What If Series

When our primordial ancestors hauled themselves up from the depths and clamored onto dry land, they probably looked up at the sky and sighed. We're all about what we can't have, and flying, though achievable through expensive and extreme measures, is still something we can't manage on our own. Sure, you can skydive, or wing suit yourself through a canyon, or even take a little one-man helicopter to the grocery store, but it's not quite the same as spreading your wings and soaring under your own power.

How do you structure a world of unchecked flight? Who controls the traffic? Who has the right of way? It presents a lot of problems, but they all seem so small compared to the unbridled joy of taking wing. Don't you wish you could? Hell, almost everyone does. This episode we explore the question of airborne humanity, and what our society would look like unbound from the ground.

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Clothing has always been, and always will be, one of the primary ways we as people identify who we are. Its unlikely you'll see a well groomed person in a business suit and assume they're homeless, or a person in ripped and tattered clothing and assume they are the CEO of a huge corporation. Our likes, statements, occupations, and attitudes and broadcasted to the world via the clothing we decide to wear on a daily basis. And lets not forget about the boost of confidence it gives.

Now, imagine a world where clothing is stripped away…no pun intended…and being nude all the time is a regular occurrence. How do we as people broadcast who we are into the world? What about extreme cold, how would we keep warm? What path would our evolution have taken without the idea of clothing? We look at these questions and more this week as we ask,"What If Public Nudity Was The Norm?"

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I can't tell you how many times I've wished I could be in two places at once. If I could stay at home and laze around all day while another, less important, me went to work? Sounds a bit like paradise. Closer to hell, however, for that overworked duplicate.

In this episode we're exploring a world where duplication is possible, and you could have yourself (or even a few of yourselves) out and around helping you to live your dreams. Sounds pretty cool, right? Maybe for you, maybe sometimes for them, but as we discover over the course of conversation, the strange and frightening repercussions are many.

Would your duplicate have the same rights as you? What's stopping them from assuming your identity? How would the powers that be twist this ability to their will?

All this strangeness, and quite a bit more, on our latest episode!

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At what point did fast food stop being fast, and just start being food? The service is still quick (on good days) and the experience (hopefully) convenient, but it's not the last resort or infrequent treat that it used to be. Citing exactly zero sources, because we're not exactly a scholarly program, I still feel confident saying fast-food consumption is on the rise. Who's to blame? You could pin it on aggressive marketing or overworked parents. You could blame long hours, poor choices, and sedentary lifestyles. Is it any one of these things or an amalgam of them all?

In this episode we ponder a world where fast-food isn't even an option.

Now here's the real question: does that sentence fill you with dread, relief, or indifference? How would the world look without it, and how would you adapt? Is fast-food an integral part of your weekly diet, or is it just a quick'n'easy solution after working a double? It seems simple on the surface, but the deeper you go with this one, the stranger things seem to become. So join us, why don't you, as we ask: What if fast food didn't exist?

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@WhatIfSeries

If you'd like to show your support, you can either visit our Patreon page at Patreon.com/WhatIfSeries or you can leave us a review on iTunes! Thanks for listening!

We make our technology smaller, our houses bigger, and all the while space becomes more and more scarce. Do you ever wish you could shrink down all the junk in your basement? The car in your garage? Those boxes of clothes you really should donate but always forget to? How much easier would life be if we could reduce the size of everything we didn't need (and many things we did)?

Storage, living, leisure, and damn near everything else would be fundamentally changed if size was variable. Imagine keeping your bike in your briefcase, or a months worth of food in the drawer of your fridge. What would you do with all the space? Shrink yourself down beside them and you could live in a shoebox, happily, even.

The possibilities are almost endless, and the more we think about it, pretty awesome! Join us this episode as we explore a world of ever-changing size!

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If you'd like to show your support, you can either visit our Patreon page at Patreon.com/WhatIfSeries or you can leave us a review on iTunes! Thanks for listening!

It's no wonder the ancient world saw signs in the weather. A brutal storm or enduring drought could only be a sign that the gods are upset, right? If the harvest is great, and the weather fair, well, we must be doing something right! It wasn't a foolproof system, though. No matter how many festivals you hold or lambs you sacrifice, you can't make it rain (or make it stop).

Most of human civilization learned to work around this, and it's kept us strong, clever, and prepared for sudden disaster, but not always happy. Who hasn't wanted to change the weather? Everyone's seen a birthday or wedding ruined by a storm, or had their vacation grounded by sudden snow. If we had the means, we'd change the weather to suit not just our needs, but our moods.

Would that be a good thing, though? Could we balance the good of the environment with our own self-interest? Frankly, we already know the answer to that question is 'no', but bear with me…

Could we handle the responsibility of controlling the weather?

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@WhatIfSeries

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In the modern world, fear is more of an inconvenience than a motivator. If something frightens you, you can probably just avoid it. Sure, doing so is an imperfect solution, and for some fear remains a tremendous obstacle in their lives. It is not, however, the bulwark against extinction it used to be. We’re afraid of war, instability, poverty, but these fears are new and manageable, not like fear of stalking predators or imminent starvation.In the modern world, fear is more of an inconvenience than a motivator. If something frightens you, you can probably just avoid it. Sure, doing so is an imperfect solution, and for some fear remains a tremendous obstacle in their lives. It is not, however, the bulwark against extinction it used to be. We’re afraid of war, instability, poverty, but these fears are new and manageable, not like fear of stalking predators or imminent starvation. What scares us now are the small things. We panic at the morning traffic, or a late bill. We’re scared of losing a job or failing a test. These things can stifle and harm us as quick as any primal fear; but imagine if they didn’t have to. What a world it would be if you could take away the little fears, and the big ones. Go skydiving, invest in risky stocks, travel to far off places… there’s no limit to what you could do without fear. No limit except death itself.
Could you even cash in on that privilege? Would it be worth it to tempt fate over and over just because you could? In this episode we explore the pros and cons of a life free of fear.

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@WhatIfSeries

If you’d like to show your support, you can either visit our Patreon page at Patreon.com/WhatIfSeries or you can leave us a review on iTunes! Thanks for listening!

It was such a big deal when we started crossing the oceans that we called it the 'age of sail'. I think that says a lot about how much the water keeps humanity separated. It's different now, sure, with the rise of internet and long-distance communication making vast gulfs manageable. Still, whole cultures can spring up a dozen miles from one another, and be totally unlike each other. It's no wonder the continents of the world, separated as they are by the sea, are so different. All that elbow-room makes for some varied populations.

It would have been much different if we were all in the same place, don't you think? Would you rather your neighbor lived down the street, or in the room next to yours? Could you cope with such proximity? Mankind would've had to if it weren't for the drifting of the continents. If there was no drift, we'd be living in a world almost unrecognizable. The mind boggles trying to imagine what it might look like. Why not listen now and hear what we think?

WhatIfPod.com Twitter: @WhatIfSeries Facebook and Instagram: @WhatIfPDCAST

If you'd like to show your support, you can visit us at Patreon.com/WhatIfSeries and get access to the What If Patreon pod, making your What If experience a weekly one! You can also show your support by subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. Thanks for listening!

What If Theme Song "Before the Night" by HOME https://youtu.be/wWyf7viDRC4

The dead stay dead. It's something that defines our whole world. We fear death, we prepare for it, we recover from it, we stave it off when we can. Almost everything that makes us human comes back to death, and how much we try to avoid it or inflict it upon those we feel we must. Everyone has their own opinion, too, we're not all of the same mind about it. Depending on where you come from and what you were taught, you could have beliefs about life and death that are totally incongruous with your neighbor's.

Turn that all on its head; now the dead can come back whenever we want them to. Did that make your stomach lurch? Is it too huge a thing to even ponder? Yeah, we understand. All the same, we chase the rabbit as far as we can in this episode, imagining a world where death is just an inconvenience. It would be a stranger world than our own by orders of magnitude, and perhaps a much scarier one.

WhatIfPod.com Twitter: @WhatIfSeries Facebook and Instagram: @WhatIfPDCAST

If you'd like to show your support, you can visit us at Patreon.com/WhatIfSeries and get access to the What If Patreon pod, making your What If experience a weekly one! You can also show your support by subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. Thanks for listening!

What If Theme Song "Before the Night" by HOME https://youtu.be/wWyf7viDRC4

Why did they call it the 'new' world when explorers landed in the Americas? Was it just because it was unlike their home? Or was it the possibilities it presented; what treasures, dangers, and miracles where hidden within the unexplored country? I think it was a little of both. Not only was it something strange and unknown, it was something potentially magical. It was a place where all the old legends might just be true, where anything could be real. It was the perfect place to find mankind's most sought-after treasure: immortality.

If there was a fountain of youth, a place where you could stop or even reverse the aging process, what would've it done to the world? It would have been the dream and the goal of every great nation on earth, and the unattainable fantasy of every common person. Could it have elevated humanity past its petty squabbles? Or would it just be a new source of power for the already powerful? It's a staggering thought, and we're thrilled to share with you our musings on the subject. Enjoy!

WhatIfPod.com Twitter: @WhatIfSeries Facebook and Instagram: @WhatIfPDCAST

If you'd like to show your support, you can visit us at Patreon.com/WhatIfSeries and get access to the What If Patreon pod, making your What If experience a weekly one! You can also show your support by subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. Thanks for listening!

What If Theme Song "Before the Night" by HOME https://youtu.be/wWyf7viDRC4