Thinking Sideways: Time Travelers

the only episode we ever do on time travel. Calm down, but we've been getting a lot of time travel requests and I can hear you hyperventilating. But we all have stories that we really liked that we thought maybe didn't make up an entire episode. So we're just gonna each talk about our stories. Are you guys ready to do this?

Let's do it? Okay. Oh and before we get too far into this, we always like to say big shout out to this listener for suggesting this, but literally all of these have literally been suggested like five or six times, So if you suggested it, congratulations your a suggestor for the Team Sideways Time Travel group show. Special Travaganza. That's what we're calling this one, right, travel Travaganza. No, I know, it was a longer name than not to try and

time travel, time travel paloza, time travel ploza. That's okay, alright, let's start the time travel plus. So I think Joe is going to start first. We're gonna just do chronological right, Yeah, exactly. People have been popping into the twentieth century at various times, and so we'll start with the earliest one. This one starts in nineteen fifty one night in mid June, at about ten pm in New York City, witnesses, including a police officer, saw a man standing in the middle of

a busy intersection near Times Square. Some accounts just put it right in Times Square, but anyway, somewhere close by there.

He Nobody had noticed him walking out into the street, but they saw him standing there, and he was staring around him quote gawking at the signs as if he had never seen an electric sign before, unquote, as one witness put it, And they seemed to notice that he was surrounded by fast moving metal boxes and started to started to move towards the sidewalk, but unfortunately was run over by a cab and he died at the scene.

This is why I don't like cabs. Yeah, so a short trip for this guy, this time traveler, a policeman. The policeman that was there noticed that the man was dressed oddly, and then he had some very unstylish mutton chopped sideburns, like we're popular like way back when. Yeah, but it's New York, so it's hard to tell when they're popular today. But he was wearing old style clothes.

A suitcoat had a high cut us with lapels. He had black and white checked pants and high button shoes, and essentially he was wearing nineteenth century clothing in nineteen fifties New York. So that seemed a little odd. He was taken to the morgue. His body was taken to the morgan It was searched and some things were found in his pockets. Number one some business cards with the name Rudolph Fence was F E N t Z, So that is our time traveler, Rudolph Fence. The cards also

had an address on Fifth Avenue. There was a letter to him sent to that Fifth Avenue address, dated June eighteen seventy six from Philadelphia, a copper token, and some and some accounts of this, I've seen it as a brass token, but as as it was a beer token, for it was a five five cent beer token from a saloon which was unknown, it didn't exist. He also had seventy dollars in old currency, old American currency, which

is no longer in circulation. And he had a bill from a livery stable on Lexington Avenue in New York would was made out quote to the feeding and stable in one horse and the Washington one carriage, and the bill was for three dollars. That was a lot cheaper back then, way cheaper. And of course the Liberty Stable didn't exist either. Of course, that was interesting about the stuff. It wasn't like that the letter, for example, wasn't old and wasn't aged or anything like that, even though it

was a seventy five year old letter. But that was the one thing I was going to say, is I know that that's what stood out in most of the accountings of this that I read, is the letter and the money. None of it seemed to be stuff that ted just stood the test of time. It wasn't all antiqued and stuff, and it were they able to actually date it to those times or was it just kind of like, oh, and has this date on it, so it must be from this time. You know, our currency

does has been changed changed over the years. Sure, and most of it's taken out of circulation, So it would be fairly long con for somebody to have just had these laying around, right, Yeah, I can't see why. What what game you would be playing to have that on you? Well, you hit it under your shoe box, under your shoe box,

in your yeah, exactly. No, it is actually um entirely possible that this guy, this guy actually got assembled this whole thing, very elaborate thing, and then deliberately committed suicide but plueing himself in front of a cat. Well, like we did talk about this in the Voytage manuscripts. Right, is that it's possible that somebody hoarded all of that paper, Right, we were having a hard time dating it. Blah blah blah blah blah. It's possible that somebody hoarded all that paper.

It's possible that somebody hoarded old currency, for instance, thinking oh, it'll gain value some other time. I mean, that is a thing. But it seemed like the clothes seems wrong and I don't know. Sorry, I'll let you continue. I'm gonna let you finish. But okay, anyway, not back to

our mystery, our mysterious time traveler. Here. Um, there's a captain Hubert rim I'm gonna call him Rim, right, Yeah, sob the Missing Person's Department of the end yep D tried to identify Rudolph fence Um and tried to track him down and see where he came from. They looked on the phone book and he was not in the phone book. Weird. Yeah, we just pull out the old phone book here. See this is one of those times where Joe's phone book comes in handy. Makes sense, But yeah,

I mean the eighteen hundreds impersonator. No, that's one thing not in the phone book. We can't just find him under that. You would look him up in the phone book under like eighteen hundreds impersonator. That would be in the pages. Hope. I'm so sorry. That's okay, don't worry about it. Uh. They were looking at the white pages,

not the yellow pages. They also ran his fingerprints. They couldn't find any any record of his fingerprints, and they they would check the missing person's report to see if somebody reported him missing and nobody had. He wants to the address that was on the fifth the fifth Avenue address. Yeah, yeah, it says you rim want to that address on Fifth Avenue and it was a store and the current owner

didn't know of any Rudolph Fence. So his next bright idea was to go through old phone books, which you know, I don't know if the library stores those are the police departments it keeps a stash of those or what. I have no idea what the protocol would be at

that time for for I mean, their their documentation. There's something that I imagine at the time we're useful, but I have no idea where you would go to find those in nineties the library you think it was library, Well, that's where they you know, archive all of the old newspapers and things like that. I presume you would keep records like that as well. That's put him on the what's what's the tape that they put it on? Yeah?

How old is that? That's fifties right, Well, I'm guessing yeah, yeah, it had been around, so already we're way off track, by the way. That's just assume that the NYPD had a stash of phone books for purposes like this, and so I started going through old phone books and finally found a from a phone book dated ninety found a Rudolph Fence Junior with the New York address. He went to that address, this is a room, and our our

policeman and found it. It It was an apartment building, and he found a few residents of the building who remembered Fence. Because I remember this is only eleven years before. I don't think people moved as off and back in those

days as they do now. That would make sense. Yeah, they said when they last they last remembered, it was being a man of around sixty years or so who worked who had worked at a bank somewhere close by, and they said that he moved out after his retirement in nineteen forty and moved away and nobody knew where, but that that was a clue. Rim contacted the bank that Fence had worked at. The banks said that Fence

had died five years before. But there's what it was still alive and living in Florida, isn't it always Florida right now? Well, it's down there at the bottom, so that's where everything sort of like goes downhill, just sort of rolls downhill and winds up there. That's how that works. Rim tracked the track the widow down and they had

they studied stuff. He didn't travel to Florida, but they established a correspondence and she told him that Rudolph Fence Senior, which would be her late husband's father, had disappeared in the spring of eighteen seventy six at the age of twenty nine. Very mysterious. Yea seventy or four years before. The guy was okay, I was doing the same thing. Mental math, not my high stand. Let me get a calculator.

Rudolph Fence Senior had a wife who did not like him smoking his cigars in the house, so he got in the habit of taking a stroll around the neighborhood while smoking, and he'd always do it at night for going to bed. It's his last smoke of the day. One night, he left for his walk around ten pm and he was never seen or heard from again. Next up, our our policeman, Captain Rim checked the NYPD's missing person's files for eighteen seventy six, and sure enough, there was

Rudolph Weird Yeah, and the missing person's reported it. In the clothes that he was last seen wearing, we're identical to the ones that he was found in nineteen. So this is like a dead Ringer match, same guy, Rudolph Fence disappears and then reappears and then at the still at the age of seventy four years later. So he just went wandered into like a wormhole in time and this. Yeah, I had a time portal and boom hate those things. They always That's why I always, you know, just in

case I get transported into the past. You know, I always carry a block nine millimeter in a thousand rounds of just in case I'm transported back to medieval times, I'll be the king of everything. That's true. Yeah, yeah, this is my boomstick. Yeah but what what movie was that from where the guy called it his boomstick? It was the sounds like something Arnold would say. Was it Evil Dead? Bruce? Bruce Campbell? Yeah it was Bruce Campbell? Did it an evil Dead? And he had a he

had a gun and he called it his boomstick. That's the worst thing I ever heard in my entire life. That's a great movie. It's a good movie. Soy solved mystery. Not so it's a huge mystery. Yeah, it was. You got published quite a large number of times. It got published all over the place, and then of course after the after the Internet arose, it got published even more so.

Two thousand, the year two thousand of Spanish magazine published the same story and the published it as a factual report, and that caught the attention of a folklore researcher named Chris Aubeck. Wait, so before that, everybody had been printing it is kind of an anecdotal story. Yeah, it's basically, like you know, it's circulated like an urban legend. It was.

It was like this story and and a lot of a lot of like unsolved mysteries websites and things like that, would you know, published period magazines and books and stuff like that, fiction stuff like that, tales from the strange. Yeah. In two thousand I discovered that the tale actually began life as part of a short story that was written by a sci fi author named Jack Finney. I don't know if you guys have heard of Yeah, so that's

something interesting about Jack Finney. I didn't know until I started researching this is that his book bought the body Snatchers was adapted in the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Really, yeah, I didn't know that. I did not know that. I didn't know it was him. I didn't I didn't know he was the one who came up with a story sci fi classic, right. Yeah, I guess that's what you get from for having a mom like mine. I just grew up on B movies. Any Way, back to Jack Finney.

So he published the story a short story in Collier's magazine in ninety one that was in September. The story was called I'm Scared. Then two years later a guy named Terrible title. Yeah, well it must have been from the point of view offense, right um. I haven't read the story yet. I don't know if I will actually, but I probably will at some point. Two years later,

a guy named Alph Holland came along. He was part of a group of people called the Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, which was dedicated to the UFOs and you know and all sorts of weird phenomenon stuff like that. Half Yeah, these guys are still around, and they have a website. I've got I've got a link here to their their thing on Rudolph fence. I'll click that right here on this paper. I just have to put your finger on that and go click click. That's how that works right now.

And you know, on this one after account of the whole story of fence, say they explain how these time travel events happen, how well, it's like, imagine it's the fourth dimension essentially what they say, so the third dimension. Imagine the third dimension is a sphere, a rotating sphere and circle, and it's nestled inside another sphere, the larger sphere, which is a fourth dimension. Both of these spheres have holes in the small and large, and when they're all

they're both turning. And when they on two of those holes in line, well you got your time portal, which is why it's so in freak went in unheard of. Yeah, I mean, time portals could be opening up all over the place. But if just say, you know, a piece of cloud steps into one, well it's you know, it's not a huge thing. Maybe you know, maybe a squirrel jumps into a time pork was transported a hundred years into the future. Or I certainly loved the idea of

time traveling squirrels. I didn't find their explanation terribly convincing myself. Yeah, Moorland Sciences published a regular pamphlet promoting their views. It was called the Journal of Borderland Research, and this story appeared in it in nineteen seventy two, and it was footnoted if what't The source of the story was a book called A Voice from the Gallery, which was published

in nineteen fifty three by Ralph Holland. He took He took the Finney story and essentially reworked it so it didn't appear to be an actual short story, made it sound like it was the real deal, documented defense and of course didn't give Jack Finney any credit, and claimed that it was all true and put it in his book. Chris Obb trace the story back as far as the nineteen fifty three book and then if you published an article about the fence story and what he had found.

He was contacted by a pastor named George Murphy who would recognize the story. I guess, he wrote, I guess he was a sci fi fan or a regular reader of Colliers whatever, but he'd recognize the story. And he told I back about the original Finny story and Collier's magazine n the mystery was solved. So it started out as a short story, and then a guy, a guy plagiarized it two years later, and that's somebody and then and then it was circulating around and then it got

replagiarized in seventy two. But Borderland's guys who Holland was affiliated with the next thing. You know, it's this big old urban legend. So this is why you don't steal. Yeah, well yeah, plagiarism is not it's not a classic thing to do. So one further little twist of the story is, and I'm not sure if this is true. I didn't, I was not able to. Actually I found it as

me too exactly. But that's it anyway, for fun. In two thousand seven, researcher who was working for the Berlin Berlin News Archive found a newspaper story in their archives in German, of course, but it was from April nineteen fifty one, reporting the story almost exactly as it's reported today. Now this this would have been printed months prior to the finny story appearing in Colliers. Yeah, well, but it's entirely likely that the story had been put out several times.

I mean, writers do that they submitted to more than one place, but probably most German language German magazine. I don't know, well, was the was the article? Was it? It was the story entirely in German? It wasn't. It wasn't like they got it somewhere and they translated it to reprint it themselves. Is that what I'm to understand? You know, it's entirely possible that he actually actually wrote the story a couple of years before, and he'd been

shopping it around to a number of periodicals. And that's that's what I'm I'm getting at. Yeah, And as somebody ripped him off and finds that somebody, somebody, some of some German guys, says, hey, let's translate this to German because we're even less likely to get caught, get busted

for plagiarism. Story got ripped off many times. Yeah. Another another odd fact, and this is against something I can't I can't corroborate, but researchers have actually claimed to have found evidence of the real Rutolf Fense who at a real Rutolf Fense who disappeared in eighteen seventy six at nine. Yeah. Again, this is I think this is something somebody probably made up, but they never know. Yeah, I would want to know how they found. That sounds like something we should probably

set the interns on. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So it's just a story. It's just a made up story. But maybe not. We'll find out when the interns come back with their information. They're gonna dig into it. They'll they'll find something. Well, next up is my story, So okay, why not. July nineteen fifty four, Tokyo officials are monitoring ssengers who are deplaning or maybe also checking passports. It's hard to tell. The nineteen fifties security was like, okay,

not existent. No, I mean it existed. You know, this was just post World War Two. It's kind of the time when security was higher. Most of the time that I've read the story, I've read that the officials were just, for whatever reason, watching people deplane, and they spot a man that they, for reasons unknown, find suspicious. Um he's a fairly conventional looking Caucasian mail but they decide to employ the very first line of defense in this situation.

They check a passport. But on they check his passport. That's what you usually do if somebody's looking a little suspiciousty excuse me, sir, Can I check your passport? Easy way to stop somebody. So it's clearly a passport, a real passport that bears all of the typical security indicators which I guess you can't forge and aer like international, which I think that's true. Most of the passports you

see look basically the same. They have a different color cover, different seal on the front, unt but for the most part they're organized basically the same. Yeah, and they country they all have very typical security things that you can't forge necessarily. I don't know, I'm not you know, like they'd have the foil and lays and the seals and all of that stuff that you're not passports are not

forgeable by nature. Well, but this is ninety four. But even then, there's no point in issuing something that you can easily forge. Actual Yeah, so visa stamps, but also you know, the stamps over the picture of the passport, things like that, impressions in the Yeah, it looked really official. Just to say it wasn't clearly forgery or anything like that. It's generally accepted. It looked like it was real. The only problem was that the country of issuance was tarad.

That's how we're saying it. I'm going with either of those. And as you're probably aware, I know you guys are, most of our listeners probably are. That's not a country, yeah, not one that we know I could see in the town. No, and not on Earth at least, and definitely not currently and not in the fifties either. So obviously they decided to take this guy in for a little more questioning. He's got a passport from a place that doesn't exist.

But apparently this man spoke fluent Japanese, and upon further inspection of his passport, they found that it had lots of those stamps that we were just talking about, the visa stamps, many of which were actually from Tokyo. So he'd been through Tokyo with no problem before, apparently on this passport, which is odd. Right. The officials continue to question the man, and they asked him just you know, to show him where they're where he's from. You know.

Maybe I guess the rationale is, maybe he's a speech impediment. May maybe he's just saying it weird. Also, there's a lot of countries in the world. May we missed one, but it wasn't just saying it though it was written on his passport. But if, but if English is not their first language, they be questioning what, Oh, he was in Japanese? You know. I if English is not his first language and he's saying a word that they don't know, they're going to presume it's something native to him. I

would guess if Japanese isn't his first language. Correct. Yeah, so it's possible that he's pronouncing it weird or whatever. Yeah. Sure, although, as Joe points out, it is written right. So they show him a map or a globe or something, and they say, al right, just point tell us where you're from. Point at it. And he points um at a place, confidently at the nation of his origin. It's been there forever.

That's where he's from, but becomes very confused and angry when he actually looks at the map because the country that he was pointing out was not Tarude, tired, Tarid, Tarude. I'm gonna say Tarude because that's how I say in my brain. It's not his beloved homeland, but instead it's the principality of Dora. And it's really small, you guys,

this is let's let's talk about Andra for a second. Yeah, for those of you who don't know, it's the sixth smallest country in Europe and it is a hundred and eighty one square miles and has a population of about eighty five thousand people in two thousand thirteen. That was the last number that I could find. That tiny. Yeah, that's less people actually that down. Then download this podcast every month. That's a good statistic for you. Yeah, and Dora,

it's land locked between France and Spain. It was formed in twelve seventy eight, a D or C, whichever you go by, and it seems to be going pretty strong. But according to this mysterious man, Tarud should have been there. It had existed for a thousand years at least, so there's that that would be frustrating. Officials decided to explore his story more so they look through his things. They've on a lot of different European currencies, because you know

this is pre euro Remember. I know some of you are too young to remember times like that, but even I remember the pre eurow everything up well, and this man was actually be able to produce a quote valid unquote driver's license from Tarud, credit cards, bank documents, and business papers a lead, the Japanese investigators shouted. So the Japanese investigators followed this lead, which I guess you know, you guys don't think. They yelled in excitement, a lead,

find whatever. I'm telling the story, so I get to do whatever I want. Anyway, they contacted this bank, which was a real bank, um and though they verified somehow that the documents were real, they couldn't verify that his account or he existed. That's weird, right, yeah, that's unusual, you know. They said, oh, yeah, it's our letterhead, it's our seal, it's a blah blah blah. You can't just download it from the internet. The nineteen you know, so

he had this stuff in his possession. But they said, oh, it's account number blah blah blah. And they said, oh, that doesn't exist. And they said, well it's under this name, which, by the way, there's no name actually associated with this story. But they said, oh, it's in this name. And they said, well, that guy doesn't have an account here, so I don't

know what you're dealing with. They also then contacted his place of work, which was a real business, and again they could not explain how the man had so much documentation that he worked for him, but they didn't have record of him existing or being an employee. This is really weird. It's really weird. Right, he has all this documentation that should prove that he exists. He's seems to be very sincere and cooperative and actually genuinely confused about

why the place that he is from doesn't exist. But everything else seems to be normal to him. You know, he's dressed in normal clothes, he speaks fluent Japanese, he has actual currency from actual places. I don't know. Maybe I presume he did because he was from there, but he had a driver's license from there, but they have it. Anyways, this this interrogation and fact checking and all of that stuff, it took about eight hours, at which point all parties

were basically just tired. He wasn't being uncooperative. They but you know, they weren't getting anywhere. But they weren't getting anywhere because they were just they was all dead ends. So the police decided to just place the man in a guarded hotel room at night. They didn't, you know, they didn't want to lock him up in jail. He hadn't really actually technically broken any laws hospitality. Technically, he didn't break any laws. He was being cooperative, he was

being sincere. He was genuinely confused and frustrated and scared. So they thought, well, we'll just put him in the hotel. We'll just you know, have a guard posted outside and we'll be fine. Of course, they picked a room. There was a small window, allege, no ledge, you know, things like that, minor security measures that you would but basically, I think they seemed to feel bad for the guy.

They allowed him to have dinner at the hotel restaurant and then escorted him back to his hotel room, and all parties agreed, including this man, that they would just continue to try and get to the bottom of it in the morning, because everybody kind of wanted to know what was going on. When they went to go get him in the morning, he wasn't there. He was gone.

He just left. He didn't check out. There was a guard posted outside the only door that could get him out of the place, and he said the door didn't open all night, didn't hear anything unusual, There was no suspicious behavior. There was just a small window leading out of the room, and there was no ledge or anything, and it was on a busy street or something like that. Nger than that, It was my impression. It was the fifth or six. Were there any great blinding flashes of light?

Not as far? I mean, you know, the guard said, nothing unusual to report, just went to knock on the door, and then suddenly there was nobody there. So the Japanese officials, of course mounted a search. But then about after a day, I did, well, we're not going to find him, so they just stopped looking for him, and I guess decide. I think they probably just decided it was all too weird and they would just believe it be. It's Tokyo, right, Yeah,

there's a gazillion people in Tokyo. Even I can imagine trying to find him, even even a white guy. When there's enough people around, it's going to be hard to track. So they're actually sorry, go ahead. So this guy was a time traveler from the future, correct, I don't. I don't think it's from the future. He was modern to that time, right, it wasn't. It didn't seem as though he had been blasted from the future back in you know, his clothes were very authentic to the time, things like that.

So actually There are a couple theories about this. One is that he he just came from an alternate reality.

I mean, you know, we know that there are in infinite possibilities of worlds that exist in in this universe or in multiple universe is that is the multiverse theory multiverse, so we get it's possible that this man came from an alternate dimension, adulterate dimension Earth, even in which the only difference was a tiny sovereign country or the only difference that they found out about which this falls into

that same fourth dimension holes lining up, somebody accedentally popping. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's it's totally possible that he just popped into our universe, not from a different time, but from a different universe. That was the only really difference that

again that we could discern. I think that he probably would have said other things if if he realized he would have maybe said, oh, well, yeah, and then there's this war happening, and they would have said what what or oh, why are you guys all not wearing green right now? You know, things like little things. But if there are in the multiverse theory, that is literally a possibility. Literally, you know, there could be a universe where the only

possibility is that, uh, Steve has hair. That's the only difference in the universe. I have hair. Well, it's clear, I have a full head of hair. It's just clear. Right, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Anyways, there's another theory. But you know, actually this actually suggests a way to solve the mystery. If if these these clods have only thought of it back, then,

which is that Andorra. If it's the only difference is that Andorra in our world was named Tored in the other world, then there's got to be a copy of this guy living in Andorra. And there's only eight people, so it would have been a simple manner to interrogate everybody, every single Yeah, yeah, you're totally right. Of course, there's another theory here, less metaphysical. It is possible that this

man was brainwashed, right, he was genuinely confused. It's possible that he had been brainwashed and led to believe that he was from the country that didn't exist. Maybe for a reconmission. It's also possible a recondission into Japan well, to see if he could get in, all right, I mean, he gets in on a fake passport or how long does it take them to actually react or whatever. Yeah, if you if you are if you're trying to invade a country, or if you're trying to like sneak in

for whatever reason, will people notice something? And how far can you push the forgery? For instance, if it was a forgery, how far can you push that document? How far can you push that before the officials will actually notice? So they're testing their Japanese security, Yeah, absolutely they could. Also it could also have been a dark government ployd on awry. Yeah, I'd be just thinking it could have been like some spy con kind of thing. And well, once you have a story, you stick to it so

you can escape. You stick to your story. But if you're gonna be, if you're actually gonna be a kind of a spy trying to slip into the country, you know, doesn't really make a lot of sense to have a passport a phony country. Why wouldn't you just do the same country. The thing that I actually think is valid in this though, is that the passport was stamped a number of times. And typically if you're just bringing the passport up to somebody for your visa stamp, they see

it stamped before. They're just going to assume it's a good passport. They don't need to check it, stamp it, and send you on your way, particularly if you're deplaning with hundreds of people, right, it's easier to just get lost in that crowd and have them just keep stamping. Unfortunately, similar to to Joe's story, it's just a story. Uh. The original source for the story was a book called

The Directory of Possibilities. And I've actually read the portion of this book that pertains to this, and it's definitely literally just a story. Sorry, guys, So that the explicitly states in this work this is all just fiction. No, but it's clearly it doesn't try and claim oh and here's a source for it, and here's another source for it. It's just a Directory of Possibilities where they tell a bunch of sci fi stories and they say, well these

this might have happened. I don't know, maybe, so sorry, it's just a short story fiction book. Yeah, got out back my story. It turned into an urban legend. Yeah. Actually that book contains within it a lot of kind of popped out of into history dimensions stories. Rudolf Fense may even be in there. The next one that we've got would be my story, which is the next chronologically next, and this one's going to be true. Is John tetor or Teeter? I've I've heard that, I've heard it pronounced

a couple of different ways. I'm I'm just gonna go with Teeter. The story of John Teter is. John Teter is the name of a self proclaimed time traveler from the year six. He first appeared on internet forums for the Time Travel Institute on the second of November two thousand, but he wasn't calling himself John Teeter. He was instead calling himself or using his handle, time traveler Underscore zero. Well, I must have gotten on there pretty quick, because, yeah,

the Time Travel Institute for him. You would think that that's probably why he had the zero, Probably because somebody else got time traveler trying time travel. Yeah, that's probably one of the moderators. Um. Teeter would go on to make claims or predictions about future events and provide descriptions of how time travel worked, and then he would quote

unquote leave us. On the March two thousand one, he went back to the future apparently, so he came spent about five months and in the century and then left. Huh yeah, the original posts as the name of the forum time Travel Institute or the forum would indicate we're we're about time travel. And it wasn't until he started using the forums in two thousand and one January, yeah, January of two thousand one, for the now defunct art

Bell forums that the name John Teeter came about. And that's that's because they required a name instead of just a handle, right, and that is absolutely correct. They required an actual name instead of just some made up whatever you wanted to use. Now the I just briefly mentioned

there's the aren't Bell forums aren't in existence anymore. But people liked or were so interested in what Teeter said that they actually copied them and put them onto other sites, and eventually that all got co mingled into one location again. But here's here's what he claimed. He said that he was a soldier sent from the year six and a computer virus and or bug. I never was quite clear, is it okay, because I've seen it called the virus?

Have seen it called the bug? Okay, was going to wipe out the computers in his world, and his mission was to head back to in order to get an IBM fifty one computer, which was necessary have the evidently the necessary equipment to fight that bug. Yeah, it was to fix it. I think you're going to talk about this little bit, but it is an actual thing. It really was actually happening at that time that very few people knew about. Yes, that is correct. Yeah, the bug

well yeah, here here's what it is. Is is the the IBM people say and or we've figured out it has the ability to read both a p L, which I believe he stands for a programming language actually and basic code. No one knew until after Teeters posts had stopped that what he was saying was accurate, and indeed engineers from IBM confirmed that yes, this computer from was able to use both of these codes, both ap L and basic. I think, I think almost, I think just

about any computer can use those things. I don't. I mean, the thing about it is it's like I have very limited programming knowledge. I will admit that right now. Yeah. Yeah, it's actually. Um, the way it works is in a computer, the only language it speaks is machine code like hexadscible code. And then if you want to run a language like C plus plus, then you've got either get an interpreter

or compiler. So you write your program in C plus plus or in basic or in a p L, and then you compile it to compile or translates that into the machine code that the computer actually knows. That makes sense some but but I don't. I'm I'm guessing that not every computer can read every other computers compiled code. That's why I can't about something from Windows on an Apple computer. Yeah, I mean, you've got to get a compiler that's specific to that particular type of machine share.

And I think that's what basically what the IBM was all about. But but here's the reason that they're after it is that there is an issue with Unix or Unix based code, which is everything, which is just to clarify most everything, every every operating system we use at this point is Unix? Is it? Now? Okay again, I'm programming, not my wheelhouse. The thing is is everybody will remember the whole ker buffle of Y two K and how it's going to screw up the banking system because of

the way the numbers go. Well, there's the same issue with Unix. It's called the year eight problem. Simple this again, I had to simplify this, just to wrap my head

around it. What it means is that there's gonna be an issue at three hours, fourteen seconds or fourteen minutes seven seconds universal time code is that what UTC stands for, Okay, on the nineteenth of January, at which point, because of the way that Unix encodes the date time in binary format, it's not going to be able to record it properly anymore, and it's clocks are gonna jump back to one. Um

it runs out of space? Is it runs out of space where it starts over to what those old Well, so it only hasn't a specific number of slots right, correct, right, So it can't be an infinite Oh, we'll just have all of this binary code go on forever. So I from what I understand from the research that I did about this, is that what happens at that very second is that you hit the limit. So it's going to restart, yeah, or whatever the computer things. But really the main problem

is it runs out of out of things. It can't go to the next second. Yes, exactly, that's my understanding. But again I'm not that I've used unix. Is actually my jobs in the past. I don't recall we're hearing about this in particular, is well, it's because it's been solved at this point. It's not. It's not it's a non issue. But at this time in programming history, it was an issue that IBM actually knew about and that they were not advertising for reasons that are probably fairly clear.

And actually that you know, as he was saying, IBM knew about it, and they confirmed it after this story because a bunch of people were saying, well, IBM, is this true? Can you validate this? And they said, well, we're really going to tell anybody, but yes, And apparently it was one of those things that very a few people knew about outside of IBM. Apparently that's what I've read, and and in Teeter's time as well as ours. Um, you know, like Devil was talking about, everything was Unix space.

So it was going to cause this huge problem because they hadn't figured out how to fix it in his time, so they had to reset it with this new computer. Right. I'm gonna be honest, I still don't understand what the IBM gonna do. That doesn't make a lot of sense. Well, it actually, I don't know. When you go out and read it at Yeah, you can read it and if if code makes sense to you, you'll get it. It doesn't to me as many times as I read it in many versions. It's just that I just don't think

that way. But but back to Teter, he he said that his reason for being in the year two thousand was for personal reasons. Over the period of about four months, he responded to questions from people who were pasting on the forums. He described future events. But he always and I gotta admit this is a pretty good thing that

he did for himself. Yeah, is He always kind of gave the general disclaimer that there are multiple realities and alternate realities do exist, and so it's possible that we might not be in the same timeline as where he came from. Well, didn't he describe the way that you have to time travel to without paradoxes in that way? Okay, Yeah, we're definitely gonna get to that. And obviously he's not at the same time on his US because the first thing that comes up there. Yeah, but he he talks

about some things. He gives some dire warnings for everybody to learn first aid and stop eating beef because well mad cow disease is a huge, terrible problem in his time. In fairness, it was a little bit of a thing for us. It was a little bit of a thing for us. But evidently in his time is knocking people out left, right and center. Although again, in fairness, I'm not totally sure how first aid like helps with mad cow disease. But okay, he was talking about an apocalypse. Yeah, yeah,

that's that's where that's coming from. It. We're going to get into that just in a moment. I just want to get a couple of other things that he gave information on. He provided a bunch of tactical specs regarding how time travel worked, which were I read through a little bit of it. It's pretty interesting. He used some really complex algorithms. He gave some hard to understand images of his time machine. And his time machine was pretty awesome because it was well, the first one was in

uh god, what was it? It was a car? Well know, it eventually into yeah, yeah, he moved it to a suburban, but it was in some kind of seventies sports car. I want to say it was like a Camaro or a core of I love this thing, man. I love also that you know, you need a car for it, but you can just move it from car to car. Yeah, it's just you know, it's like the Dolorean future, except for that the Dorian was integral to that time machine, right, it was embedded in the DeLorean, whereas this thing was

a huge box. Right do you have to do you have to like have a car so you can plug this thing into the cigarette lighter and like to make it move with you. That that's like connection. So did he go to it like a museum and get himself a classic seventies car? Or why didn't he just didn't you grab a futuristic car and bring that back? That would have been much more cool. I think he wanted to blend in, right, if your time travel, you want to blend in a little. Yeah, you don't want to

have a twenty seven car. But also maybe cars didn't really maybe he could find one, right, I don't know. I mean, that's a hard thing is is he showed a lot of things that we're plausible, but there isn't a whole lot there to to really back up. The other thing that he showed, of course, was his his awesomely cool futuristic military insignia. I think it's kind of cool. It is. It's it makes me think of something that's

a cross between stargate and NASA. Yeah. Yeah, it totally does look like a kind of a space insignia that somebody would have come up with in the eighties. Yeah, you know, or you know, ripped off from an Air Force group or something like that. I mean, it's it's hard to say, but but like I said, Teeter, he made a lot of predictions, uh that that don't appear to have come true, and there's there there were some

great ones. He's got one left, which is that in this year, World War three is going to break out, which I'm really hoping doesn't happen. Yeah, I hope it doesn't happen to Actually, when you look at the world is kind of going up in flames easday. Well there's here's I just want to call out a couple that

a handful that he gave note of. First one is that a civil war would break out in the US and it would start with civil unrest and take off in two thousand five and would split the US eventually into five separate regions with different leaders and objectives, which obviously hasn't happened. We didn't break up in two thousand and eight. The two thousand eight Olympics would be canceled.

That obviously didn't happen. They were in Beijing. He made a comment, I believe the comment was something along the lines of have you figured out the overheating problem with your space plane? He called it a space plan, which people have said was a reference to the space Shuttle. Well, if you know your history, Columbia space a disaster of two thousand three was caused because a piece of insulating

foam on the which rocket is it? It was the main rocket that lifts it off from the Earth, the booster rocket, I think it is, which one it was. Chunk of foam came off, hit the tip of the wing, caused a hole which, when the shuttle re entered the atmosphere, began to disintegrate because of the friction and the heat and the pressure, which of course then caused the whole thing to disintegrate and kill everybody. I'm not willing to

overheating issue. That's that's more like overheating and bursting and the bursting into flames, And no, it's not. It's an issue of faulty equipment. It's just not secured, right. Yeah. Well, and they've they obviously fixed this for all future missions. But people have pointed to that as well. Looked he was right. We've got another one where he said China would put a man into orbit, which was an easy one. Yeah, it's just a matter of time. He did it in

two thousand and three. Uh. This one that didn't come through was that cern would discover time travel in the year two thousand and one. You don't know that, and as far as we know that, it hasn't happened. You don't know. Well, though, you're right, I don't about why

would day Oh my god, can you imagine? Well you think about this if you if you want to keep the existence of time travel under wraps, and some guy goes out and blabs, you just get in the timechine, go back to the day before he blabs and kill him exactly. Isn't that we'd never know? Wow, he slipped on a banana? Better? Better still, you know you go back to you go back to a day before whoever briefed this guy on the time travel thing and just a whisper to somebody, Hey, don't tell him he's a

blabber mouth. Yeah, that's a much nicer way to go about it. Wow, Joe going the moral route. I don't

usually do that. No, you better not doing anymore. The one thing that he did say, and and he well, and he did really well as we talked about, was he talked about the fact that there was the multiple timeline theory is real, and that is why some of the things that he saw weren't the same at the time, is what he knew should have been happening in two thousands and just if if you haven't seen a sci fi show that talks about alternate reality or how time

can quote unquote split into different realities, here's a very simplified version. You've got a coin in your hand and you flip it and it lands on heads, and your timeline continues on as you know it, but in an alternate one, the coin lands on tails, and the timeline jogs off and it splits off from itself, and from there you know that it's landed from tails. So now there's two. That's a very very basic basic sums it up though, and what it means a sense, a sense

that things are things are happening. One following one direction or there all the time, millions of times every second around the world will strains. We've got a lot of universes out there. Yeah, there's I mean, there's the quantum physics theory, right, is that like all possibilities are happening at all time until your brain focuses on one and decides to see that one. Right, you can watch Oh god, what's the movie? What the bleep do we know? Do

you guys? Did you guys ever see that? It's like a pretty metaphysical telling of quantum physics, but also super accessible if you're interested and anyways, it's you know, like I said, it's just really easy accessible way too, I guess kind of start to wrap your head. Yeah, you know,

if if that's something that may interest you. I'm not saying it's you know, comprehensive in any way, but you know, so in that universe, in that theory that you know, the flip of the coin, the coin is literally impinite until it's Schrodinger right, Yeah, yeah, right, same thing. So all those millions of different universes all out there in the same time. This is a solid solid explanation for Yeah.

The thing about this that the implication of the multiverse thing is though, is that is that so many new universes are being created every second by all the different all the different changes that go on. It means just sooner or later we're gonna run. Essentially, we're gonna run of ram. This is going to get real Medici is going to end real quick. But there's a lot of stuff out there about time is just how your brain experiences your life. It's not actually linear. Therefore, I won't

run out of everything. Everything that could have ever possibly happened is happening all at once. Yeah, that's true. There is that theory, and that's there's a time travel theory from that is that you can because everything is happening all at the same time, and then we just just time is just an illusion that helps us keep track of things and make sense of things. That means that all you need to do is jump over to a multiverse to travel to a different point in time. And

that's what Peter did. Yeah, and that's and that's uh so essentially all you need to do is in a teleportation device. And we've already and actually we were already working on teleportation right here on planet Earth. Well, you actually announced, so that could happen. Maybe he did. Maybe maybe he did. The one thing that I and and I didn't really I didn't grasp a lot of what you guys just talking about. But the one thing that I really liked was the way that this applied and

he explained. Also, everybody I'm hoping has heard of the grandfather paradox. Futura addresses it pretty solidly, so the grand if you have again, if you haven't heard of it, The grandfather paradox was first described in n says a time traveler goes back in time and he kills his grandfather before his grandfather meets his grandmother. Problem is, of course, as a result of the time traveler can't have been born, so then his grandfather can't have been killed. So it's

just it's just paradox. If to have one, you can't have the other. So that the alter reality thing solves that well, actually, and it doesn't need to need to be solved by alternate reality, because you can go back. You can go back in time murder your grandfather and not cease to exists because your grandmother had an affair and he's not actually your grandfather. Yeah, that's what you can and just be your own grandfather. There is that.

There is that, okay, um, But essentially, yeah, he's from a different timeline, so that's why everything's not gonna work. He could also he could also argue that because he's back here, you know, shooting his mouth off and saying stuff, he probably shouldn't be saying the timeline and I don't know that he wasn't wanting to do that. But let's get into the there's really kind of like the other ones, really just two theories about this whole thing. Ye. Of course,

A is that he really was a time traveler. And I did, of course look at the specs and they make sense to me from a guy who doesn't know how time travel works. So it's impressively detailed, and there's there's some stuff in there that seems accurate. He he did kind of hit the mark on a few things, but like I said, the multiverse thing really defends him, so he could have been real. The problem actually that I read about the whole you know, the science behind

it and all that stuff. With the specs that he described, that that unit that he would have moved from car to car, I think they said would have weighed somewhere like in the neighborhood of pounds, and that he claimed to have just moved it himself. He never said he

didn't have a forkliff. Perhaps there are really strong he is a soldier, But so that was That was a problem that I thought presented fairly frequently, was that people did look at the specs and kind of trying to do the math and crunch the numbers on what that thing would have weighed at that point, and it was just the right. Yeah. The other thing is that he

wasn't a scientist from his time. He was a soldier and then a farmer according to him, who then got into the time travel program as an adult and was sent back. So he's grasp of it might not have been accurate. The specs that he posted were supposedly pictures that he took of the user manual, so that it doesn't have to be his understanding was wrong. Good point posted specs that he ostensibly had, and he didn't have to understand what it meant. Yes, uh, well, let's do

the second theory on which is it's a hoax. Well, yeah, he turns Teter didn't appear for the first time ever in the year two thousand. He first appeared in nine Namee turned up in with with facts is that were sent to the Art Bell. At least the first one, I believe was on the twenty nine of July, and it claimed to be from someone who was a time traveler from the year twenty four. The year difference two years difference confused from the process of time traveling. Could

be he forgot what he wasn't completely materialized. I don't know figured out how this fact machine thing worked. Maybe he maybe he actually was in the year four. Maybe that was the first time or the second time that he went back. I don't know. But the person who said the facts made many similar claims about a few teacher But instead of talking about the year twenty eight issue, the units issue, was making all kinds of claims about the white two K issues that everybody was worried about

at the time. That's a problem if you're going to go public in two thousands. Yes, uh, there is a TV show called Voyager. It's an Italian TV show and they investigated this. Yeah, in two thousand and eight they got a hold of a private detective named Mike Lynch who found that there was no registry traces uh present or past of a John Teeter or Teeter family. That's okay,

he's from a different universe. But the thing is Teeter said that he was from Florida, and nobody in that red that area that he looked for that family name wasn't registered. But he did find a for profit company called the John Teeter found Dation which was formed on the sixteenth September two three. It had no office, it was it had a p O box in kissimme? Is that how you say that? Kissing me? I'm gonna go

for kissing me alright, kissing me Florida. There's there's no evidence anywhere of Teeter to be found, and the only person who happens to be the CEO of the John Teeter Foundation by the name of Larry Haber, is the only person who ever seems to have met Teeter or have any encounters with life in real life. In I R L scary, I was about to make the same joke. Yeah, the private detective kind of. He came to the conclusion that likely Teeter was a guy by the name of

John Rick Haber, who was the lawyer's brother. He was a computer scientist. He would have known about some of the things with the IBM and the Unix issue. And his name evidently is on a post office box application, uh for the John Dieter Foundation. Okay, so there's a problem. So I'm while I love the multiverse idea and that makes so much of this plausible, that private investigator for me at least kind of put the cap on this. Well.

I think the reason that it's important for us to do these stories, and specifically for us as the skeptics I guess, to do these stories is that I think that at least one of us, but maybe all three of us, believe in time travel and believe that the multiverse theory is that, Yeah, what you just do as an existence human being, But you know, that's the sort of thing. It's the same thing with those really bogus

claims of aliens. Is it's really important to take head on the issues of time travel when somebody is just clearly just lying about it, when it just debases any kind of real claims that may or may not come up. Yeah, I'm very skeptical about time travel. I mean, but you never know. Things that we thought were impossible a hundred years ago, they're happening now, So who the hell knows? Yeah, we have little devices in our phone that let us

talk to people halfway across the world. Years ago didn't even exist, and you couldn't even have conceived conversations with my ninety seven year old grandmother fairly frequently where you know, we talked about the podcast sometimes and it's like, okay, we're starting, all right, you know the radio, but it's the internet. Do you know the Internet? No, okay, all right, let's just so we put it on tape and we mail it to everybody. Yeah, that's how we you know

it's true, it's who knows? Who knows? Yeah, we'll find out someday. I'll live to easily. You guys probably will I'm I'm guessing I probably will. You get hit by a bus cab. And unless nuclear war breaks out this year, yeah, pretty big trouble will be poking our heads out of the rubble. And hey, titter was right? Does exist? Oh my god? So yeah, I mean, I guess if you if you really want time travel to be a reality, then you've got to be hoping for nuclear war this year. Yeah,

I guess. Or it's a different universe, it doesn't really matter. Multiverse. It's multiverse, different multiverse. Yeah. Anyways, the other thing about you would think if time travel existed in the future and they were sending people back to do things that that retrieve things or for whatever on special missions, you would think that they would have briefed them and say, hey, by the way, don't change, don't change the future, don't don't go to say thing they'll tell you know. I mean, yeah,

you think you get that. That would be the basis. Well, that's if time is truly linear. If it's a multiverse scenario, then who cares. It doesn't matter. As long as you come back to the right one. It doesn't matter. But you can screw up other timelines, but it doesn't matter your timeline. It's not your paramox exactly. I guess with that, we're going to wrap it up. It's been an awesome adventure your time and space. I still don't see why you needed an I I just go google it. I'm

sure it will become very apparent. Um. This episode, along with some of our research, is on the website Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You can leave us a comment there. You can also do some awesome stuff on that sidebar. There. We've got T shirts and phone cases. I just got my phone case, so if you live in Portland you might be able to find me now, which is weird. Yeah, yeah, we've got stuff on that. I still need to buy something.

I still need to get my shirt. Yeah. Thank you to everybody, yeah for real, and also thank you to everybody who's donated. A few standout donors are let's see, Kathleen and Clarissa, and Becca and Wendy have all donated recently. I think, hey, guys, the chicks are showing you up. Come on, I knew. Also on our website you can find this new thing that we have which is transcripts, and those are all being transcribed by a woman by

the name of Alison Wison. All the ones are on the site right now as of the recording of this episode. Yeah yeah, she's great. Um so if you want to read it, or if you have any hearing impaired people or anything like that, the transcripts right there. We can be a little hard to understand sometimes, particularly in our old episodes, so that's a good resource there, give her something. Really, I was glad to of a T shirt, I think. Yeah. Yeah,

So anyway, Allison, tex a millionaire. Yeah, so you might be listening to us on the website, but probably not. You're probably listening to us on iTunes. That's where everybody's listening to us. If you are listening to us on iTunes, leave us a comment and a reading. That's how other people find us. Even if it's a bad rating and you hate that Steve elongates his words, that's fine, leave us a rating. We like to hear what you guys have to say. We kin for them, but do whatever

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dormant recently, but just okay, it's cool, calm down. None of us are busy, everet and you can always send us an email if you have feedback if you want to correct our science on any of these, because I'm sure that there's some really messed up science that we talked about. If you are an expert on the IB would love to hear from Yeah, there's lots of other stuff that we'd love to hear you hear from you about. If you've got suggestions, stop sending us weird murder suggestions

please please can continue set please send them. I was gonna say, if you are a time traveler from the future, I would like to know if if our podcast gets so huge that we eventually are offered like if we or something like that, or if we kind the basis of the whole society or something like that like Bill and Ted. We really kind of like to know. I mean, how big do we get? Are we gonna be? Are we going to get bigger than serial We We want to know, So email us all of that. That email

address is thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. So with that, I think we're going to scoot on out of here back to the future just in time be excellent to each other.