from PRX.

This is Studio 360.

I'm Kurt Anderson.

On this podcast Extra, we're bringing you a special series of stories about science and creativity.

Today we finish our look at a staple of science fiction and fantasy,

the multiverse.

Writers of modern animated TV shows have been a little obsessed with the idea of multiple universes,

like in this episode of The Family Guy.

Apparently, this is a universe where everyone has two heads, one happy, one sad.

Honey, have you seen Steeley? I can't find him anywhere.

I sure have. He's over there playing in the corner.

Of course, a lot of animators started out as comic book geeks.

So here we are at the Source Comics and Games in St. Paul, Minnesota, my local comic

book shop. This is a very dangerous place for me, because I'm a geek with a paycheck.

That's James Cacelios. He's a physics teacher at the University of Minnesota, and he says

comic books have been playing with theories of the multiverse for ages, and that those storylines

mirror actual scientific theories by physicists like Hugh Everett, who first proposed the many-worlds

theory in the 1950s.

This, of course, this idea was not considered helpful by physicists who was struggling with quantum mechanics

and was ignored, even though four years later, in 1962, in Flash number 123,

experimental evidence is provided when the Flash from the 1960s

vibrates over to a parallel Earth and has an adventure with the Flash from the 1940s,

...