My Accidental Time Travel Adventure

A scientist takes a plunge in a wormhole back in time.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My accidental time travel adventure. I never thought I'd invent
a time machine, mostly because I wasn't trying to my
actual goal to make the perfect cup of coffee, you know,
the kind that doesn't taste like bitter disappointment. But science
has a funny way of going off script, and that's
how I ended up stuck in the Jurassic period with

(00:22):
a velociraptor who thought I was dinner. Let me back
up the coffee that broke physics. My name is doctor
Linda Fairweather, and I'm a quantum physicist who loves caffeine
more than people. I was in my lab tinkering with
a prototype energy condenser. Don't ask me to explain it.

(00:42):
Even I barely understood it. When inspiration struck. What if
I use quantum particles to heat my coffee evenly, at
a molecular level. Brilliant? Right? Wrong? I poured my coffee
into the condenser and hit the button. Instead of a
perfect cupp Joe, the room started vibrating like I was

(01:02):
inside a drum. A glowing vortex opened in the middle
of my desk, sucking in everything that wasn't bolted down,
including my lab assistant sandwich which was the only thing
he cared about. Doctor Fairweather, he yelled, what did you do?
I think I made a wormhole, I replied, just before

(01:24):
the vortex sucked me in. Two. Welcome to the Jurassic Period.
When I landed face first on a patch of dirt,
I knew three things. One my coffee was gone. Two
I was not in Kansas anymore. Three, something very large
was breathing behind me. I turned around slowly, and there

(01:44):
it was a velociraptor. Now movies will tell you velociraptors
are scary, fast and intelligent. What they won't tell you
is that they drool a lot. Oh no, I muttered,
I'm a snack. The velosa who raptor lunged, But just
as it was about to chomp me, I instinctively threw

(02:05):
the only thing I had on me, my phone. Turns
out dinosaurs are easily distracted by shiny objects. While it
tried to eat my iPhone, I scrambled up a tree
and prayed it didn't have a cousin named t Rex,
making friends sort of. After spending the night in the tree,

(02:25):
note prehistoric mosquitoes are the worst, I realized I needed
a plan. Luckily, I've seen enough survival shows to know
that step one is don't die. Step two make allies.
I started by following a herd of docile looking dinosaurs
imagine giant cows with spikes. I figured they were my

(02:46):
best bet for safety until one of them sneezed on me. Dinosaurs, not,
by the way, is worse than you think. Eventually, I
stumbled upon a clearing where I found something incredible, a
primitive human tribe. They weren't cave men liking cartoons, but
they were definitely early humans. They were also arguing over

(03:07):
a stick, which I quickly realized was a who gets
to hit the next predator discussion. I introduced myself in
the universal language of don't kill me. Specifically, I waved
my hands and yelled, Hi, I'm Linda. They stared at
me like I was a particularly stupid velociraptor, but they
didn't attack, so I took that as progress inventing fire. Accidentally,

(03:33):
after a few days of grunting, pointing, and trying not
to die of dysentery, I realized something. I might be
stuck here forever. My wormhole was gone, and I had
no idea how to recreate it. But Hey, I had
a PhD. So how hard could it be to survive? Answer?
Very hard. On one particularly cold night, I tried to

(03:55):
show the tribe how to make fire, you know, the
old rub sticks together trick. Turns out I'm bad at
rubbing sticks. Frustrated, I banged a couple of rocks together
and accidentally caused a spark that lit the chief's fur
skirt on fire. Chaos, absolute chaos. They ran around screaming

(04:15):
while I yelled stop, drop and roll, which shockingly they
did not understand. Eventually they put the fire out, but
the chief was now pantsless and very angry. I spent
the next two days banished to the we don't like
you side of the camp The return of the Wormhole.
Just as I was getting used to prehistoric life read

(04:39):
eating questionable berries and dodging dinosaurs, the wormhole reappeared. It
popped into existence one night, right above the campfire. The
tribe stared at it in awe, clearly convinced I was
some kind of sorcerer. Okay, Linda, I said to myself,
you've got one shot at this. Grab a stick, because

(05:01):
apparently I'd become a fan of sticks, and leapt into
the vortex back to the lab. When I landed back
in my lab, my assistant was sitting there eating a
new sandwich. He barely looked up. Where have you been,
he asked, Jurassic period, I said, brushing off dinosaur dirt.
It was wild. Did you bring back proof? I reached

(05:24):
into my pocket and pulled out a tiny glowing rock
I'd found near the tribe's campfire. Proof enough. Looks like
a weird pebble, he said, unimpressed, I sighed, it's fine.
Let's just agree that wormholes and coffee don't mix.