Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald,

currents and trends through a mythic lens.

The podcast where we explore an ever-changing world and our lives in it

through the lens of myth, story, and imagination.

The Emerald.

All that's happening on this green jewel in space. Listen.

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

Everyone remembers this classic line, don't they?

From the groundbreaking anti-war novel Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut's magnum opus,

about a World War II soldier, a society of fourth-dimensional alien beings called Trophalmodorians,

and what war and life and human machinations look like when viewed outside of time,

Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower

and awakened on his wedding day. He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in

1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death

many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the

events in between. Sounds a lot like a yogi, doesn't he? Merging past and present and future like that.

Today on the Emerald, we look at the shamanic Vonnegut, the yoga of Slaughterhouse Five, the primal sound of the universe and the fine art of hearing the purple hum.

Music I remember reading Slaughterhouse Five in high school. The sheer creativity of it struck me,

particularly the idea of what it looks like when we gaze upon human activity removed from the

constraints of three-dimensional time. There is one passage I remember in which Billy comes

unstuck in time and watches a war movie backwards.

It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them.

...