The Joker

Today's tour introduces us to an irreverent hero and a brave chef, both of who have a lot to teach us about thinking outside the box.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
to the Cabinet of Curiosities. It was an Alaskan hunters

(00:29):
pot luck. I know those are a lot of unrelated words,
but let me try to unpack them for you. You see,
state laws in Alaska ban the sale of game meat,
so if you were to swing on down to the
local steakhouse, you aren't going to find caribou on the menu,
no matter how badly you might want to try it.
Of course, no one can stop you from eating something

(00:51):
you hunted yourself. So a common event all across the
state is for hunters to invite a few friends over
for a meal. Maybe everyone brings their own hunting related dish,
or perhaps there's just one main dish that everyone will share.
It's different each time, depending on the success they've had
that season. With all that said, Dale had had a

(01:13):
very successful hunt. He had brought home meat from a
prized catch, something to be proud of, so he invited
a few friends over to celebrate and partake in the bounty.
The trouble was there wasn't a lot of meat to
go around, so he did what people have done for centuries.
He made a stew out of it. Dale cut up

(01:35):
carrots and potatoes, diced some onions, and crushed some garlic,
and put the whole thing on the stove for a
good long simmer. By the time guests arrived that evening,
there was a rich aroma filling. The house wine was poured,
bowls were filled, and then every single one of the
eight people around the table dug into their meals. Dale

(01:58):
wasn't a celebrity chef, so don't expect something amazing to
have taken place. According to one interview, everyone managed to
finish their portion, but no one remembers anyone going back
for seconds. I get it, there's nothing unusual or curious
about a gathering of Alaskan's around the dinner table enjoying

(02:18):
a nice stew that one of them cooked up. But
this was no ordinary dinner party, and the meal was curious.
That's because the meat in dale stew was from a bison,
a bison that died over fifty thousand years ago. Reggie

(02:49):
was a bit of a practical joker. Sure, he was
a physicist by training and used his skills to help
the British military defend itself from the Germans during World
War Two. But trickster nature was always right there near
the surface. It said that in the nineteen thirties, while
he was a research fellow at Oxford, he called up
one of the other professors to carry out a prank.

(03:12):
The first few times he called, Reggie immediately hung up
as the man was answering. Finally, after sowing the seeds
of frustration and doubt, he called and pretended to be
a representative from the telephone company and reported a faulty line.
He then went on to ask the professor to run
a series of tests to see if the problem was
on his end. Those tests included tapping his pencil on

(03:35):
the phone, standing on one leg, and dipping the receiver
into a bowl of cold water. Much to Reggie's enjoyment,
the professor followed all of the instructions to a t.
Let's be honest. Though the college campus is no stranger
to practical jokes. In fact, Steve Wozniak, one of the
founders of Apple Computer, engaged in his own fair share

(03:56):
of fund Wozniak actually built a sort of signal jammer
for early televisions and would carry it in his pocket
in the dorm and cause TV shows to cut in
and out, much to everyone else's frustration. But most people
grow up, they move on and leave those college pranks
behind them. Steve Wozniak went on to help found one

(04:17):
of the most culturally significant companies of the last century,
and Reggie went on to work for British military intelligence.
His training as a physicist allowed him to help the
British avoid the bombing raids that the Germans continuously sent
their way. The Germans had developed a technology they called
the nick and bine, which was a method of guiding

(04:38):
airplanes to a very specific target using a pair of
radio beams that intersected over the location. Reggie's first assignment
was to find a way to bend one of those
beams and throw off the German bombers, and it worked.
Rather than dropping bombs on major cities, the German planes
were guided out into the countryside, where their bombs did

(04:59):
much less damage. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award

(05:22):
winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
and television show and you can learn all about it
over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious.