Bagel, please.
Bagel, please. (Pronounce that in your head not like “Coffee, please”, but like “Bitch, please.”) The Multiverse has been in the zeitgeist lately. Notably in movies, it often happens that different films touching on similar topics will emerge around the same time. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is one. Everything Everywhere All At Once is another. Spoilers ahead, particularly for those two films, some Marvel Cinematic Universe backstory, and also – for physics. We all love a good story. Stories, as Sir Terry Pratchett was fond of pointing out, are a huge part of how we think about the world. “Fisherman catches fish. Poor man begs for fish. Fisherman refuses. Poor man turns out to be King pretending to be poor man. Fisherman begs forgiveness, learns lesson about being kind to strangers.” That sort of story sticks with us and is retold over centuries, because it encodes some basic truths. Kings are useful plot devices because they’re powerful. They allow things to happen t...