Two Thousand Years in Eighty Five Handshakes

Season 3, Episode 3 What if Jesus isn’t as many people away from us as 2,000 years makes him feel? In this episode of Echoes for Angela, we turn The Human Chain into a giant historical game of “who actually knew whom?” Instead of measuring the distance from Jesus to today with a calendar, we follow real human relationships—disciples, teachers, students, friends, enemies, bishops, rulers, relatives, and correspondents—one person at a time. The paper reconstructs a candidate path of 86 people and 85 interpersonal connections from Jesus of Nazareth to someone alive in 2026. But there’s one big rule: no cheating. “They probably knew each other” doesn’t count; every connection needs historical evidence, and uncertain links stay uncertain. Along the way, Angela gets to meet people like John, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Mary Ward, kings, teachers, troublemakers, and ordinary humans who kept history connected. Two thousand years is a very long time—but maybe it isn’t nearly as many people as it looks. Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22283045 Zenodo SkibidiScience Repository: https://zenodo.org/communities/skibidiscience/