What a creative post! this must be one of those ideas you thought of on one of your bike rides. I think Frank should definately be a character in the movie.
Nate: great concept for a movie because you can plant ideas in the hearts of movie goes so that maybe they leave the movie and reflexively start doing little things that help the 2025-2075 period that now will be critical. Going back and planting one tree to see the ripple of a giant tree in the future and how that tree informs a community - so many visuals to write into this. Last scene is one monarch butterfly landing on the finger of the eco guy (who’s hungover from the rave) and it does one thing - flaps its wings. This then reminds him and he remembers **why** he went back…. :). Happy New Year also Nate - see you then :)
My thought is that we already have many "time machines". They are called "books". Particularly History books. The gradual rise and fall of the human experiment has been well-documented. YOU personally have read many of them I am sure, otherwise TGS would not exist. Your didactic intentions are obvious and admirable. Your weekly, on-going efforts towards sense-making and benign wisdom is as good of a "movie" as we can expect. Relax, frolic with Frank n' ducks, and have a great holiday! Forever thank you.
Nate, you should interview Aaron Beaudry, he just wrote his first novel "Amid the Ashes". It's unique in that it tells a constructive and positive story about life during the great simplification. He focuses on how the end of modernity doesn't have to be a dystopian apocalypse and instead focuses on how it can be a profound opportunity for rediscovery and connection.
That sounds great. Right on time, too -- that's exactly what we need more of now. That dystopian scenario has gotten really old, hasn't it? An example of how easily we can get into hypnotizing ourselves voluntarily into expecting what we most fear, instead of working on what we'd most like to create. I'm ready for a happier and more constructive outcome.
Good idea, Nate! Probably your idea would be best as a miniseries, 6 -10 episodes. Some really good shows are done that way nowadays. It might be interesting to host brainstorming sessions with your friends and colleagues here on your channel.
the time traveler would have to go back to 10,000 BCE Fertile Crescent, to recognize that what awakens the superorganism is large-scale agriculture, which supports ultra-sociality with specialized roles and rising population (a la Lisi Krall's "Bitter Harvest"); capitalism merely formalized the Ponzi scheme and ff supercharged it
50 years ago I was investigating this new thing... putting solar panels on my house. Didn't manage to do it until 1986.... thanks for all you do, Nate.
You want to experience time travel? Go deep into a forest, so deep you don’t hear the sound of cars or planes….then just sit and listen…that is exactly what the forest sounded like and looked like a thousand years ago…
Time travel isn’t an available option but back casting is. Imagine a successful outcome in the future with its characteristics of a healthy humanity and biosphere. The economic Super-organism has made the leap to effective restoration of past damages and, while not perfect, the joy of life, the collective survival, is looking good. This is the story of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. The economic framework is introduced in chapter 42, called “the Chen plan” it’s based on the real life work Dr. Delton Chen- now called the global carbon reward. It’s a thermodynamically correct way forward but it’s not been recognized. Regenerative future in the service of life is the goal and outcome.
Or, he travels back and creates a podcast, broadcasting ideas & information in service to life. I love your idea, & thank you for traveling to this point in time!
Omg Frank 🥺 Himbs lil face. I can’t 😩😍 IMO one of the best movies/characters depicting how wise it is to remain humble in the reality of earth systems and the complexity of life is Jurassic Park, and Jeff Goldblum’s character, the chaos theorist (aka systems guy) I wrote some novels a long time ago, kinda cli-fi, two of the three were published. I’ve had an idea for another series maybe, where groups of people in the near future are recruited to go back to different points and places in time to try and influence the people and cultures there to remain earth/systems aware, and shenanigans ensue. Like, try not to get burned at the stake, kind of a thing. Outlander meets Jane Eyre was my tagline (I had to have some romance etc 🤣🙄) Keep studying warm, frens!
I like the idea of making the man and woman a romantic couple. A bit of an odd pair (him a hippie ecologist type, and her an investment banker, but very much in love), but when they find the Time Machine and go back in time, they are taken in opposite directions, him succumbing to the desires of the superorganism, her awakening to its destruction. As their characters make these arcs, it puts a strain on their relationship, which ultimately ends in heartbreak. Of course, the breakdown of their romantic relationship is an analogue of humanity’s relationship with the ecosphere. Or something like that…😅
Since I've been plowing through these episodes they've been sitting in my unconscious enough where I had a dream of Nate last night (which kind of relates to this idea of time travel). In case you see this Nate, I'll write it as if you will :) In the dream I believe I was seeing what I perceive at your heart/spirit in practice. I was introducing others to you at a massive doorway between the black hole we were standing in and an idyllic scene. Once we gathered together you (Nate) opened the doorway into an idyllic waterfall scene. With joy overflowing, you toured the scene. It was a child-like energy and pride you exuded as you beamed with light walking through this scene and crafting the vision for what can be. In my intuition I believe I sense the deeper journey and emergence of your capacity (Nate) to hold the darkness while also greeting the emergent future with joy. For myself I've been reflecting on the nature of being human and especially in this time - to 'travel' between states of consciousness where we face the dark reality while simultaneously holding hope for a future we imagine (fantasy/creation/ideation), and then to transform our current reality through action in the now. In a way it's a kind if time travel we must constantly do in order to participate in change. AGI explorations seem to be illuminating these concepts as well as theories of everything that explore consciousness, time and space and the nature of reality. I think we are living the film now, and for me, I want to whole-heartedly embrace the vision for the future us pro-social people can see: it's ours for the making.
What a fantastic dream! It totally reflects what I've been experiencing connecting here. And yes, the time has arrived -- I certainly feel it. Carrying with us the lessons gleaned from studying our misunderstandings in the past, it's time we focused on the kind of world we want to create for ourselves and our progeny, and for the Earth herself and all her creatures... and on how best to move forward in creating it.
Thanks again, Nate! Much appreciate the imagination and thought experiments that can better inform our present choices. To add to the ideas... the time travelers also connect and help nurture existing 'islands of coherence'... the local communities already active back in the 70s and for a variety of reasons, didn't achieve the regenerative continuity that they had hoped to. A slight difference to your superorganism-free zones, but working more with the folks already trying to live that way and leverage technologies to accelerate the network affect. Thank you for expanding the idea in many directions... I'm hopeful those who listen will resonate with 'something' and then go do that thing... at least that's my goal.
Terrific idea, Nate! Here's a possible episode: The hero finds himself back in December 1973 when the House Committee in the USA Congress is writing the final version of the Endangered Species Act to be passed by both houses and then signed by President Nixon on Dec 28. Our hero is aware of how difficult it has become 50 years later to fully fund and get anything much accomplished in implementing the Act, which has not only become very divisive and subject to court remands but now entails 1,780 animals and plants on the list - with more being added every year. Our hero knows that plants were added by staff to the draft bill only a few days earlier - and this evening will be the final hours of staff work. He also knows that a citizen group (Torreya Guardians) used a loophole (just for plants) to conduct "assisted migration" northward of a climate-endangered tree in Florida beginning in 2005 such that in 2018 their plantings began producing seeds in Ohio - even though the official actions in behalf of the plant in Florida had not halted their decline, nor enabled them to begin producing seeds again in their tiny "glacial refuge" that had trapped the species in Florida ever since the glaciers retreated from Ohio. He arranges to be in a restaurant where 3 of the staff members are eating dinner together, in prep for the final all-nighter to finish their work. He reminds the group that a version of the ESA had passed in 1966, then was expanded in 1969, and so it might be best to not overburden the act this time around. "Look, guys, we're going to require agency staff this time around to figure out actual land boundaries to become the 'critical habitat'. They're also going to have to publish a recovery plan for each listing - and specify things like what actions to take and what population increases will suffice for achieving the ultimate goal: delisting. They've never had to do any of that before. That's a heck of a lot of scientific understanding required - and then they have to pass a comment period for the public - and all the commercial landowners and ranchers and oil companies worried about the consequences are going to challenge them in court. So let's not over-reach this time. Let's just stick with wildlife. No plants this time around." Someone protests: "But the United Nations project to develop a global list of endangered species is already thinking about plants. The USA has got to stay ahead of them. We've always been the first in environmental law improvements. Let's stay that way." Discussion and some pivotal little event, like spilled coffee, happens. And the result is that plants were not put into the act. Which means that upon the 50th anniversary in 2023, there is widespread celebration of the Act's accomplishments for animals - and a parallel celebration by NGOs and garden clubs and land trusts and citizen groups who have long been helping declining plants through their own volunteer efforts, such that the Act never had to be amended to include plants. If that hadn't happened, the 50th anniversary of the Act would have shown more than a billion dollars being spent each year, and with far more than half of the backlogged species waiting for action being plants. That is what actually happened.
Nice ideas... But I just have one problem with this script. It's sharply individualistic, a tale of Superheroes changing the curse of the world. You should look up on a more collectivist ground or interdependent if you prefer (collectivism being still a bad word in the USA). I don't believe in Avengers, Superman or Captain America saving the world, as I don't believe in Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos saving our civilization. Rather, what I see is almost content in this statement made by Jørgen Randers when he declared in 2012 at the Smithsonian Institute, celebrating in Washington the 40th anniversary of the book "The Limits to Growth" (he's one of the writers), that the American political regime, whose CEOs remain enslaved to the quarterly results of their corporations and political actors hampered by election results every two years, was unable to face the challenges of the century, as it was unable to implement the policies required without seeing them defeated by the electoral alternations game, but that the Chinese political regime was capable of doing so, as it was capable of planning over a long enough period. Or silently It seems to me that it's what we are seeing right now and probably more accurately after the 20th of January 2025. But I cannot ignore that the Carbon Pulse is a direct predicament of the thermodynamic constraints that undermine the following assertion: Life is formed by energy-dissipating structures. In an open thermodynamic system such as Earth, the greater the internal complexity of these dissipative structures, the more energy they consume to maintain this complexity and the more entropy (i.e. disorder) they generate outside of them. Human societies are not immune to these thermodynamic constraints. More specifically, the technosphere constantly requires energy inputs to power its operation. This is a direct consequence of the "memetic mutations" that our cultural memory allows, having begun from the first hominids, starting from cutting stone through the conquest of fire to the Neolithic revolution, then other developments in technoculture leading to the cumulative use of all the primary energy sources available on our planet. All industrial revolutions from the steam engine to 5G rely on the abundance of energy to support them. BTW I offer you my best Saturnalia's day or Nowell or Yule to celebrate the shortest day of this year and longest night on the 20th of December. I just wish that your podcast still continues to illuminate some wisdom to all of us.
Great start Nate, thank you! I'm a 72 year-young human, and student in Narrative Futures at the University of Edinburgh. What comes to mind right now is: I am my grandfather, my father, myself, my son, my grandson and great grandson, alongside my grandmother, mother, daughter, granddaughter, greatgranddaughter. We shapeshift through time even from our Pictish and Celtic ancestry to my great grandson and granddaughter's life in (currently renewing) Findhorn (per Mt Dinner With Andre). Let's talk to Daniel Christian Wahl and Rob Hopkins. Cheers to you, Franky and our other animaliens who should also come along!
Amazing! I had a similar idea last year, but with only one protagonist. Before I go there, one quick observation about your original plot. The captured female traveler sounds a lot like a representative of you. 🤔 In my scenario, a well informed activist finds a way into the past. Knowing the downfalls he/she tries to change the course of history, but fails. The movie progresses to current times, revealing today’s issues and problems, including those less familiar to the general public. Frustrated he/she finds a way back a second time, but this time draws notoriety and manages to garner a global following. He/she changes developmental trajectory in many ways including: regenerative agriculture on a massive scale, electric transportation methods, energy conservation practices, maintenance of environmental ecosystems, etc.. The movie then marches to current times revealing a much different situation with more supportive societies, few species loss, smaller human population, more equanimity and so on. The idea is to bring more current problems to consciousness, while providing a form of template to drive towards a different future.
Cool idea, Nate! Thanks for sharing. It might be interesting to see them simply inject certain facts/interpretations/suggestions into conversations that would have otherwise gone unchallenged or brought ideas into spaces they may not have otherwise been heard or understood.They could drop in at important places at different times to provide that little extra nudge into accepting or entertaining different futures. There would be unexpected radeoffs. One would only need to look at a list of ecological and socioeconomic/political events and pull out the red string to see what interesting "sidequests" emerge. Frankly though, it sounds a little like a Doctor Who movie sans aliens and interdimensional/spatial travel. They'd still be in the same place, just at a different time so the events would have to be reflected in the history of that place within the broader story being told unless you'd like to change the frame of reference up to some end.
The original Star Trek did a great time-travel episode by Harlan Ellison called "The City on the Edge of Forever" with guest actress Joan Collins. You could follow that plot generally. Dr. McCoy has to be prevented from saving Collins' peace-activist character from being killed by a car because her survival would change the course of history in a bad way. The plot has to work at the level of character and not just idea,. Otherwise, you're in Kim Stanley Robinson territory--too many ideas without good characters to cary them.
Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom - poets, visionaries - realists of a larger reality. - Ursula K. Le Guin On that node, does it have to be a hero story? Does the hero have to be male?
A few years ago in a previous incarnation of my channel, way back when UA-cam still had the video response feature, I posted a video challenge where I asked for videos on how people imagined the world 100 years from now, at a time after most if not all the people we know now would be gone. Got about a dozen wonderful responses, all quite different and some quite surprising. Your time travel story would make a great video response challenge where viewers could explain the narrative they envision through good old fashion story telling. A tricky part is just coming up with an original plot, as it is stunning just how difficult that can be. In my screenplay instead of the protagonist being someone from the future I'd set it in maybe the mid 1970s Detroit and 2 people who discovered access to future events by some type of information flow or communication. Imagine an assembly line worker and a mid level automotive executive being able to access the same source of knowledge. I'd have the line worker treat it as prophetic vision sent as a warning to humanity, and the executive trying to capitalize on it for personal wealth and power while the getting is still good. As the plot thickened I'd have them gradually reverse perspectives where the line worker is seduced by power and wealth from their ministry, and the auto executive concluding that maybe he f'd it up big time (it's the 1970s, of course it's a he). But given the time travel paradox and the endemic exploitative nature of civilization, both ultimately realize that their knowledge of our collective fate would change nothing. The End.
Yes small dogs are so awesome as companion and pet. I can't imagine wolf ancestor of dogs were so small, so they were bred intentionally over many generations to be small, cute and with behavior designed to please humans. Larger dogs are harder to manage unfortunately if you live in confined area and you can't exactly hold them in your arms so easily.
You need to weave a sleeper Lizard Person into the story that kills everybody at the end for no.reason at all. I'm picturing a George Clooney looking head with a gigantic, rhinestone bordered sombrero and make him the creepy guy in the background that never says a word.
Enjoy your holiday season with puppies and ducks and whatever family you've inherited or created. Me and mine will be here in the new year to catch your, always appreciated, gifts.
Hope somebody makes your movie, Nate! I am a bidirectional time traveler. I see the current reality through the lens of a mashup of three prescient sci-fi novels from my wasted youth: Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and A Scanner Darkly by Phillip K. Dick.
For fiction the story needs an inner story for the main character that reflects the outer story. The outer story on its own with the machine is somehow secondary unless it is for an educational purpose. For young people this idea would be great to educate. Basically for a feature you would need to find the drama :)
You might want to watch jesse michael's latest podcast with Colonel Karl nell and Diana Walsch Polsuka. They talk about a time-traveling .Nasa mission control operator, working with townsend brown It's a lengthy interview given to corporate investors.
My belief if someone did (which happens to be impossible, we can only go forward) still I believe they work on community building instead. This is a great idea (your last guest) but I afraid we are starting too late. Still I like this idea even if it not possible. Another idea is going forward and see what happens, when that once comes down. Do we make it to the moon? or build space stations? This is what I think would also make a cool movie showing of what is coming, who knows that might also work. Still I heard it was done, Mad Max they point to, yet they left out that ice age that hanging over our heads. Still that was a block buster so that one, I think it might work. Thanks for triggering this idea, its a Christmas gift for us writers (not movie makers sadly), and a very happy Holiday season, Merry Christ, Happy Hanukah and Kwanzaa!
It is difficult for me to project any supposed values that may be promoted by your time travel idea. You certainly try and I love that you have the spirit for it. Few people seemed then to have that large view perspective that now is only avoided by serious denial. Silent Spring and nuclear annihilation were trend setters in what has become a competitive doom-scape. My take on do-gooder schemes is that they bring with them the blindness of the creator. Teaching a thorough and lasting peace that takes on the whole of the planet is way beyond humanitarian goals. It would require the sacrifice of nearly the totality of modernity and its support/production of the massive overpopulation of humans. Who would support or even imagine such a thing? Perhaps the Nazis were the most likely. They understood slavery.
I think Mike Ruppert, Guy McPherson and many, many, many others have already done or tried to do so..... "WE?" are living the Flick my Friend. Thanks for your great works! Otherwise.... Earth w/o Humans!?
I would modify this idea so that they have a machine that allows them to see into the future. The future would be very bleak, of course, and as it will be in our reality. Then they would modify their ways and they could check with the machine if what they have done so far is enough to avoid the doom.
I don't think super-empowering any individual would make a difference. Even empowering a great political leader would only go so far. I think you're mistaking ability for virtue. Hard for me to see any super-empowered individual, or those around him/her, not being corrupted by that superpower. Thinking as a whole and trying to be somewhat self-skeptical, perhaps there is something intrinsically self-destructive about European civilization. What if African or Asian civilization was dominant? Would we still be hurtling towards the abyss? Maybe, but it would be an attempt to alter the known course. To that end, giving advanced weaponry to such a past civilization would allow them to defeat European colonization and even reverse it. The different civilization that emerges might make different choices.
Great idea. There would of course need to be a romantic element. I was really disappointed Don't Look Up did not resonate with more people. I have been considering a comic strip idea for quite some time, just wish I had a little more artistic talent. I have to disagree with the comment about education not changing things. I think our dilemma is largely a result of a lack of education on ecology/earth systems and not focusing enough on critical thinking skills in K-12.
Frank (and the others) are adopted - we found him in the woods behind the office. tried for 3 weeks to find his owner - we think he was dumped. (10 years ago!)
Can Hollywood help change the thinking of general audiences? Your movie idea is interesting and deserves to be fully thought out, but, I think no; a Hollywood movie will not changes things very much. Take the 2021 movie Don't Look Up. It is funny, serious, well made and well acted, with a big name cast. It tells of the immanent end of life on Earth. Immanent. How much has it affected general thinking. I would say, not enough to make a difference. I think the place to focus efforts is in the middle three categories of your TGS audiences. Turn the lead horses and the team will follow.
The Day After Tomorrow was a great movie, but a little too much Hollywood…watch Threads…it the British version of a nuclear war…I my option far more realistic and it shows the effect for years
...hard to follow, too much referenced talk... sorry about that comment of mine, but interesting that you bring out the subject about a possible movie, but I've been thinking of a more realistic movie about a future, not dystopian and not embellished, just putting together what we know, ecological overshoot, carbon pulse ending, population trends, economy etc... and a not too distant future... say 2100 or 20150. Art Berman uploaded a kind of cartoonish clip of how the future could look like, but with a plot line made into a real movie could cause a splash!.. no exagerations like apes or zombies.....a future if we do nothing and one where we do starting now!
Nate, better you start looking to the stories that are being told in recent decades, more and more... This is already being done 😉😉 You are not in Kansas anymore Dorothy
Happy Solstice to you and the team, Nate. Thank you for another year of thought provoking content, and for your common sense.
What a creative post! this must be one of those ideas you thought of on one of your bike rides. I think Frank should definately be a character in the movie.
Nate: great concept for a movie because you can plant ideas in the hearts of movie goes so that maybe they leave the movie and reflexively start doing little things that help the 2025-2075 period that now will be critical.
Going back and planting one tree to see the ripple of a giant tree in the future and how that tree informs a community - so many visuals to write into this. Last scene is one monarch butterfly landing on the finger of the eco guy (who’s hungover from the rave) and it does one thing - flaps its wings. This then reminds him and he remembers **why** he went back…. :). Happy New Year also Nate - see you then :)
My thought is that we already have many "time machines". They are called "books". Particularly History books. The gradual rise and fall of the human experiment has been well-documented. YOU personally have read many of them I am sure, otherwise TGS would not exist. Your didactic intentions are obvious and admirable. Your weekly, on-going efforts towards sense-making and benign wisdom is as good of a "movie" as we can expect. Relax, frolic with Frank n' ducks, and have a great holiday! Forever thank you.
Nate, you should interview Aaron Beaudry, he just wrote his first novel "Amid the Ashes". It's unique in that it tells a constructive and positive story about life during the great simplification. He focuses on how the end of modernity doesn't have to be a dystopian apocalypse and instead focuses on how it can be a profound opportunity for rediscovery and connection.
That sounds great. Right on time, too -- that's exactly what we need more of now.
That dystopian scenario has gotten really old, hasn't it? An example of how easily we can get into hypnotizing ourselves voluntarily into expecting what we most fear, instead of working on what we'd most like to create. I'm ready for a happier and more constructive outcome.
Good idea, Nate! Probably your idea would be best as a miniseries, 6 -10 episodes. Some really good shows are done that way nowadays. It might be interesting to host brainstorming sessions with your friends and colleagues here on your channel.
Frank gives the lovies. Aww happy holidays!
the time traveler would have to go back to 10,000 BCE Fertile Crescent, to recognize that what awakens the superorganism is large-scale agriculture, which supports ultra-sociality with specialized roles and rising population (a la Lisi Krall's "Bitter Harvest"); capitalism merely formalized the Ponzi scheme and ff supercharged it
50 years ago I was investigating this new thing... putting solar panels on my house. Didn't manage to do it until 1986.... thanks for all you do, Nate.
Nate you realize you explained the nature of the simulation we live in with your movie idea🤠
You want to experience time travel? Go deep into a forest, so deep you don’t hear the sound of cars or planes….then just sit and listen…that is exactly what the forest sounded like and looked like a thousand years ago…
Love this idea Nate! Most of the greatest movies were adapted from books so hopefully some talented author will see this and get started.
Time travel isn’t an available option but back casting is. Imagine a successful outcome in the future with its characteristics of a healthy humanity and biosphere. The economic Super-organism has made the leap to effective restoration of past damages and, while not perfect, the joy of life, the collective survival, is looking good. This is the story of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. The economic framework is introduced in chapter 42, called “the Chen plan” it’s based on the real life work Dr. Delton Chen- now called the global carbon reward. It’s a thermodynamically correct way forward but it’s not been recognized. Regenerative future in the service of life is the goal and outcome.
Storytelling is the primary way we imagine the future. Many thanks to Nate for keeping the story alive 😊
Or, he travels back and creates a podcast, broadcasting ideas & information in service to life. I love your idea, & thank you for traveling to this point in time!
Omg Frank 🥺 Himbs lil face. I can’t 😩😍
IMO one of the best movies/characters depicting how wise it is to remain humble in the reality of earth systems and the complexity of life is Jurassic Park, and Jeff Goldblum’s character, the chaos theorist (aka systems guy)
I wrote some novels a long time ago, kinda cli-fi, two of the three were published. I’ve had an idea for another series maybe, where groups of people in the near future are recruited to go back to different points and places in time to try and influence the people and cultures there to remain earth/systems aware, and shenanigans ensue. Like, try not to get burned at the stake, kind of a thing. Outlander meets Jane Eyre was my tagline (I had to have some romance etc 🤣🙄)
Keep studying warm, frens!
I like the idea of making the man and woman a romantic couple. A bit of an odd pair (him a hippie ecologist type, and her an investment banker, but very much in love), but when they find the Time Machine and go back in time, they are taken in opposite directions, him succumbing to the desires of the superorganism, her awakening to its destruction. As their characters make these arcs, it puts a strain on their relationship, which ultimately ends in heartbreak. Of course, the breakdown of their romantic relationship is an analogue of humanity’s relationship with the ecosphere. Or something like that…😅
Brilliant idea for a movie!
Since I've been plowing through these episodes they've been sitting in my unconscious enough where I had a dream of Nate last night (which kind of relates to this idea of time travel). In case you see this Nate, I'll write it as if you will :) In the dream I believe I was seeing what I perceive at your heart/spirit in practice. I was introducing others to you at a massive doorway between the black hole we were standing in and an idyllic scene. Once we gathered together you (Nate) opened the doorway into an idyllic waterfall scene. With joy overflowing, you toured the scene. It was a child-like energy and pride you exuded as you beamed with light walking through this scene and crafting the vision for what can be. In my intuition I believe I sense the deeper journey and emergence of your capacity (Nate) to hold the darkness while also greeting the emergent future with joy. For myself I've been reflecting on the nature of being human and especially in this time - to 'travel' between states of consciousness where we face the dark reality while simultaneously holding hope for a future we imagine (fantasy/creation/ideation), and then to transform our current reality through action in the now. In a way it's a kind if time travel we must constantly do in order to participate in change. AGI explorations seem to be illuminating these concepts as well as theories of everything that explore consciousness, time and space and the nature of reality. I think we are living the film now, and for me, I want to whole-heartedly embrace the vision for the future us pro-social people can see: it's ours for the making.
Thanks for this 🙏❤️🌎⚡️
What a fantastic dream! It totally reflects what I've been experiencing connecting here. And yes, the time has arrived -- I certainly feel it. Carrying with us the lessons gleaned from studying our misunderstandings in the past, it's time we focused on the kind of world we want to create for ourselves and our progeny, and for the Earth herself and all her creatures... and on how best to move forward in creating it.
Thanks again, Nate! Much appreciate the imagination and thought experiments that can better inform our present choices. To add to the ideas... the time travelers also connect and help nurture existing 'islands of coherence'... the local communities already active back in the 70s and for a variety of reasons, didn't achieve the regenerative continuity that they had hoped to. A slight difference to your superorganism-free zones, but working more with the folks already trying to live that way and leverage technologies to accelerate the network affect. Thank you for expanding the idea in many directions... I'm hopeful those who listen will resonate with 'something' and then go do that thing... at least that's my goal.
Terrific idea, Nate! Here's a possible episode: The hero finds himself back in December 1973 when the House Committee in the USA Congress is writing the final version of the Endangered Species Act to be passed by both houses and then signed by President Nixon on Dec 28. Our hero is aware of how difficult it has become 50 years later to fully fund and get anything much accomplished in implementing the Act, which has not only become very divisive and subject to court remands but now entails 1,780 animals and plants on the list - with more being added every year. Our hero knows that plants were added by staff to the draft bill only a few days earlier - and this evening will be the final hours of staff work. He also knows that a citizen group (Torreya Guardians) used a loophole (just for plants) to conduct "assisted migration" northward of a climate-endangered tree in Florida beginning in 2005 such that in 2018 their plantings began producing seeds in Ohio - even though the official actions in behalf of the plant in Florida had not halted their decline, nor enabled them to begin producing seeds again in their tiny "glacial refuge" that had trapped the species in Florida ever since the glaciers retreated from Ohio. He arranges to be in a restaurant where 3 of the staff members are eating dinner together, in prep for the final all-nighter to finish their work. He reminds the group that a version of the ESA had passed in 1966, then was expanded in 1969, and so it might be best to not overburden the act this time around. "Look, guys, we're going to require agency staff this time around to figure out actual land boundaries to become the 'critical habitat'. They're also going to have to publish a recovery plan for each listing - and specify things like what actions to take and what population increases will suffice for achieving the ultimate goal: delisting. They've never had to do any of that before. That's a heck of a lot of scientific understanding required - and then they have to pass a comment period for the public - and all the commercial landowners and ranchers and oil companies worried about the consequences are going to challenge them in court. So let's not over-reach this time. Let's just stick with wildlife. No plants this time around." Someone protests: "But the United Nations project to develop a global list of endangered species is already thinking about plants. The USA has got to stay ahead of them. We've always been the first in environmental law improvements. Let's stay that way." Discussion and some pivotal little event, like spilled coffee, happens. And the result is that plants were not put into the act. Which means that upon the 50th anniversary in 2023, there is widespread celebration of the Act's accomplishments for animals - and a parallel celebration by NGOs and garden clubs and land trusts and citizen groups who have long been helping declining plants through their own volunteer efforts, such that the Act never had to be amended to include plants. If that hadn't happened, the 50th anniversary of the Act would have shown more than a billion dollars being spent each year, and with far more than half of the backlogged species waiting for action being plants. That is what actually happened.
Nice ideas... But I just have one problem with this script. It's sharply individualistic, a tale of Superheroes changing the curse of the world. You should look up on a more collectivist ground or interdependent if you prefer (collectivism being still a bad word in the USA). I don't believe in Avengers, Superman or Captain America saving the world, as I don't believe in Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos saving our civilization. Rather, what I see is almost content in this statement made by Jørgen Randers when he declared in 2012 at the Smithsonian Institute, celebrating in Washington the 40th anniversary of the book "The Limits to Growth" (he's one of the writers), that the American political regime, whose CEOs remain enslaved to the quarterly results of their corporations and political actors hampered by election results every two years, was unable to face the challenges of the century, as it was unable to implement the policies required without seeing them defeated by the electoral alternations game, but that the Chinese political regime was capable of doing so, as it was capable of planning over a long enough period. Or silently It seems to me that it's what we are seeing right now and probably more accurately after the 20th of January 2025. But I cannot ignore that the Carbon Pulse is a direct predicament of the thermodynamic constraints that undermine the following assertion:
Life is formed by energy-dissipating structures. In an open thermodynamic system such as Earth, the greater the internal complexity of these dissipative structures, the more energy they consume to maintain this complexity and the more entropy (i.e. disorder) they generate outside of them. Human societies are not immune to these thermodynamic constraints. More specifically, the technosphere constantly requires energy inputs to power its operation. This is a direct consequence of the "memetic mutations" that our cultural memory allows, having begun from the first hominids, starting from cutting stone through the conquest of fire to the Neolithic revolution, then other developments in technoculture leading to the cumulative use of all the primary energy sources available on our planet. All industrial revolutions from the steam engine to 5G rely on the abundance of energy to support them.
BTW I offer you my best Saturnalia's day or Nowell or Yule to celebrate the shortest day of this year and longest night on the 20th of December. I just wish that your podcast still continues to illuminate some wisdom to all of us.
Great start Nate, thank you! I'm a 72 year-young human, and student in Narrative Futures at the University of Edinburgh. What comes to mind right now is: I am my grandfather, my father, myself, my son, my grandson and great grandson, alongside my grandmother, mother, daughter, granddaughter, greatgranddaughter. We shapeshift through time even from our Pictish and Celtic ancestry to my great grandson and granddaughter's life in (currently renewing) Findhorn (per Mt Dinner With Andre). Let's talk to Daniel Christian Wahl and Rob Hopkins. Cheers to you, Franky and our other animaliens who should also come along!
This would make for a great series
I would name this movie Ycarcoidi 😆
Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Relax…don’t do it!
Love Frank! 😘
Thank you for another year of sharing knowledge, Nate! Wish you health to you and your loved ones in 2025 and hope for the best
Amazing! I had a similar idea last year, but with only one protagonist.
Before I go there, one quick observation about your original plot. The captured female traveler sounds a lot like a representative of you. 🤔
In my scenario, a well informed activist finds a way into the past. Knowing the downfalls he/she tries to change the course of history, but fails. The movie progresses to current times, revealing today’s issues and problems, including those less familiar to the general public.
Frustrated he/she finds a way back a second time, but this time draws notoriety and manages to garner a global following. He/she changes developmental trajectory in many ways including: regenerative agriculture on a massive scale, electric transportation methods, energy conservation practices, maintenance of environmental ecosystems, etc.. The movie then marches to current times revealing a much different situation with more supportive societies, few species loss, smaller human population, more equanimity and so on.
The idea is to bring more current problems to consciousness, while providing a form of template to drive towards a different future.
What a sweetie that little Frank! ❤️
Cool idea, Nate! Thanks for sharing.
It might be interesting to see them simply inject certain facts/interpretations/suggestions into conversations that would have otherwise gone unchallenged or brought ideas into spaces they may not have otherwise been heard or understood.They could drop in at important places at different times to provide that little extra nudge into accepting or entertaining different futures. There would be unexpected radeoffs. One would only need to look at a list of ecological and socioeconomic/political events and pull out the red string to see what interesting "sidequests" emerge. Frankly though, it sounds a little like a Doctor Who movie sans aliens and interdimensional/spatial travel. They'd still be in the same place, just at a different time so the events would have to be reflected in the history of that place within the broader story being told unless you'd like to change the frame of reference up to some end.
The original Star Trek did a great time-travel episode by Harlan Ellison called "The City on the Edge of Forever" with guest actress Joan Collins. You could follow that plot generally. Dr. McCoy has to be prevented from saving Collins' peace-activist character from being killed by a car because her survival would change the course of history in a bad way. The plot has to work at the level of character and not just idea,. Otherwise, you're in Kim Stanley Robinson territory--too many ideas without good characters to cary them.
Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom - poets, visionaries - realists of a larger reality.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
On that node, does it have to be a hero story? Does the hero have to be male?
A few years ago in a previous incarnation of my channel, way back when UA-cam still had the video response feature, I posted a video challenge where I asked for videos on how people imagined the world 100 years from now, at a time after most if not all the people we know now would be gone. Got about a dozen wonderful responses, all quite different and some quite surprising. Your time travel story would make a great video response challenge where viewers could explain the narrative they envision through good old fashion story telling.
A tricky part is just coming up with an original plot, as it is stunning just how difficult that can be.
In my screenplay instead of the protagonist being someone from the future I'd set it in maybe the mid 1970s Detroit and 2 people who discovered access to future events by some type of information flow or communication. Imagine an assembly line worker and a mid level automotive executive being able to access the same source of knowledge. I'd have the line worker treat it as prophetic vision sent as a warning to humanity, and the executive trying to capitalize on it for personal wealth and power while the getting is still good. As the plot thickened I'd have them gradually reverse perspectives where the line worker is seduced by power and wealth from their ministry, and the auto executive concluding that maybe he f'd it up big time (it's the 1970s, of course it's a he). But given the time travel paradox and the endemic exploitative nature of civilization, both ultimately realize that their knowledge of our collective fate would change nothing. The End.
Yes small dogs are so awesome as companion and pet. I can't imagine wolf ancestor of dogs were so small, so they were bred intentionally over many generations to be small, cute and with behavior designed to please humans. Larger dogs are harder to manage unfortunately if you live in confined area and you can't exactly hold them in your arms so easily.
Where’s the 4K at?
DO IT!!!!!!!
You need to weave a sleeper Lizard Person into the story that kills everybody at the end for no.reason at all.
I'm picturing a George Clooney looking head with a gigantic, rhinestone bordered sombrero and make him the creepy guy in the background that never says a word.
Enjoy your holiday season with puppies and ducks and whatever family you've inherited or created.
Me and mine will be here in the new year to catch your, always appreciated, gifts.
Frank❤❤❤
Hope somebody makes your movie, Nate! I am a bidirectional time traveler. I see the current reality through the lens of a mashup of three prescient sci-fi novels from my wasted youth: Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and A Scanner Darkly by Phillip K. Dick.
❤ I needed a puppy this morning ❤
awwww! how nice.
I have some wonderful dogs🤗 1 year old smart potty trained, ready for Love. I would love to share, I have too much love🤠
I love Frank. ❤
For fiction the story needs an inner story for the main character that reflects the outer story. The outer story on its own with the machine is somehow secondary unless it is for an educational purpose. For young people this idea would be great to educate. Basically for a feature you would need to find the drama :)
You might want to watch jesse michael's latest podcast with Colonel Karl nell and Diana Walsch Polsuka. They talk about a time-traveling .Nasa mission control operator, working with townsend brown It's a lengthy interview given to corporate investors.
He does look so cute!!! 😅😍
I would go back to 1492 and have a long talk with the indigenous peoples, about the horror that is sailing toward them.
My belief if someone did (which happens to be impossible, we can only go forward) still I believe they work on community building instead. This is a great idea (your last guest) but I afraid we are starting too late. Still I like this idea even if it not possible.
Another idea is going forward and see what happens, when that once comes down. Do we make it to the moon? or build space stations? This is what I think would also make a cool movie showing of what is coming, who knows that might also work.
Still I heard it was done, Mad Max they point to, yet they left out that ice age that hanging over our heads. Still that was a block buster so that one, I think it might work. Thanks for triggering this idea, its a Christmas gift for us writers (not movie makers sadly), and a very happy Holiday season, Merry Christ, Happy Hanukah and Kwanzaa!
The "Ear Lick" ~ a sign of True "Love"! Will Dogs share their command of the ElectroMagnetic Field with Humans? "Mine" have.
It is difficult for me to project any supposed values that may be promoted by your time travel idea. You certainly try and I love that you have the spirit for it. Few people seemed then to have that large view perspective that now is only avoided by serious denial. Silent Spring and nuclear annihilation were trend setters in what has become a competitive doom-scape. My take on do-gooder schemes is that they bring with them the blindness of the creator. Teaching a thorough and lasting peace that takes on the whole of the planet is way beyond humanitarian goals. It would require the sacrifice of nearly the totality of modernity and its support/production of the massive overpopulation of humans. Who would support or even imagine such a thing? Perhaps the Nazis were the most likely. They understood slavery.
Would be great to see “Avoided Carbon and Methane” through behavioural change - become blockchain traded commodity.
Primary historical writings , artifacts, images and maps allow us to see the past through now dead eyes and voices , not second hand sources.
Study the termite and the ant who did make the bridge.
I think Mike Ruppert, Guy McPherson and many, many, many others have already done or tried to do so..... "WE?" are living the Flick my Friend. Thanks for your great works!
Otherwise.... Earth w/o Humans!?
So you are saying it is not people from 100 years in the future that are coming back to today and trying to help us by flying drones in New Jersey?
❤❤❤
Hi Frank!
The Superorganism Freezone...the Ecotone.
I would modify this idea so that they have a machine that allows them to see into the future. The future would be very bleak, of course, and as it will be in our reality.
Then they would modify their ways and they could check with the machine if what they have done so far is enough to avoid the doom.
He creates a time machine and, upon starting it up, uses the last drop of accessible fossil fuels, rendering it useless.
Frank ... Furter?
I don't think super-empowering any individual would make a difference. Even empowering a great political leader would only go so far. I think you're mistaking ability for virtue. Hard for me to see any super-empowered individual, or those around him/her, not being corrupted by that superpower. Thinking as a whole and trying to be somewhat self-skeptical, perhaps there is something intrinsically self-destructive about European civilization. What if African or Asian civilization was dominant? Would we still be hurtling towards the abyss? Maybe, but it would be an attempt to alter the known course. To that end, giving advanced weaponry to such a past civilization would allow them to defeat European colonization and even reverse it. The different civilization that emerges might make different choices.
First. 🎉
PU GEE NESS!!
Great idea. There would of course need to be a romantic element. I was really disappointed Don't Look Up did not resonate with more people. I have been considering a comic strip idea for quite some time, just wish I had a little more artistic talent.
I have to disagree with the comment about education not changing things. I think our dilemma is largely a result of a lack of education on ecology/earth systems and not focusing enough on critical thinking skills in K-12.
Perhaps the scientist you are looking for is Diana Beresford-Kroeger? ua-cam.com/video/EYPQHdTqx5M/v-deo.html&ab_channel=GBHForumNetwork
You should adopt dogs, not buying them.
Frank (and the others) are adopted - we found him in the woods behind the office. tried for 3 weeks to find his owner - we think he was dumped. (10 years ago!)
So cute
Just watch soilent green
Can Hollywood help change the thinking of general audiences? Your movie idea is interesting and deserves to be fully thought out, but, I think no; a Hollywood movie will not changes things very much. Take the 2021 movie Don't Look Up. It is funny, serious, well made and well acted, with a big name cast. It tells of the immanent end of life on Earth. Immanent. How much has it affected general thinking. I would say, not enough to make a difference.
I think the place to focus efforts is in the middle three categories of your TGS audiences. Turn the lead horses and the team will follow.
The Day After Tomorrow was a great movie, but a little too much Hollywood…watch Threads…it the British version of a nuclear war…I my option far more realistic and it shows the effect for years
...hard to follow, too much referenced talk... sorry about that comment of mine, but interesting that you bring out the subject about a possible movie, but I've been thinking of a more realistic movie about a future, not dystopian and not embellished, just putting together what we know, ecological overshoot, carbon pulse ending, population trends, economy etc... and a not too distant future... say 2100 or 20150. Art Berman uploaded a kind of cartoonish clip of how the future could look like, but with a plot line made into a real movie could cause a splash!.. no exagerations like apes or zombies.....a future if we do nothing and one where we do starting now!
Nate, better you start looking to the stories that are being told in recent decades, more and more...
This is already being done 😉😉
You are not in Kansas anymore Dorothy
Sorry Nate. wish thinking doesn’t move anything forward. It posits irrational outcomes. I like some aspects but just can’t bite.
Cartoon strip😂
What a nice gift to get a Frankly with little Frank. 🥹🥰🥰