April 6, 2021 • 9 mins
We can't believe everything we read, and not everything we see on television can become a reality. But today's stories might just make the line between truth and fiction a bit more blurry.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. The media is no stranger to spin papers
and TV channels on the right and the left. Both
have their agendas. They compete for dollars and eyeballs, pandering
to audiences with sensationalist headlines and juicy stories. Because it's
(00:50):
hard to stand out in a crowd, isn't it. When
one news source outperforms another. It's common for competitors to
try anything for a bigger slice of the pie. And
you know what it's going on. Since before the age
of twenty four hour news networks, way before at the
turn of the twentieth century, America declared war against Spain.
Cuba had been fighting for independence from Spanish rule since
(01:12):
eight and the news being reported at the time was
being filtered through interpreters and hearsay, most of which was
pro revolution. Journalists didn't fact check what they were being told,
they simply reported what they had heard and moved on
to the next story. Nowhere was this more prominent than
in The New York World, a newspaper owned by Joseph Pulitzer,
(01:33):
and The New York Journal, which was owned by William
Randolph Hurst. The owners didn't only compete at the news stand,
Hearst and Pullitzer shamelessly carried out their rivalry in public,
most often within the pages of their respective newspapers. The
ethical codes that today's modern journalists lived by didn't exist
at the time, so the papers were hotbeds of shoddy journalism,
(01:56):
driven by a philosophy of whatever it takes. For exact ample,
the USS Maine, an American battleship that had been stationed
in Havana, exploded on February fifteenth. Over two hundred and
fifty men were killed in the blast, and reporters swooped
in to cover the story. Though the military put out
a public statement claiming that the explosion had been an
(02:17):
accident caused by a spontaneous fire, the Journal and the
World came up with their own stories. They invented sources
and made up facts. Each paper had its own agenda,
which they pushed by any means necessary. Hurst even promised
a fifty thousand dollar reward of the person who brought
those responsible for murdering two hundred fifty eight American sailors
(02:38):
to justice. Anything, of course, to sell a paper, However,
filling pages and column inches with brand new reporting each
day was a herculean task. Sometimes the news was slow,
other times what was available to report wasn't exciting enough.
It wasn't uncommon for one paper to steal a headline
or even an entire story from another, adding fuel to
(03:00):
their feud, and it happened often. The situation came to
a head after Hurst had gotten tired of seeing his
papers copy in Pulitzer's New York World, so he decided
to take the fight right to them with a story
they wouldn't be able to refuse. It involved Austrian artillerist
Colonel refilpe w fen News. The colonel had been fighting
on behalf of the Cubans when he was killed in battle.
(03:22):
The journal story was a reverent encapsulation of the colonel's
contributions to the war effort, and it was taken almost
word for word and reprinted in the New York World.
Hirst didn't even have to read the whole article to
know it. All he had to do was see the
colonel's name printed in Pullitzer's paper, right there in black
and white. Because reflip a w than news didn't really exist,
(03:45):
Hurst made him up in an effort to catch Pullezer
red handed. Even the name was a dead giveaway. It
was a nanagram that unraveled into the phrase we pilfer
the news. Of course, Pullitzer didn't have the moral high
ground either. His papers were just as guilty of plagiarism
as Hearst's. In retaliation for Hurst's dirty trick with the Colonel,
(04:06):
The New York World published a story featuring the name
lister A Raw, which inevitably wound up in Pulitzer's paper.
The media magnate had no idea that he had been
had lister A Raw wasn't real. His name, like the colonel's,
had been in anagram, the letters of which rearranged into
the words first a liar. Inspiration can strike from anywhere,
(04:42):
whether it's in the shower, while cooking dinner or mowing
the lawn. We never know when we're going to be
hit with the next big idea. People watched birds sore
through the sky for generations as they devised contraptions to
give themselves the power of flight. Wales provided the inspiration
for submarines, and chemist Roy Plunkett was researching CFC refrigerants
(05:03):
for du Pont when his tetra flora ethylene gas accidentally
hardened into a powder. It turned out that the powder
was heat resistant and made a great lubricant. With a
few more tweaks, polytetra flora ethylene, otherwise known as teflon
was born. Of course, inspiration doesn't always drop out of
the sky or rise from the deep, nor fall like
(05:24):
snowflakes into our laps. Sometimes it hits us like a
blast of lightning. Militaries all over the world have spent
thousands of years looking for an advantage on the battlefield.
Weaponry has advanced considerably in the days of swords and arrows.
Today we have guns, missiles, and all sorts of weapons
designed to damage the human body in ways we could
never imagine. In two thousand eighteen, China claim did had
(05:47):
developed a handheld rifle capable of firing a laser beam
strong enough to set clothes on fire. The beam could
also penetrate glass and even shoot through a fuel tank
to cause an explosion. The US military, on the other hand,
already has a non lethal energy weapon that can heat
any surface it's pointed at, including human skin. It was
designed as a way to control unruly crowds and contain
(06:11):
prison riots. There had even been talks to develop a
device that would make someone think they were hearing voices
in their head. It would have fired short bursts of
r F energy, capable of carrying words straight to a
person's ears. Such an instrument could have been used to
plant thoughts into a target's head or make them feel
as though they were losing control of their mind. It
(06:32):
had also been conceived as a method for contacting hostages
in order to provide them with instructions given no other
way to reach them. However, one weapon was nearly borne
from one of the most unlikely places, and due to
its intended effects, it was also one of the most unethical.
According to a declassified army document released around two thousand eight,
(06:54):
the military was planning on constructing a weapon that would
have disrupted a person's brain activity using electro magnetic pulses,
in other words, by rapidly flashing light into someone's eyes.
The Army would have been able to trigger a seizure
in anyone. The technology had also been planned to be tuneable,
meaning it could have caused anything from loss of basic
(07:14):
motor functions to full on epileptic episodes, depending on the
speed of the pulses being fired and where did they
get the idea to build such a weapon. A children's
television show Pokemon, an episode of the Japanese cartoon, was
blamed for sending seven hundred people to the hospital for
something called photic seizure induction. The flashing red and blue
(07:36):
lights had triggered seizures in victims ranging from three years
old all the way up to fifty eight and older.
Two hundred viewers remain hospitalized for days due to epileptic symptoms.
Pokemon stopped airing for four months, but reports of the
cartoons effects made their way back to the United States,
where they stirred up public debate as well as military
(07:57):
research and development. Parents were their children would also begin
convulsive if they watch Pokemon, while Army scientists and engineers
started drafting plans for a new kind of weapon, one
that was non lethal but could incapacitate anyone over a
distance of hundreds of meters. Like many of the devices
described before, this seizure gun was never actually built. However,
(08:21):
it's one rock among a mountain of evidence that the
world's armies are constantly dreaming up new ways to hurt
and even kill anyone they perceive as a threat, and
that their inspiration can come from anywhere, be it nature,
a scientific breakthrough, or even something benign as a children's
cartoon about superpowered animals. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
(08:45):
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 Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
book series, and television show, and you can learn all
(09:07):
about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. The media is no stranger to spin papers
and TV channels on the right and the left. Both
have their agendas. They compete for dollars and eyeballs, pandering
to audiences with sensationalist headlines and juicy stories. Because it's
(00:50):
hard to stand out in a crowd, isn't it. When
one news source outperforms another. It's common for competitors to
try anything for a bigger slice of the pie. And
you know what it's going on. Since before the age
of twenty four hour news networks, way before at the
turn of the twentieth century, America declared war against Spain.
Cuba had been fighting for independence from Spanish rule since
(01:12):
eight and the news being reported at the time was
being filtered through interpreters and hearsay, most of which was
pro revolution. Journalists didn't fact check what they were being told,
they simply reported what they had heard and moved on
to the next story. Nowhere was this more prominent than
in The New York World, a newspaper owned by Joseph Pulitzer,
(01:33):
and The New York Journal, which was owned by William
Randolph Hurst. The owners didn't only compete at the news stand,
Hearst and Pullitzer shamelessly carried out their rivalry in public,
most often within the pages of their respective newspapers. The
ethical codes that today's modern journalists lived by didn't exist
at the time, so the papers were hotbeds of shoddy journalism,
(01:56):
driven by a philosophy of whatever it takes. For exact ample,
the USS Maine, an American battleship that had been stationed
in Havana, exploded on February fifteenth. Over two hundred and
fifty men were killed in the blast, and reporters swooped
in to cover the story. Though the military put out
a public statement claiming that the explosion had been an
(02:17):
accident caused by a spontaneous fire, the Journal and the
World came up with their own stories. They invented sources
and made up facts. Each paper had its own agenda,
which they pushed by any means necessary. Hurst even promised
a fifty thousand dollar reward of the person who brought
those responsible for murdering two hundred fifty eight American sailors
(02:38):
to justice. Anything, of course, to sell a paper, However,
filling pages and column inches with brand new reporting each
day was a herculean task. Sometimes the news was slow,
other times what was available to report wasn't exciting enough.
It wasn't uncommon for one paper to steal a headline
or even an entire story from another, adding fuel to
(03:00):
their feud, and it happened often. The situation came to
a head after Hurst had gotten tired of seeing his
papers copy in Pulitzer's New York World, so he decided
to take the fight right to them with a story
they wouldn't be able to refuse. It involved Austrian artillerist
Colonel refilpe w fen News. The colonel had been fighting
on behalf of the Cubans when he was killed in battle.
(03:22):
The journal story was a reverent encapsulation of the colonel's
contributions to the war effort, and it was taken almost
word for word and reprinted in the New York World.
Hirst didn't even have to read the whole article to
know it. All he had to do was see the
colonel's name printed in Pullitzer's paper, right there in black
and white. Because reflip a w than news didn't really exist,
(03:45):
Hurst made him up in an effort to catch Pullezer
red handed. Even the name was a dead giveaway. It
was a nanagram that unraveled into the phrase we pilfer
the news. Of course, Pullitzer didn't have the moral high
ground either. His papers were just as guilty of plagiarism
as Hearst's. In retaliation for Hurst's dirty trick with the Colonel,
(04:06):
The New York World published a story featuring the name
lister A Raw, which inevitably wound up in Pulitzer's paper.
The media magnate had no idea that he had been
had lister A Raw wasn't real. His name, like the colonel's,
had been in anagram, the letters of which rearranged into
the words first a liar. Inspiration can strike from anywhere,
(04:42):
whether it's in the shower, while cooking dinner or mowing
the lawn. We never know when we're going to be
hit with the next big idea. People watched birds sore
through the sky for generations as they devised contraptions to
give themselves the power of flight. Wales provided the inspiration
for submarines, and chemist Roy Plunkett was researching CFC refrigerants
(05:03):
for du Pont when his tetra flora ethylene gas accidentally
hardened into a powder. It turned out that the powder
was heat resistant and made a great lubricant. With a
few more tweaks, polytetra flora ethylene, otherwise known as teflon
was born. Of course, inspiration doesn't always drop out of
the sky or rise from the deep, nor fall like
(05:24):
snowflakes into our laps. Sometimes it hits us like a
blast of lightning. Militaries all over the world have spent
thousands of years looking for an advantage on the battlefield.
Weaponry has advanced considerably in the days of swords and arrows.
Today we have guns, missiles, and all sorts of weapons
designed to damage the human body in ways we could
never imagine. In two thousand eighteen, China claim did had
(05:47):
developed a handheld rifle capable of firing a laser beam
strong enough to set clothes on fire. The beam could
also penetrate glass and even shoot through a fuel tank
to cause an explosion. The US military, on the other hand,
already has a non lethal energy weapon that can heat
any surface it's pointed at, including human skin. It was
designed as a way to control unruly crowds and contain
(06:11):
prison riots. There had even been talks to develop a
device that would make someone think they were hearing voices
in their head. It would have fired short bursts of
r F energy, capable of carrying words straight to a
person's ears. Such an instrument could have been used to
plant thoughts into a target's head or make them feel
as though they were losing control of their mind. It
(06:32):
had also been conceived as a method for contacting hostages
in order to provide them with instructions given no other
way to reach them. However, one weapon was nearly borne
from one of the most unlikely places, and due to
its intended effects, it was also one of the most unethical.
According to a declassified army document released around two thousand eight,
(06:54):
the military was planning on constructing a weapon that would
have disrupted a person's brain activity using electro magnetic pulses,
in other words, by rapidly flashing light into someone's eyes.
The Army would have been able to trigger a seizure
in anyone. The technology had also been planned to be tuneable,
meaning it could have caused anything from loss of basic
(07:14):
motor functions to full on epileptic episodes, depending on the
speed of the pulses being fired and where did they
get the idea to build such a weapon. A children's
television show Pokemon, an episode of the Japanese cartoon, was
blamed for sending seven hundred people to the hospital for
something called photic seizure induction. The flashing red and blue
(07:36):
lights had triggered seizures in victims ranging from three years
old all the way up to fifty eight and older.
Two hundred viewers remain hospitalized for days due to epileptic symptoms.
Pokemon stopped airing for four months, but reports of the
cartoons effects made their way back to the United States,
where they stirred up public debate as well as military
(07:57):
research and development. Parents were their children would also begin
convulsive if they watch Pokemon, while Army scientists and engineers
started drafting plans for a new kind of weapon, one
that was non lethal but could incapacitate anyone over a
distance of hundreds of meters. Like many of the devices
described before, this seizure gun was never actually built. However,
(08:21):
it's one rock among a mountain of evidence that the
world's armies are constantly dreaming up new ways to hurt
and even kill anyone they perceive as a threat, and
that their inspiration can come from anywhere, be it nature,
a scientific breakthrough, or even something benign as a children's
cartoon about superpowered animals. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
(08:45):
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 Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
book series, and television show, and you can learn all
(09:07):
about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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