Time travel fiction

Daniel and Kelly talk to authors about the science and storytelling of time-travel. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Daniel Whiteson?

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• 1:48Daniel Whiteson?

  So y'all probably know that I'm a big fan of science fiction. I watch science fiction movies, TV, I read all sorts of science fiction books all the time. Send me your suggestions, please. But something that crops up all the time in science fiction, something those authors and those writers can't seem to resist, is time travel. The narrative opportunities opened up by being able to move Your characters forward in time, or go back and meet themselves, or interfere with themselves, or jump on another timeline. You see it everywhere these days. But you know, science has rules to it. And so time travel opens up complications, not just opportunities. And so on today's show, we're going to be talking to authors and screenwriters

• 2:29Daniel Whiteson?

  about how they've dealt with the complications of time travel in their fiction. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

• 2:51Kelly Weinersmith?

  I'm Kelly Wiener Smith, and I used to hold out hope for the kind of time travel you see in movies until I started spending time with Dan.

• 3:00Daniel Whiteson?

  Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I love crushing Kelly's dreams.

• 3:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  You're so good at it.

• 3:06Daniel Whiteson?

  It's not me, it's science. Science has been ruining everything delicious since 1547 or whatever.

• 3:13Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, no, I think you and I actually both push that agenda regularly.

• 3:16Daniel Whiteson?

  And though, you know, while science does say that some things you always wanted to do are impossible, it also opens doors we never expected and reveals crazy truths about the world. So sometimes science is on the fun side of life.

• 3:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, and you know, we've got like all of human knowledge in a tiny little thing that fits in our pockets now. Like, that's pretty sweet. I have no complaints.

• 3:39Daniel Whiteson?

  That's right. You are listening to us because of science. Otherwise, you'd have to travel to Virginia and California somehow simultaneously to have a conversation with us. So science has made this possible.

• 3:50Kelly Weinersmith?

  And now you don't have to go to California. You're welcome.

• 3:54Kelly Weinersmith?

  Sorry, you don't get to come to Virginia, though.

• 3:58Daniel Whiteson?

  I don't think I agree that that's a benefit. But anyway, you are all auditorily transported to California.

• 4:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right. Well, so today we are talking about time travel, and we're doing some incredible interviews with people who have written and made movies about time travel. So my question for you, Daniel, if you could go back in time and see anything. And you only had one place you could go. You could only use the time machine once. What would you see?

• 4:25Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, wow. Such a good question. So many things to see. You know, it frustrates me that there are facts out there about the universe, which would change the entire way we see ourselves and the context of our lives if we knew them. You know, how life began on Earth, for example, or how humans evolved. All these things are so crucial. But if I only had one, I think I would want a universe-sized reveal. And I would go back to 13.6 billion years ago and see what happened just before the Big Bang. What was the state of the universe? What was going on there? I think, yeah, that would be my choice.

• 5:00Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, that's interesting. So you are not only assuming that you can travel back in time, but you are also assuming that your body can survive under conditions that it probably couldn't survive in. Like, you would go back in time in, like, a safe, protective bubble or something.

• 5:13Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, who built this time machine? Because if I'm responsible for it, then no, I'm not trusting it in the Big Bang. But if, you know, somebody who actually knows what they're doing, like an engineer, put this thing together, then yeah, I'm going back to the Big Bang. And you know what? Even if I perish, I would still like to go back and know, because that knowledge would be so powerful. Knowing how our universe began, the one true story of our universe. Wow, that would be incredible to do.

• 5:37Kelly Weinersmith?

  Would you be OK with perishing, even if it meant that the answer couldn't be transmitted back to the present? Like, it's enough that just you know?

• 5:45Daniel Whiteson?

  Maybe I could somehow leave a message for the future. You know, like, in the pattern of the cosmic microwave background radiation. That would be pretty cool. Wouldn't it be amazing to be doing research like that? To see photons in the night sky? To analyze the data? And then to see an awesome message in that data? From somebody who had traveled back? Wow, that sounds like a great science fiction story.

• 6:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  Daniel says it's 42. OK, so this is clearly a lot of fun to think about. So it's no surprise that it shows up in a bunch of movies and TV shows. And I was just at Disney, and it was in, like, the Guardians of the Galaxy ride. And my daughter was asking a bunch of questions about whether or not they were right about the Big Bang. And then she zoned out five seconds into the explanation. But I'll get there. But you follow a lot of instances where this happens in books and movies and stuff. And so we are chatting with some people you know, who have written about this for PopSci.

• 6:37Daniel Whiteson?

  That's right. Time travel appears all over the place in science fiction. And so I'm always curious like how authors work the science of time travel into it, how they deal with the potential contradictions, you know, the mechanics of making a story work when you can basically make up the rules and the rules don't always have to be self-consistent. So today, we're going to talk to two authors who have dealt with that in their books and in their movies. Books and movies, I think, are really fun and totally worth reading and watching. But first, we're going to talk about the science of time travel so that you can have in your head what's possible and what's nonsense.

• 7:12Kelly Weinersmith?

  Let's play a game and let's see if from our conversations, I can explain if time travel is possible.

• 7:17Daniel Whiteson?

  I'd love to hear that.

• 7:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay, so my understanding from our conversations is that time can curve a little bit, and I guess I'm not 100% able to remember and articulate the reasons why, but time curves, it's possible. You could go back in time a little, maybe for short periods, but you couldn't do it ever if it broke causality. Did I remember those points? Your face tells me I didn't get it 100%.

• 7:42Daniel Whiteson?

  No, that's the right spirit of it. There are a couple of technical issues there. You know, what do we mean when we say time curves? What we really mean is that clocks don't run the same for everybody. So for example, if you're near a black hole, I'll see your clock running slower and you'll see my clock running faster. So that's what we mean when we say like time curves. It's really just time dilation. And you'll notice that in both those cases, clocks are running forwards. So you can have weird things like, I think this star blew up before that star, and you can think the opposite, that the order of events is different, but that's not exactly going back in time. That's just saying there is no universal clock in the universe, and people can disagree about how

• 8:23Daniel Whiteson?

  fast clocks are running and the order of events. So there is some flexibility there, but actually going back in time is a whole different thing.

• 8:33Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right. Well, it's good. We revisited this conversation then. Yeah, now I'm remembering you talking about lights in the trolley and which one reaches the front and that's all making sense now. Okay, so you would say going back in time is not possible. Experiencing time at different speeds might be possible as long as that experience doesn't break causality in any way. Is that a fair summary?

• 8:55Daniel Whiteson?

  That's a fair summary, but it's worth digging into the details because there actually is one place in general relativity where time travel appears to maybe be possible, though most people think that's just another place where general relativity breaks down like it does at the hearts of black holes. But let's start with the most vanilla thing. Like, why can't we just travel in time? I mean, in special relativity, we treat time like the fourth dimension, right? We have three dimensions of space, X, Y, Z, like forward, backwards, up, down, left, right. And in space, we can move all around. It'd be ridiculous to have somebody say like, hey, you can be at home and then you can never be at home again. You can't ever go back to that location. That would be weird,

• 9:36Daniel Whiteson?

  right? Because in space, you can always go back to a location. It's no big deal. And if we say time is the fourth dimension, like spacetime is a four dimensional object and we're grouping time together with the other bits of space, it's really weird to say, look, you can only slide forwards along this one weird special dimension we call time and you can never go back, right? It's very weird to have one dimension be different from the other ones. And so I think it's tempting in physics even to say like, hey, can't we find a way around this? Can't we bend these rules? Can we somehow slide our bead backwards along this one dimension the way we can the other three, right?

• 10:14Kelly Weinersmith?

  That would be beautiful. I want a beautiful equation that does that.

• 10:18Daniel Whiteson?

  And it would save us so much time. But the issue is the one you mentioned, causality, right? We think the universe has this property where the future is caused by the past. And that immediately makes time different from space because space doesn't have this requirement that like the left half of the universe causes the right half of the universe or something. That would be really strange again. But this is something we see in the universe, the Flows forwards in time and it flows through space at a certain speed. So for example, anything I do right here, right now can't influence things that are happening really far away right now because there's no time for that information to get there. So if I shoot a laser at Alpha Centauri at some aliens, I can't kill them right now.

• 11:03Daniel Whiteson?

  I have to wait until that laser, that death ray gets to Alpha Centauri in three years. Then I can kill them. So there's only part of the universe that I can even influence. That part of the universe in spacetime, we call a light cone. That's the region of the universe that I can influence. And that grows with time, right? If I shoot lasers and death rays in all directions right now, the portion of the universe that I could kill with my death rays grows and grows and grows as those death rays fly out away from me. So imagine sort of a cone where the tip is me and the cone is expanding out into space. And causality says I can only influence things in that cone.

• 11:43Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay. So let me see if I'm understanding. So like, say I'm a very boring time traveler. All right. And so I travel back in time five minutes and I turn the light in my office off. And that's all I do. And then I travel back to the future. Why couldn't the light still be off when I jump forward five minutes again?

• 12:02Daniel Whiteson?

  So you go back in time and you turn off the light, right? And so the light was on and you turned it off.

• 12:10Kelly Weinersmith?

  And then I jump back to the present.

• 12:12Daniel Whiteson?

  But the you who turned the light off experienced the light being on in the present, right? And now the light is off in the present. So you have a contradiction. And does that you who thinks the light is off still go back in time to turn the light off? Would the light is already off?

• 12:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right, see, we can't even do boring things like flick light switches.

• 12:33Daniel Whiteson?

  And here we're really implying causality. We're imagining Kelly is doing things by reacting to her situation and that she's making decisions about the future based on the past. You're like a little causal agent. You're like reacting to the information you have and making decisions and influencing the future, right? And already we're stuck in some sort of contradiction. And that's because we're making this assumption that the universe is causal, that the future depends on the past only, right? That no information from the future affects the past. Because we don't know how to make sense of that. Like, we don't know how to build a theory of physics that involves causal loops like that. We don't know how that would work. It leads to contradictions, all that kind of stuff. And so we assume causality in physics. It's just a base assumption.

• 13:17Daniel Whiteson?

  We don't know where that comes from. We don't know that the universe has to be causal. It might be that the universe is not actually causal. That this is something we impose on it to make sense of it. Because it's the way our brains work and it's the way we tell stories. And it's just sort of natural and intuitive. It doesn't mean the universe has to be that way. It's just hard for us to make sense of anything else. And it's a base assumption in all of our theories. So if causality is not required in the universe, you gotta throw everything out. So that would be a big deal. But, you know, the same way we used to assume that space was absolute and time was absolute. Those were assumptions we made at the bedrock of physics. And we did have to throw those out and we did start again. And now we have a better theory.

• 14:02Daniel Whiteson?

  So, you know, I don't want to say forever this is going to be the bedrock of physics. It's just what we have right now.

• 14:08Kelly Weinersmith?

  So if physicists are right right now, then you could never have any interesting spacetime fiction. Because the things you're allowed to do are so narrow. So everyone's gonna have to break some of the rules of physics if they're gonna bend time and space. Yeah, okay.

• 14:24Daniel Whiteson?

  Yes, with one exception. There is one place in general relativity where you can bend these light cones. So what happens to your light cone as you approach, for example, a black hole? Well, instead of your light cone just going forward in time, it starts to bend a little bit. It bends towards the black hole. And this is why we say, for example, when you enter a black hole, space and time get mixed up. And the spatial direction is the future. Like, there's only one place you can go, and that's towards the center of the black hole. So your light cone bends towards the center of the black hole. That's just to give you intuition that when space gets bent, these light cones get really, really weird. People have found arrangements of matter, like weird ways you can put stuff together, which create what they call a closed time-like curve.

• 15:10Daniel Whiteson?

  And this is the prediction that something would move in a loop in time. And these arrangements of matter are weird. They're like an infinite spinning cylinder of dust. Apparently creates the situation where the light cone is bent in such a way that something goes in a loop. And that means that it is its own cause, right? Like its future is its past. It's very strange.

• 15:31Kelly Weinersmith?

  Is this like Groundhog Day? How is this different than Groundhog Day?

• 15:36Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, in Groundhog Day, he remembers the other days, right? This would have to be some arrangement where your memories never change, right? Because it's always the same. Now, nobody takes this seriously as a physical prediction. It's even less seriously taken than like the prediction that there's a singularity inside a black hole, which everybody recognizes is like, this is probably a sign that general relativity is breaking down and needs to be replaced with another theory of quantum gravity that makes a more reasonable prediction. And most people suspect that when we do have a theory of quantum gravity, something that explains how gravity works and takes quantum mechanics into account, it will probably fix this problem. But to date, we don't know. So, you know, when people say our current theories of physics outlaw time travel, that's

• 16:18Daniel Whiteson?

  true, except for this weird closed time like curve, which nobody really believes in, but technically is allowed according to theories of physics. So if you are an author out there and you want to write a really, really hard science fiction story about time travel, you can use closed time like curves until we come up with a theory of quantum gravity. But until then, everybody's got to deal with some way to handle this issue of getting information from the future and having information cause itself.

• 16:47Kelly Weinersmith?

  And Daniel is available for consultation for a fee.

• 16:50Daniel Whiteson?

  No, absolutely. And for free, people, send me your science fiction. I'd love to read it and give you tips on it.

• 16:55Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right. So on that note, let's introduce our first set of authors who had a teleporter in their Amazing Kids book.

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• 18:20Daniel Whiteson?

  So it's my great pleasure to welcome to the podcast illustrator Mark Fearing and author and agent extraordinaire Seth Fishman. Seth and Mark, thanks very much for joining us today. Thanks for having us. Awesome. Thank you. These two are the pair behind the new book, Brandon and the Totally Troublesome Time Machine, a kid's book about time travel. So guys, we ask a lot of folks on here to talk to us about the science in their science fiction. But before we dig into the book, we want to ask you a question that we ask all of our authors, which is about teleporters in Star Trek. Do you believe that teleporters actually move you from place to place or kill you, dismantling you and recreating you somewhere else?

• 19:03Daniel Whiteson?

  Are they teleporters or are they death machines?

• 19:06Speaker 07

  I think they're sort of both. I mean, I think that they do move you, take you apart. I just don't think you die. That's my take on it. You are fully separated and you come back together. But I don't know why you have to throw the death in there. It seems totally fine.

• 19:20Kelly Weinersmith?

  You maybe don't know Daniel very well.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  This is a debate I remember having back in college and I'm pretty sure you have to dismantle completely and rebuild from materials. So I think there is a death involved in a rebirth from fresh, new materials at the, you know, quantum level.

• 19:38Speaker 07

  Okay, I'll give you new body.

• 19:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  So then why don't we improve it? Like, if you're gonna get a new body anyway, why not like, you know, always be a little bit younger when they transport you somewhere? I think there's a lot of opportunities that have not been explored in the Star Trek universe.

• 19:50Speaker 07

  No diseases, totally. Oh, man.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Almost like they left open a lot of holes in this theory in Star Trek. Yeah, there's a lot of things that could be happening. Yeah.

• 20:01Daniel Whiteson?

  All right, so let's get into the topic of your book instead of Star Trek. How did you guys end up writing a book about time travel?

• 20:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, this is my seventh picture book and I have discovered over time that picture book inspiration comes from my kids usually and from me just sort of staring at their room, you know, and seeing what's going on or something that they say. And in general, for this book, you know, I think time travel is something that kids think about a lot. So this came out of a question my son asked that I don't even fully remember, which is so vague, like, how does time travel kind of thing work to me? And then I went straight to my childhood. The clear inspiration for me here was mainly Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, a little Calvin and Hobbes.

• 20:45Kelly Weinersmith?

  Classic.

• 20:45Daniel Whiteson?

  Nice.

• 20:46Speaker 07

  There's a scene that is very specific in Bill and Ted's where towards the end, when they realize that they can sort of communicate with themselves in the future without even having to go into a time machine, where Ted goes, remember the trash can? And then sure enough, a trash can like falls on his dad's head. But in order to make that work, that means, okay, so he has to remember. And then a future one of him needs to set up the trash can back in the past such that it will release off a timer and at that very moment fall down on his dad's head. And that is such a powerful.

• 21:23Speaker 07

  Thing that you could just be there and say, remember the trash, remember the, there was also like a recording device. And so I really thought that was just so fascinating. And so I was puzzling that over my head. So the book is built out of the idea of what about a kid being able to sort of call into being with the time machine, the solutions to his problems. That's where it built out for me. And then I was lucky enough to be able to work with Mark on this process. It's such a perfect exploration of the medium via his art. So I'm super happy about it.

• 21:51Kelly Weinersmith?

  When you all talk to other people, including Seth, your kids, about how time travel works, are you all kind of on the same page? Or do you get a lot of different people with different ideas about time travel?

• 22:01Speaker 06

  I can say quickly, there's a lot of debate about time travel. Ever since I was a kid, my dad read a lot. And I remember reading The Time Machine as a kid and trying to figure out how this could possibly work. And then you get older and you become like Slaughterhouse Five, you know, and you start really thinking about space and time, right? Travel. And so it's a great playground. And I think Seth just has a kid's take on it, which is not easy to do. This is complicated stuff. And I imagine, I'm looking forward to reading it. I substitute teach primary school on occasion. And I look forward to reading the book one day and seeing how the kids take to it, because it's a big idea. That's what's so fascinating about it.

• 22:39Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, do you think time travel is more complex for kids to understand or for adults? It's sort of mind bending and counterintuitive. But is that easier for kids who haven't like learned all the details of causality in physics? So they don't have the objections? Does it make more sense to a kid's mind or to an adult's? What do you think?

• 22:56Speaker 07

  I think that's exactly right, that it's easier because they don't have those what if moments or how about this moments. At the same time, isn't that like what these books are about? Is like basically grabbing those moments when you're in high school being like grandfather paradox. Whoa. And like, how do we do that? So there's a page in this book that also everything came out of this one joke that I started. So it's this page where past and future, the main character's name is Brandon, are fighting each other. And he decides that past Brendan is going to teach future Brendan a lesson. So before he goes to bed, he sets up a pie trap. And then the way I wrote it, it's just literally impossible to actually illustrate

• 23:41Speaker 07

  this way, which is what Mark had the challenge of doing. And that's why I want to ask you this question. It's like, how did you approach this? But the idea that I puzzled with was putting a pie, he puts his pie trap, and then he gets into bed himself, and he goes to sleep. And when he wakes up, that pie trap hits him in the face. So it's actually hitting future Brandon, but it's very much him. But future Brandon's like, ah, past Brandon. But he set it up. So it's his fault. And I wrote that in, in every edit for the first, like, five rounds, where like, it's too confusing. And I was like, this is the reason why I wrote this book. It's gonna be in there. And Mark's like, he's shaking his head right now, because it's like, so hard to do. So, Mark, tell me, like, when you got here, like, how did you get around? How did you figure it out? You know, and picture books are interesting. I've done about 30 of them now. And because

• 24:24Speaker 07

  of the media age we live in, a lot of authors tend to think in more animated terms, like jokes developing through time. And of course, in a book, you are locked to a single image on a page. Those are difficult things to try to communicate. And I think a lot of it has to do with the style and sort of the tone that you bring to it, and allowing readers to bring their own meaning to it as they look at it. And they kind of fill in the frames, like in a storyboard, I think. But those are difficult issues. There's a lot of very funny ideas. I'm working on a new book right now, and it's like, they were totally inspired by The Simpsons, because they want these cutaways to things, which don't work as well in a picture book as they do in Family Guy or The Simpsons. So there's always a

• 25:09Speaker 07

  little bit of stress, I think, on that. And even in my own work I write. So you just approach it and hope you can find the right tone, and let the reader bring as much as possible in their mind to what's happening in between. That's like a form of time travel itself, because you're filling in the gaps between each panel, right? Yeah, I mean, it's narrative art is great at that. That's what we're asking you to do, is fill in those panels. And if you can find the right way to do that, you bring motion to the reader.

• 25:35Daniel Whiteson?

  If I can follow up on that, Mark, I'd love to hear about how you made your illustration choices. When I was reading it, I was actually thinking Covenant Hobbes, the transmogrifier box, and all that stuff. Did you have a conversation with Seth about what was in his mind? Did this come just from your reading of the text? How does that all work?

• 25:52Speaker 07

  In picture books, you tend

• 25:53Speaker 06

  Never to speak to the author. In fact, it's kind of nice that Seth and I have been able to discuss this stuff and work together because there's many books I've done that I've never talked to an author of at all.

• 26:03Kelly Weinersmith?

  Why?

• 26:04Daniel Whiteson?

  What? Why not?

• 26:05Speaker 06

  Publishers are looking to combine a author's point of view and an artist's point of view to create something sort of greater than either of them. Seth, as an agent, you would know how to describe this better.

• 26:16Speaker 07

  Oh, I hate it. I think it's absurd. I think it's probably more built out of protectionism by a publisher of like whoever might be the bigger name person. If I'm really honest, the idea that there's not even like a form that I should fill out to like give some benchmarks. It's basically just the script. An author can write in art direction and then it's totally up for the artist to do whatever they want with it, which is totally fine. But, you know, I reached out to Mark because I wanted to say, thank you. It was looking great. I usually like to wait for them to get their stamp on it so that the stamp is in and then there's a conversation in my mind. I don't want to like get in there too early, but I find it crazy.

• 26:53Speaker 06

  It's a weird way, and I think finding the right tone, I illustrate in a couple of different ways. I'm not a one style. I wanted to find that cartoony that's fun, that's frivolous, that I think one of the reviews called it retro, which bothered me for a week. I had to call my agent and say, am I retro now? Is this my career over? But I wanted that looseness. I wanted that sort of New Yorker style cartoon looseness to it. I didn't want it to be battened down and painted. So those are all just sort of art direction things that you come up with when you're working on it. And Seth was happy with it, which is great. I'm glad. And it was a lot of fun to draw and be silly with it and creating the time machine in any way, you know, I wanted and being inspired.

• 27:37Speaker 07

  I loved your time machine.

• 27:37Speaker 06

  Thanks. Yeah, it's a tone thing with art.

• 27:39Kelly Weinersmith?

  I love what the Christmas lights and the shower curtain and it's like, you can really imagine that a kid had a ton of fun in there. And they were like little reading books in there also in between traveling through time.

• 27:49Speaker 06

  It's a fort. Calvin and Hobbes really makes that clear. It's an adventure. It's a fort. It's an escape. And that's kind of what a time machine is in a way, so.

• 27:57Kelly Weinersmith?

  How much research goes into scenes like when he goes back in time to visit the dinosaurs? Did you have to do like a bunch of research on the, you know, current state of what we think dinosaurs looked like? Or was it more like you had a picture in your mind and that's what you went with?

• 28:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, some books demand a more encyclopedic approach if you are creating. Something I wanted it to be more fun and a little more fantastic. And I do keep up on my paleontology and archaeology. I'm a geek. I love watching the newest discoveries, you know. So I try to create something that sort of looks like you might imagine it more than being encyclopedic with.

• 28:33Speaker 07

  Don't sell yourself short. For those of you who don't know, I write nonfiction books too. Those have a much higher level of you have fact checkers. Reviews will rag on you if you say something that's metaphorical, you know, like you're in trouble. Here, though, there's a specific run of scenes, which is what Mark was referring to with dinosaurs. I gave sample art pieces or like links to places showing what I thought with each one. I mean, where they are from the science base. All I wanted was feathers on the dinosaur. Like, that's really what I cared about. Right? Because I think that the idea, if you ever see a dinosaur without feather on it now, most dinosaurs. I'm like, what are we doing? Like, we're teaching our kids poorly, right? And then we had other ones like the Colossus of Rhodes. We went back and forth. We had to do research because I always thought the Colossus of Rhodes was straddling the harbor and the boats went under.

• 29:18Speaker 07

  But after some research, it seems like, well, we don't 100% know. Most suggests that he'd be standing to one side. So we actually did do real research to try and play that in there. And sometimes it's me and the author, sometimes it's the artist. And sometimes actually the copy editor sneaks in there and is like, here's some stuff you didn't know. But so we did go back and forth for sure. I was always curious about your portrayal of Alexander Hamilton. Because, you know, now he's such an iconic figure, but it's also like Lin-Manuel Miranda, which is not what he looks like, of course. So I was like, oh, you know, in my head, it's all these different thoughts there.

• 29:52Speaker 06

  I try to look stuff up. Definitely Colossal Rhodes is interesting because I was an ancient art history major in undergrad. What path haven't they gone down? So that stuff is fascinating to me. And there is a lot of debate. There it is still very much debatable about exactly what that was. There's contradictory information. And of course, I'll take the shortcut to what's most visually interesting. At a certain point, I'm like, I don't care. This is a lot of fun to draw if we do this.

• 30:17Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 06

  So there is some back and forth where I would rather push it.

• 30:20Speaker 07

  To be interesting visually than maybe what was actually constructed. But yeah, we did have some notes on that, but it's certainly not like a book where you're doing history of New York architecture or something where you're going to have people who are like, those are not the right sized bricks and 1720, they only, you know.

• 30:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 30:35Speaker 07

  But it was fun, you know, kept it fun and I appreciated the notes. That's right. I remember, and we did debate about the colossal roads. I remember looking that up myself in a couple of books and online.

• 30:45Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, that really touches for me, one of the exciting things about the possibility of time travel, because there are so many big questions about the universe whose answers are just facts, facts that are lost to history, you know? What did the dinosaurs look like? How did the universe begin? How did humans evolve? All these things we could just know the answers to. If we could just go back and, you know, watch, it'd be fascinating. So it's so tantalizing to imagine that you could actually get these answers. It really tickles that bone for me.

• 31:11Kelly Weinersmith?

  So I feel like that's a great place to ask a final question, which is if you could go back in time to anywhere, what would you go back and see?

• 31:19Speaker 07

  I'm going to take sort of the easy answer. That's not checking anything in my own history, which I wanted my character to explore. But like you said, your ancient art, I was ancient Rome history major. And I've always wanted to see Rome at the height and get the walk around and see what that's like. So I'd probably wander through there and then, you know, find out those answers and then tell the historians and then tell them what their methods were wrong. And then we'll have to revise everything, you know? That's what I want. No, I just want to go take a look at it. Yeah, that'd be great. I'm very close. I think just hearing the Latin that was spoken, you know, what was being spoken in the streets of Rome in 100 AD or 50 BC would be fascinating because we have so many questions. I think I'd be tempted to go Alexander the Great would be a real pull to see what exactly

• 32:04Speaker 07

  was going on. What was that? What was he? I'm always partial to Athens about 480 BC or something. I'd love to see what was shaken. Mark, looks like we have to do like a history book together here. Yeah.

• 32:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  We don't know where Alexander the Great ended up being buried, right?

• 32:21Speaker 07

  We do not.

• 32:22Kelly Weinersmith?

  You could figure that out.

• 32:24Speaker 07

  That would, if we could go to the end of it, we don't really know how he died. We don't know the mood of, that's why I don't think time travel could exist because wouldn't we have seen some people poking around these places by now, wouldn't they? But I think Seth and I are a lot closer than, yeah, I imagine, but that would be fascinating. Or to see Caesar and try to understand what was going on there. Oh, fascinating.

• 32:45Daniel Whiteson?

  All right. Thanks, everybody. So the book is called Brandon and the Totally Troublesome Time Machine. It's a picture book for kids, but it touches on the kid inside all of us who wants to go back in time and get the answers to all of these deep questions. Seth and Mark, thanks very much for coming and talking to us.

• 32:59Speaker 07

  You're welcome. Thank you for having us. This was so fun.

• 33:09Speaker 06

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• 33:37Speaker 05

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• 34:27Daniel Whiteson?

  So it's my great pleasure to welcome to the podcast my old friend Brad King. He runs a video game company. He writes science fiction and he went to Los Alamos Middle School and High School with me. Bradley, so nice to see you again.

• 34:40Speaker 06

  So nice to see you, Daniel. I appreciate you emphasizing the word old there. I just want to say I'm very excited to see you again and I'm excited to meet Kelly. Daniel was like a really, he was in speech and debate. That's really where I think we got to know each other. And Daniel was a year ahead of me and I think really kind of a funny, wise, grounding force in an otherwise kind of chaotic motley crew, you know, of like very intelligent people, but a little manic. So yeah, it's great to interact with you as an adult also.

• 35:10Kelly Weinersmith?

  I didn't know you did speech and debate.

• 35:11Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, yes, absolutely. Extemporaneous baloney and Lincoln Douglas debate. It was a lot of fun.

• 35:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  And that brought you here.

• 35:19Daniel Whiteson?

  Dot, dot, dot. Here we are. Exactly. So before we talk about your exciting movie, we have a question we ask all science fiction writers to sort of put them on the spectrum. In your opinion, what does a teleporter do in Star Trek? Does it actually move your atoms from here to there? Or does it disassemble you and rebuild you somewhere else? Is it a murder machine?

• 35:42Speaker 06

  This question, this is very contentious. I'm sure you're aware. Yeah. I'll answer it, but there's also an aspect of it that I feel like is more contentious that I usually get into. But, I mean, I can't get ahead of the writers exactly. I'm an optimist and I like the idea that they are actually being transported. However, I recognize that I think it's probably more likely that they're being disassembled and then just recreated. And when I get into this with scientist friends especially, there's one in particular who, he says it doesn't matter because even if you're murdered, the fact that the copy of you is the exact same and moves forward, for all intents and purposes, that means you live on. Of course, my point of view is, well, but the me prior to teleportation is dead. Like my story has completed and now there's a new story.

• 36:28Speaker 06

  He'll argue very well that my point of view is invalid and that, you know, it doesn't matter whether you get disassembled or not. It's the same.

• 36:35Daniel Whiteson?

  So does that mean you wouldn't step into a teleporter, but he would?

• 36:38Speaker 06

  I'm like a cat. I'm so curious. I would get in, you know, like.

• 36:43Kelly Weinersmith?

  Really?

• 36:44Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, I assume hopefully that afterwards, whatever happened, I would either be blissfully unaware that I had been murdered or get to continue on. So.

• 36:54Kelly Weinersmith?

  Hope the murder was quick and painless. Yeah, then who cares what happens after that?

• 36:57Speaker 06

  That's the hope. But if you guys figure something out otherwise in your fields, please let me know before I get in.

• 37:02Daniel Whiteson?

  We'll call you up to be a guinea pig on our next experiment, since you're so optimistic.

• 37:08Kelly Weinersmith?

  Since you are totally willing to jump into these sci fi sort of pieces of technology, were you always into sci fi? Or what got you into science fiction and movies?

• 37:17Speaker 06

  Oh, thank you. That's a great question. You know, I grew up on Star Wars. I think like a lot of us in that era. And I also was really into fantasy and played Dungeons and Dragons and you know, all that. I think growing up in Los Alamos, of course, I was around a lot of science and I was hyper aware of science as a thing. I also recognized early on that I probably wasn't going to go into science. I just don't think I had the dedication, you know, or interest. And I really admired, you know, all the scientists and all of the smart people around. And so it's very possible that that, you know, combined with my formative entertainment youth, sort of tilted me in the direction of science fiction. So I think, yeah, post high school, I was constantly sort of going back to science fiction as a genre.

• 37:57Daniel Whiteson?

  And so what's the first piece of science fiction writing that you did?

• 38:00Speaker 06

  Oh, my gosh, that's really hard. I have the first piece of fantasy writing I did because in gate in elementary school, we they made us print a book. So I have that on the shelf, but sci fi, I'm not sure I have a fun answer for that. You know, I just started writing little short stories. I remember in college.

• 38:16Daniel Whiteson?

  So then tell us how you decided to write a movie with sort of time travel and, you know, seeing the future or this kind of aspects. You sent me before we talked, this incredible spreadsheet you put together where you like broke down the time travel motivations and mechanisms in all sorts of movies. You must have thought about this deeply before you got into it.

• 38:33Speaker 06

  I break down a lot of movies. I'm very interested and sort of borderline obsessed with the patterns in storytelling. And so I will watch movies and I have a constantly shifting sort of template where I'll, you know, feed in all of the information. And I don't think it's a is useful of a guide for creating stories, but more maybe as a reflective or diagnostic tool afterwards, or after an outline to say, you know, am I sort of in line with satisfying entertainment? But I also want to ask her, there's a lot of soft data in that table. You know, a lot of it is conjecture. Like, you could say, oh, well, most science sci fi movies either look to the past or look to the future. But a lot of them do both, you know, or they look to the past, but because the characters goals are to correct an impending disaster, they're also looking forward. So take all of it with a grain of salt, obviously.

• 39:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  I had a similar spreadsheet for zombie movies for a project I was working on once. And I actually found I enjoyed the movies more because I was thinking about them on like multiple levels and how they connected. Did it increase your joy or decrease your joy to be like filling in boxes as you were watching stuff?

• 39:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the first time I watched something, I try to just enjoy it. Like, I don't do this on first viewing. But yes, I think it enhances my enjoyment. And I think the discovery process of patterns, again, it's like a drug to me. You know, when I observe a pattern, I get really excited. And so especially with time travel movies, which can be pretty complicated, you know, Primer is a really great example where the infinite sort of time loopage, the diagrams they have online are really interesting to look at.

• 39:57Daniel Whiteson?

  And so how did you land on this particular sort of mechanism for your movie? This information from the future, these questions about can you avoid what you see happening in the future? What about those themes opens up new stories for you or what story that you wanted to tell with those sort of topics and mechanisms?

• 40:15Speaker 06

  I have a lot of anxiety, a lot of it focused on the future. And I also was undiagnosed ADHD for a very long time. So I have time blindness. You know, there's a lot of things around time that I think have sort of plagued me unconsciously. And sometimes I was working out through my art. But I would say, I can't take credit for the initial idea. My co writer and producer, BP Cooper, we were just sort of obsessing about my favorite time travel movie at the time, Time Crimes, which I don't know if you guys have seen that. It's amazing. You should see it. Yeah, incredible. And he had seen a movie called Timeline, where I think they sent a camera back into the past to take a picture of the stars to ascertain the year that they were able to send something back at. And he just said, you know, off the cuff, he's like, Oh, what about a camera

• 41:00Speaker 06

  that takes pictures of the future? And for some reason, my brain, you know, locked on to that. And I went away for a weekend and just sort of roughly outlined the whole movie, you know, and then came back in for the next two weeks, we've worked on it. But I struggle with anxiety about the future. And I also, as an artist, am constantly struggling with inspiration and wanting to You know, somehow get ahead of the difficulty of not understanding where a piece of artwork or a story is going to go, even though that is, you know, the satisfying part is the discovery in the, you know, solving the puzzles, but it also carries a lot of emotional challenges along with it. So the idea of being able to see art ahead of time sounds, you know, amazing to me.

• 41:36Daniel Whiteson?

  But in your movie, it doesn't exactly give them confidence or let them relax, right? It causes tension in the movie.

• 41:42Speaker 06

  Yes, right. Well, you know, I mean, it's cinema and it's a story, so we have to create as much conflict as possible. But I think all the themes that can be explored via time travel are very fruitful and exciting. Yeah, thrills me.

• 41:56Daniel Whiteson?

  So what are the challenges of writing a movie like this, where the rules are a little bit fuzzy, where you get to basically make up the rules yourself, instead of just like, you know, a movie that happens in our universe according to our laws of physics, where you're already bound by rules everybody understands?

• 42:11Speaker 06

  That's a great question. I was a little nervous about getting on this podcast because I have friends who are into, you know, hard science fiction, right? So the idea behind hard science fiction is that all the science is real. And if it's set in the future, that it's at least not violating any of the known laws of science right now. And I'm very obviously more of a soft science fiction writer. I almost treat it like fantasy. And I've had people say, well, why don't you just write fantasy then? You know, why? I think it's a general argument, like, why does soft sci fi even exist? But I don't know. I guess I do like fantasy also. But the rule I try to set for myself to really address your question is, if I need science to do something that it can't currently, I try not to take an element from the periodic table and make it do something that we know it can't do.

• 42:54Speaker 06

  I would rather invent a new element. I just don't have a bunch of people from Los Alamos eye rolling, you know?

• 42:59Kelly Weinersmith?

  I love soft sci fi. And I feel like as long as you create a world and then you're consistent with the rules that you've created for that world, I'm just there to have fun. I'm not there to fact check. That's my personal philosophy.

• 43:12Speaker 06

  Thank you, Kelly. I appreciate your support.

• 43:14Daniel Whiteson?

  And even as particle physicists, we can enjoy soft science fiction also. Just because I grew up in Los Alamos doesn't mean I rule my eyes when something weird happens in a movie.

• 43:24Speaker 06

  Wow, so much support here. With solidarity. I really appreciate it.

• 43:28Daniel Whiteson?

  Hey, it's a positive vibes kind of podcast. We weren't going to ask you on the podcast and then, you know, quiz you on general relativity or anything.

• 43:35Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, gosh.

• 43:36Speaker 06

  Right.

• 43:37Kelly Weinersmith?

  I would fail if we did that. Do you enjoy other time travel movies? So you've made that spreadsheet. So you've clearly watched a lot of them. Do you have like pet peeves for things that people do in time travel movies or things you really like?

• 43:48Speaker 06

  Yes. I should clarify, this document was very hastily thrown together. I actually have hundreds of movie breakdowns and I meant to tackle this earlier in the week and give you guys something really comprehensive. I just did not have time. So this, this was me very hastily this morning. Like, oh, what can I get them?

• 44:01Daniel Whiteson?

  You just go into your time machine and go back and do it and then come back to the podcast.

• 44:04Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 44:05Daniel Whiteson?

  We'll wait.

• 44:05Speaker 06

  Yeah. I think, you know, depending on what's going on with me, I can either be more filled with regret or more obsessed with the future. And so that might color which time travel movies I'm, you know, more interested in. You know, time loops, I think are really fascinating. I'm interested in explorer. You know, so many time travel movies. Again, it's like, oh, is it regret of the past or we're looking at the future and inevitably it brings the characters back ideally to the state of being more present in the moment and sort of, you know, having acceptance, basically like that's correcting their false philosophy. But I think something that hasn't been explored that much in time travel is using time loops to explore the problem of confirmation bias, which seems like a really

• 44:50Speaker 06

  big problem, you know, or a growing problem in our society, right? Like people getting these echo chambers and they get obsessed, you know, they sort of form these like neural grooves. And I think I tried to touch on that a little bit in my movie. It's almost a throwaway, but it's like the characters are certain they will die if they deviate from these photographs. But then a scientist shows up partway through and says, I don't think that's necessarily true. You know, and we never resolve that, which I like, but I would like to explore that more deeply because I feel like people seem to be getting more polarized into their little paths of confirmation bias. And it seems like a problem.

• 45:22Daniel Whiteson?

  So you've written a movie about time travel, but you're also just a natural storyteller. Tell me, why do you think people are so drawn to movies about time travel? I mean, nobody's experienced it. So it's not something we all connect with or resonate with. And yet people seem to accept it. It's not like something weird and alien in stories. Why is it something that we find so easy to connect with when we've never had this kind of experience?

• 45:44Speaker 06

  Right. I again, I don't want to hammer the regret or future worry thing, but I do think those are universal experiences and often define people's lives, you know, especially if something terrible has happened in the past, or they're very concerned about something terrible upcoming. And so if I had to peg something, I would say probably once people grasp the mechanics of the time travel movie, it's easy for them to get into those emotions, you know, and access their own anxiety in one direction or another, I think.

• 46:11Daniel Whiteson?

  So we feel like constrained by the mechanics of time in our universe and we want to break out of it.

• 46:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Theoretically attached to regret is a yearning to be able to go back and change what you did wrong. And future worry attached to that is a desire to be able to go forward. And of course, consciously logically, we know we can't do that. But once you get put in a fantasy world where you can, I think it becomes compelling.

• 46:33Daniel Whiteson?

  So then let me ask you a personal question, which is if I built a time machine that lets you go back in time and change something in your life, what would you do? Would you use it to go back and inform Bradley about the consequences of decision? Or you like go deep into the past and learn something scientific?

• 46:48Speaker 06

  I'd like to think I've had enough therapy to say that I wouldn't go back to try to change anything, you know, and then it's like that I appreciate how, you know, my mistakes have formed me. I would say in this moment, I'm in a very challenging phase. And so I would be more tempted to try to go back and change something, although thanks to time travel movies and books, you know, we're all sort of hyper aware of the perils of going back and changing things. But by studying something, going back to any other era and just being able to sit there and observe, you know, I think would be from a nonfiction standpoint, obviously great. But from a fiction standpoint, you know, the verisimilitude that you could probably extract from some other era would just be gold, you know?

• 47:24Daniel Whiteson?

  All right. Wonderful. Well, thanks very much for coming on the pod, everybody. This is Bradley King, and he's one of the writers and the director of Time Lapse, a really fun movie you can all check out. And Bradley is working on several new projects, so we hope to hear more from you soon.

• 47:38Speaker 06

  Great. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

• 47:46Kelly Weinersmith?

  Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We would love to hear from you.

• 47:52Daniel Whiteson?

  We really would. We want to know what questions you have about this extraordinary universe.

• 47:58Kelly Weinersmith?

  We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions for future shows. If you contact us, we will get back to you.

• 48:04Daniel Whiteson?

  We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us at [email protected].

• 48:11Kelly Weinersmith?

  Or you can find us on social media. We have accounts on X, Instagram, Blue Sky, and on all of those platforms you can find us at D and K Universe.

• 48:20Daniel Whiteson?

  Don't be shy. Write to us.

• 48:26Kelly Weinersmith?

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• 48:55Speaker 05

  This is Shirley Strawberry from the Steve Harvey Morning Show. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an all-wheel drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla Sedan with the latest features and tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you could get more at trade-in, get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places.

• 49:37Speaker 06

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• 50:06Daniel Whiteson?

  So, everyone on board? Yeah, I think so. You can't see it, but everyone in this room is nodding. They all agree the launch plan's perfect. But Julie has an idea how it can be even better. So she asks Copilot Cowork to help her overnight. Hey, Copilot. Gather the past three months of retail sales reports, surface key insights, and build a deck outlining a partner strategy by tomorrow morning.

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