What Could Have Been

In this episode, which is sadly Not a Halloween episode, we talk to a timeline where Canada's Mincome program didn't end in 1979. Starting in 1974, Mincome was an economic experiment carried out in the town of Dauphin, Manitoba to see if Universal Basic Income, the idea of the government giving people a small amount of unconditional money every month, would improve life & the economy, or if people would stop working & live off of the Basic Income. In our timeline, it was cut short when the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada came to power for 9 months & scrapped the program. But in a timeline where it kept going, it might have worked & led to Canada becoming the first country on Earth to institute nationwide Universal Basic Income.Did Mincome work? Was it instituted across the province of Manitoba? All of Canada? Did people stop working or did they achieve a better & healthier work/life balance? Did it invigorate the economy, or become an expensive drain on the system? How much did it cost? Also, who the heck is The Great Hungry One?Tune into our latest episode to find out What Could Have Been. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Part 5 of our Miniseries, we pick up from where we left off in 1963, & continue the story through 1980As the Cold War rages in our timeline, in Sam's timeline, an era of peace is upon them, mostly. We finally get to find out how the Estonian Rebellion played out, Tsar Alexander the 4th has to deal with a religious group that is violently opposed to the reconstruction of Moscow, & everyone is not so patiently waiting for his son, Prince Nicholas, to father a child to carry on the House of Romanov. As Russia reaches up to join the Americans in Space, everything is going well, at least until some former soldiers of the People's Far Eastern Union pop up again. These Communists just don't quit.How did the Estonian Rebellion play out? Is somebody stockpiling Nuclear Weapons? How far into Space will everyone get? What are the Communists up to? Can Sam handle hearing about all of our Nuclear Weapons, treaties & the times that we almost ended the world because of a technical glitch?Join me again as we explore this wildly different timeline where Moscow was wiped out by a meteor strike in 1908, the Soviet Revolution failed, & the Tsars are still ruling over Russia. If you haven't heard Parts 1 through 4 yet, I recommend going back & checking them out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the last seconds of 1999, the world counted down to a new year, a new century & a new millennium. When the clocks & calendars flipped over to 2000, the world celebrated, cheered & partied like it wasn't 1999 anymore. Couples kissed, strangers kissed, music played, fireworks went off, & all around the world, a legion of computer programmers breathed a sigh of relief went nothing went wrong.Of course, the reason that nothing went wrong was because they had spent the last few years making sure that every computer on Earth that kept track of the date was Y2K compliant. Years earlier, it had been discovered that a tiny little detail that was used to make the earliest computers run faster was now set to make computers go crazy when the calendar rolled over to 2000. Thankfully, their hard work & long hours paid off as the century changed with hardly a bug or glitch.But what if they hadn't been able to work fast enough? What if they didn't have the manpower or the resources to fix everything. What if when the ball dropped to usher in the new century, countless computers got confused & could no longer keep track of what they were doing? What if the computers that governed banks, power grids, traffic lights & the stock market all had a digital coronary & no longer knew what they were doing?What would happen to a timeline where Y2K wasn't patched in time for the Year 2000? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the last seconds of 1999, the world counted down to a new year, a new century & a new millennium. When the clocks & calendars flipped over to 2000, the world celebrated, cheered & partied like it wasn't 1999 anymore. Couples kissed, strangers kissed, music played, fireworks went off, & all around the world, a legion of computer programmers breathed a sigh of relief went nothing went wrong.Of course, the reason that nothing went wrong was because they had spent the last few years making sure that every computer on Earth that kept track of the date was Y2K compliant. Years earlier, it had been discovered that a tiny little detail that was used to make the earliest computers run faster was now set to make computers go crazy when the calendar rolled over to 2000. Thankfully, their hard work & long hours paid off as the century changed with hardly a bug or glitch.But what if they hadn't been able to work fast enough? What if they didn't have the manpower or the resources to fix everything. What if when the ball dropped to usher in the new century, countless computers got confused & could no longer keep track of what they were doing? What if the computers that governed banks, power grids, traffic lights & the stock market all had a digital coronary & no longer knew what they were doing?What would happen to a timeline where Y2K wasn't patched in time for the Year 2000? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In our second mid-season interlude, a Simon who calls no particular timeline home has just helped a wealthy client start a new life in a new timeline where accusations of certain financial improprieties won't be able to follow him. What did he ALLEDEGELY do? Why does this timeline have so many milk alternative options? Why is sea level climbing so fast? Why is the Moon being settled so fast, & will Simon manage to get out before his quasi-legal gateway closes? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.