Mirror

People come up with the oddest things. Sometimes they fade away, while other times they stick around. And that back and forth can be more than a little... curious.

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Episode Transcript

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. Our planet is lush with life of all kinds,
from the smallest single celled organism to the massive blue
whale gliding beneath the waves. Earth is a rich tapestry.
Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the varieties of

(00:49):
cultures across all seven continents. Where the people in one
part of the world might live in a technological paradise
of constant digital connection, there might exist in isolated island
tribe who have never seen electricity before. In the mid
nineteen fifties, though anthropologist Horace Miner had been studying a
strange group of people living in a massive territory below

(01:11):
Lake Superior and above the state of Sarona in Mexico.
He wrote about them in a paper titled Body Ritual
among the Nacarima. The Nacarima prioritized economic pursuits and their
appearance above all else, spending their days performing bizarre body
rituals in front of shrines in their homes. While every
home had at least one shrine, those who had elevated

(01:32):
themselves above poorer tribe members often had two or more.
In fact, the value of one's living quarters hinged on
how many shrines they could fit inside. Minor discovered through
extensive study that every shrine possessed a box of elixirs
and concoctions that the Nacarima would either ingest or smear
across their faces to improve themselves. Such tinctures could only

(01:54):
be procured by medicine men, who would hand over the
elixir along with an incantation, and there were magical potions
for all sorts of purposes too, for a price. Of course,
then Acaima couldn't help but hoard these charms, as they
were called, even once they had served their purpose. The
vessels they were packed in would be stored in the
shrine in case their contents ever needed to be used again.

(02:16):
And right there in the shrine, underneath that collection of
boxes sat a front with water provided from a central source,
the water temple of the community. Then Acaima performed daily
cleansing rituals at this front, including one that was meant
to prevent them from incurring the wrath of the holy
mouth men. The holy mouth Men were feared in the
community as they performed tortuous acts upon the mouth of people,

(02:39):
and they would examine the teeth of the tribes members
and carve holes in the ones that had started rotting.
Once the holes were large enough, they filled them with
a liquid that hardened to protect the teeth from getting worse.
Avoiding the holy mouth men involved a daily ritual performed
by rubbing a magical substance on a bundle of hogs
hairs and moving them around inside their oral gavities. By

(03:00):
doing this each day, they were able to prevent untold
evils from invading their mouths and driving away their friends.
Folks who needed more help than could be provided by
the average medicine man or holy mouth man were required
to pay at the La Tipso. The La Tipso was
a temple where sacred ceremonies were performed. On the very ill.
They would have all their clothes removed by a vestal

(03:22):
maiden who would collect various fluids and excretions from their bodies.
To give to a diviner. The diviner studied the organic
substances and determine what it was that was making the
Nacaraima member sick. The Nacarima were a culture dependent on
magic and ceremonies, all of which were performed in specialized
rooms in their homes, far from the prying eyes of others,

(03:43):
even from the other members of their own tribes. Horace
Miners paper was first seen in American Anthropologist, a journal
published by the American Anthropological Association in nineteen fifty six. Today,
the rituals of the Nacarima are still widely practiced, though
their tools have become more advanced. The bundles of hogs
hairs have been changed to nylon, and the Nakarima people

(04:06):
hoard elixirs with even more magical powers within their shrines.
In fact, this strange tribe isn't too different from you
and I. If you look closely, you might even recognize
some of its members. Just reverse the letters in the
name and you'll see that Horace Minor was simply exploring
the large swath of people living between Canada and Mexico

(04:27):
nineteen fifties. Americans. Evolution is a natural process as creatures
learned to avoid predators. Over time, their species developed defense

(04:49):
mechanisms over the course of tens, hundreds, or even hundreds
of thousands of years. But evolution isn't limited to nature.
Everything changes over time. Computers get smaller and more powerful,
homes are built with stronger materials, and even sports undergo
some alterations. For example, tennis has been played since the

(05:09):
twelfth century, when it was called jud Palem or game
of the Poem. In France. Around the sixteenth century, players
stopped hitting the ball with their hands and started using
rackets instead. As more people in more countries continued to
play it, they also began to change it. A British
army officer named Walter Wingfield spent over a year perfecting

(05:30):
his own version, which he patented and sold as Spheri
Styke or ball playing. Included in the box was a net,
rackets and balls. He tested his new sports on unsuspecting
guests at a friend's garden party, after which Wingfield's creation
took on a life of its own. Spherri Styke found
its way to the United States and all over Europe,

(05:51):
where it adopted a new and easier to pronounce name,
lawn tennis for the simple reason that it wasn't played
on a court but on a grassy lawn and stead
interest in the sport led to the formation of tennis
clubs as well as tournaments in places like New York
City in France. And while some of the first tennis
balls had been made of leather or wool or strips

(06:13):
of cloth, the equipment kept changing with the times. Leather
eventually gave way to rubber, a material used in modern
tennis ball manufacturing. Of course, there was one problem with
tennis back then. No matter what the ball was made
out of, it could only be played outdoors. Wingfield's original
game design had included illustrations of an hour glass shaped court,

(06:33):
which was wider at the ends and more tapered near
the net in the middle. He'd wanted to sport to
appear beautiful from all angles. Unfortunately, those kind of spaces
could only be made outdoors, and winters in Victorian England
got quite cold. Aristocratic elites didn't want to have to
wait until spring to play tennis again, but they didn't
want to freeze either. However, rather than construct a court indoors,

(06:56):
they just changed the game entirely again, you see. Back
in India during the mid eighteen hundreds, British military officers
had found a fun way to pass the time. They
would set up books in a row across the center
of a table, with one officer on each side. In
their hands was a single book, which they used as
a racket to whack a golf ball back and forth

(07:17):
over the literary wall they'd constructed. Borrowing from both the
British military officers and Walter Wingfield's lawn tennis idea, a
new game was invented. It used a net, just like
in tennis, except it was much smaller. The rackets also
got a change. They went from having taught strings in
their empty centers to being solid wood padals. While the

(07:38):
company Jay Jacques and Son sold a boxed version of
the game in England and nineteen o one, Parker Brothers
distributed its own variety in the United States. In fact,
Parker Brothers bought the name of the game from Jay
Jacquin's son not long after it went on sale and
litigated everyone violating its trademark. That same year, two more
major changes to the game happened. The ball was replaced

(08:00):
with a new kind made from celluloid the same material
that was used to make camera film. These new types
of balls were hollow and filled with air, allowing them
to bounce quite high. To aid in their delivery across
the net, stippled rubber was glued to the surfaces of
the wooden rackets or paddles. Within several years, its popularity
spawned organizations where players could connect and compete, followed by

(08:24):
tournaments and championships all over the globe. Today, it has
become an Olympic sport, chock full of special techniques, strategies,
and a glossary of specific terms. What had originally begun
as a way to pass the time in winter in
the nineteenth century gradually turned into a global phenomenon. Officially
it's called table tennis, but Parker Brothers had branded it

(08:46):
with a different name, something it had been called since
its inception, and one we still used to this day.
Ping Pong, 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

(09:07):
dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
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 about it
over at the world of Lore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious. Yeah,