April 2, 2026 • 10 mins
Curiosity is often born in the moments when we view something old and accepted from a new angle.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
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 of Curiosities. In the early eighteen eighties,
(00:37):
a man known as Doc Carver rode his horse across
the open plains of Nebraska, lost in thought. Carver was
a drift He was an expert sharpshooter, and he'd spent
the past few years traveling around the world in touring
exhibitions in vaudeville shows. He had even teamed up with
another famous showman, Buffalo Bill Cody, to start their own
(00:58):
traveling circus, but they had had a bitter falling out,
and now Carver was striking out on his own once again.
He wanted to start his own show, but he was
having trouble finding a hook that people would be drawn to.
He needed a fresh idea, something that no other circus
was doing. As he crossed a bridge over the Platte River,
(01:18):
his mind wandered with possibilities. Then all of a sudden,
he heard a deep groan. The bridge was collapsing. There
was a loud snap, and Carver and his horse both
tumbled down toward the river with a graceful arc. The
horse s dove down and splashed into the water. Carver
clung to its back as it swam toward the banks.
(01:39):
As he climbed onto the grass, Carver hopped down to
check the horse for injuries, and amazingly, they had both
made it out unscathed. As Carver remounted his horse and
navigated it toward the road, an idea began to form
in his mind. Everyone had animals in the circus, but
no one else had animals doing water tricks. Soon enough,
(02:00):
at a fairgrounds in Saint Louis, Missouri, a curious audience
gathered around a tall, wooden ramp that rose at the
edge of a deep tank of water. Dot Carver greeted
the crowd and told them to prepare for something they
had never seen before, a high diving horse. And then
he mounted a sleek mare named Black Bess, patted her back,
(02:21):
and led her up the ramp. Once they had reached
the top, Carver got Black Best into position on a
small wooden platform, waited for the crowd's anticipation to reach
its peak, and then tapped his legs against the horse's sides.
On command, Black Best dove down into the tank of water.
The audience gasped as they fell. They splashed into the
(02:42):
fourteen foot deep pool, and as they bobbed to the
surface and Carver shook the water out of his ears,
he heard the crowd cheering and whooping.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Horse diving was an instant hit. Over the next few years,
droves of curious spectators poured in to see Carver's traveling exhibition.
He gradually exped band of the operation until he had
a total of six horses performing in various cities all
across the country. Carver passed away in nineteen twenty seven,
but the show, as they say, must go on. His son,
(03:12):
Al took over, and just a year later Al married
Sarna Webster, one of the first female horse divers in history,
who had worked for Al's father. Under their guidance, a
permanent horse diving attraction was opened on the boardwalk at
Atlantic City's Steel Pier in nineteen thirty one. However, tragedy
struck when Sonora lost her balance and hit the water
(03:33):
with her eyes wide open. The impact caused her retinas
to detach, causing instant blindness. Despite this, though, she continued
to dive riding horses off the platform and into the
tank without being able to see, just like Daredevil, only cooler.
Sonora retired in nineteen forty five, but the act kept
(03:54):
going strong until the nineteen seventies. That's when the audiences
gradually dwindled, helped along by animal rights groups that had
begun to protest the shows, and so in nineteen seventy eight,
the last diving horse took its final leaps off steel
pier before the exhibit was shuddered for good. In the
decades since, there have been two attempts to revive this
(04:15):
bizarre sport, neither of which got off the ground. No
pun intended, I swear, and in nineteen ninety one, the
story of Sonora's miraculous career was turned into a movie
called Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken. She passed away in
two thousand and three, less than five months shy of
her one hundredth birthday. Horse diving certainly was a curious
(04:36):
bit of entertainment, but just like the vaudeville shows and
sharpshooters of the wild West. It's one that might best
be left a thing of the past. The famous theorem
(05:00):
that's taught in geometry classes everywhere, A squared plus B
squared equals C squared. It's meant to help us find
the hypotenuse of a right angle, and it was named
for the famous Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras. Now it's
easy to picture him as a sage robed scholar lecturing
a class of engaged students about his chosen field. But
(05:23):
if you did that, you'd only be getting a fraction
of the truth. To get a much clearer picture, you
have to also include a few other strange angles. His
belief that souls wandered between humankind and the animals, the
secrecy around his mathematical discoveries, and of course, his absolute
refusal to eat beans. The school of Pythagoras founded gives
(05:47):
us the first clue of his peculiarities. It wasn't merely
a lecture hall. What he created instead was more of
a commune where his students lived and ate together and
took an oath swearing them to absolutely secrecy. To be inducted,
one had to pass through secret rites, and the oath was,
in Pythagoras's mind, protective to keep the world from learning
(06:09):
truths that might destabilize the established order. This suppression of
knowledge was key to a culture of silence that has
kept much of the mathematician's life and works mysterious to
this day. We do know that Pythagoras was obsessed with
numerology and believe that numbers constituted the very core of reality.
(06:29):
He taught as students that the distance between planets and
stars created a type of cosmic music that he alone
could hear. He also taught that a triangular arrangement called
a tatractus could be used to align one's soul with
the greater universal order. He would conduct rituals wherein his
initiates would arrange and rearrange small objects into the tatractus pattern,
(06:53):
which he believed could channel that heavenly order into the
material realm. The philosopher also insisted upon on a strict
dietary regimen, including forbidding that any of his disciples eat beans.
There was a practical reason for this, He said he
believed that lagume caused flatulence could be a distraction to
his teachings. It's hard to focus on sacred geometry when
(07:16):
the lecture hall stinks. But there was a stranger, more
mystical reason for disallowing beans, the belief that within them
dwelled the souls of the dead. And yes, I get it,
it's quite weird. But this view came from his belief
in metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls, and it led
him and his followers into a life of strict vegetarianism.
(07:38):
By avoiding the killing of animals, he hoped not to
harm the souls that were transmitted between beast and man,
and in this way he could extend his beliefs into
a practical, everyday application. Although it's unclear to this day
why beans were also spiritually excluded. There are a host
of other peculiarities about the guy. For instance, tales of
(07:59):
the mathematician won walking around in golden sandals. It kept
his footfalls silent, they say, as well as allowing him
to walk a path of spiritual virtue. There were also
rumors that he could tame wild animals, stop a raging
bull in its tracks, and predict earthquakes by sensing the
deep vibrations of the Earth before they struck, and in
(08:20):
all these rumors, along with the cult like behavior of
his students and the deep secrecy around his teachings, gave
him a mystical air. This mysterious persona was further supported
by his students, who warned of a terrible curse that
would befall any man who dared spread his secret teaching.
You see, the Pythagoreans believe that the universe was a
(08:42):
living tapestry. It was woven out of the souls, numbers,
and harmonies hidden too most of humankind. They guarded this
tapestry fiercely. Their belief that the cosmos sang in precise
ratios made ordinary mathematics a sacred art, while their dietary
bands and mystical rituals turn daily life into a continual
(09:03):
right of devotion. Even the discovery of an irrational number
was treated as a sort of philosophical crisis to hide
from those who could not or would not understand, lest
the spread of that knowledge publicly unravel their entire worldview.
And so as time passed by, the legend of Pythagorasts
grew the beam shunning soul traveling mystic who claimed to
(09:27):
hear the music of the planets became a cultural archetype,
a symbol of the uneasy marriage between rational inquiry and
mystical belief. Modern scholars today, armed with archaeological fragments and
ancient testimonies, continue to untangle fact from fiction, but the
weirder elements persist because they illuminate a world in which
(09:49):
mathematics was not a neutral tool, but a pathway to
the divine. I hope you enjoyed today's guide tour through
the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by me
Aaron Manke in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written
by the Grim and Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk.
(10:11):
Learn more about the show and the people who make
it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also
find a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book,
available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook.
And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider
joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without
(10:31):
the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and
sign up over at Patreon dot com slash grimandmild, and
until next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
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 of Curiosities. In the early eighteen eighties,
(00:37):
a man known as Doc Carver rode his horse across
the open plains of Nebraska, lost in thought. Carver was
a drift He was an expert sharpshooter, and he'd spent
the past few years traveling around the world in touring
exhibitions in vaudeville shows. He had even teamed up with
another famous showman, Buffalo Bill Cody, to start their own
(00:58):
traveling circus, but they had had a bitter falling out,
and now Carver was striking out on his own once again.
He wanted to start his own show, but he was
having trouble finding a hook that people would be drawn to.
He needed a fresh idea, something that no other circus
was doing. As he crossed a bridge over the Platte River,
(01:18):
his mind wandered with possibilities. Then all of a sudden,
he heard a deep groan. The bridge was collapsing. There
was a loud snap, and Carver and his horse both
tumbled down toward the river with a graceful arc. The
horse s dove down and splashed into the water. Carver
clung to its back as it swam toward the banks.
(01:39):
As he climbed onto the grass, Carver hopped down to
check the horse for injuries, and amazingly, they had both
made it out unscathed. As Carver remounted his horse and
navigated it toward the road, an idea began to form
in his mind. Everyone had animals in the circus, but
no one else had animals doing water tricks. Soon enough,
(02:00):
at a fairgrounds in Saint Louis, Missouri, a curious audience
gathered around a tall, wooden ramp that rose at the
edge of a deep tank of water. Dot Carver greeted
the crowd and told them to prepare for something they
had never seen before, a high diving horse. And then
he mounted a sleek mare named Black Bess, patted her back,
(02:21):
and led her up the ramp. Once they had reached
the top, Carver got Black Best into position on a
small wooden platform, waited for the crowd's anticipation to reach
its peak, and then tapped his legs against the horse's sides.
On command, Black Best dove down into the tank of water.
The audience gasped as they fell. They splashed into the
(02:42):
fourteen foot deep pool, and as they bobbed to the
surface and Carver shook the water out of his ears,
he heard the crowd cheering and whooping.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Horse diving was an instant hit. Over the next few years,
droves of curious spectators poured in to see Carver's traveling exhibition.
He gradually exped band of the operation until he had
a total of six horses performing in various cities all
across the country. Carver passed away in nineteen twenty seven,
but the show, as they say, must go on. His son,
(03:12):
Al took over, and just a year later Al married
Sarna Webster, one of the first female horse divers in history,
who had worked for Al's father. Under their guidance, a
permanent horse diving attraction was opened on the boardwalk at
Atlantic City's Steel Pier in nineteen thirty one. However, tragedy
struck when Sonora lost her balance and hit the water
(03:33):
with her eyes wide open. The impact caused her retinas
to detach, causing instant blindness. Despite this, though, she continued
to dive riding horses off the platform and into the
tank without being able to see, just like Daredevil, only cooler.
Sonora retired in nineteen forty five, but the act kept
(03:54):
going strong until the nineteen seventies. That's when the audiences
gradually dwindled, helped along by animal rights groups that had
begun to protest the shows, and so in nineteen seventy eight,
the last diving horse took its final leaps off steel
pier before the exhibit was shuddered for good. In the
decades since, there have been two attempts to revive this
(04:15):
bizarre sport, neither of which got off the ground. No
pun intended, I swear, and in nineteen ninety one, the
story of Sonora's miraculous career was turned into a movie
called Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken. She passed away in
two thousand and three, less than five months shy of
her one hundredth birthday. Horse diving certainly was a curious
(04:36):
bit of entertainment, but just like the vaudeville shows and
sharpshooters of the wild West. It's one that might best
be left a thing of the past. The famous theorem
(05:00):
that's taught in geometry classes everywhere, A squared plus B
squared equals C squared. It's meant to help us find
the hypotenuse of a right angle, and it was named
for the famous Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras. Now it's
easy to picture him as a sage robed scholar lecturing
a class of engaged students about his chosen field. But
(05:23):
if you did that, you'd only be getting a fraction
of the truth. To get a much clearer picture, you
have to also include a few other strange angles. His
belief that souls wandered between humankind and the animals, the
secrecy around his mathematical discoveries, and of course, his absolute
refusal to eat beans. The school of Pythagoras founded gives
(05:47):
us the first clue of his peculiarities. It wasn't merely
a lecture hall. What he created instead was more of
a commune where his students lived and ate together and
took an oath swearing them to absolutely secrecy. To be inducted,
one had to pass through secret rites, and the oath was,
in Pythagoras's mind, protective to keep the world from learning
(06:09):
truths that might destabilize the established order. This suppression of
knowledge was key to a culture of silence that has
kept much of the mathematician's life and works mysterious to
this day. We do know that Pythagoras was obsessed with
numerology and believe that numbers constituted the very core of reality.
(06:29):
He taught as students that the distance between planets and
stars created a type of cosmic music that he alone
could hear. He also taught that a triangular arrangement called
a tatractus could be used to align one's soul with
the greater universal order. He would conduct rituals wherein his
initiates would arrange and rearrange small objects into the tatractus pattern,
(06:53):
which he believed could channel that heavenly order into the
material realm. The philosopher also insisted upon on a strict
dietary regimen, including forbidding that any of his disciples eat beans.
There was a practical reason for this, He said he
believed that lagume caused flatulence could be a distraction to
his teachings. It's hard to focus on sacred geometry when
(07:16):
the lecture hall stinks. But there was a stranger, more
mystical reason for disallowing beans, the belief that within them
dwelled the souls of the dead. And yes, I get it,
it's quite weird. But this view came from his belief
in metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls, and it led
him and his followers into a life of strict vegetarianism.
(07:38):
By avoiding the killing of animals, he hoped not to
harm the souls that were transmitted between beast and man,
and in this way he could extend his beliefs into
a practical, everyday application. Although it's unclear to this day
why beans were also spiritually excluded. There are a host
of other peculiarities about the guy. For instance, tales of
(07:59):
the mathematician won walking around in golden sandals. It kept
his footfalls silent, they say, as well as allowing him
to walk a path of spiritual virtue. There were also
rumors that he could tame wild animals, stop a raging
bull in its tracks, and predict earthquakes by sensing the
deep vibrations of the Earth before they struck, and in
(08:20):
all these rumors, along with the cult like behavior of
his students and the deep secrecy around his teachings, gave
him a mystical air. This mysterious persona was further supported
by his students, who warned of a terrible curse that
would befall any man who dared spread his secret teaching.
You see, the Pythagoreans believe that the universe was a
(08:42):
living tapestry. It was woven out of the souls, numbers,
and harmonies hidden too most of humankind. They guarded this
tapestry fiercely. Their belief that the cosmos sang in precise
ratios made ordinary mathematics a sacred art, while their dietary
bands and mystical rituals turn daily life into a continual
(09:03):
right of devotion. Even the discovery of an irrational number
was treated as a sort of philosophical crisis to hide
from those who could not or would not understand, lest
the spread of that knowledge publicly unravel their entire worldview.
And so as time passed by, the legend of Pythagorasts
grew the beam shunning soul traveling mystic who claimed to
(09:27):
hear the music of the planets became a cultural archetype,
a symbol of the uneasy marriage between rational inquiry and
mystical belief. Modern scholars today, armed with archaeological fragments and
ancient testimonies, continue to untangle fact from fiction, but the
weirder elements persist because they illuminate a world in which
(09:49):
mathematics was not a neutral tool, but a pathway to
the divine. I hope you enjoyed today's guide tour through
the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by me
Aaron Manke in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written
by the Grim and Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk.
(10:11):
Learn more about the show and the people who make
it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also
find a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book,
available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook.
And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider
joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without
(10:31):
the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and
sign up over at Patreon dot com slash grimandmild, and
until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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