 1: around since the twenties. And uh, he was obviously holding
Speaker 1: a camera as well, and it looked like it was
Speaker 1: a period camera, like one camera that would have been around.
Speaker 1: In the sweater was not really out of place, and
Speaker 1: even the shirt upon closer examination, looked like one of
Speaker 1: the kind of handmade shirts that uh that people made
Speaker 1: at the time too, for various sports teams like a
Speaker 1: college sports team or a high school sports team. So
Speaker 1: upon further discussion, it appears that this guy was just
Speaker 1: you know, he's just a guy of his time. It's
Speaker 1: just he was not dressed up like everyone else. He
Speaker 1: was more of a student slash artist kind of type. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well before hippies, but yes, yes, the the precursor to
Speaker 1: the hippie. So clearly I would have hated this person.
Speaker 1: But the hippies and hipsters, man, don't get me started anyway.
Speaker 1: So the the In fact, I had a friend who
Speaker 1: who suggested that the camera was a Brownie Special one seven.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, it's kind of crazy that someone was able
Speaker 1: to identify that just by this, and the picture does
Speaker 1: not show the guy holding the camera prominently. He's actually
Speaker 1: it's got it's right around his stomach level, so it's
Speaker 1: just barely in frame. But she picked that out pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: Way to go rifka, So um, yeah, it's it's That
Speaker 1: was one of those moments where there were enough things
Speaker 1: in the picture that looked a little weird to make
Speaker 1: people say, oh, this has got to be Uh, this
Speaker 1: can't be from that time, but it just really shows
Speaker 1: that we're far enough out of that time amera to
Speaker 1: not be able to see what does and doesn't belong.
Speaker 1: That's funny too, because it wasn't but a few days
Speaker 1: ago as of the date we are recording this in
Speaker 1: early November, um, when Charlie Chaplin was accused of capturing
Speaker 1: a time traveler on film. Yeah, it's just the sort
Speaker 1: of thing that little jerk would have done. That's why
Speaker 1: I like you, Buster Keaton. You never would pull those shenanigans.
Speaker 1: I really don't know that. Yeah, I know, but yeah, okay, No,
Speaker 1: it's from the circus. It was drawn to our attention
Speaker 1: by Irish filmmaker George Clark. Yes, it's important to note
Speaker 1: this is a filmmaker who's making this big yeah his
Speaker 1: uh and in the YouTube video he uploaded a YouTube video.
Speaker 1: What happened was supposedly, um George as I like to
Speaker 1: call him, uh post, you guys are on the same
Speaker 1: you know, the first name basis there. Clearly he's an irishman.
Speaker 1: I've seen Ireland as I flew over it to England.
Speaker 1: Um So anyway, Georgia George, and he bought the these
Speaker 1: collect this collection of Charlie Chaplin movies. Yeah, brought him home,
Speaker 1: started watching the extras on the various DVDs, and one
Speaker 1: of them had a newsreel from nineteen the premiere of
Speaker 1: the Circus. Yes. And during this news reel, Yes, the
Speaker 1: newsreel was showing the the the grand premiere at Man's
Speaker 1: Chinese Theater. And uh. As part of this news reel,
Speaker 1: there's a moment where a fellow walks into frame, followed
Speaker 1: closely by a woman, uh, you know, kind of a
Speaker 1: a large ish woman in a big coat and a
Speaker 1: top hat walking behind the fellow, and she has her
Speaker 1: her hand that's facing the she's she's walking in profile
Speaker 1: to the camera. Essentially her hand that you can see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the hand that you can see is held up to
Speaker 1: her face as if it's holding something like perhaps a phone,
Speaker 1: but a cell phone. In nine that doesn't sound right,
Speaker 1: So clearly the answer must be she was a time traveler.
Speaker 1: At least that's the answer. George came to and he
Speaker 1: said it's the only one that makes sense because he
Speaker 1: didn't say it like that because he was irish. Um. Yes,
Speaker 1: he said he should showed it to a crowd of
Speaker 1: about a hundred people, and none of them could come
Speaker 1: to any other conclusion. They didn't know clearly it was
Speaker 1: a hundred people who were smashed on Guinness, because I
Speaker 1: could think of a couple of different reasons off the
Speaker 1: top of my head. He actually did um, he did
Speaker 1: the the typical television uh thing that you do whenever
Speaker 1: you have any footage, zoom in and enhance, zoom in
Speaker 1: and enhance. So he zoomed in to try and get
Speaker 1: look and see what was going on here. And it
Speaker 1: kind of looks like she's holding something in her hand,
Speaker 1: but it's I don't think it's really that obvious. It's
Speaker 1: it could simply be that she was literally scratching the
Speaker 1: side of her face. It does look at the end
Speaker 1: of the little clip, just as she goes out of frame,
Speaker 1: that she's saying something or her mouth at least is moving. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: now uh. There have been, of course, many attempts now
Speaker 1: to explain what's going on part of them, and part
Speaker 1: of it has to do with the fact that she
Speaker 1: she or as Mr Clark suggests, it could be a
Speaker 1: man wearing women's clothes. Um, whoever the person is is
Speaker 1: is actually speaking, which confuses the matter even more. Hang on,
Speaker 1: so it's a cross dressing time traveler. It's apparently that's
Speaker 1: is it Frankenfurger because he he could travel through space
Speaker 1: and time? Let's stop. Um. Possibly, but okay, So the
Speaker 1: first explanation, and one of the more plausible ones that
Speaker 1: I've seen, is that it's a compact hand trumpet. And now,
Speaker 1: of course, lots of us, even our young for listeners,
Speaker 1: have probably seen the hand trumpets that people used to
Speaker 1: use before they were electrical hearing aids. Um. And these
Speaker 1: would have been used towards the end of the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century early part of the twentieth century. And um, it
Speaker 1: is entirely possible. Actually, the the article I saw that
Speaker 1: tried to explain that was from Jeremy Sue who wrote
Speaker 1: for a Life science UM and he spoke with a
Speaker 1: with the historian named Philip Scrasca, who was an archivist
Speaker 1: at the Bernard Becker Medical Library at Washington University in St. Louis.
Speaker 1: Or is those of us in competing schools column wash
Speaker 1: you very good school, um, But basically, you know, we're
Speaker 1: used to I'm used to thinking of the ones that
Speaker 1: they used to see in pictures like Beethoven, where it's
Speaker 1: a giant. It looks like you're holding the side of
Speaker 1: a gramophone up to your head. You know that that
Speaker 1: uh you're thinking of Pete Dragon where the character holds
Speaker 1: the big Yeah, exactly exactly, but U and basically was
Speaker 1: like it was like a funnel that you'd hold up
Speaker 1: to your ear so maybe you could hear a little
Speaker 1: bit better. And I think it did you know it
Speaker 1: had some effect? Um no, no, it works. But but
Speaker 1: apparently there were compact models and some people think that
Speaker 1: it may have been a very small version. And really,
Speaker 1: as a couple of commenters I saw online put it,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to carry one of these big things
Speaker 1: around with me you while you're walking. You want something
Speaker 1: that's small and light and portable. So that is a
Speaker 1: possible explanation. Well, and four years before that, premiere Semens
Speaker 1: Yes produce the A handheld hearing aid essentially is what
Speaker 1: it was. And um, yeah, they weren't the n ear
Speaker 1: models that you see now which are all but invisible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was actually was a microphone amplifier and you held
Speaker 1: the amplifier side to your ear. The microphone side would
Speaker 1: stay out facing the world, and that's you know, you
Speaker 1: would hold it to your ear like the way we
Speaker 1: do with cell phones. And they were about the same
Speaker 1: size as cell phones are today, So it could and
Speaker 1: and like I said, four years earlier those have been
Speaker 1: introduced now they were expensive. But this is a lady
Speaker 1: who's attending a film premiere in Hollywood. So clearly this
Speaker 1: is someone who has at least some means, right, not
Speaker 1: necessarily just not someone just walking on the street. She's
Speaker 1: dressed up, she's ready to go to the theater um.
Speaker 1: So it could very easily be someone who has one
Speaker 1: of these hearing aids, and she may be talking in
Speaker 1: a way of testing it, you know, trying to make
Speaker 1: sure that it's working, like hello, Hello, to make sure
Speaker 1: that she can hear before she interacts with anyone else,
Speaker 1: or she's yammering to herself, which I do frequently so right,
Speaker 1: or as one other person I saw pointed out, so
Speaker 1: it could be as simple as the fact that her
Speaker 1: jaw ached and she was moving her jaw and she
Speaker 1: had her hand up to her face and nothing was
Speaker 1: in the hand. Because the George says that's there's clearly
Speaker 1: something that's black inside her hand. Um, I don't see
Speaker 1: that quite as clearly as George does. I mean, and
Speaker 1: I was trying to be as objective as possible, because
Speaker 1: as soon as someone tells you that something is in
Speaker 1: a picture, it's really hard to not see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody was trying to, uh, to show where the the
Speaker 1: part of the ear trumpet would be where you put
Speaker 1: it in your ear canal and going I just don't
Speaker 1: see that in here. The same sort of thing that
Speaker 1: where someone shows you a picture and said, do you
Speaker 1: see the face that's in here? And you're like uh,
Speaker 1: and then they point out the face and then you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: there it is, and then you cannot never not see it. Right.
Speaker 1: But if they were just to show you that picture
Speaker 1: and say do you see anything in here, and you
Speaker 1: might look for a while and saying no, I don't
Speaker 1: see anything and there's nothing here. Um, well, so it
Speaker 1: could have been uh, a hearing aid, could have been
Speaker 1: nothing at all, could have been a little ear trumpet
Speaker 1: of some sort. Um. I like. My favorite part of
Speaker 1: the video, by the way, is when George says specifically,
Speaker 1: it's not an AM FM radio because it's night Oh, well,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Clearly, it has to be a cell
Speaker 1: phone because it's nineteen twenty eight, it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: And and how does she get reception in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: eight with a cellphone when there are no cell phone towers? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That that is the biggest argument I've seen against it.
Speaker 1: There's some interdimensional temporal cellphone tower that she's connecting to.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sure you've seen the The people who want
Speaker 1: to hold onto this their argument to that. If they've
Speaker 1: are society that hasn't invented something as sophisticated as a
Speaker 1: time machine, surely they could invent something with an antenna
Speaker 1: for cell phone communication that they would stick on the
Speaker 1: outside of the time machine. Okay, I wonder if these
Speaker 1: people have ever heard of something called Acam's razor. What
Speaker 1: makes more sense that this lady exists in that time
Speaker 1: frame that's exactly when she's supposed to exist, because that's
Speaker 1: you know, she was born during that era and she's
Speaker 1: walking down the street holding an object that had been
Speaker 1: built four years before was known to exist. Is it
Speaker 1: more likely that that's the answer, or that there was
Speaker 1: somehow someone developed time travel, traveled back in time use
Speaker 1: this cell phone, and was not smart enough to stay
Speaker 1: out of the range of a camera it's not like
Speaker 1: the camera was even secret they were filming the premier. Why, Like,
Speaker 1: if I'm a time traveler and I go back to
Speaker 1: an era that exists before cell phones, I'm not whipping
Speaker 1: the cell phone out at a very public event where
Speaker 1: there are cameras around. Yeah, And that leads me to
Speaker 1: my favorite of the debunking attempts. Uh. Apparently some video
Speaker 1: producers will put things into footage in order to make
Speaker 1: them like a a non uh, a non obvious water mark.
Speaker 1: So for the way that maps will sometimes include a
Speaker 1: street that doesn't actually exist in order to prove that
Speaker 1: it's their I p yes. So what what some people
Speaker 1: have suggested, and very few people I might add, was
Speaker 1: that this is literally an anomaly. It's supposed to make
Speaker 1: you notice it so that if somebody else copies the video,
Speaker 1: you remember our privacy, our privacy piracy. We've had both
Speaker 1: our piracy broadcast. If you're copying DVDs, they can say, yes,
Speaker 1: you took this, because see this anomalous person carrying a
Speaker 1: cell phone in was something that I added and made
Speaker 1: black and white. I would think that just the fact
Speaker 1: that they showed the same video proves that they copied
Speaker 1: it because they had to get it from somewhere. That
Speaker 1: argument makes no sense to me. I just like that argument. Right,
Speaker 1: you could do so much better. You have disappointed me.
Speaker 1: Go to your rooms now. Most most people seem to
Speaker 1: be going with the semen's hearing any thing. So let's
Speaker 1: go on to uh John Titor yes or t tourds
Speaker 1: T I T O R. I never really was clear
Speaker 1: on exactly how you're supposed to pronounce that name. Well,
Speaker 1: apparently it's not his real name, and I say it
Speaker 1: is because le because he's he theoretically exists now he
Speaker 1: lives in Florida. Right, well, he existed then he was
Speaker 1: two years old. But no, okay, let's let's start at
Speaker 1: the beginning. November two, two thousand, there was a web
Speaker 1: form called the Time Travel Institute. Yes, and a person
Speaker 1: who referred to himself or herself, possibly as time Travel
Speaker 1: Underscore zero posted started to post on this forum, and
Speaker 1: then later Time Travel Underscores zero became John Titre or Titour.
Speaker 1: However you're supposed to pronounce that j JT JT said
Speaker 1: eventually that he had traveled from the year two thousand
Speaker 1: thirty six back in time. This was actually technically his
Speaker 1: second stop. His first stop was back in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: I want to say, um, sorry it was And uh.
Speaker 1: The re then why he was traveling back in time
Speaker 1: was in two thousand thirty six, they realized they were
Speaker 1: really close to a big event that was going to
Speaker 1: be a huge problem for their computer systems. That's, of
Speaker 1: course talking about two thousand thirty eight, which is a
Speaker 1: going to be an issue with Unix UM and uh,
Speaker 1: we actually talked about that in a previous episode. We
Speaker 1: don't need to go into that again, but at any rate, Uh. Apparently,
Speaker 1: and by two thousand thirty six, the technology was lost
Speaker 1: to interface with these systems and to correct the problem
Speaker 1: that existed. So he was sent back in time to
Speaker 1: to get an IBM computer because that would allow him
Speaker 1: to go back to his original time of six and
Speaker 1: use that computer to fix the problem so that by
Speaker 1: eight everything would run smoothly. Yes, apparently, the the IBM
Speaker 1: had some functions that weren't included in the original documentation
Speaker 1: for the machine, but had some bearing on what it
Speaker 1: is that he needed to solve. Yeah. In fact, some
Speaker 1: of that is what people who believe that JT really
Speaker 1: did come from the future say, Well, I mean, how
Speaker 1: would he know that could do these things if he
Speaker 1: weren't from the future and hadn't discovered it. And the
Speaker 1: answer to that is, actually that information was really available.
Speaker 1: It just wasn't in the manual. But but computer engineers
Speaker 1: knew all about it. Yeah, so it wasn't like it's
Speaker 1: a documented thing, right, it actually does exist? Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: the computer that JT was supposedly going back in time
Speaker 1: to retrieve did exist. Um, is a real thing, and
Speaker 1: it could do the things JT said it could do. Uh.
Speaker 1: The the plart where the argument breaks down is some
Speaker 1: people said that those were secret and therefore j T
Speaker 1: must have been telling the truth. But that's not the case.
Speaker 1: Those those features were not secret, They just weren't widely
Speaker 1: known outside of computer science circles. So that just means
Speaker 1: that j he could be a computer scientist when I
Speaker 1: what JT said he really was was, uh, he was
Speaker 1: an officer in the army or a soldier in the
Speaker 1: army who had been part of this sort of time
Speaker 1: travel core. And uh, I think there were eight or
Speaker 1: seven people other people besides him in his time travel unit,
Speaker 1: and each of the members had a time travel device
Speaker 1: machine that would allow them to go to different points
Speaker 1: of time, and they each had their own assignments. His
Speaker 1: assignment was to go back and get this computer, and
Speaker 1: he pointed out that he could spend as much time
Speaker 1: as he wanted to in the past, because when he
Speaker 1: would go back to his present, it would appear as
Speaker 1: if he had only been gone for a couple of seconds,
Speaker 1: right like the machine would disappear, and that would immediately
Speaker 1: reappear as if no time it all had had taken place.
Speaker 1: But in reality he had spent maybe years away, So
Speaker 1: really the only indication would be his apparent age once
Speaker 1: he stepped out of the time travel machine, which by
Speaker 1: the way, was it was a car that had the
Speaker 1: time travel actual device installed, and it had to be
Speaker 1: a car that had a really heavy um suspension so
Speaker 1: they could handle a lot of weight. It happened to
Speaker 1: be in nineteen sixty seven Chevrolet Corvette. If you're gonna
Speaker 1: travel man doing in style DeLorean. But yeah, I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, I feel like I've heard this one before.
Speaker 1: It was a convertible too. It wasn't just a Chevrolet Corvette,
Speaker 1: was a convertible. And he said that the way this
Speaker 1: time travel device worked was by manipulating gravity, and that
Speaker 1: it would actually create two micro singularities, which are essentially
Speaker 1: like black holes, so to miniature black holes, would spend
Speaker 1: them around and it would alter gravity, and that through
Speaker 1: creating this gravity lock system, it could travel through time
Speaker 1: and in subsequent messages because j T he he wrote
Speaker 1: stuff from late two thousand to early two thousand one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he actually held court for a while. He was answering
Speaker 1: people's questions about time travel and what the future was,
Speaker 1: like how easy it is to time travel, And that's
Speaker 1: how we know so much about this. It's they're like,
Speaker 1: we found him somewhere and there there there there are
Speaker 1: websites out there that will list all of his posts chronologically. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can actually read the whole story, and it
Speaker 1: is it's long. Yeah, he was prolific with his with
Speaker 1: his uh forum posts and that goes that goes against
Speaker 1: what you were saying about the person holding the cell
Speaker 1: phone in the Charlie Chaplin video. I mean, if I
Speaker 1: agree with you, if I were in possession of some
Speaker 1: future technology and trying to pass as somebody who belonged here,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to flaunt this. And he's going not
Speaker 1: not even you know, just casually using this, you know,
Speaker 1: future technology in a public place and and trying to
Speaker 1: be ignored. He's actually flaunting it like this is what
Speaker 1: I got here on pictures and and that raises a
Speaker 1: lot of questions right there, like we're asking him, doesn't
Speaker 1: this make you worried that when you go back you're
Speaker 1: gonna get in trouble because you revealed yourself And he's like,
Speaker 1: why would I get in trouble? He wouldn't answer the question.
Speaker 1: There were certain questions that j T was very good
Speaker 1: at evading, and that was one of them. He would
Speaker 1: never directly answer that. He's just like, why would they
Speaker 1: be mad? I don't know the fact that you revealed
Speaker 1: all this information? And you know, there were also times
Speaker 1: where he would suggest that, like he was, his message
Speaker 1: was really weird, and that sometimes he was talking about
Speaker 1: things like in a hope of preventing tragedy, he wanted
Speaker 1: to express certain information, but but in another post, just
Speaker 1: a little further down, he'd say, yeah, there's no way
Speaker 1: to alter the future. So you have these contradictory statements
Speaker 1: saying like, oh, I want to try and head off
Speaker 1: this this huge disaster that's coming, and boy, you guys
Speaker 1: are gonna be sorry when it happens. And then he'd say,
Speaker 1: you know, there's no way to really avoid it because
Speaker 1: time is not elastic like that. Right. Well, I understand
Speaker 1: that he was a Now I admit I had never
Speaker 1: heard of of JT before um, this particular episode. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, I understand though that he was a believer
Speaker 1: in the many worlds theory. Yeah, the Everett Wheeler Graham
Speaker 1: multiple world theory of quantum physics. Now, this theory in
Speaker 1: general is you've probably heard about parallel dimensions. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: essentially what this theory states is that there are an
Speaker 1: infinite number of parallel dimensions, and that, uh, some of
Speaker 1: these dimensions are almost almost identical to our own, right,
Speaker 1: Like the differences between the two are very tiny, and
Speaker 1: then of course the further away you get, the greater
Speaker 1: the differences are. So you know, you could say, like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, you go five degrees of separation in the
Speaker 1: South won the Civil War. You go ten degrees of
Speaker 1: separation and humans never evolved, you know, and then you
Speaker 1: go twenty and then Earth never even happened, Like, uh,
Speaker 1: that that's a very simple way of putting this, you know,
Speaker 1: and he actually said that he did not travel back
Speaker 1: to his own time period of two thousand. He traveled
Speaker 1: back to a parallel time period of two thousand UM.
Speaker 1: And this was another thing that I found really confusing.
Speaker 1: He said that he could travel huh, you know, using
Speaker 1: the gravity thing. They would they would try and determine, uh,
Speaker 1: the temporal divergence is what he called it, temporal divergence
Speaker 1: being like how far away from his world line He
Speaker 1: didn't use timeline, he called worldline um how far away
Speaker 1: he would venture and he said, try to keep it
Speaker 1: between one or two percent, and that you would be
Speaker 1: similar enough to your own timeline that things would be
Speaker 1: familiar to you and you could interact and you you know,
Speaker 1: nothing would take you by surprise necessarily, Like there will
Speaker 1: be minor differences, like someone might have won the World
Speaker 1: Series in one reality and it would be the opposing
Speaker 1: team in another reality, or maybe it was the same
Speaker 1: team but I had totally different name and whatever, or
Speaker 1: maybe it was a nice way to pass off, you know,
Speaker 1: making predictions that don't come true. That's that was one
Speaker 1: of the things that really bugged me because it was
Speaker 1: one of those he wanted to be able to have
Speaker 1: have it both ways, right. He wanted to be able
Speaker 1: to say, Hey, this is what's going to happen to you, guys. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you this is gonna happen in two thousand five.
Speaker 1: This was one of his predictions. In two thousand five,
Speaker 1: the United States is going to erupt in civil war,
Speaker 1: which will eventually pull the rest of the world into
Speaker 1: a conflict. And ultimately this would result in a nuclear
Speaker 1: uh nuclear bomb exchange of you know, firing him at
Speaker 1: each other between Russia and the United States and other
Speaker 1: parts of the world, and then you would have this
Speaker 1: new United States that would be five separate into five
Speaker 1: major regions. And that was his reality, was that there
Speaker 1: were these five major regions. Most of the other world
Speaker 1: is pretty much whited out. Europe is gone, and China's gone,
Speaker 1: and Russia's supposed is hurt really bad, and that the
Speaker 1: entire social structure has changed dramatically because of that, as
Speaker 1: you would imagine it would um and he would he
Speaker 1: was saying like, this stuff is gonna happen to you,
Speaker 1: but that's you know. He also would say like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you who's gonna win the World Series,
Speaker 1: because you know it might be different from when when
Speaker 1: it happened in my worldline, it's not gonna be the
Speaker 1: same for yours. Well, how how can you determine which
Speaker 1: events are definitely gonna happen and which events are not
Speaker 1: going to necessarily happen the way you remember them from
Speaker 1: your world line? There was never any differentiation between those two.
Speaker 1: There are other problems as well. Um. For one, in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, we did not interrupt into civil war,
Speaker 1: so that suggested that claim was rather inaccurate. Let's say,
Speaker 1: at least, um, he didn't predict anything like you would think,
Speaker 1: all right, it's two thousand when he appeared, and he
Speaker 1: disappeared by March two thousand one, and uh, and actually
Speaker 1: wrote a farewell post in March of two thousand one.
Speaker 1: There was another major event in the United States that
Speaker 1: happened in two thousand one, the World Trade Center tragedy,
Speaker 1: the terrorist attack. He never mentioned that at all, And
Speaker 1: you would think, like, this was something that really shook
Speaker 1: America up and to some extent the rest of the
Speaker 1: world as well, but really America, no mention of that
Speaker 1: at all in his posts. You would think that that
Speaker 1: would be you know, even even a vague mentioned saying
Speaker 1: there's going to be a terrorist attack that happens this
Speaker 1: year that's going to do No, that would be the thing, like,
Speaker 1: that's going to be the domino effect that will set
Speaker 1: the rest of these things in motion. But he didn't
Speaker 1: say that. So he did say some other things that
Speaker 1: did eventually come true, though, such as, yeah, yeah, he
Speaker 1: was only off by about nine years on that one. Yes,
Speaker 1: but they did imagine they did man do that. He
Speaker 1: said that the certain facility, which by that I assume
Speaker 1: he meant the Large Hadron Collider, would go online in
Speaker 1: two thousand one. As you know, that was a little
Speaker 1: optimistic cerns. LHC did not go online until really it
Speaker 1: started going online around two thousand nine, and then kind
Speaker 1: of kicked into gear in two thousand ten once birds
Speaker 1: stopped dropping bread into it. I was going to say,
Speaker 1: if it weren't for that bird, um, but yeah, the
Speaker 1: the last Olympics being in two thousand four, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was wrong about that one. Wrong. Now there's one statement
Speaker 1: that a lot of people point to as saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: well this is what about this? What about mad cow disease?
Speaker 1: Because one thing that JT said was that he was
Speaker 1: scared of eating in the current time frame, because he
Speaker 1: knew that there were UM the the the way that
Speaker 1: ranchers were raising cattle and where we were getting food
Speaker 1: and all that we're from unsafe sources, and he didn't
Speaker 1: trust them. And he thought that people were crazy for um,
Speaker 1: for eating the food, you know, without question. And he
Speaker 1: was saying that it was going to lead to this
Speaker 1: outbreak of UM what essentially ends up being mad cow disease,
Speaker 1: which happens, of course, you know, you may have heard
Speaker 1: about it when UM animals are fed feed that contained
Speaker 1: the dead of their own species, like that can. That's
Speaker 1: one way that gets transferred or transmitted, and then you
Speaker 1: can catch it that way by eating tainted food UM.
Speaker 1: And he talked about that a lot and uh. And
Speaker 1: so people said, well, you know, later on, the mad
Speaker 1: cow outbreak actually happened. You know, it actually happened while
Speaker 1: he was still posting UM. And isn't that proof that
Speaker 1: he at least had some form of being able to,
Speaker 1: you know, to to see into the future. Not exactly UM.
Speaker 1: The disease he was specifically talking about was quite spelt
Speaker 1: Jacob disease or c j D, and it was already
Speaker 1: well known by two thousand. In fact, it was first
Speaker 1: identified or it was first observed in nine four. I
Speaker 1: was accepted as a new disease in nine six. Uh.
Speaker 1: When I say accepted, I'm talking specifically about mad cow disease,
Speaker 1: which is a kind of a variant on c j D.
Speaker 1: C j D we knew about well before. So anyway, anyway,
Speaker 1: by six we knew about mad cow disease. That's not
Speaker 1: what we called it necessarily, and it was called a
Speaker 1: v c j D, which is a variant of kreitz
Speaker 1: Felt Yakob disease. So in other words, this was not
Speaker 1: a secret. It's not like he was giving us information
Speaker 1: that we didn't already have access to. He was saying
Speaker 1: that it was more important than what people believed, and
Speaker 1: then it turned out that he was right. But we
Speaker 1: already we you know, we had already known about this
Speaker 1: for almost two decades. So I don't really come that.
Speaker 1: Are that great evidence to support the JT was actually
Speaker 1: from the future. Yeah, there, there's more evidence to the
Speaker 1: contrary than there is for him. I fear. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: there people would have like very serious questions about the
Speaker 1: time travel techniques that he talked about, because some of
Speaker 1: it was based upon theoretical physics and uh, and so
Speaker 1: there there are theoretical physicists out there. Actually they're the
Speaker 1: physicists are real, but the science, the science is theoretical.
Speaker 1: So sore, there are these these physicists out there who
Speaker 1: do think that there may be a way of being
Speaker 1: creating these shortcuts through time or between dimensions or whatever
Speaker 1: using similar methods to what JT was saying. But when
Speaker 1: people would ask specifics, he would say, I'm not a physicist,
Speaker 1: so I can't really answer that question, which was weird
Speaker 1: because he could answer some physics questions in detail, and
Speaker 1: you think, wow, that's remarkable because he said that he
Speaker 1: was he grew up in central Florida, um that he
Speaker 1: had essentially joined the army by age fourteen, that he
Speaker 1: was either homeschooled or went to some university that had
Speaker 1: been turned into a fort in Florida. So you wonder
Speaker 1: where did you learn the basics of the physics stuff
Speaker 1: you're talking about here that that are I mean, these
Speaker 1: are complicated quantum physics, uh concepts, and yet you you know,
Speaker 1: you can answer some of them very well and the
Speaker 1: others you can't answer at all. It's kind of strange
Speaker 1: and I also wondered, how could he if if when
Speaker 1: you're traveling through time and it's all dependent upon gravity
Speaker 1: and you can only get the percentage to around one
Speaker 1: or two percent, that you're going to go to um
Speaker 1: are or you're going to a dimension that's gonna be
Speaker 1: only one or two percent degrees difference from your own,
Speaker 1: how do you get back? Like, how do you how
Speaker 1: do you travel back so you're at your back and
Speaker 1: in what is legitimately your own world line. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: wasn't very good at answering that. Also. Another question I
Speaker 1: had was if if it's using gravity, like supposedly the
Speaker 1: device was measuring gravity around it traveling through time but
Speaker 1: not space, right, right? Yeah, they that's the difference in
Speaker 1: the DeLorean in the Corvette. In this case, the Corvette
Speaker 1: is basically just a shell. It's something for him to
Speaker 1: sit in. Well, then it happened, Well, the Dolorean also
Speaker 1: would travel through time but not space. It's just that, uh,
Speaker 1: it is traveling through space, but it's not It's not
Speaker 1: like you could travel in time from California and then
Speaker 1: appear in Paris, right, you would go from California to California,
Speaker 1: would just be a different type right, Yes, the tartist
Speaker 1: can doctor who's tartists can travel through both time and space.
Speaker 1: This thing could supposedly travel only through time, not space.
Speaker 1: So the question people had was, wait a minute, how
Speaker 1: is that even possible? Because the Earth isn't gonna be
Speaker 1: where it was when you traveled, Like you hit start
Speaker 1: and you're traveling back thirty years. Well, the Earth has
Speaker 1: is not in the same position as it was, you
Speaker 1: know when you left, so you would be appearing in
Speaker 1: the middle of space. Nothing nothing there if if it
Speaker 1: doesn't travel through space and only travels through time, and
Speaker 1: he said, that's a great question by so it would
Speaker 1: have been really good to get involved in that discussion.
Speaker 1: I gotta go that was you know anyway. So my
Speaker 1: my vote is that JT was a hoax, that the
Speaker 1: person who was perpetuating the hoax did know at least,
Speaker 1: you know, had a ground interest in quantum physics more
Speaker 1: than a ground interest in computer science. I would say
Speaker 1: that the person who posted this probably was a computer
Speaker 1: scientist um, and that they also had some social commentary
Speaker 1: that this person probably legitimately believed in. And this was
Speaker 1: this was like things like you guys got to be
Speaker 1: more vigilant about protecting the constitution, don't eat meat, that's
Speaker 1: you know, be careful about the where your food comes from.
Speaker 1: And like the warnings he were getting that he gave
Speaker 1: were um, good warnings. It's just that everything was fabricated, right,
Speaker 1: And like I said, the big predictions haven't panned out,
Speaker 1: which kind of proves that. Now you could argue, well,
Speaker 1: in his parallel time, they did pan out that way,
Speaker 1: but that then you're just using an unfalsifiable argument, which
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. You can't. That's not a debate, that's just
Speaker 1: a way of making me go crazy. We all enjoy this.
Speaker 1: Then I read an article on of all places, tour
Speaker 1: dot com, which is really awesome for science fiction your fantasy.
Speaker 1: By the way, many of you probably know that he
Speaker 1: is our The website is uh decided for a major
Speaker 1: science fiction fantasy publisher actually science fiction infinite. Yeah anyway, um,
Speaker 1: speculative fiction published there we go. I was trying to
Speaker 1: remember if they do both or if they split between
Speaker 1: tournforge anyway. Uh. Pablo Stefanini wrote a blog post in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight basically saying, Hey, the Olympics are over.
Speaker 1: I guess he was wrong. Um, that was the basic
Speaker 1: gist of it, but I mean that that really no,
Speaker 1: that's how he got started and went into a lot
Speaker 1: of things including, uh, he mentioned Mike Lynch. Did you here.
Speaker 1: I haven't come across Mike Lynch. He's a private investigator.
Speaker 1: An Italian TV show hired him. I think I did.
Speaker 1: And they found the name of a lawyer named Larry Haber.
Speaker 1: Uh has a brother who has a brother, John Rick Haber,
Speaker 1: who has a computer expert and basically, uh, they came
Speaker 1: to the conclusion, or at least suggested that these two,
Speaker 1: the Haber brothers, may have actually come up with this
Speaker 1: as a hoax. Um basically uh um, possibly as a
Speaker 1: means for an entertainment deal of some kind, because there
Speaker 1: have been uh subsequent books and things about JT. And
Speaker 1: somebody pointed out that, uh, Larry Haber lives in Celebration, Florida,
Speaker 1: which is a Disney community. I think that's probably coincidence.
Speaker 1: But it's another thing that the Walt Disney is frozen
Speaker 1: underneath his house, right and they're going to revive him
Speaker 1: and be healthy. No, he's just he's always just frozen. Okay,
Speaker 1: I suppose that's possible. I don't think that's true. Either
Speaker 1: it's not true based on the factual stuff I've read,
Speaker 1: but you know, I wasn't there to witness it, so
Speaker 1: I can't confirm that. No. Um, so they this this
Speaker 1: private investigator concluded that the whole thing was made up
Speaker 1: by these guys. But uh, there's still this, this thing
Speaker 1: keeps going around the internet as these things are wont
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, and they're more. I mean, I saw
Speaker 1: one today about a guy who supposedly encountered his seventy
Speaker 1: year old self, like a guy in his in his thirties,
Speaker 1: while he was fixing the sink of all things. Uh,
Speaker 1: ended up meeting his seventy year old version of himself.
Speaker 1: And then they took a video using the guy's cell phone.
Speaker 1: And in the video you see these two guys, these
Speaker 1: these two bald guys standing out a Swedish fellow, uh,
Speaker 1: standing out in the field. The sun is behind them,
Speaker 1: so the light sources behind them, so you can't make
Speaker 1: out details really well. And both of them show their
Speaker 1: their right arms and they have identical tattoos. I did
Speaker 1: it immediately raised questions for me. Light sources behind them,
Speaker 1: so you can't make out details very well. That suggests
Speaker 1: that this might not be on the up and up.
Speaker 1: I mean, why put the light source behind you if
Speaker 1: you want to get proof of this. The tattoo on
Speaker 1: the older guy's arm, the seventy year old version looked
Speaker 1: just as fresh, if not fresher, than the young guys
Speaker 1: tattoo also raises some I happen to have a pair
Speaker 1: of tattoos, folks, and I can tell you over time
Speaker 1: they fade. And I don't imagine a seventy year old
Speaker 1: going out and saying, you know what, I need to
Speaker 1: get my ink refreshed. Um. So I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: these time travel jokes and hoaxes and things are probably
Speaker 1: gonna keep ongoing as people find more and more clever
Speaker 1: ways of incorporating them. And of course, things like photo
Speaker 1: editing software and video editing software are getting cheaper and
Speaker 1: easier to use every year. So I would not be
Speaker 1: surprised to see some incredibly convincing yet still completely fictional
Speaker 1: time travel stories in the in the future on the web. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even though uh, Einstein's theory of relativity does not rule
Speaker 1: out time travel apparently, not that I understand it very
Speaker 1: very well, um, but from what I understand the the
Speaker 1: physics behind JTS machine are unlikely to work well. Just
Speaker 1: the whole manipulating gravity thing at the very beginning makes
Speaker 1: it difficult to I said, the energy it would take
Speaker 1: to make that work would be at least at least
Speaker 1: to nineteen sixty seven Chevrolet corvettes. Um. Actually what I
Speaker 1: saw was in MRS Yeah, a Mr Fusion UM. But
Speaker 1: the other thing is that apparently it's considered that a
Speaker 1: time machine cannot travel past the date of its own creation.
Speaker 1: So if it was actually built in and two thousand
Speaker 1: thirty four, one wonders if the parallel makes up for
Speaker 1: that though, because that's why he said the grandfather father
Speaker 1: paradox didn't apply, was because he was not in his
Speaker 1: own timeline. He was in a parallel timeline. I think
Speaker 1: he's cheating. So he could go and kill himself if
Speaker 1: he wanted to, because he was two years old when
Speaker 1: he like his his his quote unquote real self would
Speaker 1: be too. He could have technically killed himself and still
Speaker 1: been fine because it was a parallel universe, not his own. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how he gets around a lot of those things.
Speaker 1: I yeah, I called shenanigans. If you if you second
Speaker 1: my Shenanigans, Go get a broom and we will storm
Speaker 1: the castle. Meanwhile, if you guys have any suggestions, questions, comments,
Speaker 1: things like that, you can contact us on Facebook and
Speaker 1: Twitter are handled. There is tech Stuff hs W, or
Speaker 1: you can email us in Our address is tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I
Speaker 1: will talk to you again in the future really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
Speaker 1: click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
Speaker 1: of our homepage. The how stuff works dot com I
Speaker 1: phone app is coming soon. Get access to our content
Speaker 1: in a new way, articles, videos, and more all on
Speaker 1: the go. Check out the latest podcast and blog post
Speaker 1: and see what we're saying on Facebook and Twitter. Coming
Speaker 1: soon to iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you