Speaker 1: Okay, So have you ever looked at like a microwaiver,
an old TV just sitting around and thought, hmmm, like,
what if there was more to this thing? Yeah? You
know what I mean, Like a secret potential just waiting
to be unlocked.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure, Like.
Speaker 1: What if we could push these everyday electronics, you know,
to their limits and find something truly extraordinary? Absolutely, and
that's exactly what we're diving into today, the story of
the man who did just that. Oh wow, we're talking
about Mike mad Man Markham and his quest to build
a time machine.
Speaker 2: A time machine, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not in some fancy lab, but in his own backyard
in Missouri.
Speaker 2: Ah, this is right up my alley. I love this
kind of stuff, the spirit of independent invention. It's just
incredible to me, right. You know, we always think about
these huge scientific breakthroughs happening in these sterile labs with
tons of money behind them, but there are so many
examples throughout history of just regular people with a ton
of curiosity who end up finding these amazing things.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it sounds like from what you sent me this,
Mike Markham was definitely one of those people just tinkering
away in his home, probably more guided by intuition than
any formal training.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, totally Yeah. And his house it was basically
a graveyard of electronics. Wow, wires and circuits and pieces
of old appliances.
Speaker 2: Everywhere, a true tinkerer's paradise exactly.
Speaker 1: And his first project was this Jacob's ladder.
Speaker 2: Oh I love those you know, those.
Speaker 1: Two metal rods with the spark climbing between them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like a mini lightning bolt, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But Mike wanted to take it to a whole
new level.
Speaker 2: So he basically supersized it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he built his own transformer, wow, to boost the
power from the standard one hundred and twenty volts all
the way up to twenty thousand volts.
Speaker 2: That's some serious voltage.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. And he even used wire coat hangers for
the rods. Yeah, talk about DIY.
Speaker 2: That's incredible. The ingenuity of some people. It's really inspiring
in a way.
Speaker 1: Right. But here's where things start to get really strange.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm all ears.
Speaker 1: So Mike had this idea to use lasers to heat
the air around the conductors. He thought if he could
preionize the air, it would conduct electricity better and create
a more stable spark, maybe even a continuous one.
Speaker 2: So like prepping the air to make it a better
pathway for the upper city exactly.
Speaker 1: But it didn't quite work out as planned. Oh what happened?
Instead of a continuous arc, he ended up creating this
weird little vortex.
Speaker 2: A vortex like a mini tornado.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of imagine the shimmering you see above hot pavement,
but contained in this little sphere just floating there.
Speaker 2: That's really strange.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally unexpected. And the lasers, even though they didn't
create the continuous arc he was hoping for, they might
have played a role in this whole vortex thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Maybe they changed the air density somehow or the
ionization levels, and that's what caused this bizarre phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Right, It's like the lasers accidentally created the perfect conditions
for this vortex to form.
Speaker 2: It makes you wonder about all the strange things that
could be happening around us that we just don't notice
or can't explain.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. So, anyway, Mike's got this mini vortex just hovering
there in his backyard.
Speaker 2: Okay, what did he do next?
Speaker 1: Well, what would you do?
Speaker 2: Hmm, I don't know, throw something in it?
Speaker 1: Exactly, that's exactly what he did. He grabbed a sheet
metal screw and toss it right in woof, gone, vanished
without a trace. He waited for a bit but nothing.
Then as he turned off the power, he heard a
little clink.
Speaker 2: Oh no way, the screw.
Speaker 1: Had reappeared about two feet away, just lying there on
the ground.
Speaker 2: So like teleported, that's.
Speaker 1: What he started to think. Maybe it was teleportation or
maybe a tiny jump into the future. Who knows.
Speaker 2: That's wild. It's like those stories where people lose something
and then find it years later in the most random place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It's like our brains are wired to make
these crazy connections when we can't explain something.
Speaker 2: That's the beauty of the human mind, always searching for answers.
Speaker 1: Right. So, after this whole screw incident, Mike's ambitions just exploded.
Speaker 2: He wanted to go bigger.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, way bigger. He was picturing this massive eight
foot tall machine. Wow, but that meant needing a ton
more power, like d thousand volts or more.
Speaker 2: And I'm guessing his little homemade transformer wasn't going to
cut it.
Speaker 1: Nope, not even close.
Speaker 2: So what did he do?
Speaker 1: Well, let's just say he got a little resourceful, maybe
a little too resourceful.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: Oh, he and his buddies decided to raid a power substation.
Speaker 2: He stole transformers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they just went forward in broad daylight, took six
industrial grade transformers.
Speaker 2: That's a bold move, Cotton, let's just say that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't think i'd recommend that approach. Yeah, but hey,
it's a good story, right, It is a.
Speaker 2: Good story, but definitely not something to try at home.
Speaker 1: Kids, for sure. So as you can imagine, this little
stunt landed him in some trouble. I bet sixty days
in jail and five years of probation oach. Yeah, not
exactly the ideal environment for scientific breakthroughs.
Speaker 2: No kidding. And I bet his neighbors weren't too thrilled
with him either, what with all the brownouts he was causing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he was already kind of a local legend
because of those.
Speaker 2: Not exactly the kind of fame you want, right.
Speaker 1: It seemed like his time machine dreams were pretty much over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then what happened, Well.
Speaker 1: This is where things take another crazy turn.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm hooked.
Speaker 1: So there was this news headline, Kansas city man tries
to build time machine on porch. That's kitchy, right, and
it caught the attention of Art Bell.
Speaker 2: Art Bell from Coast to Coast.
Speaker 1: Am Yeah, the guy was a legend and he had
a real interest in electronics and physics. Oh wow, So
suddenly Mike's story went from a local curiosity to a
national phenomenon.
Speaker 2: It's amazing how media can do that.
Speaker 1: Right, one headline and boom, you're on the map.
Speaker 2: It's like that story about the band that got mentioned
in a blog and became famous overnight.
Speaker 1: Exactly. And Art Bell had this huge platform and his
listeners were really open to these unconventional ideas, so.
Speaker 2: Mike's story really resonated with them.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Art interviewed Mike for over an hour, and
Mike came across as this genuine guy who really believed
in what he was doing.
Speaker 2: I bet the phones were ringing off the hook.
Speaker 1: They were. People were sending donations, equipment, even property. It
was like the early days of crowdfunding, powered by.
Speaker 2: Late night radio waves and a whole lot of curiosity exactly.
Speaker 1: People were captivated by this story. Yeah, and with this
new support, Mike was able to connect with some real scientists, physicists, even.
Speaker 2: So he went from tinkering in his backyard to collaborating
with actual experts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they helped him refine his designs and they even
helped him get a warehouse in Overland Park, Kansas.
Speaker 2: So he upgraded from the porch to a full blown
lab pretty much.
Speaker 1: And about a year later he had built this new
massive machine.
Speaker 2: This is where it gets really interesting.
Speaker 1: It is this thing was reportedly capable of generating three
million volts.
Speaker 2: Three million, that's insane.
Speaker 1: It was creating what they called a plasma tornado.
Speaker 2: Wow, a plasma tornado. What does that even look like?
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly, but I imagine it was pretty spectacular.
And art Bell even compared it to the Philadelphia experiment.
Speaker 2: You know that whole story about the ship that supposedly
disappeared and reappeared.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that one, which is pretty wild considering that both
stories involved high voltage and rotating magnetic fields.
Speaker 2: It's all connected somehow.
Speaker 1: Right, And what's really interesting is that even some scientists
said that Mike's approach using high voltage and magnetism wasn't
completely out there really. Yeah, Apparently Einstein's theories hinted the
possibility of manipulating space time using extreme gravitational or electromagnetic fields.
Speaker 2: So Mike's ideas were at least grounded in some theoretical physics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like he was tapping into some fundamental principles,
even if he didn't fully understand them.
Speaker 2: That's pretty amazing, it is.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Mike's got this plasma tornado going, and naturally
he starts throwing things into it.
Speaker 2: Of course, what else would you do?
Speaker 1: Right? First, he tried inanimate objects like pieces of wood
and baseballs. They disappear in the vortex and then reappear
a short time later, always the specific distance to the
east or west of the machine. Never north or south.
Speaker 2: That's strange. Always east or west.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which made Mike think that maybe the Earth's rotation
or magnetic field was influencing things.
Speaker 2: Hmm, yeah, that makes sense. I mean those were pretty
powerful forces.
Speaker 1: Right, So then he decided to up the ante.
Speaker 2: Oh no, he didn't.
Speaker 1: He did. He started using live animals. Live animals, yeah, mice, hamsters,
guinea pigs.
Speaker 2: This guy was fearless, he was.
Speaker 1: And the crazy part is the animals would disappear and
then reappear seemingly unharmed. Yeah, and Mike claimed that he
could actually predict where they would land and when. By
adjusting the voltage and the speed of the rotating magnets.
Speaker 2: He could control where they went.
Speaker 1: That's what he said. It's like something out of a
sci fi movie.
Speaker 2: It's incredible if it's true, of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But then things took an even bigger turn.
Speaker 2: Well, could be bigger than teleporting guinea pigs.
Speaker 1: Mike decided to step into the vortex himself.
Speaker 2: He didn't, he did.
Speaker 1: There's a flash of light and poof, he was gone.
Speaker 2: He vanished.
Speaker 1: Yep, just like that. Everyone panicked. Art Bell was supposed
to visit, and the media went crazy with the whole
madman vanished his story.
Speaker 2: It must have been absolute chaos.
Speaker 1: It was. And then two years later my reappeared.
Speaker 2: It came back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but in Fairfield, Ohio, hundreds of miles away.
Speaker 2: That's nowhere near Kansas.
Speaker 1: Nope. And he had amnesia. He couldn't remember who he
was or how he got.
Speaker 2: There, so he just popped up in Ohio with no memory.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Eventually his memories came back and he went back
to the warehouse in Kansas, but it was completely.
Speaker 2: Empty, empty, like everything was gone.
Speaker 1: Everything, the machine, his notes, the videos, all of it.
Speaker 2: That's so creepy, like someone just wiped the slate clean
is pretty eerie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But Mike was determined to rebuild the machine. He
said he could remember most of the process.
Speaker 2: But how do you rebuild something like that from scratch?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but he was convinced he could do it.
H But there was a new problem. Metal metal wouldn't
pass through the vortex cleanly. Sometimes he would just explode.
Speaker 2: What that doesn't sound safe?
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't. But then he figured out that if
you put the metal inside a special tube, a Faraday cage,
it could pass through without any problems.
Speaker 2: So like a protective shield for the metal exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he decided to try going through the vortex again,
this time inside the Faraday cage, went back in. Yeah,
he took a cell phone with him, loaded with nippots
and documentation so we could record everything. Em he vanished
again and that was the last anyone ever heard from him.
Speaker 2: So he's still out there somewhere, lost in time.
Speaker 1: Maybe now. There were some attempts to debunk some of
the stories.
Speaker 2: Surrounding like oh yeah, like fact checking the rumor.
Speaker 1: Exactly, like the one about him sending a cat through
the portal. Apparently that never happened. And that story about
a body being found in a metal drum near his
location that was also fake.
Speaker 2: So just urban legends latching onto his already crazy story.
Speaker 1: Right, And apparently Mike was still alive and working in tech.
Speaker 2: So not living under a bridge muttering about time travel.
Speaker 1: Nope. But it still leaves us with so many.
Speaker 2: Questions that the biggest one, if he really could travel
through time, why didn't you just go to the future
and see how things turn out?
Speaker 1: Right? Mike's explanation was that his machine stayed in sync
with earth gravitational center to compensate for the planets movement through.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, that's an interesting idea, but not exactly scientifically proven,
not at all.
Speaker 1: But hey, it's a good story, right.
Speaker 2: It is a good story. But what do you think.
Do you believe any of it?
Speaker 1: It's hard to say. I mean, there's no real evidence
to support his claims of time travel, but the whole
story is just so compelling you can't help but wonder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really makes you think about the limits of
our understanding of the universe.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and it's a testament to the power of human
curiosity for sure.
Speaker 2: Even if Mike never actually built a working time machine,
he still managed to capture the imaginations of people all.
Speaker 1: Over the world and that's something special. And who knows,
maybe somewhere out there, he's still tinkering away, trying to
unlock the secrets of time.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll hear from him again someday.
Speaker 1: Maybe. If you want to learn more about this whole saga,
we highly recommend checking out the original Coast to Coast
am interviews with Mike Markham.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Those are a must listen for anyone interested in
this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: We've included links in the show notes. Yeah, and we'd
love to hear your thoughts on this deep dive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what stood out to you? What are your own
theories about Mike Markham and his time machine?
Speaker 1: Let us know the comments.
Speaker 2: Until next time, keep exploring the unknown and stay curious.