The story discussed the historical origins of time-travel stories and whether time travel is scientifically feasible.

Excerpt: 

The idea of time travel is actually as old as civiliaztion itself, and we see the very first stories in the Mahabharata, the great Indian epic, in 400 B.C.E, so they are nearly 2500 years old. 

As we moved into an industrial culture, and suddenly we had trains that had to move on schedule from station to station, and ships that had to cross great bodies of water and make it into docks at cetain times, we had to make sure that humans in different parts of the world were telling time in the same waus. And I think that was really exciting. We felt like we suddenly did have a little control over time.