We Solved Time Travel! (And It Involves your Favourite Coffee Mug)

**Warning, we had some audio issues this episode so things may sound a bit wonky. We apologize profusely!! Don't hate us!! 😭💚💜

Happy Pride Month, fellow Weirdos! 🏳️‍🌈 We are kicking off June the only way we know how: with a chaotic drag queen fan crack, memories of Vegas drag brunches, and a mission to give back. For the entire month of June, all proceeds from our Rainbow Tie-Dye merch will be personally matched by us and donated directly to local charities supporting queer youth, including the Gilbert Center and Spectrum! (Plus, keep your eyes peeled for Merlin the Corgi at Tri-City Pride on June 6th). 

Once we get the logistics out of the way, it’s time to melt our soft little brains with a deep dive into the fabric of space-time. We didn't take physics in high school, but that won't stop us from tackling quantum mechanics, universe ice blocks, and paradoxes! 

What’s On the Slab This Week:

• The Physics of Whimsy: We break down Einstein's flexible space-time, the Block Universe theory, and why we don't personally own the spaceship required to test a Tipler Cylinder. 
• Mug Smashing & Timeline Jumping: The internet says if you want to escape adult responsibilities, you just have to smash your favourite coffee mug to jump to a parallel branch of the multiverse. (Allegedly. Please don't sue us if this does not occur). 
• Glitch in the Matrix or Just a Reenactment?: We look into history’s most baffling urban legends, including the 1901 Versailles time slip, the mystery of internet icon John Titor, and the debunked case of Sergey Ponomarenko. 
• Neil deGrasse Tyson Ruining the Fun: Why traveling to the future is a proven reality, but traveling to the past is a space-machine nightmare. (Spoiler: If you don't calculate Earth's constant hurtling motion through the universe, your time machine will just dump you into empty space). 
• Pareidolia Strikes Again: The real, surprisingly practical truth behind those viral "1920s cell phone" clips. 
• Our Dream Destinations: Stevie wants ancient Egypt at its peak, and Jacklynn just wants to drive cool 1970s cars.

Grab a drink, lock your timelines, and let’s get weird! 

Follow the Whimsy:

• Instagram / TikTok / YouTube: @WeirdosOfWhimsyPod
• Merch & Support: Head to our website to grab your Rainbow Tie-Dye gear and help us support queer youth this month! 
• Missed our previous deep dives? Go back and check out Episodes 1 & 2 on Alien Disclosure and our Urban Legends episode!

Want more Weirdos of Whimsy? Check out https://bio.site/weirdosofwhimsy to find everything in one place! From there, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel, grab some official merch, or follow us on Instagram to chat!

Have a bone-chilling story of your own? We want to hear it! Send your scary encounters to weirdosofwhimsy@gmail.com or DM us. Your story might just make it onto a future episode! 

Transcript

0:00

Do you want to know how you apparently jump timelines or parallel universes? So say you have like a favorite mug. Obviously, it's your favorite mug. You would never want to break it. Sure. You do something that's so out of the norm for you. So take your favorite mug and literally just smash it. And that kind of causes some sort of craziness to occur and you jump a timeline, and now you're in a new timeline. I don't know that. Yeah. So if I'm having, let's say, crushing debt and horrific financial problems, I can just smash something that I love. Yeah. And everything's gonna be great. Apparently. Perfect. Or could be much, much worse. You don't have control over your timeline. That's odd. Allegedly. Allegedly. A podcast where we will be discussing all things weird and you guessed it, Whimsica. Hi, my name is Jacqueline. And I'm Stevie. And before we get into today's episode, it's officially the start of Pride Month. It's June. Happy Pride. Oh we didn't practice that at all. And we love a fan crack. So you can do it like for all you listeners at home. We've got like a full-on drag queen fans. Yeah, yeah. Like we got these. What what pride was that? We got it. Actually, we're not pride. We're in Vegas. Vegas. Yeah. Vegas. That's right. Drag brunch. Um Senior Frog. Exactly. I believe this is Chanel. Uh, I think so, yeah. I always thought it was Willem, but yeah, that makes sense because Willem was not there. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but and then we brought these. Then we got to Pride. Yes. We were the Bells of the Ball. Well, we were actually the Bells of the Ball in Vegas with these. Yes. Oh my God. We were lining up how to we taught so many people. Well, we tried to teach so many people how to paint crack. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, to be fair, you taught me. And then we can see Stevens do it. But I just're gay and it just comes naturally to us. So and I am um uh beside. Baside. An ally? An ally, but there's uh adjacent. Adjacent. I'm a beside. Anyway, happy pride. Happy Pride. Sorry, Pride. Yay, Steven. Um, so we do have a special little thing for Pride. So basically, any proceeds that we get from the Rainbow T-Dye merch that we have on our site will be matched by us personally and donated to local charities that help support queer youth. Yay! So please, if you were ever going to purchase merch from us, now is the and I mean, I guess it doesn't have to specifically be the rainbow tie-dye, but it's just it's on theme, right? It's on theme. Um, we're also not trying to rainbow wash without those people. Um so yes, please help out. Um, even if you don't want to support through us, go out and support your own way. Yeah. Um also I'm gay. Give me money. Yeah. Period. I need it, period. Um so let's also give a shout out to some of the charities that are in our regions, shall we? Um, so in Barrie specifically, there is the Gilbert Center. Um, the Gilbert Center is the primary registered charity in Barrie dedicated to providing social support, health promotion, and advocacy for the 2 SLGBTQIA plus community across Simcoe and Muskoka. And I'm really sorry that I started bizarrely like drooling. So there you go. But support the Gilbert Center. Yay! I'm also excited to tell you that Lake Country Pride is happening in Aurelia. That's exciting. Yes, on June 13th, I will be attending. Um and then Bai Pride runs for two days from June 20th to 21st as well. So check those out if you're in my region. Uh so mine that I chose, uh basically the one that we actually do a lot with. Um Dan's company donates a lot. Um, so it's called Spectrum. Uh Spectrum is Waterloo's Waterloo Region's first ever rainbow community space. It's an organization that serves, affirms, and supports the well-being of 2 SLGPTQIA plus individuals in Waterloo Region and the broader community through peer support, community partnerships, education and training, resources and events. Huzzah! And Spectrum is great. We go to their events at least once a year. They have like a gala that they go to. And it's so much fun. Yeah. Um, and we also have Tri-City Pride um happening June 6th, which we will be attending. And Merlin will too. Um, it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be so fun. Oh, fabulous. So get out there, support, um, be an ally, right, be gay. Be gay. And um happy pride queers and all you and non-queers alike. Allied everyone, also just like everyone. Yay, everyone, yay, everyone. In harmony and allowing everyone to be who they are. Yeah without any as long as you're good people. Only good people. Only good people. We talk about this. Like, there are bad people across it, all over the place. Rainbow or not. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Um, but anyways, yay for pride, yay for pride. Yay for being who you are, right? Huzzah! Yay for being, you know, fellow weirdos with us. Yay! And with that, let's uh get into what we're talking about today. What's it doing? So today we're talking about time travel, time jumps, glitches, and other time-bending theories. Wibbly wobbly, timey whimey. Timey whimey. Also pin in it for a second. Oh, okay. So I listened back to, of course, because we always listen to our podcast after. Yeah. We've mentioned this before. I never remember what we say. Never. Um, so I always have to be like ready for what people are like, why did you say XYZ? I'm like, I know what you're talking about. No recollection. So I did uh I was starting to listen to the part where we were talking about the Young Blood show and how he's like, somebody wanna take me home. Clearly, I in my brain started to do an accent and then just stopped halfway through. Okay. So bad. I retold the story to my friend at work, and I like nailed his Birmingham accent. Birmingham. And I'm like, why couldn't I have done that on the podcast? Because it was so good. Anyways, I digress. There you go. Um, back to the episode. So I feel like this is gonna be one of those episodes where we don't know what we're talking about. No clue. Even though we're reading and, you know, describing what I actually wrote and created. And I've seen every Doctor Who episode, but still, it's confusing. There's just, you know, the research is hard to understand. It's hard to wrap our soft little brains around it because, you know, like physics. Physics. I don't know about you, Steven, but I did not take physics in school. Did you? Oh, I aced my physics. No, I'm kidding. I have no. It's not I think everyone is well aware that we are not we are not pros in this by any means. Um, I think it's cool and amazing and interesting. I took the astronomy sort of science. Okay. I did not do any physics at all. What science did I do? Like, did you do? Did you take it all for general science? Sure. That was the thing. And I feel like I just stopped as soon as I could. I feel like there was physics. There was physics class. Yeah, there's physics, but did you take it? I didn't. No, I don't think I did. Did you take biology? I did not. I uh dissected a pig. I guess you did do biology. Yeah. That was very good. That was actually a lot of fun. I loved it. I I refused. I boycotted the fair. I walked out of the classroom. Did you really? Yes, I sure. Did you fail the class? No, you're kidding me? It used everything else. It wasn't pure. So my like when I learned, when they made us do that, it was general science. So it was like a chapter. What do they call them? Not curriculum. Anyways, it was like that particular few weeks of moving biology. Yes. I used everything else, so I was fine. But fully like had a discussion, a conversation with the teacher? With the teacher to be like, I refuse to do this. And he was like, fair enough. He also like was like, I don't know. He was probably also the gym teacher. Um, he wasn't, but it was Mr. Gardner for those who went to Parkside. No. Did he also go to Highland? There were two Mr. Gardner. The gym teacher, Mr. Gardner, went to Highlanders. That's why I said that then. Okay. Yeah. No. Um, this Mr. Gardner was a very hot science card. Ooh. Also had Mr. Sandahart and he was very attractive as well. Love it. We love a hot nerd. Oh my god. Anyways, we are once again spiraling. Is anyone anyone surprised? It's gonna happen a lot, party people, especially because of science and like research. Yep. Um, all right, let's get into it, Steven. Let's dive in. So, when physicists talk about time travel, they aren't talking about the DeLorean, unfortunately. They are looking at math, at the math behind Einstein's general relativity. Sure. Which treats space and time as a smooth, flexible fabric called the space-time. Let's break down some of the theories that our species have developed about this incredibly whimsical and yet quite possibly plausible topic. Let's do it. Whimsical and plausible. That should have been the name of the show. Oh my god. That's a name of the show. That's Burbic. Weird is whimsy, aka whimsical and plausible. Why don't we do like a session on like whimsical yet plausible? I like that. Okay, cool. Uh um, crunchy yet satisfying. Lion Kang? What is it what does Simba say? Oh yes, me. Yet satisfying. Oh god, what an excellent reference. All right, let's start with the block universe or eternalism. So this philosophical and physical theory suggests that time does not flow at all. Instead, the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously in a massive, unchanging, four-dimensional block, let's say, of ice. In this view, yesterday isn't gone. Tomorrow already exists, and we just have to be experiencing our slice of the time block right now. I've heard this before. Yeah, it's very interesting. Blows my mind. Blows my mind. Uh next we have wormholes, which uh also known as uh Einstein Rosen Bridges. Nailed it, just like Stranger Things. Stranger Things, that's right. Connecting Hawkins to the upside down, right? And then spoiler alert, upside down to other things. If you haven't watched it, if you haven't watched it. If you could stabilize a wormhole and accelerate one end of it to close to the speed of light, a traveler stepping into the stationary end would instantly exit the moving end at a completely different point in time. Right? Because you are here, you step in, it's moving. So you're like it's you're sucked through, but it's an instant thing. Yeah. Are you are you uh are you getting it, party people? Cause we are. Okay, let's move on to the Tipler cylinder. So proposed by physicist Frank Tipler, this theory suggests that if you take a massive object dense enough to say, you know, be a black hole, um, you stretch it into an infinitely long cylinder and spin it at a near speed of light velocity, it would ro uh warp space-time so severely that it caused, I'm sorry, it would cause a closed time-light curve or a CTC for those of you who don't know. So if you flew a spaceship in a precise spiral around the spinning cylinder, you would loop back into your own path. Interesting. But you need a spaceship for this specific I was really gonna try it, and unfortunately. Darn. Just don't have a spaceship. Uh they're getting more common though, so we might get one soon. Fair enough. Uh, so let's talk about temporal paradoxes and the rules of relativity. What? Let's do it. The moment you introduce backward time travel, reality threatens to break. Sure. Physicists have proposed a few rules to handle the inevitable logic knots. Sure. Logic knots. You have to have them. You have to have them. So we have the grandfather paradox. Pretty popular. Pretty popular, the classic dilemma. Pretty much like back to the future here. Yeah, if you go back in time and accidentally prevent your grandparents from meeting, you were never born. But if you're never born, you can't go back in time to stop them. Listen. Wibbly wobbly tiny whiny. Also back in time. Yeah. Do you know that one? Sure. Okay. Uh, let's go over the multiverse solution or the many worlds interpretation. Love a good multiverse. Yes. So quantum mechanics offers a clean escape hatch. This interpretation suggests that every time an action is taken, the universe then splits into parallel branches. If you travel back and alter history, uh, you aren't changing your own past. You're simply stepping onto a brand new branching timeline. Which I like this one. Yeah. And I've heard it a lot. And I mean, uh a lot of deja vu has to do with this because that would have been excellent to me. Yeah. We're doing it now. We're doing it now. But yeah, apparently when you're experiencing deja vu, or uh uh one explanation of deja vu is you're experiencing a different parallel universe or a different timeline, which is cool. Do you want to know how you apparently jump timelines or parallel universes? So say you have like a favorite mug. Obviously, it's your favorite mug. You would never want to break it. Sure. You do something that's so out of the norm for you. So take your favorite mug and literally just smash it. And that kind of uh causes some sort of craziness to occur, and you jump a timeline, and now you're in a new timeline. I mean I know that. Yeah. So if I'm having, let's say, crushing debt and horrific financial problems, I can just smash something that I love, and everything's gonna be great. Apparently. Perfect. Or could be much, much worse. You don't have control over your timeline. That's all hypothetical. Allegedly. Allegedly, you know, especially the part about crushing debt. Okay. So um, wow, that's really interesting, yeah, Steven. You're welcome. Uh so next we have the no Novikov. Novokov. Novokov's self-consistency principle. Sure. Uh you know, simple. Just everyday conversations and things. This theory argues that the universe is inherently stubborn. Must be a Taurus. Must be a Taurus. It asserts that if you travel to the past, the laws of physics will actively prevent you from changing anything that would create a paradox. If you tried to pull a trigger, the gun would jam. Your actions in the past are already baked into how history played out. So really, there's no there's nothing you can do or change. Yeah. Universe will intervene. So I also wanted to explore some compelling lore and of course Urban Legends. Okay. Last week, right? Yes, last week. Stockwork June. Go back. Not last week. Last week now. Well, right. Wibbly wobbly, timey wine. How awesome. Right? Um, yes, a couple of episodes by the time this one airs. Um go back and listen to Urban Legends. Yes. And send in some urban legends that you uh, you know, are fans of and maybe we didn't talk about. Yeah. Or not urban legends. It could be anything. Yes. Have you experienced a time glitch? Right in. Right in. Let us know. Um back to the episode. So while science plays with math, internet culture and history have served up some genuinely haunting tales of people who allegedly slipped through the cracks of time. Love it. Or have that. So let's start with the Moberly-Jourdain incident in 1901. So, like 1901. A minute ago. A minute ago. Uh just kind of in brief here. So two highly academic British women, Charlotte Moberly and Eleanor Jordain, were walking the grounds of the Palace of Versailles. Suddenly, they claimed that a strange, oppressive feeling washed over them. At the time, this landscape then changed. People looked different, and they encountered figures dressed in 18th century attire, including a woman that they were convinced was Marie Antoinette herself, sketching on the grass. How would they know? I mean, they would have known who Marie Antoinette was. Yeah, I guess so. They would have learned about her. Yeah. Pretty big deal. Fair. Um, they essentially stumbled out of 1901 and into the late 1700s before walking back into their own time. So I like we I did a deep dive on this. It's it's involved. I'm not gonna spend a ton of time going, but essentially these women, like their entire lives, were adamant about what happened, what they saw. They also revisited that area of the park several times, or the palace, I should say, and they never were able to recreate this sort of time work journey. The time slip type thing. Yeah. But a couple of sort of theories have come into play. And Steven, when we were talking about it offline, you guessed one. Um, so let's just go over quickly the prevailing theories of of this. Um, and I mean, here's what I love about it. In 1901, you know, it's not like you can just create a fake movie using AI and stuff, right? It's just these two women's word. And like, were they super bored and maybe came up with this on their own? Could be. Sure. That could be that could be something. Um, but let's just briefly go over it. I'm getting this particular information from discoveryuk.com. I'm just gonna read it straight from their site. Okay. So, number one, it could be a time slip phenomenon. Sure. There you go. It could have actually happened. Could have happened. We don't know. Um, it could have been a genuine experience, and this is just something that we don't know enough about. Yeah. And it happened. So there's that. Um, the other thing that's really interesting is they actually, after they got back from this 1700 sort of time loop, so they claim, they started to map out Versailles exactly how it was prior to 1901, and it was correct. Oh, I mean, that's interesting. That's very interesting. But could you argue that they would have maybe perhaps been educated on this? Because these were like could be, you know, high society women. Yeah, they were academic British women. So they would have had access maybe to etc. Right. Um, all credit to Steven on this one. Another theory was haunting or residual energy. Yeah. Maybe they just walked in on a residual energy scene and they saw all of these scenes, and what they were seeing were actually ghosts. Could be. Could very well have been. Do what do we think is more plausible? Ghosts or time slip? We put that to you, party people. Let us know what you think. Um, another sort of theory is this is my favorite. Okay. It was a private party. It was a themed private party. Ah. And they just happen to walk into the priority. Exactly. I'll read it because it's really, really short here, but this is a direct quote from discoveryuk.com. A skeptical, more mundane explanation suggests that traveling academics may have stumbled upon a historical reenactment, private costume party, or even actors hired for a tableau vivant, a still and silent group of people depicting a specific scene or incident. Interesting. It could have just been that. It was a Marie Antoinette themed flashbacks. Yes. Love O Bay. Um, it goes on to say, you know, maybe these women were hallucinating. Um maybe they were misremembering things and they were so wrapped up in their studies that maybe it was something that they were actually reading about and learning about and they just like dreamt it together. Yeah. It goes on and on and on. So many theories. So many theories, but pretty interesting. Um, so next we have the internet icon John Titter. Sure. Teter, titer. Teeter titer. Teeter Totter? Teeter Totter. Who love teeter totters? Um, this was actually a little more recent. So uh 2000, 2001, which I mean recent to us. That feels like yesterday. I know. I started high school in 2001. I started high school. I would have been two thousand then. Right? Yeah. Wait. No, we're no, you would have been two thousand two. I was like, wait, I graduated in two thousand six. Hold on. I was like, I was not in high school for six years. Uh anyway, okay. So in the early days of internet forums A user named John Tider. What did we say? What did we decide on? Titter? Whatever you want. Titter. I like titter. A user named John Titter appeared, claiming to be an American soldier from the year 2036. Ten years from right now. Oh, God, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, closer to that than 2000. Oh my God, it's so true. That's crazy. He was allegedly sent back to 1975 to retrieve an IBM 5100 computer needed to fix a future software bug, which seems think of what we have now, and we're gonna need an IBM computer. An IBM 5100. An IB1 IBM 5100. Um, yes, so needed to fix a future software bug. Uh Titter posted detailed schematics of his military grade temporal displacement unit. Sure. And shared chilling warnings of an impending civil war and World War III, which that could be real. That could be real. Within the next 10 years, I could see something like that happening. For sure. Ten days. Ten days, truly. Um, while it was widely debunked as an elaborate hoax, likely orchestrated by an entertainment lawyer, the sheer depth of the lore and technical jargon made it an internet legend. Sure. A lot of people probably still believe it. Oh yeah. Um, yeah, a what was it? It was an he was an American soldier. Um, would this have been around the time of um Terminator and shit like that? Oh God. Well, the first Terminator movie came out in 1984, I guess. Oh, okay. Um, but several, I mean several, two more. Yeah. Um, I don't know when the second one came out. Because I don't know why, but immediately that's what I thought of. Um nailed it. Terminator, 1984. Look at you. Terminator 2, Judgment Day, 1991. Terminator Rise of the Machines, 2003. Oh, okay. So, you know. But I mean, yeah. Bury that vibe. Bury that vibe. Maybe he was trying to be, you know. Sarah Connor, John Connor. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, we should not have picked either. I know. I'm I'm having too much fun. But let's do a really good one for funsies. One. One, two, three. Oh yeah. We still got it. We still got it, maybe. God. Okay, we will put these down now. I can't stop. Um okay, I'll physically remove it from my area. All right. Uh let's continue. So the glitch or the Sergei Panamorenko. Love it. From 2006, which is when you graduated. True. So a young man was found wandering the streets of Kyiv, Ukraine, dressed in retro 1950s clothing, um, carrying an old-fashioned camera and looking completely terrified. Uh, he claimed that he had taken a photo of a strange bell-shaped object in the sky and suddenly found himself decades in the future. Side note, that's where my grandpa was from. Oh, look at that. Um after finding himself decades in the future, um, when authorities developed his film, the images showed 1950s Kiev and a photo of him standing next to a woman who was tracked down in 2006. Now, of course, an elderly lady who confirmed that her boyfriend Sergei had mysteriously vanished in 1958. Interesting. Wait. Yeah. Was Sergei he appeared in 20, 2006? Um Wandering the Streets. This was uh right. So this kind of um kicked off in 2006. But yeah, so they that's a great question, actually. When would he when would he could they have introduced him to yes, yeah? Yeah, interesting. 2006, allegedly. However, uh, here we go. This has been debunked. Damn it. Yeah, the story originated as a um sort of dramatic reconstruction produced for entertainment, not a news report, and a television show in Ukraine called Aliens. Allegedly debunked. Uh actually, you never know. So I believe. I do believe in fairies. I do, I do. I you don't know how badly I want to reach for this fan. Oh, that would have been perfect. It's in my vicinity. I can't ah, it's just so good. Okay. Um, but Steven, yeah, if you ever think what does Neil deGrasse Tyson think? All the time, Jacqueline. I know. So if you're like us, um, so if you don't know who he is, Neil deGrasse Tyson is a very popular astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. He actually does just seem like a cool guy, too. Cool guy. Yeah. Um, love his voice, love everything about him. His whole demeanor, his vibe, everything. Really cool. Love his podcast. Um, so let's let's let's dive into what do you think? Let's dive in. So Neil deGrasse Tyson explains that traveling into the future is a proven reality based on Einstein's theory of relativity, achieved through extreme speed or gravity. There you go. However, he considers traveling to the past to be highly improbable, noting that it would require theoretical mechanisms like wormholes and would lead to deep casual paradoxes. Crazy. As opposed to um serious uh non-casual. Here are a few of his thoughts and theories that he's expressed in various ways over the last few years. Right. So this is all kind of taken from a variety of different interviews and pieces that he's kind of released. Okay. Um, so let's go over traveling to the future is real and why he thinks that. Um you can go forward, but you can't go back. So we are already traveling into the future. Of course, right now, it's happening in this moment at a rate of one second per second. Hey, wait, guess what? What? I'll be in the future now. We're in the future. No. And actually, you listening are in our future currently. And our past when it comes out. Oh my god. Mind blown. So, so, so nerdy. Okay, so we are traveling at a rate of a second, per second. Yeah, but physics allows us to fast forward into the future relative to everyone else. Okay. I mean, yeah. So time dilation via speed. Under Einstein's special theory of relativity, relativity, the faster you travel relative to an observer, the slower your clock ticks. If you were travel if you were to travel on a spaceship at speeds nearing the speed of light, you would age very slowly. When you were to return to Earth, centuries could have passed for everyone else. Yeah. While you would have only experienced a few years. That's why any of those like mutants or superheroes that have super speed, they age a lot faster compared to everyone around them because they're millennials, super speed, and maybe all aging so well. So well. It's speed and microplastics. Oh. Um so time dilation via gravity. Okay. Under the general theory of relativity, um, time ticks slower in stronger gravitational fields. Okay. Being near a massive object like a black hole would also cause time to pass more slowly for you compared to the people farther away. Right. So cool. That makes sense, I think. Sure. I'm just gonna say that. I'm just gonna say it does. Uh, so we have the impossibility of traveling to the past. Tyson is skeptical of traveling back in time, largely aligning with the late physicist Stephen Hawking. R.I.P. I was gonna say my namesake, but not at all. Just same name. Great. The correct way of spelling it, though. So good. So good. If backwards time travel could theoretically exist, Tyson points to solutions in Ice Einstein's equations involving wormholes. Of course, hypothetical tunnels that act as shortcuts between two points in space and time. By moving the openings of a wormhole relative to each other or placing one near a massive object like a black hole, a time difference is created between the two ends, as we kind of illustrated earlier. Yeah. While this could theoretically allow someone to step back in time, physicists still expect that unknown laws of nature would prevent you from altering history. Hmm. There you go. Uh next we have the space travel problem. Ah, that old chestnut. That old chestnut. Uh Tyson frequently highlights a humorous but fatal oversight in science fiction time machines. The earth is constantly moving, spinning on its axis, orbiting the sun, and hurtling through the expanding universe. If a time machine only sent you back in time without moving you through space, you would emerge in deep empty space. Wow. Because the earth would have moved millions of miles away from that specific coordinate. Any functional time machine would also have to be an incredibly precise space machine. So if you think of the movie Time Machine with um Guy, what's his name? Oh my god. Not is it Guy Pierce? From Memento? Is that the same guy? Uh I think so. Yeah, yeah. Guy Pierce. Time Machine is a great movie. I love it so much. But he's he's from back in the day, builds a time machine. It stays stationary. Stationary, which is a problem. Which is the problem. Yeah. So yeah. Um, also, do you remember that Doritos commercial where this kid builds a time machine? And it's like, five fucks. And he's like, All I've got is this bag of Doritos. And the kid's like, sure. So he gives him his Doritos inside, and he's just like shaking it. Oh my god, yes. So cute. I love it. I don't know why I just thought about it right now. Love. Um, but yeah, exactly. Great. Yeah. Well said, Steven. Thanks. So let's move into a couple sort of um clips that sent people reeling. Okay. Um, do you remember those clips that sent everyone into a frenzy claiming that women um in two different clips were like talking on cell phones? Yes. Yeah, let's get into that. So um here's sort of a breakdown of what's happening in both of those videos. Okay. We will post the actual clip. We see it all the time. Okay, okay, back to the clip. So let's do the first one. I'll talk about the first one. You can go to the second one. So the 1938 factory footage or the Leo Minster clip. So it shows a group of young women walking out of a brick factory building. One woman in a light-colored dress is smiling, laughing, and holding a small dark object tightly against the side of her face, as if she's chatting on a modern day cell phone. There you go. We've seen it, right? In reality, um, this one actually got solved by the internet in 2012. A commenter claimed that the woman was actually her grandmother, Gertrude Jones. Could you imagine if you're walking? I can I tell you I always think that. If there's like old footage in Ukraine, I'm like. Oh, that'd be cute. Yeah. Yeah. Um, historians and Ukraine. It's a huge country, really. I'm just like thinking that I'm like three people that I knew. Um, historians and researchers verified the details. Um, the factory was a DuPont communications plant in Leo Mister, Massachusetts. DuPont's Industrial Communications Department was actively experimenting with wireless telephone technology at the time, which in 1938. Yeah. Gertrude was 17 years old and had been given a prototype of a wireless radio handset to test out. She was walking outside the factory, speaking into the device to a scientist who was holding another prototype nearby, completely unaware that her tech trial would baffle people nearly a century. Wow. Wait, so they had this like wireless phone technology back then? They were working on prototypes for probably because like it would you had to be close by. Like walkie-talkie type stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay. So the other legendary clip that constantly gets lumped into this category comes from behind-the-scenes footage of Charlie Chaplin's 1928 silent film, The Circus. During a scene outside a movie theater premiere, an older woman walks past the camera wearing a long coat and a hat. Her hand is clamped firmly to her left ear, and her mouth is moving rapidly as she walks alone. Because of her hand position and posture, it looks exactly like someone walking down a modern city street trying to hear a call over traffic. However, in reality, the explanation is unfortunately far less high-tech. But incredibly practical. It was almost certainly a carbon amplifier hearing aid. There you go, one of those. The Siemens Company patented a compact rectangular handheld electronic hearing aid in 1924, just four years before the film was shot. Right. So if she was putting it up to her ear, she was probably trying to hear someone beside her, behind her, in front of her. And of course, she's talking back as she's trying to listen. Yeah. Right. So makes sense. But I will tell you, I remember seeing this being like, Yeah. This is proof. It's proof. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was absolutely a victim of this video. Um, so our why do we think that, right? When we see things and we just immediately think something, um, our brains are hardwired for paridolia. Paridolia. Paridolia. Meaning we instinctively map familiar modern concepts onto ambiguous historical images. Because, like, yeah, why why wouldn't we? Yeah. We wouldn't know any different. It's a lot easier for a modern brain to see a cell phone than it is to recognize a 1920s vacuum tube acoustic device or experimental 1930s short-range factory radio. I mean, yeah, there you go. Facts are facts. Facts of facts. But like, how wild is it that we discovered what Paridolia is and what is happening. Yeah. Like it could also explain what we talk about. Oh, don't say that. You know what? That's what I think about. Um, so Steven, you educated me on something very interesting. Yeah. And I would love to know more about these lost watches. Yeah, okay. So I've heard there's been a few instances where you'll they'll be like archaeologists at an archaeological dig, say somewhere in Egypt, or we've got like the Ming dynasty, that kind of thing. And they'll be digging, they'll be doing their thing, and they will unearth, like, say, like uh, like a watch from, I don't know, just like a like a watch. Yeah. Any any kind of watch that we would have. Casio, we don't know. Swiss is one of them. With a Swiss watch is um actually from one of these stories. It says Swiss right on it. It's a Swiss pocket watch. Or like a wrist watch. Swiss watch. Okay. Um, and they unearth it. And I I couldn't find exactly if it was like aged like it was back from the day, or if maybe just being dirty and underground for a while, it looked old. But this happens all the time, and they've found rings in our archaeological digs that will have like um, like a, you know how they'll like imprint. Yeah, a stink of like the sterling silver or something. Um, that would not have been there back in ancient Egypt or the Ming dynasty, things like that. They've tried to debunk it, saying that it could have been brought in from like rodents that have somehow gotten into the underground, you know, tombs and stuff like that. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Or from archaeologists from digs years and years before that have dropped something in. I see. So they're finding, okay. So to clarify, okay. Yep, yep. So like we, as modern day people, explorers, arch archaeologists, etc., are going into what we think is an untouched dig. Yeah. I mean, they're finding modern day things and being like, how did this fit in? How did this get in here? Wow. I mean, the rodents one is like, why would a rodent do why would a rodent do that? Yeah. Interesting. And uh a lot of them are, it's very hard to actually prove. Oh, they're just coming up with these theories, right? So again, trying to explain away things we don't understand. Exactly. What a great share. So, yeah, it could be time travelers going back to like ancient times and then dying in a tomb, or time travelers having all the knowledge that you know have become kind of like a pharaoh or something like that, and then buried in the pharaoh tomb. What would you do? Okay, man, how we for time. Are we okay? I think so. Yeah. Okay. We're fine. So what year? I think we've discussed this before, but if you could travel anywhere and live any decade, we've definitely talked about this. We have I don't remember what episode we did, but let's let's give you a recent answer. Where would you what decade would you travel to first? Because I would go anywhere. If I and like screw what Tyson said. Sorry, I love you, you're gonna. But um, if your time machine was precise and exact and high-tech enough to move, no problem. Where would you go? So tough. Where would you go first? I mean, I've always been fascinated with like ancient Egypt. Oh, yeah. And I would love to go there. Great answer. Yeah. Love it. Also, I know it's dirty, but like Victorian era, like London and like Jack the Ripper time. Like try and catch them. Yeah. Or way back in the day when like the the druids and stuff were like the building Stonehenge and like seeing seeing all of that being built. Yeah. I would love to see the world before human beings touched it. A thousand percent. Oh, yeah. Yeah, like back when like the like mega fauna and flora were around. Like um, even before dinosaurs. Yeah, no, just like and it's a chunk of rock. Yeah, nothing. I I would fast forward a little bit because I want like the epic giant trees. Like the earth used to be covered in j like giant mushrooms and mega flora, like massive leaves and like by the way, stay tuned. Oh, yeah. No, but that's a great call. I think that would be so cool. That'd be cool. I'd like to go to the like Paleolithic. Oh, just see them. To see them. Um, but first, where would I go first? Yeah. I love your so is Egypt like your first destination? Probably ancient Egypt. Like, are we talking Cleopatra times? Are we talking like no, like, because Cleopatra came way after the pyramids? I would want like the peak of like the Egyptian pharaohs and like all of that. Yeah, yeah. Or, you know, gay Greek Roman times. Oh, yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Um, yeah, that's that's a really there's so much. There's so much because not only that, but like time was obviously time is happening everywhere across the globe. So it's like what part of the world did I want to see in what time frame? Yeah. I mean, again, I'd want to see as many things as possible. I am absolutely drawn to like old England. Yeah. Old 100%. Ancient England. Um, would love to see like volcanoes being formed. Oh, yeah. To um, this is so funny. And like my honestly, no. You know what? My first destination would be 1972. Okay. And I would drive all the cars, I would see all the bands. Oh, I mean, like the cars were cooler. Oh man, I would experience like 1970s America. Love it. Like, no, it's kind of cool though. Yeah. Like going to like the drive-ins and like the um like driving up the cool car and having like the rollerblade girls come and like set your tray on the side of the car, yeah, yeah. Have a shake. Yeah, like literally. My I always tell my parents, I'm so jealous because that was their 20-year-old. Yeah. Like they, that was what they got to live. Go make out at Lover's Land and get the hook man coming at you. No, that was 90s. That was 90s. I'm sure it probably started in the 70s too. But yeah, I just think that would be so cool. Like, yeah. Um, I would absolutely try and like fuck shit up. But clearly I would not be able to do it. Depends on what theory we're looking at, though. But I would oh how I would try. Oh, same. I would too. Yeah, I I'd like to, I definitely do that. Yeah. So um, yeah. Do you think it's real? Do you think it happened? Time time? Time travel? Time travel? I think I I think so. I think there's if it's not the it might not be the time travel that we're like you see in movies and shit like that, but it could be the parallel universes, the um different you like like we talked about. The branches. The branches, the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The multiverse, if you will. Yeah, pretty cool. What an interesting topic. It's really interesting. And like I wish, God, I wish I were smart. Oh me too, girl. One of my dear friends, who unfortunately has passed away now, um, Brian, he was so smart. I used to actually we like I don't remember if he spelled his name like this once, so we just started calling him, but we we called him Brain. Brain instead of Brian, right? Um, and he was so smart, and I remember like chatting with him after high school. We were in school and in college and university, and I was like, what are you taking for fun? He's like, Quantum physics. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, totally. Just for a laugh. Was that an Arthur reference, do you think? Because wasn't Brain also uh would the br the brain? I think we knew that. Um I don't think we had maybe we had, but I don't know. That is a thing, right? In Arthur? Oh, yeah. Wasn't the smart I yeah, he was Brain, Brian? Um maybe because Brian was the no, but the bunny was you're talking about Arthur the show. Arthur the show. Wasn't the bunny that was Buster. Buster! No, but like the bear was I thought was his name Brain? The Brain was his nickname because he was so smart. Well, listen, that maybe that's where we got it from. Maybe but legit Brian was so smart. Love it. And I miss him and Oh, yeah. Yeah. Shout out. Shout out, Brian. Shout out, Brian. Uh he knows the secret. He knows all the secrets. Truly. So, you know, it would have been interesting to see if he'd write. Have you ever tried to chat with him? Yeah. Have there been has there been anything? No. No. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I would love to just keep trying. Yeah. He's probably like, my theory is that he doesn't want to prove me right. Because we would get in the heated discussion. I I could see it. That'd be hilarious. Yeah. Contact you because that's you freaking write it. He? Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. But great question. Thanks. Um, well, I think that's it for speaking of time. We've hit ours. Um, so thank you so much for listening and watching the Weirdos of Whimsy. We will be back again soon with another episode that guides you through the weird and wimpsical journey that is our brains. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at Weirdos of Whimsy Pod. Watch that space for updates, release dates, and other treats and delectable morsels. Say goodbye, Stevie. Goodbye, everybody. And as always, take up say well. I didn't say it. See you later. Oh, oh, hey, hey! I did not say at the same time with you.