WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.160 Imagine for a second that you walk into a bookstore. 00:00:02.580 --> 00:00:05.480 You pick up a copy of, say, Hamlet. Okay. You 00:00:05.480 --> 00:00:07.160 travel back in time to Elizabethan England to 00:00:07.160 --> 00:00:09.080 find Shakespeare, and you just hand him the book. 00:00:09.140 --> 00:00:10.960 He copies it out word for word and publishes 00:00:10.960 --> 00:00:14.050 it. Right. The question is... Yeah. Who actually 00:00:14.050 --> 00:00:16.910 wrote Hamlet? It has no origin. It just exists 00:00:16.910 --> 00:00:19.690 in a loop. And that is, I mean, that's the classic 00:00:19.690 --> 00:00:22.250 definition of the bootstrap paradox. A causal 00:00:22.250 --> 00:00:25.309 loop. Exactly. It's where an object or, you know, 00:00:25.329 --> 00:00:27.449 a piece of information, in this case, the play, 00:00:27.629 --> 00:00:31.030 has no discernible beginning. It just defies 00:00:31.030 --> 00:00:33.270 the standard law of cause and effect because 00:00:33.270 --> 00:00:36.670 the effect is the cause. And today we're not 00:00:36.670 --> 00:00:40.109 just talking about some theoretical paradox. 00:00:40.189 --> 00:00:43.210 We're looking at the story that arguably perfected 00:00:43.210 --> 00:00:45.329 this very concept. Absolutely. You're doing a 00:00:45.329 --> 00:00:48.170 deep dive into Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 short 00:00:48.170 --> 00:00:51.530 story. All you zombies. It's widely considered 00:00:51.530 --> 00:00:54.109 the ultimate time travel story. And not because 00:00:54.109 --> 00:00:56.670 it's, you know, some epic adventure with dinosaurs 00:00:56.670 --> 00:00:59.909 or lasers. No. But because it is this incredibly 00:00:59.909 --> 00:01:02.829 tight, almost claustrophobic examination of a 00:01:02.829 --> 00:01:05.609 single timeline just folding in on itself. And 00:01:05.609 --> 00:01:08.170 when we say folding, I mean, it literally ties 00:01:08.170 --> 00:01:11.799 itself into a knot. This is a story where a character 00:01:11.799 --> 00:01:13.319 isn't just changing their own history. It's a 00:01:13.319 --> 00:01:16.879 narrative feat that Heinlein apparently wrote 00:01:16.879 --> 00:01:19.120 in a single day. Which is just staggering when 00:01:19.120 --> 00:01:20.920 you think about the complexity of the plot. He 00:01:20.920 --> 00:01:23.620 wrote it, sent it off, and it was promptly rejected 00:01:23.620 --> 00:01:26.859 by Playboy. Well, to be fair, Playboy in the 00:01:26.859 --> 00:01:29.140 late 50s did publish some great fiction. They 00:01:29.140 --> 00:01:31.319 did. But this story was probably a little too 00:01:31.319 --> 00:01:35.280 weird, even for them. It deals with gender reassignment. 00:01:35.760 --> 00:01:38.980 intersex physiology, and a level of incest that, 00:01:39.040 --> 00:01:40.920 frankly, you need a flowchart to understand. 00:01:41.260 --> 00:01:44.040 So it eventually landed in the magazine of fantasy 00:01:44.040 --> 00:01:47.120 and science fiction in 1959. And thank goodness 00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:49.659 it did. Because it became this touchstone for 00:01:49.659 --> 00:01:51.200 scientists and philosophers. I mean, you've got 00:01:51.200 --> 00:01:55.400 Carl Sagan, David Lewis, Dana CLM. They all reference 00:01:55.400 --> 00:01:58.540 this specific 15 -page story when they talk about 00:01:58.540 --> 00:02:01.819 the mechanics of time. So our mission today is 00:02:01.819 --> 00:02:04.359 to try and figure out why. We are going to trace 00:02:04.359 --> 00:02:07.000 the timeline. of a person who is their own mother 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:09.280 and their own father. And we're going to look 00:02:09.280 --> 00:02:11.000 at the philosophical nightmare that's just hidden 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:12.659 right there in the title. It's a story about 00:02:12.659 --> 00:02:16.699 identity, loneliness, and the terrifying possibility 00:02:16.699 --> 00:02:19.340 that we're all just, you know, waiting for a 00:02:19.340 --> 00:02:21.259 bus in someone else's universe. Let's do it. 00:02:21.400 --> 00:02:23.780 Okay, let's step into the scene. It's November 00:02:23.780 --> 00:02:27.759 7th, 1970. We're in a dive bar in New York City. 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:31.840 The atmosphere is quiet, smoky, probably smells 00:02:31.840 --> 00:02:35.330 like stale beer and regret. And behind the counter, 00:02:35.389 --> 00:02:37.669 we have our narrator, the bartender. He's this 00:02:37.669 --> 00:02:40.629 older guy, cynical, keeps to himself. And he 00:02:40.629 --> 00:02:43.770 drops this odd little detail early on. What's 00:02:43.770 --> 00:02:46.550 that? That no one in his family ever gets married. 00:02:46.689 --> 00:02:48.509 Which sounds like just a throwaway line, right? 00:02:48.530 --> 00:02:50.949 Like he's just a bachelor. But in this story, 00:02:51.090 --> 00:02:53.650 every single detail is a load -bearing wall. 00:02:54.080 --> 00:02:56.840 And he's wearing a ring. The Ouroboros. The ancient 00:02:56.840 --> 00:02:59.680 symbol of the snake eating its own tail. You 00:02:59.680 --> 00:03:02.280 see it in Egyptian iconography, Greek magic. 00:03:02.500 --> 00:03:05.879 It always represents infinity or the cycle of 00:03:05.879 --> 00:03:07.719 life and death. Or in this case, a very, very 00:03:07.719 --> 00:03:10.879 closed loop. And into this bar walks the customer. 00:03:11.159 --> 00:03:14.860 A young man, barely 25. He orders a drink and 00:03:14.860 --> 00:03:18.520 the bartender notices he has this. This air of 00:03:18.520 --> 00:03:21.080 profound bitterness about him. But the most interesting 00:03:21.080 --> 00:03:22.680 thing about him is the name he writes under. 00:03:23.020 --> 00:03:25.699 He introduces himself as the unmarried mother. 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:28.680 It's quite the pseudonym. It is. The bartender 00:03:28.680 --> 00:03:30.780 asks about it, and the young man explains he 00:03:30.780 --> 00:03:33.099 writes for confession magazines. We should probably 00:03:33.099 --> 00:03:35.159 explain what those were. Yeah, for anyone younger 00:03:35.159 --> 00:03:37.599 listening, in the mid -20th century, before, 00:03:37.759 --> 00:03:41.080 you know, Reddit threads or reality TV, we had 00:03:41.080 --> 00:03:43.620 these confession magazines. And they were huge. 00:03:44.520 --> 00:03:47.500 Titles like True Romance or True Confessions. 00:03:47.500 --> 00:03:50.159 They published these dramatic first -person accounts 00:03:50.159 --> 00:03:52.800 of scandal, usually focused on women who had, 00:03:52.919 --> 00:03:56.259 quote, fallen from grace, unwed pregnancies, 00:03:56.319 --> 00:03:58.120 illicit affairs, that kind of thing. Right. They 00:03:58.120 --> 00:04:00.460 were sensationalist, a little moralizing, but 00:04:00.460 --> 00:04:03.280 incredibly popular. And this character, the unmarried 00:04:03.280 --> 00:04:05.639 mother, explains he writes these stories from 00:04:05.639 --> 00:04:08.159 the female perspective. He claims to know exactly 00:04:08.159 --> 00:04:10.360 how an unmarried woman feels when she's been 00:04:10.360 --> 00:04:13.610 seduced and abandoned. He says it with such conviction 00:04:13.610 --> 00:04:15.830 that the bartender kind of calls him on it. He 00:04:15.830 --> 00:04:17.649 does. He puts a bottle of liquor on the bar. 00:04:17.730 --> 00:04:20.589 He calls it the bet and says, if your story is 00:04:20.589 --> 00:04:22.189 better than my liquor, I'll give you the bottle. 00:04:22.389 --> 00:04:25.209 And so the young man begins. This is where the 00:04:25.209 --> 00:04:28.269 flashback starts. The tragic history of a person 00:04:28.269 --> 00:04:30.589 named Jane. And this is where the story shifts 00:04:30.589 --> 00:04:34.490 from just a barroom chat to a real tragedy. The 00:04:34.490 --> 00:04:37.089 character reveals that he wasn't born male. No. 00:04:37.209 --> 00:04:39.870 He was born a female infant and abandoned at 00:04:39.870 --> 00:04:44.269 an orphanage in 1945. Jane's life is just defined 00:04:44.269 --> 00:04:46.889 by isolation. She grows up in this orphanage 00:04:46.889 --> 00:04:48.730 feeling fundamentally different from the other 00:04:48.730 --> 00:04:50.829 girls. She even says she feels like a horse in 00:04:50.829 --> 00:04:53.060 a flock of sheep. She tries to find a place to 00:04:53.060 --> 00:04:55.740 belong. She even attempts to join this strict 00:04:55.740 --> 00:04:58.680 military -style comfort corps to support space 00:04:58.680 --> 00:05:00.959 travelers. But she gets rejected for reasons 00:05:00.959 --> 00:05:02.839 she doesn't really understand. It's just one 00:05:02.839 --> 00:05:06.660 rejection after another. Until 1963. Jane is 00:05:06.660 --> 00:05:09.480 18 years old. She's working menial jobs. She's 00:05:09.480 --> 00:05:12.519 lonely. Just drifting. And then... She meets 00:05:12.519 --> 00:05:15.819 a man. A mysterious older man. It's a whirlwind 00:05:15.819 --> 00:05:19.560 romance. For the first time, Jane feels... seen. 00:05:20.180 --> 00:05:23.220 She falls completely in love, she is seduced, 00:05:23.279 --> 00:05:25.079 and almost immediately she becomes pregnant. 00:05:25.259 --> 00:05:28.279 And just as quickly as he arrived, the man vanishes. 00:05:28.480 --> 00:05:30.819 He's gone. He leaves her pregnant and destitute. 00:05:30.860 --> 00:05:33.360 It's the classic Confession magazine setup, right? 00:05:33.379 --> 00:05:36.019 The girl left holding the baby. But the real 00:05:36.019 --> 00:05:38.889 twist, the big one, comes at the hospital. Jane 00:05:38.889 --> 00:05:41.970 goes into labor and it is catastrophic. The doctors 00:05:41.970 --> 00:05:44.550 have to perform an emergency C -section. And 00:05:44.550 --> 00:05:47.009 while she's under anesthesia, the surgeons discover 00:05:47.009 --> 00:05:49.709 that Jane is intersex. Now, Heinlein was writing 00:05:49.709 --> 00:05:52.050 this in 1958. So the medical terminology and 00:05:52.050 --> 00:05:53.970 understanding were different. Very different. 00:05:54.129 --> 00:05:56.509 But the premise is that Jane had both internal 00:05:56.509 --> 00:05:59.529 male and female reproductive organs. And the 00:05:59.529 --> 00:06:01.329 doctors determined that the birth complications 00:06:01.329 --> 00:06:04.230 have completely ruined the female organs. They're 00:06:04.230 --> 00:06:06.970 beyond repair. So without Jane's consent, which. 00:06:07.449 --> 00:06:09.930 really reflects the you know terrifying medical 00:06:09.930 --> 00:06:13.290 paternalism of the era oh yeah the doctors perform 00:06:13.290 --> 00:06:15.689 gender reassignment surgery They save the male 00:06:15.689 --> 00:06:18.410 organs, which were immature but intact, and they 00:06:18.410 --> 00:06:20.829 reconstruct Jane physically as a male. Can you 00:06:20.829 --> 00:06:23.670 just imagine waking up from that? No. You've 00:06:23.670 --> 00:06:25.810 lost your lover. You've just had this traumatic 00:06:25.810 --> 00:06:28.610 birth. And the doctor walks in and tells you 00:06:28.610 --> 00:06:31.670 that you are no longer a woman. You are now physically 00:06:31.670 --> 00:06:34.470 and legally a man. It just destroys Jane's identity. 00:06:34.589 --> 00:06:37.009 But the final blow hasn't even landed yet. Right. 00:06:37.089 --> 00:06:39.870 While Jane, who is now him, is recovering, someone 00:06:39.870 --> 00:06:42.350 sneaks into the nursery and kidnaps the baby 00:06:42.350 --> 00:06:47.399 girl. The baby is gone. Without a trace. So this 00:06:47.399 --> 00:06:50.209 character has lost everything. His history as 00:06:50.209 --> 00:06:52.769 a woman, his future as a mother, and the one 00:06:52.769 --> 00:06:54.750 child that was his only connection to the world. 00:06:54.889 --> 00:06:57.209 And that is how Jane becomes the unmarried mother. 00:06:57.389 --> 00:07:00.449 He has to learn to live as a man in the 1960s, 00:07:00.449 --> 00:07:02.769 learns to type, takes up writing these tawdry 00:07:02.769 --> 00:07:04.970 stories because it's the only way he can, well, 00:07:05.050 --> 00:07:08.009 monetize his pain. And that path leads him, seven 00:07:08.009 --> 00:07:10.889 years later, right into that bar in 1970. It 00:07:10.889 --> 00:07:13.829 is a devastating backstory. It is. When he finishes 00:07:13.829 --> 00:07:16.290 telling it, the mood in the bar is heavy. But 00:07:16.290 --> 00:07:19.300 the bartender. He isn't just a sympathetic ear. 00:07:19.500 --> 00:07:21.879 This is where the trap snaps shut. The bartender 00:07:21.879 --> 00:07:24.300 leans in and he makes this offer. He says, I 00:07:24.300 --> 00:07:26.240 know where the man is who did this to you. The 00:07:26.240 --> 00:07:28.600 man who seduced you and ruined your life. If 00:07:28.600 --> 00:07:31.399 I take you to him, will you kill him? And the 00:07:31.399 --> 00:07:33.839 unmarried mother doesn't even hesitate. He is 00:07:33.839 --> 00:07:37.279 so full of rage, he just says yes. So the bartender 00:07:37.279 --> 00:07:40.060 leads him into the back room. But instead of 00:07:40.060 --> 00:07:43.379 a street exit, there's a machine. A time machine. 00:07:44.110 --> 00:07:46.430 The bartender reveals he's a temporal agent, 00:07:46.569 --> 00:07:49.370 a member of a bureau that polices history. They 00:07:49.370 --> 00:07:51.750 step into the machine and they jump. Back to 00:07:51.750 --> 00:07:55.350 April 3, 1963. The specific date Jane met her 00:07:55.350 --> 00:07:58.410 seducer. The bartender hands the unmarried mother 00:07:58.410 --> 00:08:01.170 a weapon and drops him off in a park, tells him 00:08:01.170 --> 00:08:03.189 to find the man, and then the bartender just 00:08:03.189 --> 00:08:04.910 leaves him there. Okay, and we have to track 00:08:04.910 --> 00:08:06.990 the bartender's movements very carefully here. 00:08:07.149 --> 00:08:09.529 Right. He leaves the unmarried mother in 1963, 00:08:09.850 --> 00:08:13.100 but he doesn't go back to 1970 yet. He jumps 00:08:13.100 --> 00:08:16.920 forward 11 months to March 1964. To the hospital 00:08:16.920 --> 00:08:19.759 the night the baby was kidnapped. Exactly. The 00:08:19.759 --> 00:08:21.980 bartender enters the nursery, takes the baby 00:08:21.980 --> 00:08:25.019 girl Jane's baby, and jumps back in time again, 00:08:25.120 --> 00:08:27.920 all the way back to 1945. And he leaves the baby 00:08:27.920 --> 00:08:30.660 on the steps of an orphanage. And this is the 00:08:30.660 --> 00:08:32.860 first huge realization you have to grapple with 00:08:32.860 --> 00:08:36.379 as a reader. The baby dropped at the orphanage 00:08:36.379 --> 00:08:40.080 in 1945 grows up to be Jane. Which means Jane 00:08:40.080 --> 00:08:43.840 gave birth to herself. Correct. The baby is Jane. 00:08:44.279 --> 00:08:46.519 Jane is the mother and the baby is the daughter. 00:08:46.600 --> 00:08:48.860 They are the exact same person. But that's only 00:08:48.860 --> 00:08:50.840 half of the loop. Not even. So let's go back 00:08:50.840 --> 00:08:54.639 to the park in 1963. The unmarried mother is 00:08:54.639 --> 00:08:57.919 wandering around looking for this man who seduced 00:08:57.919 --> 00:09:00.159 Jane. He's looking for a villain. He's looking 00:09:00.159 --> 00:09:02.740 for someone to hate. But as he's waiting in the 00:09:02.740 --> 00:09:05.200 shadows, he sees a young girl sitting on a bench. 00:09:05.379 --> 00:09:08.279 It's Jane, his younger female self. And he doesn't 00:09:08.279 --> 00:09:12.289 just see her. He feels this. overwhelming instinctive 00:09:12.289 --> 00:09:14.690 pull towards her, a sense of completeness he 00:09:14.690 --> 00:09:17.009 has never felt before. It's basically narcissism 00:09:17.009 --> 00:09:19.250 disguised as romance. He goes up to her. They 00:09:19.250 --> 00:09:22.190 start talking. And because he is a man now and 00:09:22.190 --> 00:09:26.090 older, Jane sees him as this mysterious, sophisticated 00:09:26.090 --> 00:09:28.669 stranger she's been waiting for. And the realization 00:09:28.669 --> 00:09:30.669 just hits the unmarried mother like a freight 00:09:30.669 --> 00:09:33.129 train. He is the seducer. He is the man Jane 00:09:33.129 --> 00:09:35.340 fell in love with. The mechanics of it are just 00:09:35.340 --> 00:09:39.399 brutal. He seduces his younger self. He impregnates 00:09:39.399 --> 00:09:42.320 her. He ensures that the baby, who is also himself, 00:09:42.659 --> 00:09:45.379 is created. So he is his own father. And his 00:09:45.379 --> 00:09:47.600 own mother. And his own child. The whole family 00:09:47.600 --> 00:09:50.259 tree. The bartender returns to pick him up right 00:09:50.259 --> 00:09:52.620 after the act is done, completing the tragedy. 00:09:53.059 --> 00:09:56.720 The unmarried mother is in total shock. Understandably. 00:09:57.059 --> 00:10:00.899 But the bartender whisks him away to 1985. Drops 00:10:00.899 --> 00:10:02.639 him on at the headquarters of the temporal bureau. 00:10:03.159 --> 00:10:05.960 And the unmarried mother, now seeing the true 00:10:05.960 --> 00:10:08.220 shape of his own reality, gets recruited into 00:10:08.220 --> 00:10:11.080 the agency. He spends the next few decades working 00:10:11.080 --> 00:10:14.220 as a time agent, aging, getting cynical. Until 00:10:14.220 --> 00:10:16.259 he gets one last assignment. To go undercover 00:10:16.259 --> 00:10:19.340 as a bartender in New York, 1970. To meet his 00:10:19.340 --> 00:10:21.740 younger self. To hear the story and to start 00:10:21.740 --> 00:10:23.820 the whole cycle all over again. The bartender 00:10:23.820 --> 00:10:26.519 is the unmarried mother. Just older. It is a 00:10:26.519 --> 00:10:30.320 perfect closed circle. The baby, Jane, the unmarried 00:10:30.320 --> 00:10:32.659 mother, the bartender, all the same person at 00:10:32.659 --> 00:10:34.720 different points on the same timeline. This is 00:10:34.720 --> 00:10:36.700 where a philosopher like David Lewis gets really 00:10:36.700 --> 00:10:39.000 excited. He argued this story is the only way 00:10:39.000 --> 00:10:41.879 time travel actually makes sense. Right. Because 00:10:41.879 --> 00:10:43.600 usually we worry about the grandfather paradox. 00:10:43.679 --> 00:10:45.320 If I go back and kill my grandfather, I'm never 00:10:45.320 --> 00:10:46.860 born, so I can't go back and kill him. It's a 00:10:46.860 --> 00:10:49.720 contradiction. But in all you zombies, the time 00:10:49.720 --> 00:10:52.720 travel doesn't change the past. It creates the 00:10:52.720 --> 00:10:55.639 past. Yes. The unmarried mother has to go back 00:10:55.639 --> 00:10:58.519 to 1963 to impregnate Jane or else he is never 00:10:58.519 --> 00:11:01.639 born. The effect, his birth necessitates the 00:11:01.639 --> 00:11:04.759 cause, the time travel. It's logically consistent, 00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:07.379 even if it's biologically impossible. It's the 00:11:07.379 --> 00:11:09.679 Ouroboros. The snake isn't destroying itself, 00:11:09.860 --> 00:11:12.600 it's feeding itself. Exactly. Stanislaw Lem called 00:11:12.600 --> 00:11:15.779 it the minimal possible bootstrap paradox. It's 00:11:15.779 --> 00:11:18.980 an elegant, self -sustaining system. But while 00:11:18.980 --> 00:11:21.200 the logic is clean, the emotional implication 00:11:21.200 --> 00:11:25.059 is horrific. That brings us to the title. The 00:11:25.059 --> 00:11:27.480 story ends with the bartender closing up shop 00:11:27.480 --> 00:11:30.740 in 1970, and then he jumps forward to his retirement 00:11:30.740 --> 00:11:33.399 date. He's totally alone. He looks at his C -section 00:11:33.399 --> 00:11:35.720 scar. The mark of his beginning and his end. 00:11:35.860 --> 00:11:38.080 And he has this moment of supreme existential 00:11:38.080 --> 00:11:41.120 crisis. He knows exactly where he came from. 00:11:41.159 --> 00:11:43.519 He fathered himself. He bore himself. He recruited 00:11:43.519 --> 00:11:46.200 himself. He's the entire family tree in one body. 00:11:46.340 --> 00:11:49.269 He is a universe of one. And because he is so 00:11:49.269 --> 00:11:52.009 sure of his own existence, he starts to doubt 00:11:52.009 --> 00:11:55.090 the reality of everyone else. He thinks, and 00:11:55.090 --> 00:11:58.149 I'm quoting here, I know where I came from, but 00:11:58.149 --> 00:12:00.350 where did all you zombies come from? That is 00:12:00.350 --> 00:12:02.350 the line that just haunts you, all you zombies. 00:12:02.509 --> 00:12:05.370 He's looking at you, the listener, the normal 00:12:05.370 --> 00:12:08.269 people with mothers and fathers, and he sees 00:12:08.269 --> 00:12:10.909 us as the weird ones. It's solipsism in its most 00:12:10.909 --> 00:12:13.049 extreme form. Solipsism is this philosophical 00:12:13.049 --> 00:12:15.929 idea that the only mind you can be sure exists 00:12:15.929 --> 00:12:18.610 is your own. But for the bartender, this isn't 00:12:18.610 --> 00:12:22.049 a theory. It's his lived reality. He is a closed 00:12:22.049 --> 00:12:25.990 loop. We are just linear accidents. To him, we're 00:12:25.990 --> 00:12:28.629 background extras, zombies walking around to 00:12:28.629 --> 00:12:31.070 make the world look populated while he plays 00:12:31.070 --> 00:12:33.929 out his eternal drama. It totally flips the script 00:12:33.929 --> 00:12:36.029 on loneliness. Usually we think of connection 00:12:36.029 --> 00:12:39.269 as the default state. But he views his isolation 00:12:39.269 --> 00:12:42.470 as the only true form of purity. It's terrifyingly 00:12:42.470 --> 00:12:44.769 lonely, but it's also... incredibly arrogant. 00:12:44.950 --> 00:12:46.590 It's a defense mechanism, I think. If you are 00:12:46.590 --> 00:12:48.330 truly that alone, you have to believe you're 00:12:48.330 --> 00:12:50.110 a god or else you would just go insane. We should 00:12:50.110 --> 00:12:52.070 mention the film adaptation, Predestination. 00:12:52.370 --> 00:12:55.149 Oh, we have to. Starring Ethan Hawke and Sarah 00:12:55.149 --> 00:12:57.809 Snook. It came out in 2014. And it is a fantastic 00:12:57.809 --> 00:13:00.490 film. It's remarkably faithful to the plot. It 00:13:00.490 --> 00:13:03.389 is, but there's a bit of a tonal shift. The movie 00:13:03.389 --> 00:13:06.210 tries to add this layer of romance, a sense that 00:13:06.210 --> 00:13:08.789 the character truly loves themself in a way that 00:13:08.789 --> 00:13:11.929 is almost tender. Whereas Heinlein's story feels... 00:13:13.230 --> 00:13:16.529 Colder. More clinical. Yes. In the book, the 00:13:16.529 --> 00:13:18.769 seduction isn't romance. It's a necessity. It's 00:13:18.769 --> 00:13:21.429 almost mechanical. The movie softens the edges 00:13:21.429 --> 00:13:23.809 of the narcissism a bit, but the book stares 00:13:23.809 --> 00:13:26.289 right into that abyss. Sarah Snook's performance, 00:13:26.549 --> 00:13:28.490 though. Incredible. She captures that gender 00:13:28.490 --> 00:13:31.070 fluidity and the pain of the transformation so 00:13:31.070 --> 00:13:33.450 well. Absolutely. And speaking of staring into 00:13:33.450 --> 00:13:35.970 the abyss, there is one detail in the story that 00:13:35.970 --> 00:13:38.509 I think just sums up the whole absurdity of the 00:13:38.509 --> 00:13:40.370 situation. The jukebox. The jukebox. And the 00:13:40.370 --> 00:13:42.980 song, I'm My Own Grandpa. Which is a real song. 00:13:43.159 --> 00:13:45.220 It's a real song. It was a novelty hit in 1947 00:13:45.220 --> 00:13:48.840 by Lonzo and Oscar. It's about a guy who marries 00:13:48.840 --> 00:13:51.580 a widow with a grown daughter. And through this, 00:13:51.580 --> 00:13:54.659 like, cascade of marriages, he ends up being 00:13:54.659 --> 00:13:57.779 his own grandfather. And in the story, the bartender 00:13:57.779 --> 00:14:00.379 yells at a customer for playing it. He screams, 00:14:00.500 --> 00:14:04.090 turn that off. Because it's just too on the nose. 00:14:04.129 --> 00:14:06.590 It's the universe mocking him. But then at the 00:14:06.590 --> 00:14:09.350 very end of the story, after he secured the timeline 00:14:09.350 --> 00:14:12.049 and ensured his own birth. He lets the song play. 00:14:12.169 --> 00:14:14.309 He accepts it. He accepts that he is a paradox. 00:14:14.629 --> 00:14:17.809 So what we have is a story about a man who is 00:14:17.809 --> 00:14:20.629 his own mother, father, and child. A man who 00:14:20.629 --> 00:14:22.549 recruits himself into a time policing agency 00:14:22.549 --> 00:14:25.009 just to ensure he could do it all over again. 00:14:25.309 --> 00:14:28.470 And it raises the question, is this freedom? 00:14:29.490 --> 00:14:32.100 Or is this a prison? I think it's a prison. He 00:14:32.100 --> 00:14:33.799 can never do anything else. He can never choose 00:14:33.799 --> 00:14:35.759 a different path. If he decides not to travel 00:14:35.759 --> 00:14:39.259 back to 1963, he just ceases to exist. He's a 00:14:39.259 --> 00:14:41.240 slave to his own history. And yet he looks at 00:14:41.240 --> 00:14:43.860 us, people with free will, people with, you know, 00:14:43.879 --> 00:14:46.980 unknown futures, and calls us the zombies. Well, 00:14:47.019 --> 00:14:48.899 maybe he's jealous. We have the luxury of not 00:14:48.899 --> 00:14:50.840 knowing what happens next. He has to live the 00:14:50.840 --> 00:14:53.620 same life loop after loop forever. That is a 00:14:53.620 --> 00:14:55.559 heavy thought to leave you on. Robert Heinlein 00:14:55.559 --> 00:14:57.840 wrote this in 1958, and we're still getting headaches 00:14:57.840 --> 00:14:59.980 trying to figure it out today. That's the mark 00:14:59.980 --> 00:15:02.340 of a truly great story, isn't it? It doesn't 00:15:02.340 --> 00:15:05.460 just entertain you. It rewires your brain a little 00:15:05.460 --> 00:15:08.279 bit. So next time you look in the mirror, just 00:15:08.279 --> 00:15:11.379 be glad you have parents and that you aren't 00:15:11.379 --> 00:15:13.279 your own grandpa. It certainly simplifies the 00:15:13.279 --> 00:15:15.279 family reunions. If you haven't read All You 00:15:15.279 --> 00:15:18.139 Zombies, please go find it. It's short, it's 00:15:18.139 --> 00:15:21.899 punchy, and it is brilliant. Or watch Predestination. 00:15:22.059 --> 00:15:23.919 Thanks for exploring The Loop with us today. 00:15:24.139 --> 00:15:25.559 Until next time. See you in the future.