Chronovision

Hey true weirdos, thank you so much for all your support because of your support We were able to win some awards with this podcast in the past year and be sure to stick around for the conversation We have after the episode There's a famous short story by an Irish writer named Bob Shaw called light of other days An unhappily married couple were driving through the countryside when they spot a sign ahead slow glass Quality high prices low J. R. Hagen J. R. Hagen was a glass farmer. You just have to go with it. It's a story He said his glass was ten years thick and in perfect phase. Here's what that meant It meant it took ten years for light to pass through it Hagen's slow glass allowed a person to enjoy the view from a decade earlier Most people bought these special windows so they could enjoy nature the slow glass windows got the nickname scene dose People would park them in front of some spectacular natural scenery for a year or so then install them in their dim urban apartments Scenes of dirty skylines or brick walls were replaced with waterfalls and woodlands that sort of thing or You could do what Hagen the glass farmer did What his slow glass revealed was a woman and a child moving through the living room of his tiny cottage The story ends with the farmer gruffly trying to explain It wasn't my fault a hit-and-run driver got them both down on the old band Road six years ago My boy was only seven when it happened I'm entitled to keep something a Total punch in the gut the kind only the best made-up stories can deliver But what if something like slow glass was real What if there was a way not to travel to the past but to watch it unfold?

And what if this amazing technology an invention so unlikely that it borders on the miraculous Is quietly collecting dust in the secret archives at the Vatican I Got a small beam of light Stuff Time-travel if only right show me some random social post or online story about a person who claims to be visiting from the future And I am there even though I know how borderline impossible real-time travel would be I say Borderline because according to Einstein's theory of relativity Time travel is possible in theory now that theory holds up a little bit better when you're talking about traveling to the future That's because of something called time dilation time slows down for objects moving at very high speeds please don't ask me why because then I'll try really hard to understand the science and explain it and we're just both gonna end up with Crossed eyes and a headache and a whole chunk of our lives that we can never get back We just have to accept that if we're ever gonna travel through time. We'll probably be traveling only to the future So what makes even a theory of traveling to the past so difficult?

Well according to Einstein's general relativity There are these things called closed time like curves that basically function as paths to the past But without something wildly exotic like a wormhole There's no way to get on to that path But let's say you do manage to grab hold of a wormhole, which is really just a kind of tunnel through space-time Could you travel back in time that way?

Maybe but wormholes are still strictly a theory It's just that wormholes are such a beloved trope in science fiction that they feel like a fact The physicist Stephen Hawking thought that maybe nature made traveling to the past impossible in order to protect reality itself Which feels surprisingly woo-woo for Stephen Hawking, but then we don't really know what the hell reality even is So why not make nature the bodyguard?

The issue with traveling backward in time is the enormous risk of creating world annihilating paradoxes Once you accept that you understand that the only safe way to travel to the past is as an observer Able to witness but unable to interact or influence like being inside a 3d movie So Here we humans are stuck in the present moment and even that's forever sliding away from us We're slaves and hostages and prisoners of time No wonder we dream of being able to control it and dominate it to hopscotch across it like explorers or tourists Spying on the dinosaurs watching the great pyramids being built eyeballing Billy the Kid The past would be the ultimate theme park if we could only get there Now if Vatican priest father Pellegrino Ornetti was telling the truth you can in a way Two things to know right off the top one father Ornetti was a Benedictine monk and a trained exorcist He was also a musicologist and a physicist that last part is important because it lends credibility to a story It's not unreasonable to expect that any legit inventor of any kind of time travel device would have a background in science Right and aren't physicists the most magical scientists of all?

Second there is an extensive underground vault at the Vatican in Rome Nearly 53 miles worth of shelves a vast collection of historical documents Manuscripts letters books all accumulated over centuries. Its official name is the Vatican Apostolic Archive Access is extremely restricted. No tours are permitted for the general public Preservation is the stated reason and even a suspicious coop like me can't really argue with that But you know You know what happens when the powerful declare something off-limits?

Curiosity has a way of metastasizing into conspiracy Some believe that tucked away in those 53 miles of files is proof that Jesus Christ had a wife and children proof of extraterrestrial visitation and manipulation of the human species Proof of links between the Mafia and the Vatican Bank proof that the church collaborated with the Nazi Party and prophecy after prophecy of worldwide catastrophe doom There's something else down there, too according to Father Pellegrino Ornetti He would know because he invented it He called it the chronovisor And with it you could watch the past just like watching TV Not all that long ago people were pretty open-minded about stuff like time travel That's because a great many of the technological advances We've made as a species of meaty little talking monkeys have happened recently and from history's perspective All at once let's break it down. We first beamed a radio signal across the Atlantic in 1901 20 years later. We developed the first jet engine in 1938 we discovered nuclear fission 15 years later. We discovered DNA in 1969 the first human walked on the moon 20 years later We invented the world wide web and so on Very impressive stuff But it's all pretty new when you think about it now go back to 1931 the year the electric guitar was invented a new product called Alka-Seltzer appeared on drugstore shelves and The ballpoint pen was introduced to the world It's July 17th, and you open the morning newspaper Explosion of a powerful bomb in the Vatican Gardens terrified residents of Vatican City windows of several buildings were smashed But no one was hurt time machine found in st. Peter's Cathedral and removed to a safe place. Oh Well, that's too bad Good thing they were able to save the time machine, though Was that just a casual mention of a time machine at the Vatican Exactly Just a casual mention of a time machine at the Vatican because in 1931 that idea didn't strike people as ludicrous not at all Pellegrino Ornetti was born in Rome in 1925 he's just a little guy not even six years old when that explosion happened at the Vatican Ornetti was called to religious life early entering a Benedictine Abbey in Venice at age 16 In 1949 he was ordained as a priest now for more than 1,500 years the monks and nuns of st. Benedict have used music as a form of worship Song as prayer You know it as Gregorian chant You Father Ornetti became a musicologist and an expert in Gregorian chant he produced recordings He published books and gave lectures and eventually it all led him to Agostino Gimelli the founder of the Catholic University of Milan Gimelli was also a holy man and a scientist the two collaborated on research into the acoustic properties of music Their workplace was the physics lab with all its wonders Oscilloscopes and machines built for filtering frequencies and every kind of electronics that was state-of-the-art in the early 1950s This is where father Ornetti fell in love with physics and all the possibilities

Harnessing the unseen forces that make up the world and it was here that Ornetti and Gimelli had an experience that convinced them that they had tapped into something profound Those unseen forces for most of human history. It was believed that the universe was filled with a mysterious substance called Ether this idea arose from the fact that folks simply could not accept the idea of empty space of an endless void of nothing Without ether they argued. How could there be gravity?

How could the photons of sunlight travel without some material to carry them along? Go ahead and make fun of the aetherists. But now we know that they weren't all that far off the mark because contemporary Astrophysicists know that there's something deeply weird about the universe for starters There just isn't enough detectable matter out there to account for galaxies and gravity and everything else as in we've only been able to identify about 16% of all the matter that should exist Until July 2025 when physicists at Caltech announced that they found all that missing matter Illuminating its hiding spots using something called fast radio bursts. It turns out that about 76% of all that missing matter can be found in the space between galaxies Mystery solved if we were a peaceful planet focused on progress and prosperity This would have been huge news But since we're none of those things our big news in July 2025 was that the viral labooboo doll trend had finally peaked so What's the connection between the matter in the universe and a time machine well Have you ever heard of the Akashic Record?

It all begins with Madame Blavatsky and the founding of the religion of theosophy as a story all by itself Blavatsky and her fellow theosophists believed in a non-physical plane of existence called the mental plane Stored there is a digest or collection of every single word deed thought Intention and emotion that has ever occurred to any human being or other entity or life-form at any time ever past present and future This compendium is called the Akashic Record and the ether is how it's accessed It was believed that man Totally in touch with the etheric substance within himself once flew like a bird through the ether of the universe It was believed that he had once known how to pull the energies of the conscious thinking stars and planets Down through the ether to the earth for his own purposes Might we soon discover that the Akashic Records exist as well and that we can fly through the ether like Birds to once again access them if you could get into the Akashic Records You could observe any and every moment in human history Father and Eddie believed that was possible. And so he set out to build a machine A Benedictine monk turned priest who studies Gregorian chant doesn't just wake up one day with the wild notion to build a time machine For her Nettie the fateful moment came on September 15th 1952 he was in the physics lab at the Catholic University of Milan with his colleague father gemelli The men were filtering harmonics out of a Gregorian chant But a wire on the tape recorder kept breaking from Peter Crass's book about her Nettie Exasperated father gemelli looked up and asked his father for help it was a habit gemelli had asking his long-dead father to lend a hand in a crisis a Comforting little ritual and a plea that had never once been answered It's a thing a lot of us do isn't it to the two men's amazement his father's voice replied Of course, I shall help you. I am always with you That was unexpected to say the least and gemelli broke out in a sweat the man feared that this Might be the devil's trickery Father and Eddie ever the scientist was more curious than afraid Calm down. He told you no and calm down We must try this experiment again They did this time a very clear voice filled with humor said But zucchini it is clear. Don't you know it is I?

Zucchini was gemelli's long-ago childhood nickname. No one had called him by that in decades The priest was deeply unsettled as thrilled as he was to hear his late father's voice How is it possible? What right did he have to communicate with the dead and all of it was captured by the tape recorder Gemelli was so upset by the incident But he took himself in her neti off to the Vatican to meet with Pope Pius the 12th who was pretty excited about it Honestly gemelli was afraid that he tampered with the mysteries of the universe But the Pope was all this discovery could help strengthen people's faith not challenge it Which should have reassured the priest but it didn't Gemelli never wanted to discuss the experiment after that. He was so very private about it But her neti it was all he could think about It made him wonder about the harmonics. They had filtered out. Where did that sound go? Was it simply annihilated or?

Did it become part of the swirling ether that fills the universe Then came the chance encounter that's the reason that we know any of this at all a French theologian named François Brune was visiting Venice in the early 1960s Touring the Basilica and Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore when he met a stranger was a completely random encounter Brune later said a Conversation with an odd but most compelling man a priest by the name of father Pellegrino Ernetti The two men were waiting at the pier for one of Venice's famous water taxis when they got to chatting They had a surprising amount in common both were priests and both had studied numerous ancient languages Hearing this father Brune unloaded one of his greatest frustrations regarding scripture and theology His annoyance at those new Interpretations of scripture that see them as more than just a collection of symbols with no relation to the real facts Including even those of the life of Christ. It was her Nettie's response that left Bruna confused and intrigued Ernetti told the French priest that there was a machine very mysterious device that could certainly silence those voices Why it that didn't make a whole lot of sense to Bruna What could a machine have to do with how scholars interpreted the Word of God?

When Ernetti invited Brune to pop by for a deeper chat the man couldn't accept fast enough What Ernetti subsequently revealed seemed too fantastic to be true But why thought Brune with the priest lie? Bruna listened as Ernetti described the recording in the lab in Milan Capturing the voice of Father Gemelli's dead father Ernetti said that he'd sought out other physicists regarding this and that many shared his enthusiasm Ernetti had put together a team of scientists. He told Bruna. He swore them to secrecy their goal was Extraordinary and sound it insane To build a machine that could penetrate back into the mists of time and Recapture the sights and sounds of mankind's past. This is what Ernetti meant by silencing the voices There'd be no need to interpret the events described in the Bible if you could actually see it all unfold for yourself Father Ernetti was reticent when it came to naming his collaborators on the creation of the device Physicists from Portugal and Japan were involved He said along with the Nobel Prize winning architect of the Manhattan Project Enrico Fermi and German rocket scientist Werner von Braun As unlikely as a time machine is we can all agree that if anyone could figure out how to build one I'd be those guys That's kind of what Bruna thought too even as he questioned the feasibility of such a thing But then he reminded himself that this was the 1960s Physicists had figured out both the atomic and the hydrogen bomb NASA was working on sending a man to the moon and the movie that time machine was selling out theaters Why is it that we usually ignore the fourth dimension?

You see we can move in the other three as the doctor said up down forwards backwards sideways But when it comes to time we are prisoners Inventor Rob Taylor's breakthrough into the realm of the fourth dimension is defied by his friend Alan Young Machine can do what you see it done Destroy it George before it destroys you Every moment is a year certainly through the atomic wars of the future on an incredible excursion into the unknown What are the people like?

ah The shape of things to come it's lovely Yvette Mimue and what happens when boy meets girl thousands of years hence How do they wear their hair? The women of your time Like that show me You'll be amazed to learn by the way that the people of the future appear to be mostly blonde ladies in tight skirts Anyhow, the more Arnett he talked the more fascinated Bruna was Or Nettie allowed as to how they've gotten lucky almost accidentally stumbling onto their invention He told Bruna that they could set the device to any time or place and see events unfolding with perfect To test it. They knew they'd need to find an historical event with enough modern evidence to support Whatever the machine revealed so they tuned in or Nettie said to a speech being given by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini Given how much Mussolini had been filmed and photographed Or Nettie said they had no doubt that their device had taken them back in time to see the man for themselves The science that are Nettie was describing was legit. His device was based on the principle of energy conservation Which has nothing to do with turning down the thermostat at the house the principle of energy conservation is this Energy can't be destroyed only transformed Sound waves visual waves once created remain eternal Think of those waves as being dispersed all through space if we only had a way to detect them and then replay them Do you see ask father or Nettie any moment in history is yours to witness from the assassination of Julius Caesar to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and You've done this press burner We've done this insisted or Nettie But how?

So according to an interview with father or Nettie published in 1972 in the Italian magazine La Domenica del Corriere The team devised a series of antennas which were made of an alloy of three exotic metals This antenna array scooped up the dispersed waves of light and sound energy that had been created by the targeted historical event Since this sounds like nonsense We should probably add that or Nettie and his team were operating off principles. Very familiar to astronomers Calculating light-years that sort of thing though How even the most complex math could help locate the needle of like Napoleon's defeat of Waterloo and the haystack of energy?

rippling through space How could that even be possible? Yet or Nettie insisted that not only was it possible it had already been accomplished Once the correct energy waves were located Or Nettie's team used a system of electronic oscillography to convert that energy back to sound and light the antennas then delivered the reconstructed energy waves to a cathode ray tube where it was presented for viewing and presto human history as must-see TV They named their machine chronovisor Ernetti told Brune that with the chronovisor He had watched Roman senator and philosopher Cicero give an address to the Senate in the year 63 BC What struck her Nettie most forcefully was the slight differences in the way Cicero pronounced certain Latin words Changes and vowel sounds from how Latin was currently being taught in schools That's a compelling little anecdote given our knowledge of how language evolves you'd expect some differences and either Ernetti understood that and added it to his tale for a dash of authenticity or he was telling the truth and Then it was this Ernetti described dialing the chronovisor to the year 169 BC Just a little side trip for fun to watch a play a tragedy written by the great poet Quintus Aeneas The play was called fastest and almost all of the text has been lost to history But father and Eddie told Bruna we heard and saw everything text choruses Music I've been able to publish the entire text of that tragedy. It was persuasive But what father Bruna really wanted to know was this Had her Nettie succeeded in using the chronovisor To view the life of Jesus Christ at first We tried to recapture the images of the day of Christ's crucifixion But we had a problem Crucifixions as awful as they were were commonplace in Christ's time People were nailed to the cross every day It didn't help that Christ wore a crown of thorns because contrary to popular belief It wasn't unusual to be punished by having a crown of thorns put on your head And so the chronovisor team tried another strategy over the course of three days in January 1956 they perched in front of the machine To watch the Last Supper We saw everything The agony in the garden the betrayal of Judas the trial We saw the climb up Mount Calvary all the stations of the cross Ernetti told Bruna that the true story of that wretched day had been distorted by the Church of the Middle Ages Christ never fell He did not carry the whole cross by himself That would have been far too heavy He carried only the horizontal cross beam attached to his shoulders His feet were tied to the feet of the two there condemned men who were crucified with him Ernetti pointed out another way the truth had been shaped to fit the sensibilities of the medieval church the story of Simon of Cyrene Christ had been greatly Disfigured the scourging had torn pieces of his skin off You can see right through to the bone But according to Roman law the condemned prisoner had to arrive at the place of execution still alive Ernetti said that he'd been taught in seminary to follow the example of Simon of Cyrene and help Christ to carry the cross Just like Simon who abandoned himself to that service

except Simon hadn't volunteered said Ernetti. He was forced to do it by the Roman soldiers who yanked Simon forcibly from the crowd Then Ernetti revealed another astonishing moment shown by the chronovisor The chronovisor team was able to overhear some of Christ's words that are not preserved in the Gospels at one point Christ said this hour is yours Bruna's next question was the same one that maybe we all want answered. Did Ernetti witness the resurrection?

Yes, the priest answered but it was strange in silhouette almost not like a movie exactly and not in color and Though the chronovisor was not primarily built to record what it captured the team did film that entire event they then showed that film to Pope Pius the 12th a handful of government officials and members of the Pontifical Academy It's an absolutely fantastical story, isn't it? Hard to believe on every level Yet here was a deeply devout and educated man of God insisting That it was true So, where is this chronovisor now Bruna asked?

Ernetti told Bruna that after showing the film of Christ to the Pope It was decided that the chronovisor was simply too dangerous to even exist. It must be hidden No Was Bruna's response. Why? Why conceal an invention with the power to restore faith to a broken world? This machine can tune in on everyone's past completely leaving nothing out With it there can be no more secrets. No more state secrets. No more industrial secrets No more private lives Can you imagine what law enforcement and the courts could do with this just for starters?

Father Ernetti could yes, the chronovisor would turn the world topsy-turvy The door would be wide open for the most fearsome Dictatorship the world has ever seen We ended up agreeing to dismantle our machine Bruna was Flabbergasted dumbfounded overwhelmed and a believer do mostly to Father Ernetti himself Too much a man of God too good a man and a respected scientist It seemed to Bruna that Ernetti could only be telling the truth It didn't hurt that Ernetti's description of how the chronovisor worked fit neatly into both eastern theories of the Akashic Record and Western Spiritualism and remember this was happening at a time when the smartphone in your pocket Would have seemed like an artifact from another planet or some super top-secret government lab Mean the first TV broadcast in color had only just happened a few years earlier in 1954 as wild a tale as the story of the chronovisor was it seemed plausible enough and The fact that it disappeared into the Vatican archives There could be no better fortress no hiding place or remote or inaccessible than that a Photograph accompanied that 1972 article in the magazine La Domenica de la Corriera a little blurry It was a close-up of a man's face eyes raised upward mouth closed It was allegedly a photo of Christ dying on the cross You can imagine how sensational this was when it hit the streets In August of that same year the editors of a publication called Journal a de Mysteria the Journal of Mysteries. That's fun to say isn't let's do it again Giornale dei Misteri, the Journal of Mysteries they received a letter from a man named Alfonso de Silva There was a photo tucked in that envelope as well They were shocked to see the very same photo that had just been printed in La Domenica de la Corriera the photo allegedly of Christ on the cross Except this photograph was that same image in reverse De Silva wrote that he bought this photo in a gift shop at a place called the Sanctuary of Merciful Love near the Italian city of Perugia He said that it was a picture of one of the sanctuaries many wood carvings this particular one by a Spanish artist When the editors compared to Silva's photo with the one printed in the magazine They found them to be identical the October 1972 edition of the Journal a de Mysteries featured the two photos side-by-side No one argued that they weren't the same The world itself may not have been rocked by this but the world of parapsychology sure was Without Catholics paying attention to the story. We're also pretty sideways Since the hoax if that's in fact what it was had been perpetrated by a priest and why?

What could provoke a man of the cloth to unleash such a diabolical falsehood on the world? That'd be the devil who else? The Controversy that raged in the worlds of both religion and the paranormal raged for two decades without father or Nettie making public comment father Bruna a true believer Defended her Nettie over and over and he offered a theory to explain her Nettie's 20 years of puzzling silence regarding the Chronovisor Bruna pointed out that the Vatican hadn't been a fan of how outspoken or Nettie had been about the device when a Benedictine monk makes revelations of such a magnitude he Very often needs the direct authorization of the Vatican This said Bruna accounted for why or Nettie would commit to speak and then fail to show Why he'd been so reticent to answer questions from the press and public because any answer he gave Would only spark more questions and the priest had been forbidden to speak any answer He could offer would have to be evasive But of course his evasion and his silence would be interpreted as protecting the lie. That was the Chronovisor That are Nettie's story would be discredited as a result Exactly what the Vatican want it to happen Her Nettie had already drawn the attention of the American and Russian intelligence communities Bruna said that her Nettie had been stalked by spies from both countries To the point where he was unable to leave his monastery without a pair of bodyguards The sooner the world thought the priest was crazy or a liar the better on November 1st 1993 Bruna and her Nettie sat down again for a conversation Bruna wanted her Nettie to know that he'd written a book and In it was a long section devoted to the pair's first meeting all those years ago in Venice Father or Nettie approved but asked that if the book was ever published in Italian Well, he would like to be permitted to add a few pages of his own Then he had one last revelation for Bruna Her Nettie told Bruna that he'd attended a meeting at the Vatican just a month or so earlier September 30th 1993 he'd been summoned along with two other members of the Chronovisor team to give a presentation on the device We told them everything Bruna said those were the last words he ever heard his old friend speak Father Nettie died a few months later in Venice on April 8th 1994 It was a great irony that her Nettie Skeptics and debunkers accused the priest of having fallen prey to a trick of Satan. Why ironic?

Because remember Father Pellegrino Arnetti was also a trained exorcist the man even wrote a book on the subject called Satan's Catechism a sort of manual for spotting and dealing with demonic activity The exorcism part of his resume is a little detail That's easy to lose track of when we're talking about a machine lets you watch the past like it's Netflix Her Nettie was apparently very Enthusiastic when it came to casting out the devil a bit too enthusiastic to suit as more conservative Benedictine brothers Some whispered that her Nettie had a bad habit of confusing medical maladies with demonic possession Her Nettie wouldn't hear it Nettie wasn't sure that the medical profession itself was entirely free of contagion from the dark forces He even went so far as to suggest that the coldness emanating from some of them Regarding his exorcisms was similar to the coldness He often felt emanating from Satan in the course of his exorcisms Oh touche father Arnetti well done and besides the Vatican for whatever unknown unknowable inscrutable strategic reason of its own Never discouraged Arnetti's demon hunting a thing he believed in so passionately that even on his deathbed He tried to get up to perform one final exorcism Did he confess on that deathbed to having made up the story of the chronovisor?

Some say he did they say he confessed to the life, but his reasons were not to deceive he lied he said Because he was so hopeful that the chronovisor would work If that's true, then the implication is the chronovisor actually really did exist It just didn't work Which is a wild idea all by itself An Italian priest a Nobel Prize winning physicist and a German rocket scientist walk into a laboratory It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, doesn't it?

one where the punchline goes and Jesus was in the gift shop all along What does it say about us humans that a man of faith Was so desperate to build a machine That could supply the one thing faith is supposed to exist without proof You want a proof a lot of us want that and the kind of proof Arnetti was chasing Just doesn't exist Unless it does and the Vatican has it hidden away Tucked into a lockbox getting all kinds of dusty and forgotten on one of those 53 miles worth of shelves That none of us will ever ever ever see Next time on true weird stuff Did you used to love square dance in a gym class at school? I did. I know i'm in the minority I know a lot of kids hated it Why is it you never wondered why you were square dancing in school?

Why it was a part of phys ed programs all across the country And I bet you also didn't know but the reason we square dance at school has a whole lot to do With the guy who invented The five-day work week and the assembly line. Mr. Henry ford. That's on the next true weird stuff special Thanks to our voice talents on this episode. Kary "Doc" Bowser and don morgan You and I both were raised catholic and went to catholic school and we know there's a lot of mystery that is around the catholic religion um I know that the vatican has advisors who are priests who are like astrophysicists not every priest is a parish priest some of them are scientists and and all kinds of schools of thought and And so I do know that it's not too far-fetched to think that the vatican is somehow involved with science Oh, they are. Yeah, I mean Look at the jesuits. I mean, yeah, those are that entire order is about the intellect, right? It is um, so that that part of it but the idea that somehow we were able and I thought you did. I thought you did a really great job with two things One was sort of explaining how this is how this is possible Now whether it happened or not We don't know but how this is possible and the other is the great pronunciations on all the italian newspapers and magazines The number of times i love Yeah, you can't help you're like, you know, you're doing that thing with your hands Doesn't it surprise you that so cavalierly this was mentioned in the Yeah, there was this thing but the the time machine's okay in the explosion. I guess it was 1931 that the explosion happened 31 so max The way that the people of earth just accepted that the vatican had a time machine I could not find a single human being in the public space going. Hey, what's up with that? Like we just accepted it. Oh, yeah And Go ahead. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding in any way when I when I say to you So many of our technological advances are happening just now all at once like a minute ago We were not like people in 1931 Listen we didn't we hadn't discovered dna We barely were working with tv and radio and radio and tv was in its infancy and not even like People didn't even know what it was We we didn't have Most of what we have now and even the like limited understanding of these complex things that we have now i'll say this um, I Like on the one hand I have no idea how You actually could locate those particular energy waves I know you could translate them Using I I know you can take a sound wave and turn it into a light wave and vice versa You can make a radio wave into a light wave you can do all that So that part I don't challenge i'm not sure how in the vast The vastness of space ether or not You could dial those antennae to find that specific Wave, this is where like I I go this can't possibly be real. There's how could you do that?

But then on the other hand I have to be honest and tell you I'm, not really sure how the appliances in my kitchen work So who am I to say that this is impossible? right Well, every time you get been saying or netty I kept on thinking emmet brown and flux capacitor Yeah Think about all of those things. Can I talk about the picture for a second?

Yes, yeah Um Riffman tell me again. How is this picture presented initially? I'm not talking about the one they found in the gift shop, but How is this presented? father or netty told father bruna That although the chronovisor was mostly a device for watching not a recording device They were able to film the way that you could right now take your camera and roll video on something on your tv Right you can picture that right sure they were able to to record This set of events around the last supper um and the resurrection and all of that so that Photograph that appeared in La Domenica del corriere Was a screen grab from this alleged chronovisor recording. Okay There are a couple of things in the story and Um, they are deliberate Contradictions and I left them in there so that we could talk about them. The first contradiction happens right here father bruna asked father or netty were you able to witness the crucifixion and father or netty said No, because there were so many crucifixions remember Yes, and yet the screen grab of the alleged recording of the last supper The magazine printed that image as christ on the cross Now it's very possible that the magazine made the mistake Saying that this is christ on the cross and not at the last supper It wasn't father or netty who said that was christ on the cross. It was let me say it again Because it's so fun Domenica Corriere They said that So the photograph was a still that was taken from this movie that was allegedly taken of this event through this. Yeah Corona vision machine chronovisor chronovisor, right? Okay Yeah, and so go ahead So the letter that the journal a de misterio Received with a copy of that same photograph Um a person just a random citizen happened to pay a visit to this Sanctuary and bought saw this photograph in the gift shop and he had seen the Picture in la domenica del correa of jesus on the cross from the chronovisor Which let me just point out to you that when this magazine article dropped in in the early 1970s It was not treated as get a load of this craziness it was reported as like fact Just so we're all clear about that So de silva who found the photograph in the gift shop sent this letter off and said I think they're lying Because this photograph is a famous spanish um engraving wood wood cut So that's that was that's a contradiction right this image of this alleged image of christ on the cross um Was not that I mean that was clearly faked And or netty never really offered any explanation as to that And the reason for or netty not explaining was what the vatican?

Had silenced him What this is, you know, we're going to have another episode coming up in a while Um about another cons a very a very new baby conspiracy theory that just got birthed But here's the thing about a conspiracy theory You have to anchor it in truth in as many ways as you can Because that makes it compelling and believable So the chronovisor story has so many anchors in reality that you can point to Now the problem with those anchors is that sometimes you stumble across the contradiction which happened a couple of times in this story And how do we explain those contradictions a conspiracy theory not only needs to be anchored in truth It needs to offer an explanation to account for its own secrecy And we have that here in the vatican silencing father or netty So all the ingredients are in in play But the other thing that's that is true of the chronovisor story as is true for all the best conspiracy theories so you've got the anchor points in reality you have the Built-in explanation of why we can't tell you more right You have you have all of that going on but but then you have the heart and soul of this Is based on something that people desperately crave and that's proof that there's something beyond this world It's a perfect conspiracy theory in that way I think so, um, let's go back to um I'm, sorry, go back to dr. Emmett brown and back to the future. Dr Emmett brown would put in a date and that's how that would they would take us there you would touch on this before so he's saying Look, it was hard because there were a lot of crucifixions back then There were a lot of crucifixions and lots of crowns of thorns and I believe that also I know that at some point along the line In art museums and all kinds of things I have seen Uh images of jesus carrying a cross but just the one bar I have I know that i've seen that somewhere on in some Painting or something so that wasn't terribly surprising to me and in a lot of ways I I guess it makes more sense That they would put the whole thing together once they got up there the two the two parts of the cross, right?

Again you look at you pointing out one of the anchors to the to the truth that makes this compelling Because you're so right. We have seen those images With just the horizontal bar now in modern contemporary pop culture. You see the whole cross Unless you're a money-grubbing televangelist in which case it's the whole cross, but there are little wheels on the bottom one You've seen that right that's hysterical to me and it's also not terribly surprising the man Simon who they got to help him carry the cross. It's not terribly surprising that he was forced to do it Um that that doesn't surprise me in the least What was interesting and this is one of those where how much in the um, theological weeds do we want to go?

Because all of us and you know, we're catholic school kids all of us were taught That simon nobly and out of love and pure faith and service Offered himself to christ But what father arnetti is saying that when they witnessed the true events, which again I have to point out to you How did you witness the true events of simon of cyrene?

Since you told father bruna that you couldn't get to the crucifixion because there were so damn many crucifixion That's the other thing the contradictions, yeah and the contradiction and you touched on this before the contradiction of We don't know, you know, we can't we can't put it in the flux capacitor the date that we want to go to exactly But we do know exactly when the last supper is So they were yeah, so he claims yeah We were able to get there and the thing about the one of the problems with time travel to the past That is like a physical problem a reality-based problem is is that While the past might be quote unquote fixed like I know exactly where to find april 1st 1920, for example um the earth and Everything in our everything is in constant movement So in order to travel back to the past, you not only need to go to the time you need to go to the place Because you're not april 1st 1950 Isn't in the same physical location as it was on april 1st 1950. Is that confusing? Does that make sense? No, I understand that so even with the flux capacitor, um And the chronovisor like how are we accomplishing that? There's there's this is one of those where like There's enough To it where you go. I don't know man. There's something here But there are enough like logical Contradictions to where you go. I don't know. Yeah, I think it's a big old lie What and I come down to father or netty on his deathbed?

saying We wanted it to work and I am as intrigued by the idea of Pellegrino or netty on rico ferme and verner von braun trying to make a time machine As I am by any idea that they succeeded Like what a crazy scenario that is What do you think? Well, if there was anybody that could do it back then, you know If you wanted to get the great minds together, those are those are some of the guys that you would you would certainly put together um I know The one of the problems is we're not even exactly sure what date christ was born we want to say it was you know the The year zero or what I you know, whatever you want to say we don't even know exactly when the date was that he was born and so At the same time we can't even know exactly what date that he died I mean we we can approximately know how old he was at that point. I can't And I can't remember what that age was. Was it 28 38?

It's young. It was young. It was really young. It's young I know because a friend of mine used to say, you know, jesus died at this date You're you're older than that. Now. What have you accomplished? Let's get focused Um, but I think also something that happened on the day that he died that might be a marker In some way historically is there's a belief that there was an earthquake that day Uh at that time And but the closest you know that we could come to confirming that would be um anecdotal accounts and And it's we are humans are weird the way we go, but that's what luke says in the gospel. So it's the gospel truth And then you know, we find a parchment from babylonia and we go well, they were a bunch of superstitious fools So like we're very cheesy about which yeah historical And anecdotal accounts we decide are accurate There were so many things in this story that I imagine Are very triggering for some people The idea that the vatican is sitting on proof that christ was married and a father That's that's the stuff. A lot of folks are not interested in consuming well, you know the thing is um That doesn't bother me And the reason that it doesn't bother me is does that diminish what he did does it diminish his message?

Does it diminish uh what he accomplished? Does it diminish the kind of effect he's had on so many people through the course of time? I would say no So no, but but you know how people can become very rigid And very kind of like doctrinaire That is not what I was taught. That is not true. That is any new information They feel threatened by that. They feel like well what I believe is threatening. Therefore, whatever information you're bringing me is wrong um Listen, I have No problem at all believing that jesus jesus lived and walked the earth and did all these things. I have no No problem with any of that whatsoever um, and I think that you know, um Faith is about you know, uh Being able to believe in something and not seeing proof but to my mind. I think there is proof I think there's a lot of proof that you see around you every day if you're open if you are willing To be open to it, you know so that to me, um It's you There's two things that are happening here, there's the spiritual part of this and there's the historical part of this And and the science and there are people there are there are and the science Yes, and so there are people who are scholars at this stuff You know, we're just kind of i'm sitting here kind of you know Goofing around with a little incidental information that I have where i'm sure that scholars could sit down And we could probably do an entire podcast I don't mean an episode an entire podcast About how all of those three things come together in this. Yeah no, I agree and I know that I must have I I didn't realize until pretty recently that I must have such a masochistic kink because I make I sit down and I go, you know what girl?

um, you really comprehend almost nothing about the intensity of this level of science see if you can't figure it out and explain it because it is really challenging to To like make the the theory of the conservation of energy To make it not sound like gobbledegook in the context of the chronovisor, right? The if you'd have told me the amount of time we'd spend in the world of physics on this podcast But it turns out because physics and the quantum subatomic world that is reality y'all We are just atoms ricocheting around organizing reality as we go and with our thoughts we make the world But y'all ain't ready for that conversation. So we'll get back to the vatican the thing about father or netty that has really haunted me with this is that I think he absolutely believed Absolutely Believed and he believed it with such conviction and passion that he damn near willed it into truth Didn't get there all the way maybe so you think that he He he wanted it to be true so much that he believed it into his own reality. Is that what you're saying?

I think he wanted it to be true so much that he never gave up on the idea that it could be true Because here's what you have to remember about Pellegrino or netty um this this man Most people if they've ever heard of him And and the people that would have heard of him people in the music world, right? He is one of the world's foremost authorities on gregorian chant He this was not a kook This was not some priest that they kept moving further and further out into the countryside to keep him away from people He was a musicologist. He became a physicist. He He was a deeply deeply devout man. He went he entered the monastery as a boy And then was ordained as a priest This was an educated sophisticated deep thinker Who was widely known and respected in both the worlds of music and science?

He was very highly placed in the catholic church. I mean Max will tell you your average priest doesn't have too many meetings with the pope. No, does he? You know So this is not a crackpot This is not someone who? Is unworthy of even Being entertained as a serious person. This is a serious person But I but I can certainly understand wanting something to be true so desperately That you look up one day and your life has gone by in your pursuit of that. Some of us want um things to be true that are real close to home like you want to believe that you're You know, you want to believe that your abusive Parent or partner can be better You want to believe that your dad can get sober you want to believe that you Can heal and be better right and then sometimes then we extend it out I know people that believe in their absolute heart that they are one Sentence away from being famous best-selling authors and they might be right Musicians actors don't we?

Isn't this incredible? Powerful self-belief this desire to make a dream come true. Isn't that one of the things that makes us human? Yeah, it is This is father arnetti He could have had an illustrious career Never leaving the world of music He was a renowned musicologist But that chance encounter with father gemelli in milan Hmm changed everything for him. Now. What did gemelli pick up on that tape recorder?

Anybody with basic cable has seen a gazillion ghost hunting shows where you know, we're picking up signals from the spirit world or the beyond But it was this man's voice clear as day calling gemelli by his childhood nickname Now you can say well, they're both liars who want attention. I guess you could say that I mean you can It's a free country. You can say it but does it does that feel true to you?

that these two priests Both intellectuals craps one of them found at the university in milan these two towering intellects who have both Taken holy orders. You think they're just making crap up? What would be the possible benefit of doing such a thing? Especially in an era when there's no social media It wasn't like the two of them decided to have a tiktok together and become and monetize it and do you know what I mean?

No, you're right We're in the 1950s folks the There there's no way for these two towering intellects holy men priests To cook up a scheme to make money off of their wacky notion and gemelli was so traumatized by these events That he backed away completely and never resumed it so What do you make of that? Well, I think You know, um, it's possible that they discovered something and You sometimes if you discover something that's so powerful You're like I don't want any part of that for instance um the idea of exorcisms The idea of can can there be possessions can people have possessions?

I think what passed for possessions in the time that a lot of bible stories were written were people that had Any one of a number of things like Tourette's epilepsy Any one of a number of things that we now know what they are? Um, but do I believe that there are demonic possessions? I do There have been cases And father or netty is one of the church's most famous famous is maybe not the right word to use here but um the most well-known renowned exorcists of his day now his fellow priests Did whisper that perhaps he was too enthusiastic about finding demons?

Remember, they accused him of mistaking medical maladies for possession, right? Not in every case But in some right, you know But if you're an exorcist And the only tool you have is casting out the devil every problem looks like a demon and that was kind of what they were Suggesting about father or netty. I see that Was he a little was he a little unhinged? Was he a little loopy? Was he a little dramatic? Was he completely insane?

Hard to say But I think that You just can't dismiss him out of hand as a hoaxer Without at least looking at like the scope of everything he did And everything he claimed And and again like all good conspiracy theories. We need those points that touch reality We need a built-in reason for why the truth can't come out. You know, we have that the vatican silenced him And then we also need another explanation For why can't we have it now?

And the vatican's explanation was and this is true and it'll remind you of the movie minority report You can't have a device that strips every human being of their privacy You just can't because in the akashic record And we'll do an ep you know what we'll do an episode coming up here eventually Let me make a note. We'll do an episode on the akashic record. How much did you know about that?

I didn't I didn't know anything about it okay, good because you know, you're my favorite person to entertain so we'll do an episode on the akashic record and adam blavatsky and theosophists and stuff, but in the akashic record max the akashic record is kind of like physics and Relativity and the truth about time There's no past present and future Everything is happening all at once everything everywhere all the time past present future time is not only a circle It's a tangled up knot of a circle and everything You are right right now in this moment. You are everything you have ever been and will be That's kind of the mind-blowing trippy part of quantum physics and quantum mechanics So in the world of the akashic record guess what the akashic record knows everything past present future every thought deed intention Of you a human every living thing including non-human intelligent entities that may be elsewhere So the tricky bit with the akashic record is it knows the future as well as the past And that is kind of something to wrestle with especially if you're dr. Nettie and you're building a machine But again the conspiracy theory of the chronovisor Accounts for that by pointing out to you that in the legitimate science of time travel It's You can you really can't go backward. You can only watch and observe You can only travel forward And if the akashic record is true, do you know what that means?

That means future max We already know Everything's determined now physics will step in and go we'll hold up there a little girl. Just a second Actually, we don't already know future max because in every moment every decision that max makes he collapses the waveform So right now max for future max all things are possible Anything is possible You could get up right now and throw yourself through a window Or eat a hot dog or burst into flames or fall asleep or drop dead It's when you make the choice That is what collapses all those other possible waveforms and shapes the future path for you, right?

So you stand up right now and you decide i'm not going through the window I'm going to have the hot dog and all the events associated with you throwing yourself through a window all those waveforms collapse And now we're in this timeline where max is having a hot dog and in every instant Every moment every thought every decision everything You're creating and collapsing waveforms. That's the gist basically of the quantum side of this and the akashic record Fits very neatly into that doesn't it?

Because I can access your akashic record And you've already Made all your past decisions But in every moment you're creating the record for me to read for future max if that makes sense I cannot believe that I am not high as balls right now Because this feels like the kind of conversation you would have if you were high doesn't it?

It really did You're trying to tell me And keep in mind that my understanding of this stuff is the same understanding a mouse has about a couch It just sees it. It has no idea what the hell's really going on. Like I really don't have any I My mind melts down when I try to think about it But in the context of this story and father or netty The whole thing exists within the framework of possibility and legitimate science Doesn't it?

It does gorgeous conspiracy theory. Yeah, but the idea that it's easier to go forward than backward makes sense really does Well, there's some there's a series of uh time travel books that I absolutely love the author is jody jody jody Let me think about it It's um, I let their time they're british and it's time travel and it's there's like this whole government agency that studies the past They go back as observers. They don't go back to manipulate the timeline because of course that would create paradoxes, right?

Right, they are they are able they go back and they're historians. It's so british They're time traveling historians and they go back in time and they witness things They witness the marriage of henry the eighth and one of his wives or they witness the battle at waterloo Washington crossing the delaware whatever right, right, but of course because you know, they're humans and these are funny books something always goes wrong and they end up messing with the timeline and then history has to fix herself and They're hysterical and you would really love them But that cons that notion of can we travel through time and just watch?

Is uh, it's pretty entrenched because when you think about time travel That's kind of all you could do, right? It's happened. It's over. Yeah And it's not it's not good for your brain If you have anxiety or if you have a hamster that runs on a wheel inside your head To think too much about the knotted up circle of time where it's all happening You know, my brother would always say this to me. He would always say this to me, you know, it's it's all they're all We put all these it's all happening all at once and I just would go Are we having dessert or I I want a story like this to be true just because how cool would that be?

Very how cool would that be? And I and let's say this story is true. I do agree with the vatican I do agree with pope pius the 12th who said, you know, this is dangerous This cannot exist For the good of humanity. This must be dismantled and concealed and forgotten I mean if that doesn't sound like a dan brown book or a national treasure movie what does Speaking of which is another national treasure movie coming out. I can't wait the people of earth need it. Yes So whether or not this is true, we can at least all sit back and admire how beautifully it's been built It is a beautifully built Story that is a conspiracy theory or a hoax or whatever word you want to use it's gorgeous because it It just uses all the ingredients um And it makes us think about Like what it would feel like to have proof proof proof of everything proof of jesus and proof of the resurrection and proof that There's more beyond this We could go back and we could get proof of other things, you know think about Like right off the top of your head. What's what's an event that you wish you could watch?

Like I I have a lot of questions about the sphinx max I'd like to know a little bit more about the sphinx. Well, I would like to go back and watch that I'd like to know that and I I don't The thing is I don't know that if I let's just say I could witness the crucifixion of christ Would that I already believe that that happened. I don't need to see that My the thing that's most important to me was what was his life about and what was he doing?

You see what I mean? That's because you're not a time-traveling historian the time-traveling historians. They don't bring their own Oh, I see To it. Here's what they say. They say this is an opportunity To witness a true event in it Unfold in front of us and to learn more. They're not questioning. Did jesus exist? They just want to know more about everything that happened And and because these were priests and you know intellectuals Um, look at what father or netty did with what he allegedly witnessed on the chronovisor He went back and he compared it to The changes in the scripture in the medieval monasteries And he challenged that he was like you changed history To tell a better story and you shouldn't have done that. So interesting right that he would do that but people do that all the time yeah, we shape I mean We you know, we think of history as this dry dusty dead thing that lives in a book when history like everything else is constantly shifting and evolving And Being altered and if history really was a dead lifeless thing, why would we need to go back and censor it?

Like if history is dead and lifeless, why are they removing signs at national parks that talk about slavery? For example, if history is so dull and pointless and doesn't matter Then why are we always in such an all-fired hurry to change it? and rewrite it To suit the current narrative history is powerful and alive And these were In these were academics. I mean you have to think about that That had their they had different motivations for wanting to go back and watch these things then You or I might like i'd like to see the pyramids get built. I would be fascinated to know about that I I wouldn't mind finding myself sitting in front of a tv watching what really happened at dealey plaza When john f kennedy was assassinated Think about all of the things that you're curious about that are still kind of unresolved Wouldn't you like to see it? Yeah and then silly things that aren't historically significant, but I'd like to i'd like to sit in front of the screen and watch them work on the mount rushmore Yeah you know and and building the golden gate bridge and Man would I be interested in being on the launch pad the day that the apollo mission took off to bring those astronauts to the moon It would be thrilling and amazing but again You know if you believe this story and you believe pope pius the 12th It is also the most dangerous thing that you could not the 12th. I'm, sorry I get my roman number of the 7th. I get my roman v is a 5. I kept saying I apologize 12. It's all right Yeah, it's whatever isn't we get things wrong all the time around here But if you're going to yell at me for getting my roman numerals wrong while also believing a time travel tv machine I don't know Apologies, I I kept saying the 12th and I should have said the 7th. But anyway, yeah, like yeah So, what do you believe max at the end of the day do you believe father or netty?

No, what do you believe is in the apostolic archives, um, I believe that there was a machine where they tried to do it but I don't believe that it happened and The the proof of the hoax is that picture I mean that to me the idea that now if that picture had never appeared and they said they did it But the fact that they went we're gonna have we have to do this picture And the fact that now that and perpetuated a hoax with that A true tinfoil hat believer would say to you Yeah, but max How do you know that the magazine didn't do that to undermine the credibility of the story because the vatican wanted this silenced?

Maybe the vatican was behind that sharing. Do you see do you see how these conspiracy theories work? They're they're gorgeous It's it's how politics does now Yeah, they leave you a million doors You will never find yourself trapped in a locked room in a well-done conspiracy theory. There's always another door to go through my feeling is that this was a Here's the thing I don't believe that this happened. I believe he believed it happened and perhaps was deluded by that And the other guy that was with him, I think at some point along the line he went he's deluded And that's why father bruna. Yeah, well, he dropped out father father bruna believed ernetti for ernetti's whole life, but bruna wrote a book and he was not Um, he was not afraid to question and and be critical. It's just one of those great little stories That's perfect in every way and the fact that the proof is in the vatican's archives means we'll never get proof We'll never because we're never going to get down there. We're never going to just tell you I so want this to be true I want this to be so true, but I do too. I think there's a part of me that is like Every time I hit a fresh contradiction I was like, oh And I can't just because I want something to be true I can't like not I can't fudge it Do you know what I mean? No Because that wouldn't be right either Um, but and you know, you know, I believe in the truth the true part of this is this all did indeed This all the story of this all did indeed happen. This was oh, yeah, you know Yeah Now, um on the next true weird stuff Um, there's nothing woo woo about the next episode of true weird stuff. I i'm sorry I think time machines that let you watch the last supper. That's a little woo woo, right?

Um This this next one for those of you that like things that are you know, just facts jack this next true weird stuff episode, um We're going to take a look at why all these generations of american public school students Were made to learn square dancing in school and the reason for it is just delicious It involves an incredibly wealthy Successful industrial industrialist who was revered even today as one of the greatest businessmen That america has ever produced and this man He was a great businessman and we have his genius to thank for so many things But he was also a raging foaming at the mouth racist bigot And he decided That the only way to save america Was to access america's youth and get them real real caught up in wholesome white people culture And in his mind want nothing more wholesome more white people than square dancing And that's all i'm going to tell you because it's going to be so much fun especially if you Were one of those kids who was required to bow to your partner and do-si-do in the school gym You're gonna eat this up. That's on the next true weird stuff. Thank you We'll see you next time And if you listen to us on apple podcast hit the plus button in the top right corner And now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered and we really appreciate it if you subscribe Rate and review true weird stuff hit our website true weird stuff.com for show notes and Photos and videos when we have it and bonus content everything true weird is waiting for you at true weird stuff.com And follow true weird stuff on instagram true weird stuff is a Now! Media production Our executive producer is anthony garcia The show is written and hosted by me Sheri Lynch along with my deeply weird director Max Sweeten Our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser additional production by the mysterious steven Karl our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr original graphics by kevin nash original artworks by Olivia Axland true weird original music composed and performed by jack griffin and 2026 Now! Media all rights reserved all wrongs remembered You