November 14, 2016

EP. 152 — 7 Things To Do In A Time Machine (Other Than Killing Hitler)

Scenario: you’ve got a time machine and you only like two things in this life: eatin’ breakfast and killin’ Nazis, and you’ve already eaten breakfast. Your obvious next step is to travel to April 20th,1889 and throw baby hitler down a well and then blow up the well,  right? Or is there something better you could do with your time?

The whole ‘would you kill baby Hitler’ thought experiment has been a surprisingly prevalent pop-culture moral question at dinner parties and bad games of Cards Against Humanity. Even Jeb Bush weighed in with his thoughts back in a simpler time when he thought he could be president. His answer, by the way, was, “hell yeah!” (https://goo.gl/IzBaxA).

This got us thinking, what would be some other moments in history to travel back to and change one thing? One answer might be incredibly simple: November 8th, 2016. Who wouldn’t go back in time to stop the events of last Tuesday? Only time will tell if that day becomes one of the giant crossroads in the slow forward march of history.

So today Jack O’Brien and Alex Schmidt are posing that question to our five comedian guests: Steven Wilbur, Riley Silverman, Caitlin Gill, Blake Wexler and Eric Lampaert. When would you go in history to change one thing, what would it be and why?

Footnotes:

Alex Schmidt on Twitter: https://goo.gl/oF6OFj

Steven Wilbur on Twitter: https://goo.gl/CSBfaF

Riley Silverman on Twitter: https://goo.gl/ipJ8TX

Caitlin Gill on Twitter: https://goo.gl/HblhwS

Blake Wexler on Twitter: https://goo.gl/hBY7tL

Eric Lampaert on Twitter: https://goo.gl/b70FTt

Biography.com: About Assassination of Franz Ferdinand: https://goo.gl/1rRB5D

Smithsonian: How One Man Accidentally Killed The Oldest Tree Ever: https://goo.gl/vuVg8r

” William Tecumseh Sherman: In The Service Of My Country”: https://goo.gl/OobZ9h

Radiolab: Be Careful What You Plan For: https://goo.gl/UwvO4w

This episode is brought to you by Indochino, Loot Crate, and Wondery.

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