What If Series

In central European folklore, Krampus is a half goat / half demon entity who during the Christmas season punishes the children who have misbehaved over the past year. Though Krampus may have scared children for years, nowadays he’s become more the focus of Christmas themed horror movies and novels. But what if Krampus was a threat? Could we keep our children well enough behaved to avoid them being taken? Could we possibly stop such an entity? This episode we ask WHAT IF KRAMPUS ACTUALLY EXISTED? Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST

At the Earths equator, the planet is spinning at approx 1100 MPH. And its this spinning that creates and keeps the conditions necessary for our continued survival. But let say the spinning one day just stopped? Would the effects of this event be survivable , or would we be damned to certain doom? This episode we ask, “What If The Earth Stopped Spinning?” Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST  

Over 2000 years ago the Greek philosopher Plato first spoke of the lost city of Atlantis, and since people have been searching to find its ruins. The legend of the lost city even bled its way into fiction, showing us time and time again across television and movies an under sea world bustling with all kinds of life.  So what if such a place had been found? What could we learn from a new civilization? Would it be possible to even visit? This episode we ask, “What If Atlantis Had Been Found?” Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST  

One of the most popular creatures to think that comes to mind this time of year is the Vampire. The lore of the vampire dates back to the late 17th and 18th centuries, and still to this day they are as loved and feared as ever. But what if these creatures were real and posed a daily threat to people? Could we coexist or would we hunt them? What precautions would we take to survive? This episode we ask, “What If Vampires Really Existed?” Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST

If you look at statistics, you’ll see that human beings are gradually getting taller. Over the last 150 years the average height of people in industrialized nations has grown by about 4 inches. Though these changes are significant, they are barely noticed in the span of a lifetime. But what if our evolution didn’t have to take so long? And what if it could be controlled? Would we all stay an average height, or range from extreme smalls to larges? Could the tall and the tiny co-exist? This week we ask,”What If Human Beings Didn’t Have Size Restrictions?” Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST

65 million years ago dinosaurs were driven to extinction, leaving behind only their fossils to study. The Jurassic Park franchise has imagined a world where dinosaurs were brought back to life through scientific means, but today we’re going to look at a world where they never left. How could human beings and dinosaurs co-exist? What would our everyday look like with huge carnivores on the loose? This episode we ask “What If Dinosaurs Still Roamed The Earth?”   Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST  

For years it has been understood that the Earth is round, and over the years many different theories, tests, and pictures have shown this to be evident. But lets say the Earth was flat, what kind of differences would we see in the world around us? How does the Earth rotate around the sun? Could we see from one side to the other? This week we ask, “What If The Earth Was Flat?” Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST

We spend our lives trying to get it and it seems like there’s never enough of it. Everything we need to live normal, comfortable lives requires money. And here in the digital age of banking and shopping, its easy to get what you need quickly with the click of a few buttons. But What if the concept of money had never been? Would we still be trading for goods and services? Could online shopping even work in this world? This episode we ask,”What If Money Didn’t Exist?” Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST  

We saw it in the comics and then we got to see it on the big screen, Thanos using the Infinity stones to erase half of all living life, and then our heroes bringing it all back 5 years later. As entertaining as the stories are, they make us wonder what a world would look like without 50% of the life that occupies it? Are plants and animals considered in the snap? What would happen to all the unclaimed property? How could the economy stay afloat? This episode we ask What If The Thanos Snap Actually Happened?! Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST

The world has seen its share of war. Over the decades, millions of lives have been lost defending their homes, religious beliefs, and freedoms, and with advancements in technology, war only stands to get deadlier. But what if we found an alternative to war that sent a single person into battle rather than millions? Would the world agree to these terms? How would this person be chosen? This week we ask, ”What If War Was Still A Trial By Champion?” Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST

Of all the challenges life has to offer, parenthood is probably one of the hardest. We try our best to raise our children in to well adjusted individuals, but despite our best efforts, they’ll inherit some of the traits and behaviors we wished they hadn’t. But what if we had a perfect artificial parent and we could fine tune the experiences our children have throughout life? Would they be more likely to grow into the people we’d hoped? What would happen to the family dynamic? This episode we ask, “What If Robots Raised Our Children?” Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST

Over time, we’ve found ways to make traveling easier and faster. But despite how fast your car is, or how direct your route may seem, the quickest way to get from point A to point B is a straight line. But what if we could ignore the space between points and instantly appear wherever we want? Whats life like when you remove the journey? This episode we ask What If Teleportation Technology Existed? Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST

The wheel has been deemed one of the greatest innovations in history. Not only does it provide us easier modes of transportation, but its also been repurposed and reimagined for several other inventions that we use on a daily basis and probably don’t even notice. Look at cogs inside a clock, record players, disc drives, the steam engine, none would exist without the advent of the wheel. But what if the idea of the wheel had never come to be? What might our modes of transportation look like? What would rise in the wheel’s absence? This episode we ask, “What If The Wheel Had Never Been Invented?” Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST

We all have things we wish for. Whether its more money, better health, or even world peace, we all desire the things we sometimes can’t have. But what if all the sudden we could have everything we desire? And how would everyones new found luck and wealth effect the world? In this episode, we look at a world that has discovered a Genie’s lamp. When having this conversation, we use Disney’s Aladdin as our guide to Genie rules and protocol…I know, super professional. So how would such an amazing discovery be dealt with? Is the country who discovered the lamp now the supreme power in the world? And what if the lamp traveled the world so everyone could get a turn? Would everyones similar wish for obscene wealth topple the economy? We ask these questions and more as we ask, “What If A Genie’s Lamp Had Been Discovered? Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST

For most people, when the sun goes down it’s time to let your body decompress and sleep. And no matter how much sleep we get, we always feel like we could use a little more. We’ve all pulled ourselves through a day where we got little to no sleep the night before, and typically as a result we can’t think clearly, respond to road hazards quickly, miss important details, etc. But what if we didn’t need sleep? What If the body had another way to recharge itself while fully awake? How would we use our 24 hour days when we are awake for them all? Do we get twice as much done? How do we unwind and recharge? This week we ask, “WHAT IF PEOPLE DIDN’T HAVE TO SLEEP?” Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST

Who hasn’t wished in their life for the ability to fly, be invisible, read minds, or have super strength? If you’ve never desired any of these powers, no doubt theres another power you have. Movies and comic books have made these type of abilities attractive for many years. How exciting the world would be if we could use our abilities to fight crime and make life great for ourselves, right? If you sit and tear down what a society with super powered individuals looks like, you see it probably wouldn’t be the fantasy we’d all like to believe. If people have yielded these powers since the dawn of man, what would our modern world look like? If individuals could kill everything in their vicinity with the snap of their fingers, would we still live in condensed cities? We look at these questions and more in this episode as we ask, “What If Super Powered Being Existed?” Go to WhatIfPod.com and let us know You can also find us on Twitter @WhatIfSeries and on Instagram @WhatIfPDCST

According to Wikipedia, “Bigfoot or Sasquatch are said to be hairy, upright-walking, ape-like creatures that dwell in the wilderness and leave footprints.” For over 60 years, Bigfoot has continued to scare and mystify people of all ages. There are countless believers hunting and hoping to encounter the missing link in our evolution, as well as television shows dedicated to finding proof of the creatures existence. But with no real proof coming from their research, it’s hard to believe a creature like this would be able to completely evade detection for all this time. But, let’s say one had been found. How would it change the world? Would we continue to seek them out? Would we put them in zoos? With their amazing ability to remain unseen, would we ever come across another? This episode we ask, “What If Bigfoot Had Been Found?!” WhatIfPod.com @WhatIfSeries Insta @WhatIfPDCST

If you didn’t take a picture of it and upload that picture to facebook, twitter, instagram, and everything else, did it even really happen? Not in today’s world. We’re so driven by visual media that it’s consumed our thoughts in ways we can’t even count. Even that is probably an understatement. That’s why it’s so hard to imagine a world without these things; no photos, no screens, nothing. Our most important sense, no longer assailed by advertisement or pictures of your old high-school buddy’s new dog. So what’s left of the world when you take out the camera? People living for the moment? People constantly forgetting what the earth looks like? The possibilities are as weird as they are varied. We wrack our brains in this episode, wondering how humanity could cope with a pictureless world. What clever solutions would we find to problems of communication, record-keeping, and everything else? Why not listen now and see! WhatIfPod.com @WhatIfSeries If you’d like to show your support, you can leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

The ocean; not just the majority of our planet’s surface, but the evolutionary cradle of all life. There’s something alluring about it, even with all its dangers. Everyone remembers days spend spent poolside in the summer, or their first trip to the beach. Some flat-out live for the sea, spending more time on a ship than on the shore. What is it that makes us feel so drawn to the water? Maybe it’s millennia of genetic memory, and some part of our DNA longs to return. Maybe it’s the depth, the vastness, or the mystery. Either way, it’s taken a lot of technology to get us as familiar with the ocean’s secrets as we are. Wouldn’t it be something if we didn’t need any special equipment to get there? If we could plumb the depths of the sea with our bodies alone? Plenty of creatures do it, even mammals, so why not us? We just didn’t develop that way, I suppose. We could’ve though, and what a strange and fascinating world that would make. Picture Underwater strip-malls, mining in the trenches, submerged homes and farms and towering buildings. Have a listen as we explore this idea, and ponder at a wetter, waterier human race. Can you imagine a world where humans can breathe underwater? WhatIfPod.com @WhatIfSeries Insta @WhatIfPDCST

We’ve been fascinated with monsters since cavemen first painted on walls. It makes sense if you think about our start; running from the things that want to eat us while we chase the things small enough to eat. We were born into a world of monsters, and it left an impression that lingers today. Our advancements have made us safe and secure, keeping the predatory world at bay, but what if nature rose up to match us? This episode we discuss a world where titanic, near-unstoppable monsters roam free. How could a society learn to adapt to their presence? How could civilization grow under their shadow? No doubt it would present problems we can hardly imagine, and equally fantastic solutions. Could we master them one day? Breed them? Utilize them? Or would we just wipe them out? All that, assuming they didn’t do the same to us first. Listen and hear our thoughts on a world where mankind is no longer king! WhatIfPod.com @WhatIfSeries If you’d like to show your support, you can leave us a review on iTunes! Thanks for listening!

    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. WhatIfPod.com @WhatIfSeries

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?” WhatIfPod.com @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!

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! WhatIfPod.com @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!

  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? WhatIfPod.com @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! WhatIfPod.com @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’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? WhatIfPod.com @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!

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. WhatIfPod.com @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  

We’re so used to the divide between man and animal that it’s a basic part of life. Even religion acknowledges a fundamental difference. If you call a person an animal, you’re basically calling them lower than human (but if you call them dog it means you’re friends. Isn’t that bizarre?). What’s the biggest thing separating us? Maybe it’s intellect, diet, or amount of hair, but I think it’s mostly the language barrier. Humanity’s grasp of complex language is one of our strangest and most powerful evolutionary gifts. It sure would be something if that gift wasn’t exclusive to us. Imagine a world where all the animals we so smugly dismiss could tell us just where to stick it. It sounds funny at first, but this road gets dark quickly. We’re not the kindest masters on the globe, and though there’s no end of violence amongst animals, we have it down to a number of sciences. Could you live as you do now if animals could talk? How would it change you? Listen now and learn, because just talking about it sure changed us. 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  

Hello and welcome to the first episode of our new series! In this episode, we just wanted to give a quick introduction of ourselves and let you in on a bit of our podcasting background. We are incredibly excited about this series and want you to be there with us every step of the way. Let us know what you think of the show, and send us any feedback or ideas for future episodes you might have. Thanks so much for listening! 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