WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.660 In 1932, the blueprints for the atomic bomb were 00:00:02.660 --> 00:00:05.259 handed directly to the British military. But 00:00:05.259 --> 00:00:08.720 they don't come from some top secret physicist's 00:00:08.720 --> 00:00:10.439 laboratory. No, they didn't. They actually came 00:00:10.439 --> 00:00:12.740 from a science fiction novel, a novel written 00:00:12.740 --> 00:00:15.539 decades earlier by a guy who had literally dropped 00:00:15.539 --> 00:00:18.399 out of a miserable retail job. Right. It's wild. 00:00:19.199 --> 00:00:21.739 Welcome to today's Deep Dive, everyone. We are 00:00:21.739 --> 00:00:23.820 so thrilled to have you with us. Today, we've 00:00:23.820 --> 00:00:26.260 got a fascinating stack of sources to go through. 00:00:26.679 --> 00:00:29.420 It's an extensive biographical and historical 00:00:29.420 --> 00:00:32.219 deep dive into a man you probably know as the 00:00:32.219 --> 00:00:35.820 father of science fiction. And it forces you 00:00:35.820 --> 00:00:38.039 to completely rethink what a novel can actually 00:00:38.039 --> 00:00:41.420 do because we tend to view literature as a mirror 00:00:41.420 --> 00:00:44.850 reflecting society. But here. The book was the 00:00:44.850 --> 00:00:47.189 actual engine driving history forward. Exactly. 00:00:47.750 --> 00:00:49.710 Our mission for this deep dive is to uncover 00:00:49.710 --> 00:00:52.109 how a guy who wrote about the future didn't just 00:00:52.109 --> 00:00:54.789 passively predict it. He actively engineered 00:00:54.789 --> 00:00:56.950 the modern world that you and I are living in 00:00:56.950 --> 00:00:59.670 right now. The sheer scale of his influence is 00:00:59.670 --> 00:01:01.729 just staggering once you start connecting those 00:01:01.729 --> 00:01:04.709 historical dots. You realize he wasn't just entertaining 00:01:04.709 --> 00:01:07.969 people. He was planting seeds in the minds of 00:01:07.969 --> 00:01:10.250 the exact people who would go on to build the 00:01:10.250 --> 00:01:12.170 20th century. Yeah, you probably know him for 00:01:12.170 --> 00:01:14.329 the War of the Worlds or like the Time Machine. 00:01:14.909 --> 00:01:16.810 But what you might not know is that his writings 00:01:16.810 --> 00:01:19.349 directly inspired the invention of the atomic 00:01:19.349 --> 00:01:22.790 bomb or that his influence was so profound he 00:01:22.790 --> 00:01:26.930 ended up on. literal Nazi hit list. The literal 00:01:26.930 --> 00:01:29.790 hit list. Which is just crazy to think about 00:01:29.790 --> 00:01:33.010 for a novelist. Okay let's unpack this. To understand 00:01:33.010 --> 00:01:35.569 how Wells could so accurately see the future 00:01:35.569 --> 00:01:38.090 we kind of have to start by looking at his past. 00:01:38.530 --> 00:01:40.250 Because from what I'm reading in these sources 00:01:40.250 --> 00:01:43.030 his origins were completely grounded in a really 00:01:43.030 --> 00:01:45.530 miserable harsh reality. Far from it. I mean 00:01:45.530 --> 00:01:48.129 his early life was anything but a utopian fantasy. 00:01:48.230 --> 00:01:50.689 He was born in 1866 into a lower middle class 00:01:50.689 --> 00:01:53.430 family in Kent and they were You know, constantly 00:01:53.430 --> 00:01:55.310 hovering right on the edge of total poverty. 00:01:55.530 --> 00:01:57.629 He wasn't born into some wealthy aristocratic 00:01:57.629 --> 00:02:00.689 family of Victorian thinkers. Not at all. And 00:02:00.689 --> 00:02:02.510 the defining moment of his childhood actually 00:02:02.510 --> 00:02:04.930 happens when he's just eight years old. He breaks 00:02:04.930 --> 00:02:08.110 his leg in a pretty severe accident. Which today 00:02:08.110 --> 00:02:11.289 means a cast and playing some video games on 00:02:11.289 --> 00:02:14.069 the couch for a few weeks. Right. But back then, 00:02:14.349 --> 00:02:16.270 a broken leg meant he was entirely bedridden 00:02:16.270 --> 00:02:19.449 for a very long time. He was just... immobilized. 00:02:19.509 --> 00:02:22.310 So what did he do? Well, he was completely reliant 00:02:22.310 --> 00:02:24.909 on his father to bring him books from the local 00:02:24.909 --> 00:02:28.050 literary institute just to pass the time. And 00:02:28.050 --> 00:02:30.789 for a young kid trapped in a tiny cramped room, 00:02:31.270 --> 00:02:33.069 those books were his only way out. They were 00:02:33.069 --> 00:02:35.789 an escape hatch. Exactly. They opened up entire 00:02:35.789 --> 00:02:38.409 other worlds to him. It ignited this desperate 00:02:38.409 --> 00:02:40.969 intellectual hunger that essentially defined 00:02:40.969 --> 00:02:43.310 the rest of his life. But then history tragically 00:02:43.310 --> 00:02:45.590 repeats itself, doesn't it? Because his father, 00:02:45.629 --> 00:02:47.409 who actually made a portion of his living as 00:02:47.409 --> 00:02:49.610 a professional cricketer, also breaks his leg 00:02:49.610 --> 00:02:51.509 a few years later. Yeah, he breaks his thigh. 00:02:51.729 --> 00:02:54.409 And that injury effectively ends his father's 00:02:54.409 --> 00:02:57.509 career. And whatever tiny bit of financial stability 00:02:57.509 --> 00:03:00.789 the family had is just gone. They are plunged 00:03:00.789 --> 00:03:03.530 into severe poverty. So because they can't support 00:03:03.530 --> 00:03:06.889 themselves, a young Wells is pulled out of school. 00:03:07.090 --> 00:03:09.830 And he's forced into an apprenticeship as a draper. 00:03:10.009 --> 00:03:13.520 Basically. He is thrust into the 19th century 00:03:13.520 --> 00:03:17.039 equivalent of an exhausting dead end retail job. 00:03:17.319 --> 00:03:19.360 It sounds incredibly soul crushing. I mean, he's 00:03:19.360 --> 00:03:21.560 working 13 hour days, measuring clock, dealing 00:03:21.560 --> 00:03:23.500 with customers, and then he has to sleep in a 00:03:23.500 --> 00:03:25.599 crowded dormitory with all the other apprentices. 00:03:25.800 --> 00:03:28.659 He was miserable. So how does a poor Draper's 00:03:28.659 --> 00:03:31.460 apprentice with no money and literally no free 00:03:31.460 --> 00:03:34.180 time end up getting his hands on the advanced 00:03:34.180 --> 00:03:36.240 scientific texts that would define his whole 00:03:36.240 --> 00:03:39.020 career? Well, his mother eventually takes a job 00:03:39.020 --> 00:03:41.500 as a housekeeper at this grand country estate 00:03:41.500 --> 00:03:44.780 called Up Park. And Up Park happens to have a 00:03:44.780 --> 00:03:48.099 magnificent sprawling library. So Wells just 00:03:48.099 --> 00:03:50.599 starts sneaking in there. Oh, wow. So he's just 00:03:50.599 --> 00:03:52.740 reading on the sly. Yeah. He's reading Plato's 00:03:52.740 --> 00:03:54.580 Republic. He's reading Thomas More's Utopia. 00:03:54.960 --> 00:03:57.000 He's feeding that same intellectual hunger that 00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:59.340 started with his broken leg. But now he's absorbing 00:03:59.340 --> 00:04:01.500 high level philosophical and political theory. 00:04:01.639 --> 00:04:04.560 And that self -education really pays off. because 00:04:04.560 --> 00:04:06.560 he eventually wins a scholarship to the Normal 00:04:06.560 --> 00:04:09.599 School of Science in London. But the fascinating 00:04:09.599 --> 00:04:13.080 detail here is that he isn't studying literature 00:04:13.080 --> 00:04:15.759 or creative writing. No, he's studying biology. 00:04:16.360 --> 00:04:18.800 And he is studying it under Thomas Henry Huxley. 00:04:18.939 --> 00:04:21.579 Huxley is a massive figure in scientific history. 00:04:21.779 --> 00:04:24.800 Huge. He was famously known as Darwin's bulldog 00:04:24.800 --> 00:04:28.459 for his really fierce public advocacy of Charles 00:04:28.459 --> 00:04:31.629 Darwin's theory of evolution. So Wells is sitting 00:04:31.629 --> 00:04:33.790 in Huxley's lecture halls, absorbing all the 00:04:33.790 --> 00:04:36.050 mechanics of natural selection anatomy and just 00:04:36.050 --> 00:04:39.029 the brutal realities of how species survive or 00:04:39.029 --> 00:04:41.810 go extinct. Exactly. But even with that scholarship, 00:04:42.110 --> 00:04:45.069 his daily life is a total grind. He's surviving 00:04:45.069 --> 00:04:47.930 on a meager 21 shillings a week. Which is practically 00:04:47.930 --> 00:04:50.610 nothing. Right. He is walking miles across London 00:04:50.610 --> 00:04:52.430 every day because he literally can't afford a 00:04:52.430 --> 00:04:55.329 tram ticket. He is suffering from constant malnutrition. 00:04:55.410 --> 00:04:57.069 If you look at photos of him from this time, 00:04:57.529 --> 00:05:00.899 he is just painfully, shockingly thin. So let 00:05:00.899 --> 00:05:03.339 me ask you this. Did his specific training in 00:05:03.339 --> 00:05:06.019 Darwinian biology, combined with that intense 00:05:06.019 --> 00:05:08.439 physical struggle for his own survival, make 00:05:08.439 --> 00:05:10.740 his later science fiction feel more visceral 00:05:10.740 --> 00:05:13.220 and real compared to other fantasy writers at 00:05:13.220 --> 00:05:15.579 the time? It absolutely did. And this raises 00:05:15.579 --> 00:05:18.240 an important question about how our early environments 00:05:18.240 --> 00:05:21.779 shape our adult philosophies. You know, Wells's 00:05:21.779 --> 00:05:24.759 early exposure to extreme class divides, going 00:05:24.759 --> 00:05:27.160 from the squalor of a draper's dormitory to the 00:05:27.160 --> 00:05:29.600 grandeur of a park, combined with his strict 00:05:29.600 --> 00:05:32.819 bylaw. training, it hardwired him. hardwired 00:05:32.819 --> 00:05:35.480 him to view society differently. Yes. He viewed 00:05:35.480 --> 00:05:38.379 human society through a very cold evolutionary 00:05:38.379 --> 00:05:40.779 lens. He wasn't just dreaming up fantastical 00:05:40.779 --> 00:05:42.779 creatures for the fun of it. He was looking at 00:05:42.779 --> 00:05:45.040 humanity as a species and asking, well, how might 00:05:45.040 --> 00:05:48.399 we adapt or fundamentally fail to adapt to changing 00:05:48.399 --> 00:05:50.860 environments? He applied the brutal logic of 00:05:50.860 --> 00:05:53.360 natural selection rate to modern human civilization. 00:05:53.699 --> 00:05:55.759 And because his fiction was grounded in such 00:05:55.759 --> 00:05:58.379 strict scientific logic, it required a totally 00:05:58.379 --> 00:06:00.439 different approach to writing. His scientific 00:06:00.439 --> 00:06:02.370 background didn't just give him themes to write 00:06:02.370 --> 00:06:05.730 about. It gave him a very rigid, almost mechanical 00:06:05.730 --> 00:06:09.709 framework for inventing a completely new genre 00:06:09.709 --> 00:06:12.490 of storytelling. Right. He revolutionized speculative 00:06:12.490 --> 00:06:15.290 fiction by inventing a structural rule that we 00:06:15.290 --> 00:06:18.709 now literally call Welles's Law. Walk us through 00:06:18.709 --> 00:06:21.009 Welles's Law. How does it actually work in practice? 00:06:21.230 --> 00:06:24.470 So the rule is remarkably elegant. A story should 00:06:24.470 --> 00:06:26.850 contain only a single extraordinary assumption. 00:06:27.149 --> 00:06:30.509 one impossible thing. Just one. Just one. Maybe 00:06:30.509 --> 00:06:33.189 it's a machine that travels through time or a 00:06:33.189 --> 00:06:35.949 chemical formula that grants invisibility. But 00:06:35.949 --> 00:06:38.250 everything else around that one impossible thing 00:06:38.250 --> 00:06:41.670 must remain relentlessly ordinary, human, and 00:06:41.670 --> 00:06:43.790 scientifically grounded. That makes so much sense. 00:06:43.870 --> 00:06:46.089 He applied this masterfully to his first novella, 00:06:46.149 --> 00:06:48.310 The Time Machine, which, by the way, he coined 00:06:48.310 --> 00:06:50.709 the term time machine. Before him, people just 00:06:50.709 --> 00:06:52.350 didn't use that phrase. They really didn't. But 00:06:52.350 --> 00:06:54.790 when you read the book, the time traveler doesn't 00:06:54.790 --> 00:06:57.949 step into some glowing magical portal in an enchanted 00:06:57.949 --> 00:07:01.089 forest. Wells surrounds the impossible machine 00:07:01.089 --> 00:07:04.449 with solid upper class Victorian comforts. The 00:07:04.449 --> 00:07:07.730 scene is set in a normal drawing room with cigars, 00:07:07.850 --> 00:07:10.069 ticking grandfather clocks and leather chairs. 00:07:10.370 --> 00:07:13.589 Right. He even spends pages having the characters 00:07:13.589 --> 00:07:16.149 debate the geometry of the fourth dimension before 00:07:16.149 --> 00:07:19.180 the machine is ever turned on. He grounds the 00:07:19.180 --> 00:07:21.199 reader's belief in the mundane physics of the 00:07:21.199 --> 00:07:23.660 real world before he asks them to take the leak 00:07:23.660 --> 00:07:25.680 into the fantastic. And he also used cutting 00:07:25.680 --> 00:07:27.259 -edge science from the headlines of his day, 00:07:27.379 --> 00:07:29.759 didn't he? He did. He incorporated the newly 00:07:29.759 --> 00:07:32.120 discovered concept of radioactive decay into 00:07:32.120 --> 00:07:34.540 his narratives. For the first man in the moon, 00:07:34.920 --> 00:07:38.000 he drew directly on Nikola Tesla's highly publicized 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:40.060 claims that he had received radio signals from 00:07:40.060 --> 00:07:42.230 Mars. Let me play devil's advocate here for a 00:07:42.230 --> 00:07:44.389 second. Usually when you read fantasy, you want 00:07:44.389 --> 00:07:47.029 to escape reality completely. You know, you want 00:07:47.029 --> 00:07:49.949 sleeping space operas or magical realms. Why 00:07:49.949 --> 00:07:53.370 does dragging mundane prosaic details into the 00:07:53.370 --> 00:07:55.730 fantasy actually make it more terrifying? To 00:07:55.730 --> 00:07:57.769 me, it feels kind of like a magic trick. What's 00:07:57.769 --> 00:07:59.730 fascinating here is that the magic trick analogy 00:07:59.730 --> 00:08:02.649 is the perfect way to understand the underlying 00:08:02.649 --> 00:08:06.149 mechanism of his writing. Wells famously called 00:08:06.149 --> 00:08:09.290 his technique the plausible impossible. Because 00:08:09.290 --> 00:08:11.829 if the magician's sleeves look weird, your brain 00:08:11.829 --> 00:08:14.529 immediately flags it as a trick, your threat 00:08:14.529 --> 00:08:16.550 detection system goes off, and you start looking 00:08:16.550 --> 00:08:19.310 for the hidden coin. But if the magician's sleeves 00:08:19.310 --> 00:08:21.629 look perfectly normal... Your brain turns off 00:08:21.629 --> 00:08:24.769 its logical defenses. Precisely. Wells bored 00:08:24.769 --> 00:08:27.329 your brain's threat detection system with mundane 00:08:27.329 --> 00:08:30.069 details about cigar smoke and parliamentary debates. 00:08:30.300 --> 00:08:32.440 So by the time he introduces the time machine 00:08:32.440 --> 00:08:34.919 or the Martian tripods, your logical defenses 00:08:34.919 --> 00:08:37.419 are completely down. You accept the impossible 00:08:37.419 --> 00:08:40.320 because the environment it exists in is undeniably 00:08:40.320 --> 00:08:43.740 real. This bypassed the reader's natural skepticism, 00:08:43.940 --> 00:08:46.360 which allowed his audience to accept deeply disturbing 00:08:46.360 --> 00:08:49.399 concepts like the horrific biological engineering 00:08:49.399 --> 00:08:53.210 in the island of Dr. Moreau. or the total apocalyptic 00:08:53.210 --> 00:08:55.250 destruction of London in the War of the Worlds. 00:08:55.570 --> 00:08:58.490 Exactly. He permanently burned these ideas into 00:08:58.490 --> 00:09:00.730 the human psyche because he made them feel like 00:09:00.730 --> 00:09:02.450 they were happening right outside the reader's 00:09:02.450 --> 00:09:04.940 window. And because he grounded his fiction so 00:09:04.940 --> 00:09:07.720 heavily in strict scientific and sociological 00:09:07.720 --> 00:09:10.240 logic, the books eventually stopped being mere 00:09:10.240 --> 00:09:13.320 entertainment. They evolved into terrifyingly 00:09:13.320 --> 00:09:16.059 accurate prophecies. Scientists and politicians 00:09:16.059 --> 00:09:18.080 actually started reading them not as fiction, 00:09:18.440 --> 00:09:21.080 but as roadmaps. This is the era where Wells 00:09:21.080 --> 00:09:24.419 transitions from a popular novelist into a Vatican 00:09:24.419 --> 00:09:27.580 or prophetic futurist. His deep understanding 00:09:27.580 --> 00:09:30.779 of the mechanics of technological progress allowed 00:09:30.779 --> 00:09:33.639 him to mathematically where society was heading. 00:09:34.019 --> 00:09:36.860 His track record is genuinely insane. I mean 00:09:36.860 --> 00:09:39.379 we aren't just talking about vague psychic predictions 00:09:39.379 --> 00:09:42.379 here. He foresaw the use of aircraft in warfare 00:09:42.379 --> 00:09:44.980 long before airplanes were weaponized. He predicted 00:09:44.980 --> 00:09:48.279 armored tanks, space travel. He wrote about satellite 00:09:48.279 --> 00:09:51.279 television too. He even predicted a proto Wikipedia 00:09:51.279 --> 00:09:53.960 which he called the world brain. The world brain. 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:56.799 That's such a brilliant example of how he extrapolated. 00:09:56.879 --> 00:09:59.360 It really is. He didn't just guess that the internet 00:09:59.360 --> 00:10:02.009 would exist. He looked at the early tech technologies 00:10:02.009 --> 00:10:05.289 of microfilm and global telegraph networks. And 00:10:05.289 --> 00:10:08.370 he logically deduced that eventually humanity 00:10:08.370 --> 00:10:11.289 would find a way to continuously update and distribute 00:10:11.289 --> 00:10:14.149 all of human knowledge to anyone, anywhere, at 00:10:14.149 --> 00:10:17.110 any time. He saw the mechanics of early 20th 00:10:17.110 --> 00:10:19.330 century communication and stretched them to their 00:10:19.330 --> 00:10:22.409 ultimate conclusion. So when I pull my smartphone 00:10:22.409 --> 00:10:25.549 out of my pocket to look up a fact, I am essentially 00:10:25.549 --> 00:10:28.690 holding a piece of Wells's world brain. You are. 00:10:29.409 --> 00:10:31.820 And he didn't stop at technology. He applied 00:10:31.820 --> 00:10:34.519 that same predictive logic to geopolitical shifts. 00:10:35.039 --> 00:10:37.259 In his 1933 book, The Shape of Things to Come, 00:10:37.580 --> 00:10:39.940 he mapped out the rising tensions in Europe and 00:10:39.940 --> 00:10:41.860 predicted that a second world war would begin 00:10:41.860 --> 00:10:45.059 in January 1940. Wow, and he was off by what, 00:10:45.059 --> 00:10:47.399 only four months? From the actual start of the 00:10:47.399 --> 00:10:50.600 war in September 1939? Just four months. Here's 00:10:50.600 --> 00:10:52.080 where it gets really interesting, though. Let's 00:10:52.080 --> 00:10:54.299 talk about his 1914 novel, The World Set Free, 00:10:54.419 --> 00:10:56.419 because in this book, Wells writes the very first 00:10:56.419 --> 00:10:58.779 description of what he specifically termed atomic 00:10:58.779 --> 00:11:01.929 bombs. Right, and he didn't just imagine a really 00:11:01.929 --> 00:11:04.570 big stick of dynamite. Because he understood 00:11:04.570 --> 00:11:07.350 the physics of radioactive decay, he imagined 00:11:07.350 --> 00:11:10.149 a bomb dropped from an airplane that would continuously 00:11:10.149 --> 00:11:13.350 explode for days on end. Rendering the entire 00:11:13.350 --> 00:11:15.889 geographic area completely uninhabitable due 00:11:15.889 --> 00:11:19.250 to radiation, it was a chillingly accurate vision 00:11:19.250 --> 00:11:22.610 of nuclear fallout, written a full three decades 00:11:22.610 --> 00:11:25.370 before the weapon actually existed. And the historical 00:11:25.370 --> 00:11:28.149 ripple effect of this specific book is monumental. 00:11:28.409 --> 00:11:31.830 In 1932, a Hungarian -born physicist named Leo 00:11:31.830 --> 00:11:35.190 Szilard read The World Set Free. Wait, Leo Szilard? 00:11:35.330 --> 00:11:37.629 The scientist who literally conceived the nuclear 00:11:37.629 --> 00:11:40.590 chain reaction? The very same. Szilard reads 00:11:40.590 --> 00:11:43.389 Wells' book, and the concept of harnessing atomic 00:11:43.389 --> 00:11:46.250 energy for a continuous explosive reaction plants 00:11:46.250 --> 00:11:48.909 a seed in his mind. The following year, Szilard 00:11:48.909 --> 00:11:51.149 is waiting at a traffic light in London, and 00:11:51.149 --> 00:11:53.429 the actual physics of the nuclear chain reaction 00:11:53.429 --> 00:11:55.750 suddenly clicks for him. Just standing at a traffic 00:11:55.750 --> 00:11:58.129 light. Yes. He immediately patents the concept. 00:11:58.350 --> 00:12:00.230 But, and this is crucial, he doesn't publish 00:12:00.230 --> 00:12:02.529 it. He takes that patent and hands it straight 00:12:02.529 --> 00:12:04.450 to the British Admiralty with strict instructions 00:12:04.450 --> 00:12:07.370 to keep it a total military secret. Because he 00:12:07.370 --> 00:12:09.769 knew what would happen if the wrong people got 00:12:09.769 --> 00:12:13.789 a hold of it. Exactly that. In his own memoirs, 00:12:13.950 --> 00:12:16.769 Silder specifically stated that he knew exactly 00:12:16.769 --> 00:12:18.950 what a nuclear chain reaction would mean for 00:12:18.950 --> 00:12:21.389 the destruction of the world, and he knew it 00:12:21.389 --> 00:12:24.110 because he had read H .G. Wells. That is mind 00:12:24.110 --> 00:12:26.330 -blowing. It's like a modern sci -fi author casually 00:12:26.330 --> 00:12:29.990 writing a novel about a warp drive and an actual 00:12:29.990 --> 00:12:33.009 NASA engineer reading it, looking at the math 00:12:33.009 --> 00:12:35.529 on page 40, saying, wait a minute, this physics 00:12:35.529 --> 00:12:38.210 actually works, and then going into a lab to 00:12:38.210 --> 00:12:40.759 build it. It perfectly illustrates the staggering 00:12:40.759 --> 00:12:43.840 cultural power of the Vatican writer. Wells wasn't 00:12:43.840 --> 00:12:45.759 just predicting the future. By putting these 00:12:45.759 --> 00:12:48.279 highly logical, scientifically grounded ideas 00:12:48.279 --> 00:12:50.299 into the minds of the readers who actually shaped 00:12:50.299 --> 00:12:53.639 society, he was inadvertently providing the blueprints 00:12:53.639 --> 00:12:55.299 to build it. And it wasn't just scientists who 00:12:55.299 --> 00:12:57.419 were taking notes. Politicians were obsessed 00:12:57.419 --> 00:12:59.940 with his work. Winston Churchill was a massive 00:12:59.940 --> 00:13:02.399 fan and an avid reader. Churchill and Wells had 00:13:02.399 --> 00:13:05.659 a long, ongoing intellectual dialogue. Churchill 00:13:05.659 --> 00:13:07.879 actually borrowed the famous phrase, the gathering 00:13:07.879 --> 00:13:10.659 storm directly from Wells, the war of the worlds, 00:13:11.019 --> 00:13:13.159 to describe the looming rise of Nazi Germany. 00:13:13.600 --> 00:13:15.580 Oh, I had no idea that phrase came from Wells. 00:13:15.870 --> 00:13:18.409 Yeah, and Churchill also frequently incorporated 00:13:18.409 --> 00:13:21.629 Wells' ideas of a highly structured, supportive, 00:13:21.889 --> 00:13:24.350 utopian state into his own political speeches. 00:13:24.840 --> 00:13:27.419 But engineering the future is a messy business, 00:13:27.600 --> 00:13:29.539 isn't it? When you're a guy trying to map out 00:13:29.539 --> 00:13:32.279 the entire destiny of humanity on a global scale, 00:13:32.799 --> 00:13:35.879 you are inevitably bound to collide with the 00:13:35.879 --> 00:13:39.299 very real, very dark politics of your time. Absolutely. 00:13:39.500 --> 00:13:41.700 Wells was highly political. He was a lifelong 00:13:41.700 --> 00:13:44.639 socialist, deeply involved with the Fabian Society 00:13:44.639 --> 00:13:46.980 early in his career. Hold on. What exactly was 00:13:46.980 --> 00:13:49.700 the Fabian Society? It was a prominent British 00:13:49.700 --> 00:13:54.149 socialist organization. Unlike Marxist revolutionaries 00:13:54.149 --> 00:13:56.029 who wanted to violently overthrow the government, 00:13:56.590 --> 00:13:58.750 the Fabians believed in gradualist reform. So 00:13:58.750 --> 00:14:00.690 they wanted it to work within the system. Right. 00:14:00.809 --> 00:14:03.490 They wanted to advance socialism through intellectual 00:14:03.490 --> 00:14:06.669 debate, political education, and slowly transforming 00:14:06.669 --> 00:14:09.049 society from the inside out using democratic 00:14:09.049 --> 00:14:11.590 means. Wells aligned with this because he believes 00:14:11.590 --> 00:14:14.029 society didn't need a bloody revolution. It needed 00:14:14.029 --> 00:14:16.649 a massive, rational, scientific overhaul. And 00:14:16.649 --> 00:14:19.370 he was so committed to this vision that he traveled 00:14:19.370 --> 00:14:22.139 the globe meeting with world leaders. He met 00:14:22.139 --> 00:14:25.259 with FDR, and in 1934, he actually traveled to 00:14:25.259 --> 00:14:27.500 the Soviet Union to interview Joseph Stalin. 00:14:27.700 --> 00:14:29.940 Yes, he sat down with Joseph Stalin for three 00:14:29.940 --> 00:14:32.480 hours. Wait, he sat down with Stalin for three 00:14:32.480 --> 00:14:34.539 hours to try to convince him to embrace free 00:14:34.539 --> 00:14:37.600 expression. Wasn't that incredibly naive? The 00:14:37.600 --> 00:14:39.919 man was running a brutal totalitarian regime. 00:14:40.139 --> 00:14:42.500 Did Stalin just laugh him out of the room? It 00:14:42.500 --> 00:14:45.799 was incredibly naive in hindsight, yes. Wells 00:14:45.799 --> 00:14:48.080 went in hoping he could reason with Stalin, you 00:14:48.080 --> 00:14:50.620 know, hoping to convince him that a true utopian 00:14:50.620 --> 00:14:53.419 state required intellectual freedom and an open 00:14:53.419 --> 00:14:55.759 exchange of ideas. How did that go? Well, the 00:14:55.759 --> 00:14:57.679 transcript of their conversation is fascinating 00:14:57.679 --> 00:15:00.559 because you see Wells trying to apply his logical 00:15:00.559 --> 00:15:03.539 reformist ideals to a dictator who only understands 00:15:03.539 --> 00:15:06.320 absolute power. Stalin didn't laugh him out of 00:15:06.320 --> 00:15:08.600 the room, but he firmly dismantled Wells' arguments. 00:15:08.960 --> 00:15:12.120 Wills left the Soviet Union deeply disillusioned. 00:15:12.340 --> 00:15:14.340 He ultimately realized the system was paralyzed 00:15:14.340 --> 00:15:17.279 by state violence. He also had this profound 00:15:17.279 --> 00:15:20.019 idealism about global conflict that backfired. 00:15:20.580 --> 00:15:23.779 In 1914, he coined the phrase, the war that will 00:15:23.779 --> 00:15:26.960 end war. He genuinely believed that defeating 00:15:26.960 --> 00:15:29.899 German militarism would rationally end all global 00:15:29.899 --> 00:15:33.639 conflict forever. Which was a tragic miscalculation 00:15:33.639 --> 00:15:36.940 of human nature. However, his vocal lifelong 00:15:36.940 --> 00:15:39.600 opposition to fascism made him a major target. 00:15:40.039 --> 00:15:42.220 During World War II, his books were publicly 00:15:42.220 --> 00:15:45.039 burned by the Nazis. And when Allied forces later 00:15:45.039 --> 00:15:47.720 discovered the SS Black Book, which was a literal 00:15:47.720 --> 00:15:49.820 hit list for immediate arrest and execution, 00:15:50.039 --> 00:15:52.279 if Britain were successfully invaded, H .G. Wells 00:15:52.279 --> 00:15:54.970 was right there on the list. He was. But despite 00:15:54.970 --> 00:15:57.230 the staggering horrors of the two world wars, 00:15:57.669 --> 00:16:00.230 he never stopped pushing for a unified global 00:16:00.230 --> 00:16:02.470 structure. He was a massive advocate for the 00:16:02.470 --> 00:16:04.850 League of Nations. And later on, his extensive 00:16:04.850 --> 00:16:07.450 writings on human rights laid the direct groundwork 00:16:07.450 --> 00:16:10.789 for the UN's 1948 Universal Declaration of Human 00:16:10.789 --> 00:16:13.429 Rights. So you have this man who is a champion 00:16:13.429 --> 00:16:16.110 of free expression, a sworn enemy of the Nazis 00:16:16.110 --> 00:16:18.570 and a foundational architect of modern human 00:16:18.570 --> 00:16:20.690 rights. But this is where the historical reality 00:16:20.690 --> 00:16:23.230 becomes incredibly complex and frankly, deeply 00:16:23.230 --> 00:16:25.759 uncomfortable. for modern readers. Right. And 00:16:25.759 --> 00:16:27.320 we need to be very clear with you listening. 00:16:27.559 --> 00:16:30.240 We are strictly looking at the factual historical 00:16:30.240 --> 00:16:33.120 record here. We are not endorsing any political 00:16:33.120 --> 00:16:35.899 ideology from any side of the spectrum. But the 00:16:35.899 --> 00:16:38.440 facts of his underlying beliefs are really jarring 00:16:38.440 --> 00:16:40.980 to read today. They are. Because for much of 00:16:40.980 --> 00:16:43.899 his adult life, H .G. Wills was a passionate 00:16:43.899 --> 00:16:46.720 advocate for eugenics and involuntary euthanasia. 00:16:46.720 --> 00:16:50.299 Wow. Yeah. He argued in favor of what he coldly 00:16:50.299 --> 00:16:53.840 called the scurrilization of failure. He believed 00:16:53.840 --> 00:16:57.039 that for a socialist utopian society to function 00:16:57.039 --> 00:17:00.539 efficiently, humanity needed to ruthlessly weed 00:17:00.539 --> 00:17:04.259 out those he deemed unfit or biologically inferior. 00:17:04.640 --> 00:17:06.700 Now he did eventually recant these views by around 00:17:06.700 --> 00:17:09.680 1940 as the true horrific realities of where 00:17:09.680 --> 00:17:11.940 those ideologies lead became visible in Nazi 00:17:11.940 --> 00:17:14.099 Germany, but he held and published those beliefs 00:17:14.099 --> 00:17:17.019 for decades. He did. And it's so completely at 00:17:17.019 --> 00:17:18.960 odds with the guy who thought for the Universal 00:17:18.960 --> 00:17:21.279 Declaration of Human Rights? How do we reconcile 00:17:21.279 --> 00:17:23.079 the visionary who laid the groundwork for human 00:17:23.079 --> 00:17:25.119 rights with a man who spent years advocating 00:17:25.119 --> 00:17:27.539 for eugenics and the sterilization of failure? 00:17:27.920 --> 00:17:29.940 If we connect this to the bigger picture, we 00:17:29.940 --> 00:17:32.420 have to understand what drove Wells at his core. 00:17:32.940 --> 00:17:35.680 We have to look at social Darwinism. Wells was 00:17:35.680 --> 00:17:39.220 a man utterly obsessed with efficiency, progress, 00:17:39.660 --> 00:17:41.559 and evolutionary fitness. Because he was trained 00:17:41.559 --> 00:17:44.559 by Huxley. Exactly. He looked at society not 00:17:44.559 --> 00:17:47.339 as a collection of messy emotional individuals 00:17:47.339 --> 00:17:50.660 with inherent moral value, but as a biological 00:17:50.660 --> 00:17:53.460 organism that needed to be optimized. So he was 00:17:53.460 --> 00:17:56.559 taking the exact same cold mechanical logic he 00:17:56.559 --> 00:17:59.359 used to invent the time machine and applying 00:17:59.359 --> 00:18:02.200 it to human reproduction. Yes. And the danger 00:18:02.200 --> 00:18:04.500 of looking at humanity merely as a biological 00:18:04.500 --> 00:18:07.220 puzzle to be solved is that it strips away basic 00:18:07.220 --> 00:18:09.990 empathy. It leads you down paths of incredibly 00:18:09.990 --> 00:18:12.769 dark clinical ideologies where the system matters 00:18:12.769 --> 00:18:15.450 more than the human being. It's a stark historical 00:18:15.450 --> 00:18:17.750 reminder of the ethical blind spots that even 00:18:17.750 --> 00:18:19.809 the most forward -looking thinkers can possess. 00:18:20.029 --> 00:18:21.930 It really is the ultimate warning about treating 00:18:21.930 --> 00:18:24.789 human beings like math equations. And honestly, 00:18:24.970 --> 00:18:27.589 his own personal life proves how messy being 00:18:27.589 --> 00:18:30.490 a human actually is. He wasn't some cold clinical 00:18:30.490 --> 00:18:32.950 machine. His daily life was chaotic. I mean, 00:18:32.950 --> 00:18:35.390 he had multiple affairs resulting in children 00:18:35.390 --> 00:18:37.829 outside his marriages. He struggled with his 00:18:37.829 --> 00:18:40.390 health. He was a diabetic and he actually co 00:18:40.390 --> 00:18:42.809 -founded the charity that is now Diabetes UK. 00:18:43.390 --> 00:18:45.910 And amidst all that grand political posturing 00:18:45.910 --> 00:18:49.069 and scientific theorizing, he had this wondrously 00:18:49.069 --> 00:18:51.809 quirky affectionate side. He communicated with 00:18:51.809 --> 00:18:54.599 his second wife, Jane. through these little intimate 00:18:54.599 --> 00:18:57.259 diary sketches he drew. He called them pictuas. 00:18:57.420 --> 00:18:59.579 Pictuas. That's actually really sweet. It is. 00:18:59.660 --> 00:19:02.960 It shows a deeply human, vulnerable side to a 00:19:02.960 --> 00:19:05.119 man who spent his entire public life trying to 00:19:05.119 --> 00:19:07.920 dictate the grand sweep of global history. He 00:19:07.920 --> 00:19:09.900 was a walking contradiction. So what does this 00:19:09.900 --> 00:19:12.140 all mean for us today? When we look back at the 00:19:12.140 --> 00:19:14.019 life of H .G. Wells, we are looking at someone 00:19:14.019 --> 00:19:16.619 who was far more than just an entertainer. He 00:19:16.619 --> 00:19:19.140 was a foundational architect of the 20th century. 00:19:19.619 --> 00:19:22.400 Absolutely. The sheer force of his imagination 00:19:22.220 --> 00:19:25.160 gave us our modern nightmares, the atomic bomb, 00:19:25.420 --> 00:19:27.819 alien invasions, but it also gave us our modern 00:19:27.819 --> 00:19:30.400 miracles, like the framework for human rights 00:19:30.400 --> 00:19:33.059 and the concept of the World Wide Web. It really 00:19:33.059 --> 00:19:35.440 shows you the immense value of reading widely, 00:19:35.599 --> 00:19:37.500 but also thinking critically about the media 00:19:37.500 --> 00:19:40.500 we consume, because the ideas we absorb today 00:19:40.500 --> 00:19:43.359 literally build the reality of tomorrow. Which 00:19:43.359 --> 00:19:45.480 leaves us with a fascinating final thought to 00:19:45.480 --> 00:19:49.019 mull over. Wells predicted the atomic bomb and 00:19:49.019 --> 00:19:51.400 the internet simply by looking at the embryonic, 00:19:51.539 --> 00:19:54.720 barely there science of his own Victorian era 00:19:54.720 --> 00:19:58.799 and taking it to its logical extreme. So I encourage 00:19:58.799 --> 00:20:01.730 you to look around you today. What quiet, barely 00:20:01.730 --> 00:20:04.509 noticed piece of technology or what subtle social 00:20:04.509 --> 00:20:07.170 shift happening right now is actually the seed 00:20:07.170 --> 00:20:10.849 of an unimaginable reality for the year 2126. 00:20:11.029 --> 00:20:12.710 It really makes you wonder. The next time you 00:20:12.710 --> 00:20:14.730 open a science fiction novel to escape the real 00:20:14.730 --> 00:20:16.769 world, take a really close look at the pages. 00:20:17.009 --> 00:20:18.650 Because you might not be looking at a fantasy. 00:20:19.049 --> 00:20:20.890 You might be looking at the blueprints of our 00:20:20.890 --> 00:20:21.210 future.