November 10, 2022 • 10 mins
Today's stories are bound to give you chills. Bundle up for this colorful tour through the Cabinet.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Manky'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 life of a professional musician is a
tumultuous one. Rock star biographies are full of stories about
their lives on the road, waking up in a new
city every day, their families left behind as they work
(00:48):
their way towards superstardom. But not every band makes it
to the top, and some need to make serious changes
to even come close. The Beatles famously replaced their original
drummer Pete Best with ring Go Star when it became
clear that Best wasn't a good fit. When singer Robert
Lamb and his friends first formed their group in nineteen
sixty seven, they called themselves the Big Thing until they
(01:10):
transformed themselves into Chicago Transit Authority the following year. One
year after that, they shortened it down even more to
the name they're known by today, Chicago Change. As you see,
is common for a band, and sometimes it can be
the difference between obscurity and success. Roger and Nick knew
that in England growing up during the nineteen forties and fifties.
(01:32):
Roger was something of an athlete, growing up playing cricket
in rugby for his high school teams, while Nick went
to college to become an architect. They moved in together
in nineteen sixty three and formed a rock band a
year later with another pair of friends. They called the
group Sigma six. That was before they were named The
Mega Deaths, The Screaming Ab Dad's, Leonard's Lodgers, and the
(01:54):
Spectrum Five. Finally, they settled on what they had hoped
to be their final name, The t Set. Roger played
lead guitar, with Nick on the drums. Their buddy Richard
played rhythm guitar, while two other members, Keith and Clive,
sang and played bass respectively. Eventually, Keith and Clive split
off to start their own band in nineteen sixty three,
leaving Roger, Nick and Richard to find two replacements. Now
(02:18):
as The t Set, the group often rehearsed in a
basement tea room at the college that Roger, Nick and
Richard attended. They would then go out at nights and
play various clubs and private engagements, building up their repertoire songs.
Late nineteen sixty four saw The t Set join a
local London hot spot called the Countdown Club. In residency.
They would start playing late at nights and go until dawn,
(02:41):
rocking out over ninety minute long sets. They had a
problem though, Playing for such a long time meant that
they had to repeat songs in each set. To avoid
this problem, the guitarists began taking longer solos in each song,
adding enough to buffer them to let them complete their
sets without any repeats. Audiences liked it, and it helps
solidify the t Sets sound. As they worked their way
(03:03):
up the club circuit, they started recording some of their
tunes in a studio in West Hampstead and getting more gigs.
It was one performance in particular, though, that would change
the fate of the group forever. It was a coincidence, really,
They were set to play on the same tickets as
another band calling themselves of all things, the t Set
in a Panic. Vocalist and guitarist Rogers sought inspiration in
(03:26):
his record collection, specifically from some albums by A couple
of prominent blues musicians. The first was an album by
a guitar player named Pinckney Anderson known as Pink. Born
in Laurence, South Carolina, in nineteen hundred, Anderson had come
up playing at medicine shows, performing for crowds while Snake
oil salesman pitched their questionable wears. The other album featured
(03:48):
a blues guitarist named Floyd Counsel who hailed from North Carolina.
Counsel was a busker and specialized in playing the Piedmont Blues,
which was big in the South. And Roger wasn't a
string jurs to nicknames. His full name was Roger Keith Barrett,
but everyone knew him as Sid. And he took Pink
Anderson's name and Floyd Counsel's name and put them together,
(04:09):
changing the t set into something else entirely the Pink
Floyd sound. Later on, Barrett, Roger Waters and Nick Mason,
David Gilmour and Richard White shortened their name to simply
Pink Floyd and went on to make music history. They
released fifteen studio albums and twenty seven singles over the
course of their career, entertaining audiences all over the world
(04:32):
with their psychedelic and progressive brand of rock and It's funny.
Even though several of the band's members met while attending
architecture school, it was clear that in the end they
would build a wall, and they didn't need no education
to do it. Celebrity deaths are always hard to take.
(05:03):
When beloved actors, singers, and comedians pass away, it feels
like losing a part of ourselves too. We grew up
with them, watching their movies or listening to their albums.
Their work becomes an integral part of our lives, and
so when they inevitably die, it's hard not to feel
like the light of the world is just a little
bit dimmer. But scientists and doctors have been working in
ways to reverse death, or at least postponent. One of
(05:26):
the most well known concepts is called cryonics, a scientific
field in which living tissue is preserved at extremely low temperatures.
And we've all bumped into the concept before in countless
sci fi TV shows and movies such as Futurama, Idiocracy,
and Alien, where someone is placed into a deep cold
sleep and woken up decades later, or in the case
(05:48):
of Alien, when a murderous space creature is loose on
a ship. But yes, the idea of freezing and preserving
a human body does sound like science fiction. However, it
has been accomplished new furst times over the years as
experts continued to research and develop the technology. For example,
a fourteen year old girl in the UK who died
(06:08):
of cancer several years ago petitioned the courts to allow
her body to be cryo preserved until a cure could
be found. In two thousand twelve, baseball legend Ted Williams
had his head surgically removed postmortem. It was stored separate
from his body by a cryonics company in Arizona. And
there was also Dick Claire, a television writer and producer
(06:29):
who worked on programs like The Bob Newhart Show and
the Facts of Life. Claire died in nineteen eighty eight
of complications from AIDS, but was cryonically preserved in Arizona.
Along with many others, but one celebrity death has been
synonymous with cryonic preservation since his death in nineteen sixty six.
He was an entrepreneur, an animator, a business mogul, and
(06:50):
an icon. He created what is arguably the most recognizable
character in the world and two of the most successful
theme parks in history. Obviously, I'm talking about in another
than Walt Disney, who succumbed to lung cancer at the
age of sixty five. Of course, Walt Disney was a
futurist who anticipated a time when holmes ran automatically, with
(07:11):
robots handling things like vacuuming and mopping, not unlike the
future we enjoy today. Some of the original tomorrow Land
attractions at Disneyland were called things like the Monsanto Hall
of Chemistry and the Bathroom of Tomorrow, exhibits where visitors
could see how companies were planning to advance our world,
from the chemicals in our food to where we brush
(07:32):
our teeth every morning. So it's no wonder that when
Disney passed away in December of nineteen sixty seven, rumors
quickly spread about what had happened with his body. Those
rumors seemed to kick off in early nineteen sixty seven,
just a few weeks after his death. You see, Disney
had been being treated for his cancer at St. Joseph's
Hospital in Burbank, California, which sat right across the street
(07:53):
from Walt Disney Studios. After he died, a reporter with
the National Spotlights, a tabloid ragnell for publishing salacious rumors,
allegedly pulled off some entertainment espionage for a scoop. According
to his report, the reporter had dressed up as an
orderly and snuck into a storage room. They're preserved in
a massive metal container was the body of Walt Disney himself,
(08:17):
waiting to be revived at a time when his disease
could be cured. Over the years, the stories about Disney's
cryonic corpse only grew. They even worked their way into
several biographies about the late animator, painting him as a
man desperate for a cure by any means necessary. And
there is some truth to that notion. Disney was terrified
(08:37):
of dying and often worried about his premature death, especially
when he was depressed, although he kept many of his
personal feelings close to the vest. According to one biographer,
Walt had asked his older brother Roy not to let
anyone know about his cancer. As for the circumstances surrounding
his passing, those were kept secret from the public for
hours after he had died. The fact that only add
(09:00):
it to the mystery of what doctors or scientists might
have been doing with his body. Some people believe that
Walt Disney is currently being stored beneath the Pirates of
the Caribbean Ride at his California park, waiting until he
can be resurrected to live on his remaining years as
the head of the company he co founded. But the
truth he was cremated as per his wishes. There's no
(09:22):
cryonic chamber nor top secret storage facility under Disneyland. Walt
Disney created one of the most successful companies in history.
That is his legacy. All that other stuff about his
body being frozen in perpetuity, that's just a rumor and
one that needs to be put on ice. I hope
(09:44):
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 House
of Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
(10:07):
you can learn all about it over at the World
of Lore dot com and until next time, stay curious, yeah,
Welcomed Aaron Manky'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 life of a professional musician is a
tumultuous one. Rock star biographies are full of stories about
their lives on the road, waking up in a new
city every day, their families left behind as they work
(00:48):
their way towards superstardom. But not every band makes it
to the top, and some need to make serious changes
to even come close. The Beatles famously replaced their original
drummer Pete Best with ring Go Star when it became
clear that Best wasn't a good fit. When singer Robert
Lamb and his friends first formed their group in nineteen
sixty seven, they called themselves the Big Thing until they
(01:10):
transformed themselves into Chicago Transit Authority the following year. One
year after that, they shortened it down even more to
the name they're known by today, Chicago Change. As you see,
is common for a band, and sometimes it can be
the difference between obscurity and success. Roger and Nick knew
that in England growing up during the nineteen forties and fifties.
(01:32):
Roger was something of an athlete, growing up playing cricket
in rugby for his high school teams, while Nick went
to college to become an architect. They moved in together
in nineteen sixty three and formed a rock band a
year later with another pair of friends. They called the
group Sigma six. That was before they were named The
Mega Deaths, The Screaming Ab Dad's, Leonard's Lodgers, and the
(01:54):
Spectrum Five. Finally, they settled on what they had hoped
to be their final name, The t Set. Roger played
lead guitar, with Nick on the drums. Their buddy Richard
played rhythm guitar, while two other members, Keith and Clive,
sang and played bass respectively. Eventually, Keith and Clive split
off to start their own band in nineteen sixty three,
leaving Roger, Nick and Richard to find two replacements. Now
(02:18):
as The t Set, the group often rehearsed in a
basement tea room at the college that Roger, Nick and
Richard attended. They would then go out at nights and
play various clubs and private engagements, building up their repertoire songs.
Late nineteen sixty four saw The t Set join a
local London hot spot called the Countdown Club. In residency.
They would start playing late at nights and go until dawn,
(02:41):
rocking out over ninety minute long sets. They had a
problem though, Playing for such a long time meant that
they had to repeat songs in each set. To avoid
this problem, the guitarists began taking longer solos in each song,
adding enough to buffer them to let them complete their
sets without any repeats. Audiences liked it, and it helps
solidify the t Sets sound. As they worked their way
(03:03):
up the club circuit, they started recording some of their
tunes in a studio in West Hampstead and getting more gigs.
It was one performance in particular, though, that would change
the fate of the group forever. It was a coincidence, really,
They were set to play on the same tickets as
another band calling themselves of all things, the t Set
in a Panic. Vocalist and guitarist Rogers sought inspiration in
(03:26):
his record collection, specifically from some albums by A couple
of prominent blues musicians. The first was an album by
a guitar player named Pinckney Anderson known as Pink. Born
in Laurence, South Carolina, in nineteen hundred, Anderson had come
up playing at medicine shows, performing for crowds while Snake
oil salesman pitched their questionable wears. The other album featured
(03:48):
a blues guitarist named Floyd Counsel who hailed from North Carolina.
Counsel was a busker and specialized in playing the Piedmont Blues,
which was big in the South. And Roger wasn't a
string jurs to nicknames. His full name was Roger Keith Barrett,
but everyone knew him as Sid. And he took Pink
Anderson's name and Floyd Counsel's name and put them together,
(04:09):
changing the t set into something else entirely the Pink
Floyd sound. Later on, Barrett, Roger Waters and Nick Mason,
David Gilmour and Richard White shortened their name to simply
Pink Floyd and went on to make music history. They
released fifteen studio albums and twenty seven singles over the
course of their career, entertaining audiences all over the world
(04:32):
with their psychedelic and progressive brand of rock and It's funny.
Even though several of the band's members met while attending
architecture school, it was clear that in the end they
would build a wall, and they didn't need no education
to do it. Celebrity deaths are always hard to take.
(05:03):
When beloved actors, singers, and comedians pass away, it feels
like losing a part of ourselves too. We grew up
with them, watching their movies or listening to their albums.
Their work becomes an integral part of our lives, and
so when they inevitably die, it's hard not to feel
like the light of the world is just a little
bit dimmer. But scientists and doctors have been working in
ways to reverse death, or at least postponent. One of
(05:26):
the most well known concepts is called cryonics, a scientific
field in which living tissue is preserved at extremely low temperatures.
And we've all bumped into the concept before in countless
sci fi TV shows and movies such as Futurama, Idiocracy,
and Alien, where someone is placed into a deep cold
sleep and woken up decades later, or in the case
(05:48):
of Alien, when a murderous space creature is loose on
a ship. But yes, the idea of freezing and preserving
a human body does sound like science fiction. However, it
has been accomplished new furst times over the years as
experts continued to research and develop the technology. For example,
a fourteen year old girl in the UK who died
(06:08):
of cancer several years ago petitioned the courts to allow
her body to be cryo preserved until a cure could
be found. In two thousand twelve, baseball legend Ted Williams
had his head surgically removed postmortem. It was stored separate
from his body by a cryonics company in Arizona. And
there was also Dick Claire, a television writer and producer
(06:29):
who worked on programs like The Bob Newhart Show and
the Facts of Life. Claire died in nineteen eighty eight
of complications from AIDS, but was cryonically preserved in Arizona.
Along with many others, but one celebrity death has been
synonymous with cryonic preservation since his death in nineteen sixty six.
He was an entrepreneur, an animator, a business mogul, and
(06:50):
an icon. He created what is arguably the most recognizable
character in the world and two of the most successful
theme parks in history. Obviously, I'm talking about in another
than Walt Disney, who succumbed to lung cancer at the
age of sixty five. Of course, Walt Disney was a
futurist who anticipated a time when holmes ran automatically, with
(07:11):
robots handling things like vacuuming and mopping, not unlike the
future we enjoy today. Some of the original tomorrow Land
attractions at Disneyland were called things like the Monsanto Hall
of Chemistry and the Bathroom of Tomorrow, exhibits where visitors
could see how companies were planning to advance our world,
from the chemicals in our food to where we brush
(07:32):
our teeth every morning. So it's no wonder that when
Disney passed away in December of nineteen sixty seven, rumors
quickly spread about what had happened with his body. Those
rumors seemed to kick off in early nineteen sixty seven,
just a few weeks after his death. You see, Disney
had been being treated for his cancer at St. Joseph's
Hospital in Burbank, California, which sat right across the street
(07:53):
from Walt Disney Studios. After he died, a reporter with
the National Spotlights, a tabloid ragnell for publishing salacious rumors,
allegedly pulled off some entertainment espionage for a scoop. According
to his report, the reporter had dressed up as an
orderly and snuck into a storage room. They're preserved in
a massive metal container was the body of Walt Disney himself,
(08:17):
waiting to be revived at a time when his disease
could be cured. Over the years, the stories about Disney's
cryonic corpse only grew. They even worked their way into
several biographies about the late animator, painting him as a
man desperate for a cure by any means necessary. And
there is some truth to that notion. Disney was terrified
(08:37):
of dying and often worried about his premature death, especially
when he was depressed, although he kept many of his
personal feelings close to the vest. According to one biographer,
Walt had asked his older brother Roy not to let
anyone know about his cancer. As for the circumstances surrounding
his passing, those were kept secret from the public for
hours after he had died. The fact that only add
(09:00):
it to the mystery of what doctors or scientists might
have been doing with his body. Some people believe that
Walt Disney is currently being stored beneath the Pirates of
the Caribbean Ride at his California park, waiting until he
can be resurrected to live on his remaining years as
the head of the company he co founded. But the
truth he was cremated as per his wishes. There's no
(09:22):
cryonic chamber nor top secret storage facility under Disneyland. Walt
Disney created one of the most successful companies in history.
That is his legacy. All that other stuff about his
body being frozen in perpetuity, that's just a rumor and
one that needs to be put on ice. I hope
(09:44):
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 House
of Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
(10:07):
you can learn all 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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