In the mid-60’s, an Italian priest and scientist is supposed to have invented one of the greatest and most mind-blowing devices in history. The Chronovisor. A cabinet decked out with tubes, levers, wires, and antennas, the Chronovisor supposedly let its users tap into history by traveling back to high volumes of electromagnetic signals left in time and space.

The priest, Pellegrino Ernetti, allegedly traveled to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, to see Roman plays from 169 BC, and a whole lot more. Is it a big bucket of BS? Maybe. Are we gonna dive deep into it and see? Of course we are. Join us this week, on The What If? Podcast.

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The post Ep. #112 – What If You Could See Into The Past? – The Chronovisor, Vatican Secret Archives appeared first on The What If? Podcast.

Boy oh boy, when we said we had a part two coming, we didn’t know it’d be all this. But here we are, back again to talk about the strangeness of isolation. When it comes to living in isolation, the concept takes takes a few different forms. This week on The What If? Podcast, we do a follow up on last week’s eerily timed episode, and put out an update on John Chau, the American missionary who was killed on North Sentinel Island, just days before we put our episode on The Sentinelese people.

From there, we shift gears to talking about isolation in space. NASA has spent millions of dollars over the years, studying the effects of isolation on both individuals and groups. One of their most prominent studies has been on Hawaii, in the execution of the HI-SEAS program. Six missions over the past five years have gone, to varying degrees of success, in creating an analog world that recreates the isolation of a mission crew on (or on their way to) Mars.

How did it go? Why did the sixth mission fail after just four days? How much can we make fun of NASA’s bad YouTube videos? Find out this week, on The What If? Podcast.

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The post Ep. #109 – What If You Lived In Isolation? Pt. 2 – HI-SEAS appeared first on The What If? Podcast.

We’re talking time travel. Spencer runs through a brief history of time travel, Ryan thinks aliens are us from the future, and we try and solve some paradoxes.

The Time Machine – H.G. Wells

The concept of a time machine first appeared in H.G. Wells’ 1895 book, The Time Machine. This book also popularized the idea of time as a fourth dimension. The book’s publication coincided with the publication of Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which included the concepts of time dilation and relativity of simultaneity.  Time dilation states that time moves more slowly the faster you go. Relativity of simultaneity states that two events may appear simultaneous to one observer, but not another, if the two observers are moving relative to each other. 

Paradoxes

Predestination Paradox

The predestination paradox happens when a person traveling back in time becomes part of past events, and ultimately causes the event they are trying to prevent. Say your friend dies in an accident, and you travel back in time to prevent the accident. However, by preventing the accident and your friend’s death, you have removed your reason for traveling back to begin with. The predestination paradox states that the accident will still occur, and you may ultimately cause it. 

Grandfather Paradox

The grandfather paradox is the most famous time travel paradox. It states that if you were to go back in time to kill your own grandfather, you then would never have been born. Therefore, you  couldn’t have gone back in time to kill him.

Hot Topics: Time Travel, Time’s Arrow, A Poem About My Favorite Taco, An Existential Crisis In Every Box, I WANNA DIE, Time Storms, UFOs are Time Travelers, time slips, and much more.

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The post Ep. #49 – What If You Could Time Travel? appeared first on The What If? Podcast.

Crystal balls, ominous prophecies, and scientific predictions abound in this week’s episode of The What If? Podcast. Conrad Schoenleber joins the show, as we try to predict the future. Humans have a lot of weird ways to figure out what’s coming. Get ready for a big dose of oracles, seers, savants, soothsayers, and more. Spencer tells us about the blind oracle Baba Vanga, Ryan talks about J.W. Dunne, and his experiments with time, and Conrad schools us on all things nerdy.

Hot Topics: The Baba Vanga Venga Boys, What Happened To Miss Cleo?, If I Only Had Some Eyes, Predicting 9/11, Nastradamus, Don’t Ask The Robot, Billy’s Got The Juice, Space Apples, Ray Kurzweil

Baba Vanga

First, we take a look at Baba Vanga. The blind prophet born in Bulagria was said to have predicted wars, world leaders, sporting events, terrorist attacks, and more.

Nostradamus

Another mystic prophet, though far more ancient than Baba Vanga, Nostradamus was born in 1503, and throughout his lifetime wrote a series of prophecies. He wrote 1,000 quatrains, and packaged them as a book titled, “The Prophecies”. The book is now his best-known work. Many people have quoted and applied the quatrains to contemporary events throughout time. They claim Nostradamus predicted 9/11, and a variety of global catastrophes and events.

Billy Meier

Generally received as a fraudster of the greatest order, Billy Meier claimed he was an alien contactee, who had received gifts and information from aliens, much of which was the prediction of future events. Per Billy’s PR agent, the aliens told him of coming asteroids and interplanetary dimensional travel.

Ray Kurzweil

One of the most famous futurists in the world, Ray Kurzweil has made a series of predictions about technology and the future in his books, the vast majority of which have come true over time. In both The Age of Intelligent Machines and The Singularity Is Near, Kurzweil’s predictions have ranged from self-driving cars to real-time translation devices and much, much more.

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The post Ep. #40 – What If You Could Predict The Future? [Nostradamus, Baba Vanga, Ray Kurzweil] appeared first on The What If? Podcast.

The dudes are talking about the end times! Spencer thinks solar flares and GPS failure will be our undoing. Ryan thinks it will be runaway nanobots, or maybe ebola. This is part one of our two-part series on the end of the world. Listen to part two here. It covers fun ways to prepare for the imminent apocalypse.

Hot Topics: Driving Into The Ocean, The Spanish Flu’s PR Problem, Dino Wipeout, Super Bacteria, Human Extinction, Deer Mummies, #DONWUWWY, No One Goes To Earth Anymore – It’s Too Crowded, Killer Tofu.

GPS Failure

We rely on GPS more than most people realize. GPS doesn’t just help us find the nearest ATM. Emergency services, public transportation, banking, and utility services all rely on GPS. We’re most familiar with GPS’ location-finding abilities, but global positioning satellites are little more than extremely accurate clocks. These clocks transmit a time stamped radio signal. Receivers on the ground – in your car or smartphone for instance – pick up these time signals from three or more satellites. By comparing the time signal from space with the time in the receiver – the receiver can calculate how far away the satellite is. By comparing the distance between the three signals, the satellites can determine the receivers location. 

GPS is also a more tenuous system than most people realize. Just 24 satellites make up the entire system. Consequently, one malfunction can create chaos for the whole system. Something like a solar flare could wipe out most or all of the GPS satellites at once.

Pandemics

The world is more connected than ever before. We can travel across the world in a matter of hours. This also means disease spreads faster than ever before. In 1918, the Spanish flu killed nearly 5% of the world’s population. Today, that would be 367 million people. A pandemic on that level would be even more deadly today than in 1918 due to our ever-increasing connectivity as a species.

The post Ep. #26 – What If The World Ends? [part 1] – Apocalypse Scenarios appeared first on The What If? Podcast.

Max Selim is back to talk about genomics and the privacy of our DNA. Max gives us the quick history of genomics and the Human Genome Project, Spencer thinks aliens have been manipulating our DNA for thousand of years, and Ryan has a 23 and Me-induced existential crisis.

Hot Topics: Genomics, 23 and Me, Louis Vuitton Babies, X-Men, The Nephilim, Alien-Human Hybrids, Genetic Manipulation, GATTACA, Old Money/New Health, Wait – Which One Is Iceland?, and much more

23 and Me

23 and Me’s mission is “To help people access, understand and benefit from the human genome.” They offer genetic testing to determine your ancestry, genetic traits, and health. They might also sell your genetic data to third parties.

The Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project sequenced the full human genome for the first time in 2003.

From genome.gov: “A genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA, a chemical compound that contains the genetic instructions needed to develop and direct the activities of every organism. DNA molecules are made of two twisting, paired strands. Each strand is made of four chemical units, called nucleotide bases. The bases are adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C). Bases on opposite strands pair specifically; an A always pairs with a T, and a C always with a G.

The human genome contains approximately 3 billion of these base pairs, which reside in the 23 pairs of chromosomes within the nucleus of all our cells. Each chromosome contains hundreds to thousands of genes, which carry the instructions for making proteins. Each of the estimated 30,000 genes in the human genome makes an average of three proteins.

23 and Me

The Human Genome Project

Gattaca on Youtube

Music by Big Cats

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The post #15: What If Google Knew Your DNA? appeared first on The What If? Podcast.

Robert Crump joins us to discuss what it looks like to join a cult. From Scientology to Raeliens, the strangeness abounds. Ryan talks government infiltration. Spencer is pumped about cults that spread love. Crump educates us on Jim Jones (not the rapper).

Hot Topics: Red Prada Loafers. Strange & Sinister. Meeting Jesus. Buddha & the Dalai Lama. Ancient Alien Hair. Sex Comets. Spying On The IRS, and much more.

Raeliens

The raeliens are a Montreal-based UFO cult. Their leader is a man named Rael who believes humans were made to serve a race of aliens named the Elohim. Their main beliefs center around having giant orgies each summer in order to “upload their data” to the aliens. They also support human cloning. Lastly, they are pro-GMO, anti-war, and anti-catholic.

Scientology

L. Ron Hubbard founded Scientology in 1954. In the 1970s, they launched Operation Snow White, a conspiracy to purge negative records about Hubbard. Scientology members infiltrated more than 100 government agencies, foreign embassies, and consulates. The operation involved more than 5,000 agents working on behalf of Hubbard. Federal courts convicted eleven Scientology officials of obstructing justice, burglary of government offices, and theft of documents and government property.

Buddhafield

The Buddhafield cult started in the 1980s. A man named Michel started the group started as a sort of hippy commune, but later turned much more sinister. Michel began sexually and emotionally abusing his followers, and isolating them from the rest of society. In 2016, CNN produced a film by former cult member Will Allen. The film, Holy Hell, features lots of exclusive footage from inside the group, as Allen was a member for 25 years.

Rael talks to Geraldo Rivera

Operation Snow White

Holy Hell (on Netflix as of July, 2017)

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The post #5: What If You Joined A Cult? appeared first on The What If? Podcast.