The Time Benders

"The Time Benders" explores whether extraterrestrials might manipulate time itself, pointing to pilot reports of "missing time," UFOs appearing and disappearing instantaneously, and the ancient story of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. At the grotto of Mount Pion in Turkey, tradition holds that seven Christian warriors were sealed in a cave in 250 AD and awoke 300 years later to find their world transformed, with crosses everywhere and Christianity now dominant. Ancient astronaut theorists like those featured suggest these sleepers may have experienced a genuine time shift rather than divine intervention, and that UFO sightings involving temporal anomalies—such as a pilot's claim of flying 100 miles in just over three minutes—indicate alien civilizations have mastered time travel. The episode proposes that UFOs might not be visitors from distant planets but time travelers from humanity's own future or past.

Mainstream historians and theologians regard the Seven Sleepers as a pious legend, not historical fact, while physicists note that although Einstein's relativity allows for time dilation at extreme speeds, practical time travel remains entirely theoretical and faces enormous obstacles like the need for exotic matter or traversable wormholes. The "missing time" reports from pilots can often be explained by navigational errors, instrument malfunctions, or psychological factors during high-stress situations. Still, the episode taps into something genuinely compelling: humanity's ancient longing to transcend time's arrow, and the unresolved questions about how UFOs—if they exist as described—could perform maneuvers that seem to defy our understanding of physics.