Episode 60 — Mind Blowing Movie Thought Experiments

[JulyDiaz 2797]

Last year, Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar' took advantage of some of the most up-to-date quantum theory we've got, and wove in a story about space travel, time, and relativity.

 

While that movie went out of its way to include actual science, others just happen upon quantum theory accidentally. Take 'The Empire Strikes Back'-- Luke trains with Yoda for what seems like months in the entire time it takes Han to get through one warp-speed chase. Some might call it a plot hole, but actually could the better explanation be that Luke and Yoda were on a planet that experienced time differently?

 

 

This week on the podcast, Cracked editors Jack O'Brien, Michael Swaim, and Soren Bowie explain in layman's terms some of the basic paradoxes and thought experiments that have come to define quantum theory, and then apply quantum physics to popular movie plot holes.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

"The One Where Everyone Didn't Get Killed In The End" was always one of the more peculiar episodes of "Friends" to me...

[sharklasers 1]

Imho this is one of the best non-David-Wong episodes so far.

[JohnKinsella 0]

The bartender paradox is just the plot of the Robert Heinlein story All You Zombies on which the new movie Predestination is based.

[NickSpannaus 91]

"Artists sometimes don't know what they're doing." -- Jack O'Brien

 

This is a great line. Personally, I think artists generally provide the LEAST valuable criticism* of their own work. Without getting too in-depth, I think the human mind has a lot more going on during the creative process than we realize. Fans/critics creating elaborate (valid) theories on pop-culture subjects is a great example. Therefore, After Hours is an objectively important piece of history.

 

 

 

*Definitions #3-6 on dictionary.com

[KevinCarroll 0]

I'm a big fan of the layman-ized idea that time travel isn't possible, not because of any paradox-check or other fundamental rule of metaphysics, but instead it isn't possible because there is no place to travel to as time is just the perception of an internal component of a static set of effectively simultaneous 'events.' Though it sounds kinda crazy like that, but it helps if you think of it like a novel, from ouside of the story all events are defined as it is just a book sitting on the shelf, but from the perspective from inside the novel (which we can experience by reading it) the story unfolds as a linear set of events ("time").

[WilliamKWallace 0]

Funny, whenever I think of Tarantino I don't think of a filmic genius but rather the fuck ton of n-words I'd have to sit through. Add that the realization that like this podcast will be mostly white men who are unconsciously having that offensive slur, out their mouths, normalized for them to the point where it doesn't even oocur to them that this might offend black people.