Reflecting on the Titor Hoax

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Visit beachbum dot com to find a location near you You're listening to Hoax, a production of IHart podcasts. Hs it's a h how. No one ever ses for me see. When I swear I never was to see in I last wnder Welcome to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish were true. and truths that sound like lies. I'm the ghost of Dana S Hartz. and I'm the evil twin of Lizzy Logan. Welcome to the show Dana, what do you know about time travel U I'm kind of a time travel nerd in terms of like versions of time travel that exist in movies. Like is it the back to the future model where you can affect the future or is it like a multiverse version? So I do like the thought experiment of time travel I don't think it is real in any way that makes sense. I'm sure it's like real on a physics level, like something about particles, but I don'ts that's what I think about time travel Ttally So the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking once posed a very like astute question, whichich is if time travel is possible, where are all the time travelers? Yeah, it's very funny Well, that's becauses there's different versions of time travel. Exactly. you know And I don't know if you know this, but in two thousand nine, he hosted a party for time travelers. And then but he didn't send out the invitations until the next day. with logic being that since no one showed up, time travel is impossible. That's very That is funny. And that was like, I thought like a good little sort of gotcha experiment until just recently, people have been like, that experiment is now disproven because Stephen Hawking is mentioned in the Epstein files. And so people are like, well, that's why none of the time travelers showed up to his party is because time travelers don't want to hang with Stephen Hawking. I mean, fair, I wouldn't want to hang out with someone in the Epstein files. That's very funny. Isn't So someone like really unobjectively cool needs to do that experiment. likeike Jane Goodall. Yeah, you know, like well, you know, Yeah, or like Steve Irwin back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. someomeone just like Everyone would want to hang out with him. Steve Erwin is a great poull because like problematic king wouldn't want to hang out with Steverwin. Exactly. So this is the story of potentially a different time traveler. Great. So in nineteen ninety eight, There's a radio host named Art Bell And he hosts a talk show called Coast to Coast AM I just want to interrupt, I feel like every episode now we've been having a little Arthur cameo There's so There's so many arthors. I listen back and I didn't even clock in our Anastasia episode. You mentioned someone namedrthur and then you went first Arthur of the episode, and I didn't even hear it when you said it in real life. There are so many. Hart Bell I have a new drinking game. Yeah Okay, so a ri host named Art Bell first and last author of this episode. He hosts Coast to Coast AM, and he occasionally has a segment called Oen Timelines, which is if you're a time traveler, you can call in and he gets a fax And it's retty long, but Dana, I'm gonna have you read the whole I'll do if you would be so generous in an accent or just No, I mean, it's a fax. so there's no voice. I if you want me to get the character. No You do whatever you want. Art. I had to fax when I heard other time travelers calling in from any time past the year two thousand five hundred AD. Please let me explain Time travel was invented in twenty thirty four. Offshoots of certain successful fusion reactor research allowed scientists at CERN to produce the world's first contained singularity engine. The basic design involves rotating singularities inside a magnetic field. Altering the speed and direction of rotation, you can travel both forward and backward in time. Time itself can be understood in terms of connected lines. When you go back in time, you travel on your own original timeline When you turn your singularity engine off, a new timeline is created due to the fact that you and your time machine are now there In other words, a new universe is created. To get back to your original line, you must travel a split second farther back and immediately throw the engine into forward without turning it off. Some interesting outcomes of this are, one, you meet yourself. I have done it often, even taken a younger version of myself along for a few rides before returning myself to the new timeline and going back to mine Two, you can alter history in the new universe that you have created Most of the time, the changes are subtle Sometimes I'll notice car models that don't exist or books that come out late. The oldest one was a skyscraper that wasn't built in a near favorite store of mine in New York in a near favorite store. I think it's nearar favorite st. Yeah. Interestingly, when you travel in time, you must compensate for the orbit of the Earth. Since the time machine doesn't move, you have to adjust the engines so you remain on the planet when you turn it off. Unfortunately, it was also discovered that anyone going forward in time from my twenty thirty six hit a brick wall in the year two five hundred sixty four. Everyone who has ever been there has reported that nothing exists. When the machine is turned off, you find yourself surrounded by blackness and silence. Now, most time travelers are trying to find out where the line went bad by going into the past, creating a new universe, and proceeding forward to see if the same thing results in twenty five sixty four It appears the line went bad around the year two thousand. I'm here now in this time to test a few theories of mine before going forward Now for the future you might want to know about. one, why two K is a disaster. Many people die on the highways when they freeze to death trying to get to warmer weather Oh no Two, the government tries to keep power by instituting martial law, but all of it collapses when their efforts to bring the power back up fail Three. power facility in Denver is able to restart itself, but is mobbed by hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed. This convinces most that maybe we shouldn't bring the old system back. fourour, a few years later, a communal government system is developed after the Constitution takes a few twists. China retakes Taiwan, Israel win the largest battle of its life, and Russia is covered in nuclear snow from their collapsed reactors A The reason I'm here now is because I believe a nuclear weapon set off by Iraq in the Middle East war with Israel might have something to do with the damage timeline. I will test that theory and get back to you Please pray we have discovered the reason why there's no apparent future after twenty five sixty four U And what year was this what year is this Art Bell radio show happening? nineteen ninety eight. nineteen ninety eight. Okay So Dana, just like, what do you think of that? It seems like a great sci fi premise. That was my response to like what an incredible piece of short fiction. What a great short fiction, what a story I would love to read, what well thought out nerd psychological experiment. Yeah. And like what a cool like you know, arrival is based on like a short story like people you know, nowadays sort of write fiction from as a blog or whatever. I'm like this is like such a Cool iece of short fiction delivered in an unusual medium. Can we option this fact sent to Art Bell in nineteen ninety eight? potentially. It feels very terminator where it's like the future is going to go wrong. We have to send someone back to figure out where and how it went wrong. Yes, Terminator at this point had come out. Yes. had absolutely been seen by whoever wrote that fs. But I'm saying like I feel like I can smell the Terminator ideation happening It also reminds me of Titanic Twist in time, Titanic somethingomet there's a the computer PC game where you have to go back in time to the Titanic to stop World War two Yes, which is an incredible just like piece of media that we don't really have time to talk about right now, but just look it up if you don't know what it is. U so a few nights later another message. So he like read that on the air. He reads that on the air with a bit of commentary Yeah. And a few nights later He gets another message that I'm going read just like a slightly condensed version of because this one is like, hey, I'm sending you another message and I didn't want it to get lost in the shuffle. So I'm adding a gift and I tried to message you before and here's like my contact info, blah, blah, blah This says, Dear Mr. Bell. I sent a Fax with this opening on july twenty ninth, nineteen ninety eight. As I said then, I am a time traveler. I've been on this world line since April of this year and I plan to leave soon. Typically, time travelers do not purposely affect the worldlines they visit However, this mission is unusually long and I've grown attached to some of the people I've met there met here For my own reasons, I have decided to help this worldline by sharing information about the future with a few people in the hope that it will help their future I am contacting you for the same reason Unfortunately, there is no historical reference to your program in my worldline I believe you can change your future by creating one now Some of the information presented on your program may be invaluable to upline researchers. I suggest you isolate the programs that concentrate on military technology and new physics theories transcribe these programs and put them someplace safe away from the box I recommend some placeace in the Midwest. I also urge you to reconsider your paranoia to the Russians . They are not preparing for war with the average U. S. citizen. They are preparing for war with the U. S. government. They will eventually save this country and the lives of millions of Americans. Oh no. I realize my claims are a bit difficult to accept, so I will send the following once I know you have received this fax A few pages from the operations manual of my time machine and a few colored photographs of my vehicle If you wish to contact me, I willll be happy to share with you the nature of time, the physics of time travel, and some of the events of your future. So he's basically restating what he said before, promising to send along some information once he knows that like they've maintained contact. And he's again sort of saying like some of the predictions he said before, but the voice is a little bit different Kind of sounds like someone else's writing. It also kind of sounds like like a Russian Sciop a little bit Just it's weird. like it's less specific It's not it's less funny. I guess it wasn't funny that it's quite as funny, but it's less specific, it's less like matter of fact, less voicy. Yeah, it's less voicy And so already we have like Is this sent by the same person? Yeah. And of course, if he had read the first one on the air, there could be anyone pretending to be that guy again. Yeah, mean If you know how a factax works Kind of easy to dupe effects It was art a political radio show Oh, I don't think so. Well, that's why it's so interesting that its anyone who would be doing like a time travel segment It feels like they wouldn't be doing like serious analysis of war with Russia No, it's it's more about like, oh, what's going to happen in the future. Yeah. Yeah So we're jumping ahead to november two thousand. Okay. So this is five years before Lonely Girl fififteen, which we talked about in a different episode. The internet I don't know how to calculate how big the actual internet is, but in terms of people who are Pe who have access to the internet, it's roughly six percent of the people who now have access to the internet. So the internet is like reallyally small. Yeah which I'm saying because I had never ever heard of this story But it was a very big deal on the internet which was possible because the internet was really small. It was a very specific community of people. So you could be very famous on the internet. and not be very famous because it was like the internet was still a niche thing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yes. It's like being locally famous because the internet was a very small town. It's like someone who was vine famous. Yes. Like you're like, o, I was famous on vine. and you're like, okay, that means nothing to me.. But to a very specific group of people, it does mean something. Yes The people who are on the internet in november two thousand are creative nerds who are interested in research and emerging technologies. And we are also not too far after Y two K, which is going to come up But why doK? if it's November already, it already didn't happen But we're not too far away from it is what I say sure. findind for some people. There is a website called, appropriately, time traravelinstitute. com Okay whichich hosts forum for time travel enthusiasts. This is back in the days of Forums where it was like there was no centralized hub for the internet. If you wanted to talk about something, you had to go find a forum about that thing. The good old days. People are posting their theories and discussing various problems with time travel. Like you talked about, like different ways that maybe time travel works. And they're talking about something called the grandfather paradox Sure, whichich is like if you meet your grandfather and affect him, then he won't have you. And so you never existed. And so how could you go back in time to affect your grandfather? Exactly. The example they use is like if you kill him. Oh kill him. Yeah. I was being nice and being like affect him being like, don't marry that lady. Yeah. like if you If you prevent your own birth, then you can't go back in time to prevent your own birth. And one user comments that like a way around this paradox is exactly what you said, which is the multiple worlds idea, which is that just if you go back in time and kill your grandfather, then you continue living in a world where you are not born as a baby but you exist as an ad D in the old timeline that you left, your grandfather continues to live, but you have now like exited. Multiple timelines. Yeah, there's just now two timelines And a user who goes by time travel underscore zero, so time travel zero, comments and is like, yeep, that's exactly right. I'm from twenty thirty six and that's how time travel works And Time Travel Zero is going to comment Here and on the Art Bell Forums just under six hundred times over the next few months And he's going to reveal his name to be John Taitor T I T O R Some people pronounce it titter, some people pronounce it titer Tighter some seems right. I think tighter makes the most sense Tyer is a real American last name, but it's also speculated that like this is just his like online username. It also like could be short for time travel or or terminator. Again, his username is timee travel zero. likeike yeah, he's really not trying to be subtle about this Well, he says, I'm a time travel from twenty thirty six. Yeah. This is not And he doesn't say, I faxed Art Bell, but people who remember those faxes are like, oh, these details match up. this is the same person It's speculated now that a few different people might have been posting using this same like login information I'm going to present the information that he reveals in the order that makes sense to me not in the order that he revealed it. Okay cause again, he posted like over five hundred times, and he mostly just answered questions about time travel. So we don't really have time to get into everything he posted, but'm going just I'm going to just tell his story in the order that makes sense to me. Great When it comes to looking your best, Beachbum Tanning does it better. Beeachbum delivers advanced sun and spray tanning, luxury skincare, and an elevated salon experience designed around you. It's why so many guests trust Beachbum for flawless color and real confidence. 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For JD Power twenty twenty five US initial Qualality Study award information, visit jDpower dot com slash awards Awards based on twenty twenty five model a year, newer models may be shown The official language of football is trash talkal, late night group chats, memes, and unbelievable highlight clips That's why BoostMobile brings you our new Gobal cononnection plan, the first plan ever made for WhatsApp. Get unlimited data, talkal and text, international roaming, and calls to over one hundred countries for just forty dollars a month.ty dollarars price includes five dollars a month auto pay discount. After forty gigabytes of premium high speed data, speeds will be lowered, coverage not available everywhere. Visit store or boostMobile dot com for details A burst pipe, A dead water heater, the AC calling e quits. Who do you call? HomeServe is an easy way to handle unexpected home repairs, with plans covering stuff basic homeowners' insurance usually won't. Instead of scrambling for a contractor, you make one call to get the repair process started. Join the millions of customers who trust HomeServe right now Go to homeomeserve. com slash podcast for fifty percent less your first year. That's homeomeserve d. com slash podcast. saavings compared to renewal price vo in Florida So John says that he was born in nineteen ninety eight So I mean, he was, like the persona was born in nineteen ninety eight. Yeah. But so if he was literally born in nineteen ninety eight, then he is both two and thirty eight ure because he came back from the twenty thirties. He came back from twenty thirty six He says that the beginnings of time travel are going to be discovered at CERN, the big large hydron collllider in Switzerland in about a year. Seems like a likely place It does seem like the likeliest place. His explanation of everything is like very grounded. Well, that's what I like about it.s you know what it is? It's very like Andy Weir, the Martian It's exactly I mean, Andy is this Andy Weir? If Andy Weir wasn't inspired by this guy, I will eat my hat. Yeah, 'cause it's like very grounded, very plausible hundred percent. He's just looking at the state of science today and going like, All right, where might we be by twenty thirty six? Yeah And then he says that the first time machine will be built in twenty thirty four by GE makes it' like, Yeahah, what who builds big machines, Gee? And he says that he works essentially for like the time travel Navy SELals Like he's like, I'm in the military and we do like time travel special ops Great. that would exist. He says that his time machine weighs five hundred pounds and it is installed in a Chevy. So very back to the future. Yeah But I think it's more like that it's stored in a Chevy to make it easy to transport. I don't think that like turning on the car and driving it is part of how you work it. Sure He explains how you use it and he uses he uses the word like micros singularities a lot goes through Einstein Rosen brridges which is a very fancy way of saying a wormhole It's this thing where I'm like, I don't know what he means by micros singularity, but it does sound scientific All of his explanations sound very scientific. He can't really explain like how you actually build a time machine at his explanation for why he can't explain is he's like I'm basically an airline pilot And if you asked an airline pilot, he could basically tell you how the airplane works. That's different from being like an airplane engineer I get it. I use a refrigerator every day. I couldn't build a refrigerator Gight, But and he's like you can drive a car without knowing how to build a car. Yeah, where he's like, I operate this time machine. I basically know how it works. No, I can't explain every single detail to you, but he's basically on these forums doing like an AMA. Yeah, Gick. They everybody just loves his explanation of the universe of like how time travel works and how it also sort of solves other mysteries Be people are like, oh, UFO's are visitors from other world lines where Humans are more technologically advanced and look different I mean, that's a great explanation. I really like this sci fi premise. Yeah. And they're like, oh, and like Bigfoot or mermaids are like, that's places where the veil between different worldlines is thin and we're just like glimpsing other worlds. Yeah, why not It's really hard for me to tell. if anyone like quote unquote believes this that it's mostly just like peopleeople having fun on the internet, but knowing the interternet, there are some people who believe it. Yeah. But likeake, No one's going out and like looking for him or like trying to build ach No one's verifying this. It's almost like, like you said, with like the very small internet group It becomes it's like an inside joke among this small group of techy people Yeah, he has pictures, which they look like nothing. L it looks like it looks like junk from your garage. It looks like the proton packs and ghostbusters where it's just like metal box with like a tube coming out of it where I'm like, I'm sure there is an engine in there, but it just looks like nothing He's happy to answer questions, but he's not triing to convince anyone to believe him Gight, He even says that in twenty thirty six, there are people who don't believe in time travel And one of my favorite things is that he's like He has like a very dry humor And he's kind of snippy. And if someone tries to stump him on trivia, he's like, o, so you're from the future. So like who wins the baseball game next month? He's like, do you remember shit that happened thirty years ago And at one point he writes a pretty sick burn which is Perhaps I should let you all in on a little secret. No one likes you in the future This time period is looked at as being full of lazy, self centered, civically ignorant sheep That's pererhaps you should be less concerned about me and more concerned about that. That's very funny Oh my Godd, imagine a time traveler from like a really like ualized human civilization coming back to our timeline. Is that the premise I mean, that's kind of what Phill of the Future was. That's true. And they came back and they're like, whyy do you guys have wars So weird. I like that show fun He says that his world line is two point five percent different from ours. Yeah. and that the longer he stays in ours, the more different it's going to get. So it should have roughly the same like thirty year history between where he's from and what we're experiencing now. To me, it more makes sense to think of it not as like a two point percent difference, but almost like two point five degree angle where it's like Again, like this is just what makes sense to me that like, In two thousand things will be exactly the same, but like in two thousand one, they'll be a little farther apart in two thousand two, they'll be a little more farther apart in two thousand three, just because like Wouldn't it all be like ripple effects? Yeah. You know what I mean? So it's for it's a compounding change. Yeah, just because like If one person isn't born, that'll change things a little bit. But then when their kids aren't born, that would change things more. And then when their kids aren't born, that would change things more. What I also find kind of interesting and why this time travel explanation is very plausible because it's like even if he can't, let's say he does remember who won the baseball game in his timeline. He's like, oh yeah in two thousand, this person won But he's like, but me being in this timeline has affected reality. someomehow butterfly effffect, I don't know. somehow the game was different. Yeah. And again, and it's only thirty six years. So like there are plenty of people who are still alive like in both worldlines and in both time periods. Yeah. So it's not Conceivably he should be able to like check on a lot of this study, you know Um He says and he does give plenty of information about what's Not what's gonna happen, but like what happened in his worldline and therefore what is likely to happen in ours. Like what is, you know, I guess ninety seven point five percent going to happen. So he says that from around two thousand four to around two thousand eight, America will have a massive civil war where there are like waco like events every month And we are going to break up into five countries And then in twenty fifteen, there will be a third World war with Russia that includes nuclear bombs. and three million people will die And after that, humanity kind of goes back to a more primitive agrarian society that kind of sounds like what the conservative homesteader movement wants. Like everybody's growing their own food. There's not a lot of medicine. People live close to their families and Iad religion. I read yesterar, this bad situation. I mean, the way he makes it sound People really are a lot happier You know, I personally don't want to learn to use a gun, but like I would live with my family on a farm. You know what I will say is having a baby. If my family was close, that would be a big help. you know I hate that. Yeah. but I do like going to the grocery store. I do like going to the grocery store Cost of food could come down? No don't know, I get I get the vision. You get the vision. I get the vision. I like air conditioning too much. Maybe they they have the internet in the future. So I think So even though it's like an agrarian more agrarian community, they still have I would have to check the. I just think they're not like it's it's less like sprawling cities and more like community and you know what? That's great. I don't mind that. as long as I can, you know prefer medicine and air conditioning Ideally, if if I could send a request to the future. Well, you've got ten more years. I'll work on it He also mentions that the human for of mad cow disease is going to be a big problem. U, which it could be because Food safety is really getting underfunded and that because of the Civil War, we're going to cancel the Olympics. Okay I'm going to jump ahead for a sec Some of his So again, he has over five hundred posts. so he makes a lot of predictions. some are very specific, some are very vague some of his predictions in the fullness of time have come true. He does make a reference to like they're not being nukes in Iraq and how that was a rumor to stir up. war, which I want to be clear as someone who was Alive back then. People were talking about that not being true Right, but not necessarily in two thousand. This is pre nine eleven. Oh. All right. All right. Right. interestnteresting. He mentions sort of like a Lincoln like president, the people who are looking for evidence are like, well, Obama was from Illinois. Yeah, like really into Lincoln The vast majority of his predictions did not come true in any significant way Yeah As you pointed out, his sort of like get out of logic free card is that by simply visiting our timeline K. made it diverge from his timeline. Yeah The hoax only lasts a few months and it is a hoax Es in march two thousand one H't say shit about nine and eleven? L there are vague things that people then point to and they're like, yeah, that was him warning us about nine hundred and eleven. No, he does not drop He needed to drop like a hint. He needed to say like, Mariah Cery, your album is not gonna do well because of New York. Like it doesn't even sound like he was being like mysterious. He was saying explicit things. He was saying explicit things and there was one thing he needed to warn people about and he did it. But maybe nine hundred eleven didn't happen in his timeline. I guess, but like feels like he should have worn about feels like really should have warned about that Also I just think it's interesting that he says the Third World War starts in twenty fifteen because twenty fifteen is also the year that they go tune back to the future too Interesting. Yeah There's no war inect to the future too. It's just people like to use that year as a like round number, future a year There are three D sharks though So many U Okay, back to the story So online Again, people don't have nine and eleven as a reference point. Yeah. So They're like, hey, if you're a time traveler, why aren't you out there stopping Pearl Harbor Oh yeah. U and he's like, well, first of all That wouldn't stop Pearl Harbor. It would create another universe where Pearl Harbor didn't happen, but in the universe that I came from, Pearl Harbor still would have happened. Yeah And second of all You don't even know about all the things that I did stop because they didn't happen M. So think about that Mh. Aually I didn't come to the past to do any of that. I came to the past to pick up a computer O a specific computer or just a computer? A specific computer. He came to the past to go to Rochester, Minnesota. In nineteen seventy five to get an IBM five thousand one hundred which was one of the first quote unquote, portable computers. And it weighs fifty five pounds. so it's not the most portable, but like it doesn't take up a whole room. like you could put it in one in a car. You could yeah, you could in a car or like you could have it at home and then you could like move it to your office for some time And he actually already did it So he explained that he completed that mission and then he's just stopping by two thousand to hang out with his family, which I think is adorable But also a different explanation than the one he gave to Art Bell. Yeah, which is that he's hanging out to try to figure out where humanity went wrong. But he did say that he had grown fond of loved of people in this timeline. I know, his explanation keeps changing. His family could be the people he's grown fond of I'm just saying. I just if you're hanging out with your family, you would want to know where things went wrong because indndeed because you want to save them So he says that he completed his mission in nineteen seventy five and now he's just hanging out with his family in two thousand, and I guess his two year old self He's like picking up photos and just like chilling with his parents And there's like a there's like a good time travel window that's going to open up in a few months. I guess like the, you know, wormholes have to be good. Solar flares. Yeah.. And so He's just killing time answering questions on the Innet until then. You feel like that would be against the rules I don't know. I didn't make the T time travel seal r. have no idea. So to explain why he needs this computer, I do think it would be helpful to talk about Y twoK. Okay So Why's youK was not a hoax Yes, I've heard about. I was a child at the time, so I didn't know anything happening, but I've heard this. And it's again, it is similarly like You don't even know about the things that didn't happen because they didn't happen And it's a hoax that people think it was a hoax This is A new segment on our show, Doo called Lizzy does a very bad job explaining computer programming I can't wait. I know nothing about computer programming, so it's going to sound like a good explanation to me. No, it's not. Okaykay early computers, like not early as in like designed by Steve Jobs. I mean, like early early, early early, like a little bit after Alan Tururing really Big, big room sizeed getters Maybe half I don't half a room size. commenters. They saved m they saved time, No Ly Sona was to talk about computers. They saved memory only using the last two digits of the year. Yeah because this was considerable amount of their memory. Yeah, their compute, their're new computers So the nineteen in like nineteen fifty four or whatever, was implied or not accounted for So the year two thousand would be indistinguishable from the year nineteen hundred And people notice this. People realize that this would be a problem as early as the eighties, Sure. because On Wall Street, there are bonds that pay out over fifty years So if you buy such a bond in the eighties and then you go to compute how much money someone's going to have in fifty years, the computer would be like, oh, that will pay you in nineteen thirty after existing for negative fifty years. Yeah, it like wouldn't work. That's very funny. It would just go all the like The wheel would go all the way around and it would never hit the year two thousand, it would just go right back to nineteen thirty Negative money, neegative money O like time over Yeah, money over negative time. Yeah So as we get into the nineties, more and more systems are upgrading to avoid what's called the Y two K bug which is really just a series of potential issues that are being grouped under the same umbrella. being called the Y two K bug. It's not like a computer virus that you can download. It's a bug meaning just like a flaw in the system. Yeah Even though this has been known about since the eighties They're kind of dragging their feet because No one's paying them to fix it. Like there's no profit in fixing it. And there's no it's not like there's an overarching like big world group being like everyone fixed this now, which is also like the global warming problem. The only person who finally does it is Clinton. Clinton makes everyone do it? Well, he kind of spearheads. he's like We should probably do this. Yeah, correct. Yeah. gotta have a leader and then people finally notice. and so some people do stock up on toilet paper. And like that's what gets the news talking about it. And that's what creates sort of the hysteria that ends up mattering, which is why people now laugh at the quote unquote, like Can you believe people thought the world was gonna end? Yeah, people like, I guess thought like, oh, the planes will fall out of the sky because all the systems will go Right, but it's like Y two K is actually a really good example of hardworking people behind the scenes stopping the planes from falling out of the sky and stopping the nukes from going off. Like we laugh at the people who stocked up on toilet paper, but we should be applauding the hard wororking people who did the very unglamorous work of going in and adding little twos and zeroos to all of the lines of code. Yes. Thank you for your foresight and your effort and preventing disaster. And it's like time travel in which We don't get the timeline where things could have gone wrong because people work to make it better. Exactly. 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You're a lifelong learner, energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on and your own high standards to meet Dop now? Not a chance. At Capeella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now, go earn the degree, Capeella University. What can't you do? Visit Cpeella. edu to learn more Um no, okay. But you're probably thinking like why is displaying the correct date important? You know, if my computer that I'm looking at right now says the wrong date like My oven and my microwave always say the wrong time. It doesn't matter, they still work as an oven in a microwave. Yes Number one, a lot of other programs run based on the time and the year. Number two. If one part of your computer collapses, a lot of other parts of your computer can collapse Number three A lot of times computer programs are built on top of each other. so The time and the date were like one of the first parts that were built could be what's called legacy code which is like load bearing No, okay. I barely understood Halt and catch fire Some stuff actually did crash, like cash registers and stuff and credit cards didn't work. and I don't know, but I know I tried to look this up and it said that Y two K was almost a really big deal. So just trust me, you know's really important. What happened was the computers, if they said nineteen hundred, they're like, oh, computers didn't exist in nineteen. out existed just Shut down. Okay So keeping all that Y. Titer was sent back to nineteen seventy five. too get a specific computer to avert something that is real That is called the twenty thirty eight problem. Oh, the twenty thirty eight problem, which is another Y two K that's gonna to happen in twenty thirty eight Wh Why? What is weird about twenty thirty eight? Is it some sort of root Yeah, okay, I actually understand it now it's a That's why it was important to talk about why two can. Okay. is why people on the internet in november two thousand would have been vaguely familiar with why why two K was important and what John Tyer would have been talking about when he said I had to go back to nineteen seventy five to get an IBM five thousand one hundred because it's my mission to avert the twenty thirty eight problem. And that's because something about memory The Unix system, UNIX. Yeah is a thirty two bit system. We don't make thirty two bit systems anymore. We run everything on a sixty four bit system, but it is a foundational type of computer a lot of computers in the world, not like personal computers, but like know big computers that run like the lights, the big traic system.. bigig computing systems are built on top of these old unix systems They were programmed in the seventies They don't count the dates. they just count how many seconds it's been since like nineteen seventy and they are going to run out of space in january twenty thirty eight don't know what's going to happen, and I think it's possible that nobody knows what's going to happen. they might crash Okay. hope So I guess every bnts are sort of assuming either the world will end or we'll have better better systems in place by then and no one's doing anything We still have twelve years, so we just need to upgrade them. Okay. We just need to upgrade them in the next twelve years. Okay, or run some code, add a little hard disk or whatever. If we upgrade to sixty four bit systems, then we have like a billion years or whatever. Like this is not a problem we're ever going to have again The twenty thirty eight problem they call it the epoch ellipse because it's like an epoch and Eunixs epoch It is like a real thing. And it's also like using an old piece of equipment to sort of like Like a good piece of equipment is a good piece of equipment. Like I remember when I know this is just like going all kinds of crazy tangents and we're talking about tech and not hoaxes, but I think it's interesting. I find it fascinating. I don't know about any of this. Remember when the Ocean gate thing happened and there were those pictures about how they were using like A a u Cable No, the an Xbox controller. Oh yeah. And then but then all these engineers were like, what Xbox makes a good controller? Yeah. It's like a good piece of equipment is a good piece of equipment So basically, John Tyer is like Listen IVM made the best computer to run a unix system on. So my mission was to go back to nineteen seventy five to get this compomuter to go debug The computer in twenty thirty six. It's like just plausible enough to work. Yeah, it's like, why would you think that our tech just because it's from the future would be better? A good piece of equipment is a good piece of equipment. But it's like in this situation, you've invented a time machine, but you can't invent something to debug the twenty thirty eight problem, but maybe this is their solution, right? But people are pointing that out on the forums. They're like Dude, going back to nineteen seventy five, Minnesota, seems like a lot of work. Surely you could just find like a used computer someplace and like refurbish it. Yeah he's like B in the military. if they say go back in time, I go back in time. Yeah. And one guy is like H, I have a question. again, like with the snarkiness, there's some snarky guy online who's like I have a question, why don't you refurbish an old model? and do people in the future still wipe their butthholes with toilet paper? And he's like Well I need to go back in time because I need some specific upgrades to this computer And so I need to be with one of the original programmers of it who, you know, will' be in nineteen seventy five And yeah, we still wipe our butth holes with toilet paper in the future. and in the future there's still people who are weirdly obsessed with butth holes guuy on the internet. guy on the internet trying to be funny. Yeah He's like, what I need is a brand new IBM five thousand one hundred and I need one of the original IBM five thousand one hundred programmers. One of whom is my grandfather. Oh, no big deal because I need him to help me trick it out This is a real like coming of age novel. You really should have written this. Ad some plot And what you losers on the internet don't know. I do is that there's something special about the IBM five thousand one hundred. The guys who program the software did it in such a way that it's almost like a universal translator canen to all the other IBM systems of that era it's compatible with all the other IBM systems of that era. So once I get it back to my time, I'm going to be able to plug it into like all the computers that I need to plug it into. I won't have to go around finding all these other different compatible parts. A those dongles? Yeah, I'm not gonna have to Yeah, exactly. I'm not gonna to need adapters. IBM didn't tell anybody about this because they thought that maybe like their competition would use it for, I don't know. purpose or whatever Only twenty people ever knew that this computer could do that And it's the only computer they ever made that could do that. It has this like secret function. So that's why I have to go all the way back to nineteen seventy five to make sure that it's this exact bottle Great. I believe it. Dana, it's true What? It's true What this guy's grandfather Ive was a program around this. Researchers who have looked into the John Tyer hoax down some of the guys who worked at IBM and they were like Yeah, I don't know how he knew that, but yeah It's true. They were like, I don't know, whoever was posting on those forums. I don't know if they knew jackshit about time travel, but they knew a lot about IBM This guy's grandfather was an IBM programmer. He was an IBM programmer. I have no evidence to that, but I'm like, love I love this. Yes. He doesn't talk the way a computer programmer talks. He doesn't talk the way someone from the future would talk, but he knew that piece of information My theory is that his grandfather was an original IBM programmer and I'm just gonna go with that. I guess not grandfather. Right. He's only twenty five years.. He's not actually from twenty thirty. Dad See year two thousand In march two thousand one, he's like, cool, I got to go back to my time My final piece of advice is keep a can of gasoline in your car in case you run out of gas on the side of the road and be well. That's actually good advice And he logs off and Basically the end of The hooks becomes like an internet Urban legend. I've never heard of this. That's the crazy. I mean, that's not crazy because I'm not like into forums, but this is like so delightful. It makes me really happy. Is? kind of more But like The way it You know, the more you dig into Lonely Girl fififteen, the more delightful it gets. The more you dig into this, kind of the less delightful it gets Lake There are people who have claimed over the years to be John Titer, but then when you look into them, they all have like criminal records for really gross things. Wait, have we ever actually figured out who John Tyer was No and we disprove that he was a time traveler. So this has not been officially debunked. Most people After two thousand four really stopped believing because like, say what you will about the state of America, we are not five different countries. No we did not not would yet deal with a civil war. No It's unclear to me how many people really Believed, belieelved. There are a few like likely suspects for people who have contributed to John Tyer or have been John Titer? Yeah, especially given that it was like the internet and there's fax machines. I'm like that seems like the first person who sent the fax wouldn't have been the same person writing all these things or the second you know, message I'm Kan throw out like my whichich is I Wan to just wait ten years and see if he comes forward in twenty thirty six? A yeah. Like it's not that long. Sh we set a reminder? Yeah If our calendars, if our phone calendars still work? Yeah So that's like kind of my takeaway, but So now I want to just talk about it as like an amazing piece of fiction, performance art with the internet as its medium and Nirvana the band the show the movie because it's all about going back in time to get a piece of technology to make your time travel machine work. and it's so good. Lizzy told me to watch this movie called Nirvana The Band The Show The movie. I was not familiar at all with Nirvana Band the show, like the Canadian comedy show, but I watched this movie with no No like, you don't need know no expectations. And I it was genuinely delightful and amazing. I enjoyed it a lot. You should also watch it and don't look don't look anything up about it. justust go in blind. I guess know that time travel happens, but you're like, how did they there's some scenes where I'm like, how did they make this? Yeah? And it really is amazing that they did. It really is. So the real time travel is people using art to creating art I mean, it's just like, I feel like the two things are so linked because it's like using a simple medium to do things that people just hadn't thought of before of like Oh, yeah, you could just film things out of order in a really interesting way, or like, oh, you could just use A Forum basically write a novel, like a collaborative novel almost. That's how I feel. I'm like the fact that someone first sent a fax in to a radio show. and just assuming this is the same person or the same group project, that this group project sent this fax into the radio show and then was like answering hundreds of questions on forums. I'm like, what a brilliant comprehensive, cohesive piece of fiction that I find delightful, that is now like free and secret and wonderful. And I think it's like so fun because it's like, I think we've all had the experience of reading a book set in an alternate world and wishing we could ask the characters a question And sometimes you can then like ask the author a question of like, how does this work in, you know, like, you know, Tolkien wrote like all of those things Be likey Rowling, was there a Jewish student? But it's like, what if someone did a whole book basically that was just the questions. You know what I mean? Just being like, oh, I have an idea of how time travel might work instead of trying to come up with like a plot and characters and this and that not that those things were bad. I'm saying it very dismissively, but like what if it was like, what if I just pop on the internet and I just let people decide what they want to know. and like just take questions and let that be the plot and just see where that takes us and like like just crowdsourcing a whole novel's worth of information and like letting that like that's such a cool project. And you know what else I love about it is it's not like this guy or girl, whoever they were, wrote their sci fi novel or wrote their screenplay and was like, I need to find James Cameron and give me my screenplay. and I need to be famous and make my like this stayed anonymous. they weren't looking for glory. They just were doing it for the love of the game. Yeah, someone did eventually like trademark it and then try to sell merch, but like it kind of was a flop. People have made U there's like a documentary, like a quote unquote documentary that is very can't watch it anywhere., But like then, you know, people have made YouTube videos. It's it's inspired a lot of then other art and like I just think like the spirit of it is very cool and other people have been inspired by the spirit of it and some have made money, but most have not. And like I don't know. likeike John Tyer' cool. People who are into him are cool. John Tydder are cool. And if you're into him, I would also recommend checking out the word work of John Boyce B O I S. He makes these He's made these like incredible websites for ESPN or spports Illustratated or something. He made this one called like Football in the Future. I love this. Do you remember the future on the future? Doesn't it have a John Tyer esque quality to it? Yes. There's like play an ar key Yeah. I love people being creative for for the love of the game. Yeah John Titer, cool. J Titer cool. I hope we get to meet. Hey, John Titer. ten years for now. ten years from now, please seek out either Danish Sartz or Lizzy Logan, ideally both and say hi Dana, what would you do with a time machine? notot like correct mistakes in your life, but like what period of time would you go to and who would you to and walk around and