john silveira time travel

You need to watch the most fascinating time-travel movie on Netflix before it leaves next week

Before he went blockbuster, director Colin Trevorrow delighted indie audiences with the 2012 twee sci-fi Safety Not Guaranteed .

In 1997, magazine writer John Silveira was working for Backwoods Home Magazine when his publisher, Dave Duffy, asked him to tell a joke. Apparently, the magazine was short on material for the classified ad sections, and Duffy was chill enough to let writers slip in some funnies.

“John, give me a couple of jokes,” Silveira recalled Duffy telling him in 2010. So Silveira did as he was told, and came up with a gag about a time machine. He recycled the opening lines to an unfinished novel, which read as follows:

“WANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 322 Oakview, CA 93022. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.”

It was a joke. In the early days of the internet, this ad managed to go viral before that was a real term. It was read aloud by Jay Leno on TV and discussed on NPR’s Car Talk . Years later, screenwriter Derek Connolly came across the ad, believing it to be real — or, rather, to be sincere. “There was something really sad about it all,” said Connolly , who was inspired. “What if he is really lamenting something from his past that he wants to go back and fix. That’s what drew my attention.”

After contacting Silveira, Connolly wrote the screenplay for what would become the 2012 sci-fi indie hit Safety Not Guaranteed , which is leaving Netflix on August 14 and is worthy of your time before then.

Remembered as the movie that put Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow on the map, Safety Not Guaranteed also happens to be a picture-perfect example of a dying breed: that of high-concept genre movies with twee sensibilities.

In Safety Not Guaranteed , Darius Britt (Aubrey Plaza) is a depressed twenty-something working as an unpaid magazine intern for Seattle Magazine . Like a lot of young adults in the years after the financial crisis, Darius is stuck at home and struggling to find direction.

During a pitch meeting, scummy reporter Jeff (Jake Johnson, committing to a more competent variation of his Nick Miller from New Girl ) pitches a story about an amusing classified ad — one that reads just like the one from 1997 — in Ocean View, Washington, a podunk beach town. With the pitch approved, Jeff recruits Darius and Arnau (Karan Soni), a studious and virginal science major, to come with him. Jeff has ulterior motives, but the story still moves forward, with Darius posing as an interested party to the ad’s writer, supermarket employee Kenneth Calloway (indie royalty Mark Duplass).

What then unfolds would appear to be a rudimentary romantic comedy, if not for the time travel stuff and the eccentricities of leads Plaza and Duplass, each playing up themselves as authentic outsiders to Hollywood’s plastic molds. Filmed during Plaza’s stint on Parks and Recreation , Darius is less morbid than April Ludgate, though I imagine the two would get along well debating Bloc Party albums. Duplass’ Kenneth, meanwhile, looks like a dumpier John Krasinski, with disheveled brown locks and a tight denim jacket who drives around in a beat-up yellow Datsun.

Safety Not Guaranteed stars Aubrey Plaza, Karan Soni, and Jake Johnston, in a romantic-comedy about an eccentric ad seeking partners for a time travel experiment.

Seen through the eyes of anyone other than Darius, Kenneth is a loser. When his old crush (Kristen Bell, in a surprise supporting role) emerges to describe him as “one of those guys who you kind of know has a crush on you but he’s really nice and so you’re really nice back” and “the type of guy who you couldn’t easily fit into your life,” you either feel sorry for Kenneth or you agree with her (or both).

Darius, who doesn’t fit anywhere, falls for Kenneth; it’s little wonder that she’s head over heels when Kenneth sings an original song about stepping out of life’s normal rhythms. Surprising, the tension of her trying to get a story out of Kenneth never feels as severe as you think it probably should. As the two develop a relationship over Kenneth’s “training” program (including a heist at a science lab that still elicits laughter from the gut), it’s never that Darius is lying to Kenneth, but rather how Kenneth might be lying to Darius, that creates the biggest sizzle in the story’s stakes.

A subplot for the film lies in Jeff, a radiant source of cologne, booze, and Alka Seltzer, who initially wants only One Thing: To sleep with an old hottie, Liz (Jenica Bergere) from his high school days. At first glance, Jeff loses interest upon learning Liz is not the preserved 18-year-old siren still alive in his memory. But encouraged by Arnau — who is later encouraged by Jeff to seize the day in his own way — Jeff revives a fling, only to realize the size of the void in his own life.

Safety Not Guaranteed ends with victories for many of its characters, timid Arnau included, but Jeff ends on a downer. Tears run down his cheeks as he drives drunk on a go-kart, a lit cigarette wedged between fingers. Even when Darius and Kenneth (minor spoilers) successfully get away and Jeff raises his fist in cheer, there’s still nothing left for Jeff to do. Unlike the other characters surrounding him, he’s lost his chance. He’s got nothing. The sun has set.

Mark Duplass stars in Safety Not Guaranteed as Kenneth Calloway, an eccentric man who builds a time machine.

When Safety Not Guaranteed premiered in 2012, critics loved it, though many commented on the film’s twee elements, which feel ripped from the mid-2000s. In her review, critic Meredith Borders remarked the film can come across as dated. “We were all blissfully free of the Garden State phenomenon,” she wrote, “only to have director Colin Trevorrow yank us back in.”

They’re not wrong. Safety Not Guaranteed has precisely that familiar flavor belonging to movies like the aforementioned Garden State , Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist , and especially Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, that still-great Michel Gondry picture preceding Safety Not Guaranteed as the premier hybrid rom-com sci-fi. When awkward Arnau tries to tell Darius that she’d look good in tight leggings that girls wear, she brushes him off, in what feels like a light jab to the Zooey Deschanels of the world. (Notice Darius later wearing those leggings at the film’s climax.)

In its defense, Safety wasn’t the only movie working in this twee vein all those years ago. 2012 also saw the release of Ruby Sparks , in which Paul Dano literally writes the girl of his dreams into life, and the following year saw About Time , in which Domnhall Gleeson learns he’s capable of time travel and uses that power to romance Rachel McAdams. Movies of this caliber are a dying breed, however; last year’s similarly retro-styled Psycho Goreman remains a little-seen gem, everything original gets dumped on streamers, and the pandemic box office has made it appear that only comic-book movies make money these days.

What’s compelling about the so-called tweeness of Safety , though, is that it is the work of Trevorrow, a filmmaker who then soared from the indie world to franchise filmmaking at a dizzying speed. Three short years later, Trevorrow was at the helm of Jurassic World , and by the end of the year, he was slated to direct Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker . (In the aftermath of Trevorrow’s exit, the abundance of verbal Star Wars references in Safety Not Guaranteed has to sting.)

It would have been fascinating to see Trevorrow stretch his legs further in the indie world before getting rocketed into the stratosphere of mega-budget films. In 2017, Trevorrow returned to non-IP filmmaking with the critically panned drama The Book of Henry , a movie I still haven’t seen but have had described to me in such great detail that I refuse to believe is a real movie. (After I file this story I’m watching it on Netflix , where it’s also streaming. I’m committed now.)

Safety Not Guaranteed still exists as a promising start for a storyteller with a keen investment in universal human emotions, one that feels real in spite of whatever time-travel shenanigans may or may not be unfolding off-screen. That is perfect for, well, Star Wars. But I often wonder what else we could received from Trevorrow had he not been so successful out of the gate. If only we could travel back in time, you know?

Safety Not Guaranteed is now streaming on Netflix until August 14.

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Copyright (c) 2004-2018 by All This Is That.North Beach, Seattle, Washington, USA

Friday, September 24, 2010

The time traveller unmasked--> the rest of the story.

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'Safety' backstory

The premise for ''Safety Not Guaranteed'' came from a classified ad in a magazine

Anthony is a Senior Writer for EW.

The premise of the indie time-travel saga Safety Not Guaranteed came from unusual source material: a classified ad in a 1997 issue of Backwoods Home Magazine that began ”WANTED: Someone to go back in time with me.” Backwoods editor John Silveira wrote it as a joke to fill space, and years later the ad became a viral sensation thanks to Internet pranksters who reinterpreted it in photos and videos. Among those inspired were Safety director Colin Trevorrow (above right) and screenwriter Derek Connolly, who got Silveira’s blessing for their film. They also gave him a cameo and an unusual credit: Time Travel Consultant.

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Angela Watercutter

Time-Travel Comedy Safety Not Guaranteed Turns Internet Meme Into Romance

PARK CITY, Utah -- Safety Not Guaranteed might just be the sweetest, quirkiest romantic comedy ever to be based on a random internet meme.

The film, directed by Colin Trevorrow , follows three magazine employees who track down the author of a classified ad placed by someone seeking a wingman for time travel.

Writer Jeff (played by Jake M. Johnson ) strikes out trying to make friends with Kenneth ( Mark Duplass ), the oddball who placed the ad. So he sends in intern Darius ( Aubrey Plaza ) to get close to Kenneth employing her feminine wiles -- or, as Darius puts it, by using her vagina like bait.

But, as often happens with sneaky (and pretty much unethical) journalistic tactics, Darius starts to see the man behind the aspiring time-traveler façade and realizes there might be more there than just plain crazy. Darius isn't the most social person (did we mention screenwriter Derek Connolly wrote the role for Plaza after seeing her in Funny People ?), and she finds the seriousness with which Kenneth is planning his journey as endearing as it is compelling.

"The movie came from just having a feeling of 'I know what type of guy would write this ad,'" Connolly said in an interview with Wired.com at the Sundance Film Festival, where Safety Not Guaranteed is in the U.S. dramatic competition.

The time-traveling wingman ad was a real thing that made the internet rounds back in 2005, but Connolly's smart, funny script breathes a whole new life into the situation, leaving viewers to contemplate the real people behind the meme.

"I think it's rare that something catches the imagination as much as this does," director Trevorrow told Wired.com. "I think this particular thing, when you look at that classified ad , it is a story, in a way.... I don't know if every internet meme is going to do that."

The original ad appeared in Backwoods Home Magazine in 1997. To secure the rights to the story for the film, Trevorrow tracked down its author, John Silveira, who only recently outed himself as its creator . And even though Trevorrow notes that Silveira "definitely thinks you need to bring your own weapons anywhere that you go ... he was strapped at my first lunch with him," the ad-writer became a friend of the production and even makes a cameo in the film.

Beyond the movie's internet origins, though, lies an incredibly rich cast of characters that make an entirely unlikely tale so sweet and real it's hard not to get wrapped up. Johnson (currently making waves on New Girl ) plays a delightful asshole and Karan Soni , who plays the third member of the reporting troupe, makes his feature debut as a sweet, young geek (try not to laugh when he notes that Stormtroopers are "blue-collar workers").

At the forefront, though, are the awkwardly endearing Plaza, who finally gets a chance to take her archetype and broaden it, and Duplass, who -- in addition to making a heartbroken aspiring time-traveler seem like Romeo -- also served as a producer on the film. In that role, he knows how fortunate he is to be working with a romantic lead who is currently lighting up the world on Parks and Recreation .

"The movie had been around for like two years or so with Aubrey and Jake attached, who were not ... their TV shows were either not happening or not as successful as they are now," Duplass said. "I think it's just a little bit of luck on our part that they are turning into more popular actors."

Safety Not Guaranteed is still looking for distribution, but Duplass said Monday that the film would probably sell in the "next few days." It should: It's the type of nerdy comedy that rarely makes it to the big screen.

"It is a sensitive, relationship-oriented, time-travel movie," Duplass said. "I hadn't seen that before and I love that that was a challenge to try to pull off."

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The True Story Behind SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED’s Time Travel Ad

By Devin Faraci Jun. 07, 2012

This weekend Safety Not Guaranteed , starring Mark Duplass and Aubrey Plaza opens. The quirky indie film ( I reviewed it here ) was inspired by a real life classified ad seeking partners for a time travel expedition. The movie even gets its title from the ad. So where did the ad come from?

The ad exploded online in the mid-2000s, gaining popularity on one-time meme-generator YTMND. But it predates that by quite a while; according to John Silveira he placed the ad in 1997, in the classified section of Backwoods Home Magazine . And it was a joke.

Silvieira sometimes helped Backwoods Home Magazine editor Dave Duffy fill in gaps in the magazine's classified section. Silviera would throw in jokes and riddles most of the time. But this one month, for the September/October issue, Duffy came to Silvieira with such a tight deadline the guy didn't have any jokes ready. He asked instead to just place two ads for free. One was a lonely hearts ad - Silviera was looking for a girlfriend. The other was the infamous time travel ad.

The ad was drawn from the opening lines of an unfinished novel Silveira had let set in a drawer. The personal, Silveira said, got five responses. The time travel ad got thousands upon thousands. Silveira writes about the responses:

What have the people who've responded wanted? Most seemed to have believed the ad. Several hundred, while admitting maybe it was a hoax, hoped it wasn't and wanted to go back in time for the sheer adventure. Though pay was offered, many of those said they'd do it for nothing. (Hell, I would, too.)   Some letters came from guys who gave me a list of some pretty sophisticated weapons they could bring along with their credentials: black belts in martial arts, explosives expertise, language skills, etc., along with assurances they can pretty much take care of themselves. I believe ‘em. But many letters came from people who wanted me to correct a past tragedy. Dozens, in prison, asked me to go back in time and talk them out of committing the crime that put them away. Others (and not a few) were from people who begged me to go back and save a loved one from a tragic death. Those letters were so heartbreaking I almost couldn't read them and I felt a certain amount of shame for not anticipating the false hope I placed in so many hearts.

Silveira still has the key to the PO box, but he has lost most of the letters he received to mildew. But that's okay - new ones keep coming in.

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#17 The Time Traveler And The Hitman

by Reply All

In 1997, John Silveira wrote a joke classified ad in a tiny publication called Backwoods Home Magazine asking if anyone wanted to travel back in time with him. A lot of people took him seriously. What do you do when everyone wants you to fix the worst mistakes they've ever made. 

Lynn Levy was a producer at WNYC's Radiolab . She is now an editor at Gimlet. Our theme song and scoring is from Breakmaster Cylinder. Ad music is by Build Buildings . 

Further Reading:

You're the man now, dog! The time traveler YTMND. A trailer for the "Safety Not Guaranteed" movie. John Silveira on the time travel ad.

Where to Listen

ALEX GOLDMAN: Hey, this is Alex. PJ VOGT: And this is PJ and from Gimlet this is Reply All, the show about the Internet. ALEX: This week we are bringing you a story that came to us from Lynn Levy… LYNN LEVY: Hello. ALEX: … who you might know if you listen to a little radio show called Radiolab. LYNN: So, I’m bringing you a story that is only a like little bit about the Internet. It’s mostly about human foibles, which there are a lot of on the Internet, so that’s good right? ALEX: Wow, you’re really setting us up to fail here. PJ: It has a sufficient amount of Internet. LYNN: It has what I perceive to be an acceptable amount of Internet. ALEX: Well I think we perceived it too or otherwise this collaboration never would have happened. PJ: You never would have gotten into this room. ALEX: You never would have gotten into this exclusive club. LYNN: Thank you for having me. So the story kind of starts with this ad in a magazine called Backwoods Home Magazine in 1997. Backwoods Home Magazine is published in Oregon, rural Oregon. And it’s published out of the back of a Subway sandwich shop. PJ: Wait that’s their one distribution point? LYNN: That’s where they make the magazine. ALEX: And is it still coming out to this day? LYNN: It is. It remains a published magazine to this very day. It’s like a lot of tips for home canning and how to make your own bow and arrow and what to do if the apocalypse comes. It covers all those things. PJ: Is it really what to do when the apocalypse comes? LYNN: It’s not limited to what to do when the apocalypse comes. But it would be useful when the apocalypse came. ALEX: There’s like a survivalist component. LYNN: There’s a survivalist vibe to it. So this magazine is about to, basically it’s late at night, the magazine is about to go to the publisher. The guy running the magazine, Dave, says to his friend, John, “John we have extra space in the magazine, I screwed up. We need some stuff to fill space." And John says “Again, dude?! Alright, I’ll put something in there, why don't I place some personal ads?” So he places some personal ads. He places one that's like “Crazy poet looking for drunken sassy lady for lifetime of adventurous fulfillment." That’s not quite right. PJ: Was he the crazy poet in this formulation? LYNN: He was the crazy poet in this formulation. And then he places another one. And the other one is like “Wanted..." JOHN SILVEIRA: “Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. PO Box 322, Oak View California 93022. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I've only done this once before.” That was it. LYNN: So very short and sweet, drops it into the magazine. JOHN: I was expecting maybe two dozen responses to the personal, and I was expecting maybe three or four responses that I thought I might find funny to the time travel ad. LYNN: He was hoping to find a girlfriend so he really wanted people to answer the personal ad. But he thought like maybe three or four people will read the time travel ad and respond and that will be fun to read. But when he went to the post office... JOHN: There was this tsunami of letters filling up the P.O. Box LYNN: They were almost all about the time travel ad. People were really, really into it. And they had all kinds of questions. From the basics… JOHN: "How are we going? Why is it danger? Why do we need weapons? What kind of weapons should I bring?” LYNN: To the smallest nitpicky-est details… JOHN: "Will there be toilet paper or do I have to bring my own?" LYNN: There were people with these kind of elaborate back stories… SIVEIRA: "We saw your ad recently while here in jail. We are all felons and would like to go back and not get caught. Can you get us back in time from where you are or do we need to travel to California? If so, that might pose a problem since we are stuck here for a while. But maybe you could go back and change things for us." LYNN: And people who, I mean, who knows what some of these people were up to. JOHN: “Yes, I want to time travel to 1984. My time machine was stolen and I am stuck in 2010. Thank you.” LYNN: John expected things to taper off after a while, but they really didn't. The letters kept coming. He got more and more responses from like almost every state, all these different countries. JOHN: From every continent, including Antarctica. LYNN: This little ad from the back of this little magazine had clearly escaped its humble beginnings. JOHN: It became an Internet meme. LYNN: The Internet… PJ: Ohhhh. ALEX: Oh, I’ve heard of that. LYNN: …had found his ad. Somebody had put his ad on the Internet. ALEX: My understanding was that it started with the YTMND site. LYNN: Yes, that seems to be true. PJ: What’s YTMND? ALEX: So this is an aside that’s so worth telling. PJ: Okay. ALEX: In the late 90’s early 2000’s, do you remember there was a movie in which Sean Connery is like a professor and he’s teaching young black men how to write poems and shit? PJ: No, but I know that movie archetype. I didn’t know Sean Connery did one of those. ALEX: So he did one of those and at the end of the movie he says one of them "You’re the man now dog!" PJ: Nooo, noo that’s bad. I mean that's a bad thing for them to have done. ALEX: So this guy created a website called YTMND.com. You’re the man now dog dot com, which was a still image of Sean Connery with the text “You’re the man now dog" superimposed over it and an auto-playing version of that quote. [YOU’RE THE MAN NOW DOG PLAYS ON LOOP] PJ: I feel like this is what people who hate the Internet think the Internet is. ALEX: Alright. PJ: Okay. ALEX: So essentially the guy who made the Sean Connery website, he made that site into a community called YTMND where people could upload the same kind of thing, an image with some text over it and music underneath it. And that's where John’s ad ended up. So it's time traveler dot YTMND dot com. Loading site. And then it's… [TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT PLAYS] PJ: I don’t get the music. ALEX: Whoever put this up here imagined that this is what the guy who wrote the thing was like. PJ: He was like this song? ALEX: He was like this song. And if you look at this, there’s a picture of a blond haired, mulleted guy, next to the original ad. The PO Box is blacked out and then it's “Take it to the Limit” and I don’t know who sings this song, but alright. LYNN: So John tells me that he’s seen this ad in a bunch of different places on the web, that the way that things do, it kind of made its way from place to place to place. And he says, eighteen years after he first placed this ad, the letters are still coming. His PO Box keeps filling up. It seems like a lot of people who write back to him get the joke kind of. But some take it really, really seriously. JOHN: Some of them were people that asked me to go back in time and there would be like, "My son committed suicide, would you go back to such and such a night and stop him."  Or "My daughter was killed in an auto accident, would you go back to the day before and stop it?" LYNN: While I was on the phone with him, John was pulling letters out of his pile and reading them to me. JOHN: Here's another one that's interesting. It says, "To whom it may concern, I have read your advertisement to ‘go back in time’" and that's in quotes. “I am extremely interested in this, and would not even require payment. I will not need a weapon and in fact would like to travel back to 1991 or previously to change the events leading to the death of my husband, for which I am in prison. I don't care about my safety. In fact if I cannot change the events of the past, I would prefer not to even survive. Please contact me by return mail with further information about this possibility.” LYNN:  I found these letters so interesting. I just kept thinking about them. Each one seemed like a window into somebody's life story, but there's only a little bit of it in the letter. Like this woman in prison, what made her write? What did she think was going to happen? [PHONE RINGS] LYNN: Um. Okay Robin can you hear me ok? ROBIN RADCLIFFE: Yes ma’am. LYNN: Okay, can you just introduce yourself so that I can record it, say who you are and where you are and maybe a little something about yourself? ROBIN: Okay my name is a Robin Radcliff and I am at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah. PJ: Why Robin is in prison and what she would go back in time and do, or undo, after the break. [AD BREAK] PJ: Alright, back to the show. ALEX: So Lynn, before the break you introduced this woman named Robin who's in prison. Who is she? LYNN: Yeah, so Robin, she's in prison in Utah. She had served about 17 years of a life sentence when she first saw the time travel ad. LYNN: And did you think like, okay twenty percent this is real, like thirty percent? Seventy percent? ROBIN: Actually, I thought maybe twenty percent, I thought, somebody just probably putting it in there, just to get mail. LYNN: But twenty percent, that little sliver of possibility, it got to her. ROBIN: It just stuck there and I was like, I couldn't get it out. Once it got in I just couldn't get it out. I couldn't sleep right after that. I didn't want to eat. Then I said I have to respond. I had to write, you know, it's just something that I needed to do. LYNN: After you wrote the letter, how did you feel? Did you feel relief or hopeful or like... ROBIN: After I wrote it I felt a little giddy. LYNN: Just giddy at the thought that maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe she might be able to undo the worst thing she’d ever done. See Robin is in prison because of the part she played in her husband’s murder. According to her, it started with a mistake. ROBIN: I made the mistake, and it was a horrendous mistake, of I met someone and I committed adultery. LYNN: That mistake set into motion this kind of chain of events, which is complicated, but basically Robin and her boyfriend, the guy she cheated with, took out a hit on Robin’s husband. They hired a couple of hit men. They decided to have him killed. And Robin's job was to go to her house, go to the window in her daughter's bedroom, unlock it, prop it open, and the hit men would come in through the window. So they showed up. They came through the window. She went to the living room, kind of stayed there, and then they went into her husband's bedroom and just bashed his head in. PJ: Oof. ROBIN: I know the exact moment I could've changed everything. All I had to do was go to my daughter's bedroom, close the window. LYNN: They came in through the window. ROBIN: Yes. PJ: She sounds sorry, but why didn’t she stop it when she could stop it? LYNN: Yeah. Well okay, the media painted one kind of portrait of Robin. They said she was kind of this scheming, money-hungry wife who was trying to get her husband's insurance policy. It was like a hundred thousand dollar insurance policy. Robin doesn't see it that way. She says that's totally ludicrous. It was not her motive. LYNN: So then Robin, why didn't you do anything to stop it? ROBIN: I don't know. I have questioned myself on that so many times in all these years. I have laid awake nights without end, sat up all day, sat on, sat there and how, who, how could I've done this, umm. Where was my mind? Where was, what was I thinking? What I was not thinking? It's the worst moment of my life. LYNN: Now Robin wouldn't use this as an excuse but I don't know, it's helpful to know the context. She had a tough life. She had a tough childhood. She tried to kill herself when she was twelve. And at the time of the crime, she was at a particularly low point. ROBIN: My daughter and I were pregnant at the same time and I was terrified of everything. LYNN: She says that she was being abused by her husband. She had been on a bunch of medication to deal with depression. She had just gone off her medication. So it was definitely a dark, dark time for her. ROBIN: I talked to one of the people I knew then, a lady I worked with, and she said, "we didn't even recognize you, you know, it was like you were a zombie." LYNN: There’s always this question in time travel fantasies, of sort of where to drop in. Like if you had a really good friendship and it went awry, it went sour and you wanted to go back and save it. You know would you go back to kind of the last knock-down, drag-out fight or would you go back further to the time that your friend was sick and you said you would bring her chicken soup and then you forgot? You didn't bring her chicken soup. Or you know, is there something else, were there like little times along the way where you said something, maybe you didn't even know that was the thing that was going to blow it all up but if you could go back there, you could fix it all. You have to pick a place. And in Robin's place, even with all the problems she was having, the problems with her mental health, the abuse that she says she was suffering, she didn't want to go back and fix any of that. She wanted to go back to the moment that she opened the window. LYNN: I thought you might say you'd go back to the point where you decided to cheat on your husband and then none of this would've unfurled, you know? ROBIN: At first that's what I originally wrote, and I was like, God, then there would be nothing. ALEX: What does she mean "there would be nothing?" LYNN: I think what it means is because of the affair, I mentioned before, she got pregnant. And she had a son who she gave up for adoption. But who she's really proud of, really glad she brought into the world. ROBIN: My son is, I only know this because my daughter has found my son. He became a nurse practitioner working with the elderly And he's an advocate for the elderly so that they are not abused and so he contributes to society. LYNN: And where is he now? ROBIN: He lives in Texas. I don't want him to, I didn't want him to be raised being passed from family to family with a parent, a mother in prison. I wanted him to be raised with two parents that could raise him in a home that he didn't have that stigma. So he doesn't know me at all. LYNN: Did you ever think to respond to that woman in jail and just say that, "I'm sorry this isn't real?" JOHN: I don't know. I think I just, I don't like to let people down. LYNN: A story like Robin’s wasn’t what John signed up for. This ad was something he dropped into the magazine at the last minute, late at night, without a second thought. JOHN: The ad wasn't placed there to have people ask me to save them from jail, or keep a loved one alive, or anything like that. LYNN: He hasn’t closed the PO Box. Even if, at this point, he doesn't always want to read the letters. JOHN: The women in the office wanted to read ‘em. I said "You can read 'em, I don't want to hear anything about 'em." LYNN: Really? JOHN: Yeah. And then I'm hearing from across the building, "John, you've gotta read this. John, this woman is saying this and that.” And I'm yelling back, "Rhoda I don't want to hear it. I just don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear what that woman has to say because I can't do anything." I mean it hurts me to think that I can't do anything for these people.  And I feel like I've let people down. PJ: Do you think there’s something about him, he seems like strikingly unqualified to do the job he accidentally gave himself. LYNN: Well I don’t know why you think that he’s any less qualified than anyone else. I’m not qualified to do that. PJ: But do you think that there's anything about, besides the fact that he’s a person who likes jokes, is there anything about him that made him the person who did this? LYNN: He’s not qualified. But if there’s anything that makes him qualified, he seems to me like a tremendously regretful person. I mean he at least knows what regret means. Not that he could do anything about it. PJ: Did he want to go back? LYNN: Mm hmm. LYNN: If you thought about if it was real, where, what would you, where would you go if you had time travel? JOHN: I’d like to go back in time, this is my first choice, I would like to go back in time to when I was a little boy, or young teenager and talk to my self… LYNN: Really? JOHN: …and convince myself that I am from the future, that I am myself from the future, and I'm gonna give you a few tips. And I would tell myself not to worry about my dad who is an alcoholic and abusive and he scared me. And I probably, I should have...I was sixteen or seventeen before I stood up to him. LYNN: Man, if you could just go back in time with your therapist to when you were, what's a good age for that? 10? Just get right in there and wipe out all those neuroses before they really have a time to get their claws in, that would be a good use of time travel. JOHN: Yeah, it would be! I'd try to clear up all the doubts and insecurities I had then. That would be the first thing. Second thing would be, go back and see dinosaurs. [MUSIC] LYNN: I actually had sort of a weird thought the other day thinking about this piece, which is, like the standard response to time machine questions is like, go back and change something, which I’m surprised that more people don’t want to go back and relive something good. Like whatever the moment in your life when you were like, this feels great. PJ: It just feels like it hurts. Like that idea hurts. LYNN: But what if you could, PJ if you could like keep that moment in a box next to your bed on a loop and anytime you wanted you could just dip back into it for a little pick me up. Wouldn't that be nice? PJ: I don’t think, I think it would be like a hot shower that you couldn't get out of. Or that like getting out of would get worse every single time. Don’t you think? LYNN: Yeah and then you'd just be stuck there. PJ: Yeah. You'd like find me sitting on the couch with cobweb drool all over my face like, yeah. I guess I just wouldn't come back. ALEX: I don't have a specific, there's not a specific moment that I would go back. PJ: You literally, your son was born a month and a half ago. ALEX: I fainted! I mean I would faint again! I’m not against it. CREDITS Reply All was hosted by me, PJ Vogt with Alex Goldman. We were produced this week by Chris Neary, Tim Howard, Sruthi Pinnamaneni and edited by Alex Blumberg. Matt Lieber is the band you discovered in high school long before everybody else did. Our show was mixed by the Reverend John DeLore. Somebody actually made a movie about John's classified ad called Safety Not Guaranteed . It's on the Internet. It's pretty good. You should check it out. And if you'd like to see some links to the websites that we mentioned in the piece, you can check out the article that Alex wrote to accompany it. It's at Digg.com. Special thanks this week to Peter Frick-Wright, Lizzie Vogt, Lina Misitzis, and Angela Johnston. Our theme music was by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Our ad music was by Build Buildings. You can find us at itunes.com/replyall or at replyall.limo. Our website was designed in partnership with Athletics. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. SEAN CONNERY: Yes. Yes! You’re the man now dog.

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The time-travel ad by John Silveira Issue #125

The time-travel ad by John Silveira Issue #125 .

Tags: Time , Unusual

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Most Bizarre Time Travel Stories Of All Time

Of all mysterious phenomena, time travel is the one we want to be real. (Spontaneous human combustion? Not so much.) The possibilities are endless, and according to some people, they've already experienced them. Of course, it's easy to dismiss all these people as nuts or liars, but that's exactly what the Time Gestapo WANTS you to do ...

Project Pegasus and Andrew Basiago

No matter what your political views are, we can all agree that the 2016 presidential election was a pretty wild ride, and that's probably the only reason that it wasn't more widely publicized that there was a time traveler running for office. Andrew Basiago, a practicing lawyer , claims that he's been traveling through time since he was only six years old. His father got him into the business, using him as a test subject with a super-duper top secret time travel program called Project Pegasus. While his first trip was just across the country—New York to New Mexico—he not only says that he went back to hear Lincoln's Gettysburg address when he was 10, but also that he has a picture of himself in 1863.

According to Basiago, the government gets firsthand experience of other times in a few ways. They've  created Chronovision , a sort of "Magic mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" device that lets you look into another time from the comfort of your own living room, and they've repurposed some of Nikola Tesla's work to travel. Basiago did it, and in 2012, he went public with claims that Barack Obama was also a "chrononaut," and that they went to Mars together as a part of a 10-member team. The White House denied it .

If you're thinking he should probably already know whether his presidential bid was successful, silly you for thinking time travel is that precise. Basiago says he does know he'll be either a vice president or a president at some point between 2016 and 2028, and honestly, we hope so. He says that not only is he going to go public with all the time travel knowledge you could possibly want, but he's also going to put Bigfoot on the endangered species list. (Yes, he's met a father-and-son Bigfoot.) It's about time we had some government officials who are concerned about the welfare of our endangered creatures.

The Australian Time Travel Study Group

The Australian Time Travel Study Group sounds like something a handful of community college kids would name their physics after-class study sessions, but it's a very real thing that claims to have discovered proof of time travel. They advertise their group on the side of a bright blue car, and it was enough to convince Vice writer Mat Drogemuller to attend one of the group's workshops.

But first, the group's website , which has clearly traveled through time from 1992. There's a couple of different names and photos of people associated with the group, and as Drogemuller found, it's a little unclear who's who and who's responsible for what. It links to the writings of a man named Ronald Pegg , who claims ancient texts that talk about visits from God and other celestial beings are recording visits from time travelers, and each trip to the past resulted in the creation of every major mythological pantheon and major religion. Other claims include that the Archangel Michael is author Michael Drosnin, who is, of course, a time traveler, and that the Bible and other religious texts describe modern objects like CDs, computer cables and a mouse, and, for some reason, the 1948 Israeli Census.

That's not proof of time travel, you're saying, that's just crazy talk. Fortunately, Drogemuller wrote about the "proof" that he was shown at the workshop, and he says it's Windows 95. Loading Windows 95—and going through the black boot screen and the Windows sounds—supposedly coincides with writings in Genesis and Revelations. Revelations in particular talks about an ancient book with seven seals, and the seventh is 144,000. The file that launches good old Win95 is 143,442 bytes. BAM. Ironclad proof right there.

George Van Tassel's time machine

George Van Tassel took a slightly different approach to building his time machine. His was called the Integratron, and the point wasn't to pick up a person and take them somewhere else. The point was to erase all the effects time had on a person's body, prolonging their life so they could travel through time the long route. According to Van Tassel, he received the plans for the Integratron by a man named Solganda . Solganda had come to Earth from his home planet of Venus, appeared at the end of Van Tassel's bed on August 24, 1953, and passed along a 17-page equation that held the secret to erasing the effects of time on a cellular level.

To raise money for the construction of the Integratron, Van Tassel organized a series of UFO conventions that attracted thousands hoping to find kindred spirits who had also had extraterrestrial contact. The Integratron was never finished, but it still stands (without its mechanical workings), and whether or not you believe in time travel, you still have to admire its acoustic properties.

Van Tassel was no slouch, and his background was in aviation. An employee of both Lockheed Aircraft and Hughes Aviation, he spent 25 years working on building the complex machinery that he claimed was an electrostatic generator to repair damage to cellular structure and recharge the human body. He likened it to a car battery, and according to those who interviewed him—and his own memoir, I Rode a Flying Saucer —he was completely, 100-percent certain time travel wasn't just possible, but aliens had given him the key. It's definitely a much more optimistic alien encounter tale than we usually get, that's for sure.

The real story of the "Safety Not Guaranteed" time travel ad

Classified ads have always been awesome, mostly because condensing an entire story into a few words tends to leave a lot open for interpretation. In 1997, an ad ran in Backwoods Home Magazine , and it read: "WANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 322, Oakview, CA 93022. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before."

We're not going to lie, we know the story behind the ad and we still want to respond ... you know, just in case. It was written by John Silveira as filler, and was one of two ads that he ran in the Sept/Oct issue of the magazine. His other ad—a personal ad, looking for a girlfriend—got a couple of responses. This one got thousands, and more than a decade after it ran, that P.O. Box is still getting mail. (And it was turned into a movie .)

Silveira has said that the idea came from an unfinished novel he had been working on, and he's gotten mail from everywhere, even Antarctica. Some call him out on a hoax, but others are pretty hard-core. He has a pile of letters from people advertising their martial arts and skills with explosives, and a bunch give a sad look into just what people would do with that opportunity. "Dozens, in prison, asked me to go back in time and talk them out of committing the crime that put them away," he wrote in 2010. "Others (and not a few) were from people who begged me to go back and save a loved one from a tragic death. Those letters were so heartbreaking I almost couldn't read them, and I felt a certain amount of shame for not anticipating the false hope I placed in so many hearts." That got dark, and it's a reminder that even if you don't believe ... you want to.

Robert Todino the spammer

In 2003, a strange email spammed inboxes. The sender was offering $5,000 for gadgets like a "Acme 5X24 series time transducing capacitor with built-in temporal displacement," and also said that all the parts would be used for building a time machine. The Internet has always been a weird place, and at least one person played along. Dave Hill made up an online store and shipped the email's sender the motor from an old hard drive. When "Bob White" got the motor, he asked for help getting more parts because clearly, it was just what he needed to build his time machine.

Hill stopped the charade, but the Internet was still interested in who was sending out the emails (and who was potentially building a time machine). They tracked down 22-year-old Massachusetts man Robert Todino, and when Wired talked to him in 2003 , he admitted to sending somewhere around 100 million emails since 2001. Legal issues saw the state trying to shut him down, but Todino persisted.

Aside from pleas for time machine parts, he also sent emails explaining just what he needed the time machine for. According to a three-page missive, "Robby" claimed he was going to go back and fix his own past, avoiding a childhood where he had been poisoned by his father's girlfriend. He was hoping for the help of any actual time travelers or aliens who might be living among us as humans, and while it's unclear whether he found his help (the state has been monitoring him), his father came out and spoke about his son's psychological problems and the money he's lost to date. Todino insists that the truth is out there ... somewhere.

The claim of an Iranian time machine

In 2013, respectable news outlets—like The Telegraph —reported an Iranian scientist had applied for a patent for a time machine. It wasn't the DeLorean sort (in spite of all the Back to the Future jokes), but it was apparently some sort of machine that could print out a summary of what was going to happen to you for the next few years. The story was supposedly picked up by Iran's state news agency, and scientist Ali Razeghi was quoted as saying, "My invention easily fits into the size of a personal computer case and can predict details of the next 5–8 years of the life of its users. It will not take you into the future, it will bring the future to you."

Apparently, that went for everything from large-scale military operations to more personal problems, but he was also cautious about releasing too much information ... or a prototype. There was a very good reason for that, too, and it was because he didn't want the Chinese to steal it.

The Atlantic did some digging and found that everything came from the Iranian propaganda machine, and it's not the only far-fetched news story that's been coming out of the country of late ... it was just the Internet's favorite.

John Titor's time travel Q&A

For five months beginning in November 2000, John Titor answered the Internet's questions. There were a lot of them, too, as he claimed to be a time traveler from 2036. In his future, the US had been torn apart by a 2015 civil war, nukes had been exchanged with Russia, and he was one of a handful of people sent back in time to get some particular items to help in the rebuilding of society.

Not only did he describe what society looked like (think The Walking Dead 's The Kingdom, without all the walker problems), but he also shared technical information about his 1967 Chevy-mounted time machine, along with schematics and details about what it felt like to travel through time. (It gets hot.) Weirdly, he also named the computer that he had come back to get—an IBM 5100—and said he needed that specifically because of a feature that had never, ever been announced to the public and was only known by the people who had designed it.

Awesomely, the story isn't just still alive, it got another chapter from the conspiracy theorists. 4chan came forward with the theory that Donald Trump's uncle, John, developed time travel with help from Tesla's notes, and not only was Trump a time traveler, but he was John Titor. Disgusted by no one believing him, he ran for president. Makes as much sense as anything else about the 2016 election.

The Bold Street time slips

If you only know Liverpool for The Beatles, you're sorely missing out on some cool stuff. In 2011, the Liverpool Echo started collecting some of the stories people had been telling about bizarre phenomena happening on Bold Street, and if the stories are to be believed, time there's very, very thin.

According to one witness, a woman had gone into a Mothercare store and tried to buy a gift for her sister. Workers refused her credit card, and the would-be customer went home and complained to her own mother. The store had, indeed, been there ... years ago. When they returned, it was a bank. There's another strange one that's from 1957, and it's the story of a Geoff Kingsley. He was driving through the Queensway Tunnel, when he saw something coming up behind him, and when it sped past, he saw a gold, triangular car that not only left skid marks, but moved Kingsley's car and seemed to vanish into a door in the tunnel's wall. Weirder still? Around a dozen people have seen the same thing.

There's an eerie number of stories about these occurrences around Liverpool, including one from a former police officer who swore he suddenly found himself in the 1960s and knew exactly what stores had been where. There was another story about a shoplifter who not only saw something off, but claimed he had been in the past long enough to find a kiosk and check a newspaper for the date: May 18, 1967. The security guard chasing him confirmed that he had disappeared down a dead end alley, and his testimony about the shops he'd walked past was accurate. Why do so many people find themselves in 1960s Liverpool? Does it have something to do with The Beatles? These questions need answering.

Rudolph Fentz of Times Square

Rudolph Fentz, the story goes, was dead when he was found, so no one could ask him what had happened . The man, wearing old-timey clothes, supposedly showed up in the middle of Times Square in New York City then was almost immediately hit by a car and killed. When police checked his pockets, they found a business card with his name and some coins from the 1800s. His clothes were from the same era, and so were his mutton chops. Problem was, it was June 1950.

Police did some digging and found that Rudolph Fentz had been reported missing in 1876. The address on his business card matched historical records. Time traveler? Yes!

Only ... no. The story had made the rounds for years, and it wasn't until 2005 that someone did the research. Chris Aubeck found the story had a very fictional source, and that it was written by Jack Finney in 1951 . It was reprinted, spread, and somewhere along the line, someone forgot that they had read it in a book.

The Moberly-Jourdain Incident

Eleanor Jourdain and Charlotte Anne Moberly were two serious and scholarly women from St. Hugh's College in England, and they were in Versailles for some serious, scholarly R&R in August 1901. Neither had any real knowledge of French history. Because they're English and it was France, they thought the majority of Versailles was all pretty boring, and headed to Marie Antoinette's little chateau.

They walked and walked, and suddenly they were walking alongside people dressed in clothing that was very distinctly not modern. They came to a cottage, and Moberly said the feeling of sadness was overwhelming. A strange, handsome man directed them over a bridge (and away from a terrifying, scowling man who seemed to take particular offense at their presence), and they came to Petit Trianon, the chateau they had been looking for. A dignified-looking woman was sitting outside sketching, our heroines left, and said no more of it until a week later.

Independently, they wrote down what they saw and while there were some differences, there was enough similar that they were able to piece together who they thought some of the people were just by descriptions of members of the court of King Louis XVI. There's a whole bunch of theories about what happened to the two women, and most of them are boring . Like: they were in the middle of some kind of historical reenactment, and someone used the words "strange lesbian romance-induced delusion" to rationalize what they saw. We prefer time travel.

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CNN's John King Asked to Travel the Nation for His First-Ever Podcast: 'I Ached to Get Back on the Road' (Exclusive)

'All Over the Map with John King' offers a window into the minds of several different swing voters who are having a tough time deciding between the current presidential candidates

CNN's John King has been traveling around the United States to get a better understanding of where swing voters' heads are at as an unprecedented election season begins to heat up. His findings are now being rolled out in a three-part podcast special called All Over the Map , following his TV segment of the same name.

The first part of King's election-themed audio project — available wherever you find new episodes of The Assignment with Audie Cornish — premiered on Monday, June 24, focusing on how loyal Nikki Haley supporters in Pennsylvania plan to vote in the general election.

The second and third episodes, which will be released on the two Mondays that follow, plan to take listeners into the minds of divided Georgia residents and voters of color in the Rust Belt.

PEOPLE spoke to King as he prepared to launch his first-ever podcast, discussing his motivation to leave the studio and meet voters where they are. He also teases some of what he's learned in the process. Below, our conversation.

Related: CNN's John King Opens Up About His Multiple Sclerosis Diagnosis: 'I'm a Very Lucky Man'

Where did the idea for All Over the Map come from?

I loved anchoring Inside Politics for seven years, but really ached to get back on the road to hear from the people Washington too often ignores and almost always misunderstands. This is my 10th presidential campaign, which gave it a little  back to the future  nostalgia, too. So I wrote a proposal to my boss making the case for a voter-focused battleground state project. And she said, yes!

How are you finding undecided voters to speak to?

I’m lucky to have a great team. We talk states and key demographic groups and counties, and then we hunt. Some of our voters are respondents from past CNN polling, others we find by cold calling or scrubbing social media. A few are from recommendations from people I know. It’s a mix.

The November election is expected to see the same 2020 candidates go head to head again. What's different about voters' mindsets this time around?

The thing you hear the most — from die-hard liberals to loyal Republicans, even a fair amount of Trump voters, is exasperation at the choices. They wish they had other options, and that does lead to an openness to considering third-party options, something that reminds me some of 1992 and the Perot phenomenon.

Another constant is how wary people are to talk politics outside of their closest circles. What used to be feisty but friendly debates now spiral into arguments and damaged relationships . That dynamic only makes polarization, mistrust and lack of respect for differences worse.

Related: Symone Sanders-Townsend Shares 4 Things Everyone Should Pay Attention to This Election Year (Exclusive)

What was the most surprising thing you learned on the road that you may not have been able to fully grasp from a studio?

You can see the sense of drift — lack of confidence in Washington and the direction of the country — in the polling data. But when you hear it in state after state, across the economic and political spectrum, it is eye opening.

You can argue this is a fairly static race. The national and battleground state polls have been about the same for months. But the ingredients of volatility are just below the surface. Anxiety, anger, disillusionment. Voters articulate this in very different ways because it is born of their unique experiences.

One common thread is the legacy of Covid — it exhausted and challenged people, and you hear threads of the pandemic experience when voters describe their mood or their priorities. The desire for “normal” comes up a ton — again, from voters of all stripes.

Will the podcast series follow a similar format to what people have seen in your TV segments?

Yes and no. Yes , in that I hope the podcast takes people all over the map — to learn about people and places different from who they are and where they live. To listen and learn and hopefully come to respect and better understand why someone might see things so differently.

But also no — in a great way, because I see the podcast platform as a way to get more personal and detailed than we can even in a long TV or text piece. You learn when you listen. In this format, we can listen to a voter for 10 or 15 minutes — hear the passion, anger, anxiety, all of the above — as they share not only who they are likely to vote for buy  why  — and  how  they got there. I hope listeners will stick with us and, over the course of a few episodes, get to meet a mix of amazing everyday Americans who live in the places that settle our closest elections.

Where to Listen

The first episode of  All Over the Map with John King  is now available as part of  The Assignment with Audie Cornish , wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes drop on Monday, July 1, and Monday, July 8.

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People .

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Delta One Lounge at New York-JFK ushers in a new era of premium travel for airline

Delta is ready to welcome guests to its newest and most exclusive destination: The Delta One Lounge at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Located between Concourses A and B in Terminal 4, adjacent to the main security checkpoint, the sweeping 39,000-plus-square-foot Delta One Lounge – the first of its kind, and larger than any Delta Sky Club – offers a variety of experiences and amenities for the premium traveler, from fine dining to spa-like wellness treatments to valet services and more. Delta One ticketholders can curate their own one-of-a-kind Lounge experience, based on what their travel day is calling for.

It’s a new standard of elevated service – one that complements Delta’s most premium onboard offering and is brought to life by the signature hospitality for which Delta is known.

"Our teams have spared no detail to ensure Delta One Lounge guests receive a truly memorable experience," said Claude Roussel, Vice President – Delta Sky Clubs and Lounge Experience. "It’s a new era for Delta – this Lounge is raising the bar across the board, from the amenities to the food and beverage offerings to the level of personalized service. We want our guests to feel the difference here; moreover, we want them to feel welcomed and valued from the moment they step through the door."

Like no other: New York City’s newest attraction

The Delta One Lounge atmosphere is true to the magic of Manhattan – step inside and you’ll forget you’re in an airport.

As New York City’s hottest new destination, the Lounge features nods to other noted locations throughout the Big Apple, with thoughtfully curated surprises for New Yorkers and design enthusiasts alike.

The premium bar, serving elevated takes on classic cocktails, features a standout Art Deco-inspired lighting fixture; the Bar Lounge ceiling and fluted glass nod to the gold leaf ceiling and chandeliers of Radio City Music Hall.

Take a glimpse into the city’s past at the white-marble counter Market and Bakery, inspired by retro delicatessen food counters.

Fan-shaped marble mosaic tiles in the Market dining area pay tribute to famed New York brasseries. The penny-round ceiling over the food counter is a hat-tip to the original JFK terminal, designed by famed architect Eero Saarinen.

The iconic overlapping strands of the Brooklyn Bridge provided inspiration for the suspended lighting fixture in the dining room.

Just as JFK is a portal to the world, the Delta One Lounge features art that reflects the airport’s global reach. Take a stroll through the Lounge gallery, featuring artists from Europe, South Africa, India, Japan, Cuba and more.

These unique design touches create a space that is like no other: one that is modern while rooted in the city's past.

A touch of high fashion

Delta’s recently announced onboard partnership with Missoni is also reflected in the Lounge, with design touches like accent pillows, vases and coffee table books bearing the signature zigzag design of the Italian fashion house.

This new partnership with Missoni elevates Delta One like never before, weaving superior craftsmanship and high-end design into the finest details of your journey – both in flight and on the ground, with a host of opportunities ahead for the brands to continue this collaboration.

Many ways to One Lounge

Whether you’re looking to dine in style, relax before your flight, or take care of business, the Delta One Lounge has something for everyone.

Foodies, take note: The Lounge features a 140-seat Brasserie restaurant delivering a three-course meal service. Restaurant Associates and Union Square Events (a Danny Meyer concept) have collaborated to elevate the culinary experience in the Delta One Lounge, with dishes such as Hamachi crudo, steak tartare and lasagna Bolognese.

Prefer to set your own pace? Take charge of your dining experience with The Market and Bakery, featuring seasonal culinary offerings plated for walk-up service.

Beverage cart service allows you to enjoy premium hospitality without leaving your seat. Let Lounge servers meet you where you are for a guest experience similar to what you'd enjoy onboard.

Prepare for the journey ahead in the designated wellness area, equipped with nine reservable relaxation pods with full-body massage chairs and nap chairs, treatments from Grown-Alchemist certified therapists, and more.

Adjacent to the wellness area, the Serenity Lounge provides a quiet, tranquil space designed for pre-flight peace of mind. Specialty lamp lighting in the Serenity Lounge mimics the light colors affecting the body’s circadian rhythms, helping your body get acclimated to the time zone to which you will be flying.

Drink to your health at the Rejuvenation Bar, featuring refreshing, non-alcoholic beverages and fruit and herb-infused waters and juices.

Just landed and feeling the length of that transatlantic haul? Freshen up at one of eight well-appointed shower suites, featuring towels, bathrobes and slippers, Grown Alchemist products, and more. Clothes and shoes need a glow-up, too? Leave your items inside the suite closet; a valet attendant will steam and/or shine them and return them while you shower.

Buckle down

Guests in do-not-disturb mode can take care of business in one of eight individual soundproof booths located in the Lounge, or borrow a second monitor to complete any last-minute work.

Take it all in

Enjoy views of the airfield from the Terrace, replete with regional, seasonally updated plants. This lush outdoor oasis with a retractable roof is designed to stimulate the senses (while calming the nervous system); enjoy it 365 days out of the year.

An end-to-end premium journey

The Delta One Lounge cements Delta’s commitment to delivering an end-to-end premium experience, from curb to claim.

The journey starts at check-in: Located on the right-hand side of the main arrivals level on Terminal 4, Delta One customers will be greeted by a team of Elite Service agents providing white-glove service, with warm towels and light refreshments on offer. This fall, the check-in area will feature a private TSA screening lane for added exclusivity.

While the JFK Delta One Lounge is the first of its kind, others will be joining soon: Delta One Lounges at LAX and Boston Logan International will open later this year, expanding the end-to-end premium experience to more customers in more hubs.

From JFK to the rest of the world

Though the Delta One Lounge is a destination unto itself, JFK customers are well-positioned to journey across the globe with Delta.

Delta offers the most flights and seats of any carrier at JFK, with more than 200 total peak-day departures to more than 90 domestic and international destinations. Customers can fly nonstop from JFK to all of New York’s 50 most popular domestic markets.

This summer, Delta is flying its largest trans-Atlantic schedule ever from JFK, with more than 240 weekly departures to 26 destinations—including new destinations like Naples and destinations not flown since before the pandemic, like Shannon, Ireland.

And Delta will add even more service this winter: the combined partnership of Delta and LATAM will offer more service than any other carrier or joint venture between New York and South America. Also, with daily service to Lagos, Nigeria (LOS) relaunching Dec. 1, Delta will reinforce its No. 1 position as the largest U.S. carrier to Africa.

Wherever their destination, JFK customers can get there in style with Delta.

Read more on access guidelines for the Delta One Lounge . 

• Delta One , Customer Experience , John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) , Delta Sky Clubs