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>> KATY: I mean, to me this is an interesting question
because there are historical events that are groundbreaking, but they're not
necessarily interesting to watch. >> KIERAN: You realize that time is
an accident of causality, and just because we have a particular position
does not mean that something in the future is not history.
Does it have to be a historical event that has already happened?
>> VOICE OFF CAMERA: Yes! >> KIERAN: [Sigh]
>> KATY: ...where they're very sort of vague, and you can't tell what's going on at the
time... >> KIERAN: So, alright, in cannonical history...
>> KATY: It's a tricky question because what you really want is a visually fascinating
historical event. >> KIERAN: The Norman Invasion?
Probably not that fun to witness, really-- it would probably be pretty grisley...
>> KATY: The first Defenestration of Prague. I would go with the first one over the later
one. Throwing someone out a window is visually
interesting, but that's not really the reason.
It's a visually interesting occurrence that has a great political symbolism at the
time. >> KIERAN: England, late '70's, around the
kind of punk rock and alternative culture explosion...
would be fascinating to see how people kind of spontaneously try and reinvent
the rules of society... >> AUBIN: They say that Mohammed
was one day praying at a temple and upon opening his eyes, he found
a cat had fallen asleep on his robe-- and his slowly unsheathed his blade,
and cut away his robe, and walked away.
I would like to be the cat. >> ARI: There's this temple called the Bamboo
Temple that's just outside of Kunming,
which is a city in Yunnan Province, in Southern China, that has an amazing
artistic work done by a Chinese artist called Li Guangxiu, that happened
in the late 1800's, which are the 500 Enlightened Disciples of the Buddha,
in all these ecstatic positions. Some of them are screaming,
some of them have eyebrows that wrap around their bodies,
they're riding on gigantic crabs, some of them have arms that are reaching
up to the ceiling of the temple, like, grabbing on moons.
They're all whispering to each other... I find this work to be awe-inspiring.
There's almost nothing known about the artist or the making of it, so I would very much
like to travel back to that time and
be able to communicate with this man. >> PATRICK: I'd like to have experienced
the world climate during World War II, just to see what it was like, you know,
for much of the world to just be pitted against itself, and just the pervasive
mentality that would come from that, and just the involvement that people had;
you weren't fighting for only your country, you were fighting for an ideology
that is shared by other countries, so in this disparity there was a unity,
and I think that's very interesting. >> ALLIE: The first telegrammed message was
"What hath God wrought?", and I just think it's a
very poignant sort of moment. It sort of marks the shift in human consciousness
and our ability to communicate with each other. The notion of instantaneous communication
actually boggles my mind and we haven't had it for most of human development,
it's been like, what, 200 years or something like that?
>> EUGENE: I would have liked to have seen Alexander
coming across Diogenes of Sinope in Athens. Alexander approached him as someone
respectful of philosophy might approach a sage,
and Alexander the Great said to Diogenes of Sinope,
the man who slept in a wine vat, he comes to Diogenes and he says,
"Diogenes! Tell me one thing that I can do for you.
What would you like most from my empire?" And Diogenes looks up at him,
and he says, "Get out of my light."