October 23, 2025 • 10 mins
Showing up for the big event can be exciting, but there have been moments in history when other emotions have won the day.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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 nineteen eighty two,
(00:37):
Martha Stewart published her debut book called Entertaining, a breathed
new life into the idea of cocktail hours and themed
dinner parties. Martha gave instructions on how to throw elaborate
celebrations with friends. She thought of everything too, from the
menu to the decor. The book quickly became a bestseller.
Forty three years later, it sold over a million copies,
(00:59):
and people still loved the recipes and tricks hidden within
its pages. It just goes to show that hosting is
an art. Stephen understood that when he.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Decided to throw a reception at the college where he worked,
everything had to be perfect because his guests were traveling
a long way to attend. But with careful preparation and
attention to detail, he was able to throw a party
for the ages in fact, it's still talked about today,
and if all went according to plan, it would be
remembered for centuries to come. On June twenty eighth of
(01:29):
two thousand and nine, an event planner hurried around a
reception hall at the University of Cambridge. She wanted everything
to be perfect for that day's reception, especially considering who
was hosting the party. She covered the tables with crisp
Linen's so that the caterers could arrange the appetizers. She
blew up balloons to decorate the hall, and placed champagne
(01:50):
glasses on the nearest table by the door, and then
a finishing touch, a cherry bouquet of flowers at the
center of the food table. The room looked perfect. At
twelve pm, on the nose, the party's host came into
the room, Professor Stephen Hawking, the world famous theoretical physicist
and cosmologist. He was a professor of mathematics at Cambridge
(02:11):
and the director of Research at the Center for Theoretical Cosmology,
so any party he threw was bound to be well attended.
And yet the minutes crept by and the reception hall
stayed empty. Not one person pop by to say hello.
The staff there exchanged looks. Stephen Hawking was a renowned
scientist and one of the most respected minds in his field.
(02:33):
When he threw a party, people showed up. It had
been a long road to get there. Hawking began his
study of physics at the age of seventeen at University
College Oxford. He then went on to earn a PhD
in applied mathematics and theoretical physics from Cambridge. But a
year into his PhD program, when Hawking was just twenty
one years old, he was diagnosed with a rare, slow
(02:54):
moving form of motor neuron disease. It would slowly paralyze
him over the course of his life. Soon enough, he
was bound to a wheelchair, and then he lost his
ability to speak and relied on a speech generating computer
to be his voice. But while Hawking was physically limited,
his mind traversed the cosmos. As a scientist, he made
a number of breakthroughs and furthered our understanding of the
(03:17):
laws that govern our universe. He wanted a wider audience
to understand his findings, so he wrote books that managed
to simplify complex scientific ideas so that non scientists like
us could better understand time and space. His most popular book,
A Brief History of Time, was on the New York
Times bestsellers list for an astounding two hundred and thirty
(03:38):
seven weeks. All of which is to say he was
not the kind of person to throw a dud of
a party. But Haking didn't seem upset. In fact, a
small smile crept across his face. He moved around the
room passing time, and finally, after a few hours, he
thanked the staff for their work and told them the
party had been a great success. The event planner was
(03:58):
obviously confused, but told the staff to go ahead and
clean up. The next morning, on June twenty ninth, Stephen
Hawking told his assistant that he had an errand to run.
He gestured to a stack of invitations on his desk
and said that they needed to be mailed out immediately.
They were invitations for the previous night's party. The assistant
raised an eyebrow, after all, people usually send out invitations
(04:21):
a few weeks before a party, not to the day
after when nobody could show up. But when she read
one of the invitations on Hawking's desk, she suddenly understood
and burst out laughing. The invitations read you are cordially
invited to a reception for time Travelers twelve pm, June
twenty eighth, two thousand and nine. No RSVP required. Stephen
(04:45):
Hawking had thrown a party for time travelers, but waited
to mail out the invitations until the next day. Hawking
wanted to prove whether or not time travel was possible.
He was confident that at least one copy of his
invitation would survive for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Surely someone from the future would travel back in time
(05:05):
and join him for a glass of bubbly. But nobody
showed up, which meant that time travel is either impossible
or is never achieved by humans. Of course, there's always
a chance that his party invitations got lost, or that
time traveler simply had no interest in attending his party.
So in twenty eighteen, when Stephen Hawking passed away, his
(05:26):
estate made one last attempt to prove time travel might
be real. They allowed anyone with a birthday through December
thirty first, twenty thirty eight to register for tickets to
his public funeral. That way, if someone from the future
wanted to come, they'd be able to register online. What
(05:56):
is entertainment worth to the average person? This question existed
ever since the first person paid for a poem or
commissioned a bard to write a song. It's deeply personal
and inextricably linked to our priorities as people living in
the world. When we buy a concert or movie ticket,
how do we know that we're getting our money's worth?
And the further back in history we go, the higher
(06:18):
stakes this question becomes, especially since there were far fewer
avenues for entertainment.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Well.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
This issue came to a head in eighteen oh nine
in London. Live theater was extremely popular than the previous year.
The theaters at Covent Garden and Drury Lane burned down.
Covid Garden rebuilt and planned to reopen its doors to
the British public, who was eager to get back to
the theater. However, there was a sticking point. To recoup
the costs of theater repair, Covid Garden theater management increased
(06:47):
their ticket prices, so box seats now cost seven shillings
rather than six. Seats in the pits were raised from
three shillings to four, and worst of all, the third
tier of seating was no longer available for individual shows,
but rented yearly to the tune of three hundred pounds,
prohibitively expensive for the average member of the British public,
(07:07):
and the theater management knew that people wouldn't be happy
in their play bills. They explained the reasoning for the
ticket prices. The reconstruction had cost one hundred and fifty
thousand pounds and they were dealing with rent prices that
had shot up since the fire. Opening nights was Monday,
September eighteenth of eighteen oh nine. The theatre's manager, John Kembell,
(07:27):
was scheduled to go up before the show for a
brief address about the refurbished auditorium. He was also an
actor who was to play the lead role of the
play that night. When he stepped out on stage, he
was greeted with polite applause from the wealthy patrons in
the boxes, and then hissing and jeers overtook the applause.
The voices predominantly came from the pit the floor of
(07:48):
the theater, and they continued to loudly protest throughout the performance.
Policemen were called in to try and calm them down,
but it only made matters worse. For show after show,
people filled the pit with the intention of disrupting the
action on stage. Some banged pots and pans, others shouted
loudly or sang songs. A public relations war broke out
(08:10):
between the theater management and the supporters of the riots.
Posters went up defending the new prices, and the riots
continued no matter how many times they were hauled away
and jailed. The series of disruptions became known as the
Old Price Riots, with participants referring to themselves as ops.
Their disruptions were aggressive, loudly criticizing the theater for greed,
(08:31):
but very little of the theater itself was damaged in
the chaos. The disruption, however, was too much for the
managers to handle. In December, John Kemball had the theater
closed while the managing directors looked over the books to
make a decision. They settled on returning to the original
pricing for the remainder of the season. Kemball issued a
public apology and was greeted by a sign in the
(08:53):
pits reading simply we are satisfied. Hoping that it would
be soon forgotten, Kemball attempted to bring back the idea
of private boxes at the start of the following season,
when the rioters returned in force, the idea was quickly scrapped.
At the center of the old price riots was class.
Live theater, which today is extremely expensive, was an entertainment
(09:16):
accessible by all, and attempting to cut working class Londoners
out of the experience was seen as offensive. Works by
playwrights like Shakespeare shouldn't be restricted to the ruling class.
It was a hard learned lesson for the season thespian
and businessmen like Kemball, but he took it to heart.
Although the riots caused little property damage, injuries had been
(09:38):
common throughout the months of protest. It is sad to
say that in the chaos twenty people died, although historical
accounts are fuzzy on how these deaths occurred and who
these twenty people had been. But what it shows to
us now is that affordable theater was important to them,
It was worth fighting for. And the play that opened
that fateful season at Covent Garden naturally it was a
(09:59):
popu one that would bring in the crowds, and it
was also the most famous cursed play ever written. William
Shakespeare's Macbeth. 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
(10:21):
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 about it
over at the Worldoflore dot com. 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 nineteen eighty two,
(00:37):
Martha Stewart published her debut book called Entertaining, a breathed
new life into the idea of cocktail hours and themed
dinner parties. Martha gave instructions on how to throw elaborate
celebrations with friends. She thought of everything too, from the
menu to the decor. The book quickly became a bestseller.
Forty three years later, it sold over a million copies,
(00:59):
and people still loved the recipes and tricks hidden within
its pages. It just goes to show that hosting is
an art. Stephen understood that when he.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Decided to throw a reception at the college where he worked,
everything had to be perfect because his guests were traveling
a long way to attend. But with careful preparation and
attention to detail, he was able to throw a party
for the ages in fact, it's still talked about today,
and if all went according to plan, it would be
remembered for centuries to come. On June twenty eighth of
(01:29):
two thousand and nine, an event planner hurried around a
reception hall at the University of Cambridge. She wanted everything
to be perfect for that day's reception, especially considering who
was hosting the party. She covered the tables with crisp
Linen's so that the caterers could arrange the appetizers. She
blew up balloons to decorate the hall, and placed champagne
(01:50):
glasses on the nearest table by the door, and then
a finishing touch, a cherry bouquet of flowers at the
center of the food table. The room looked perfect. At
twelve pm, on the nose, the party's host came into
the room, Professor Stephen Hawking, the world famous theoretical physicist
and cosmologist. He was a professor of mathematics at Cambridge
(02:11):
and the director of Research at the Center for Theoretical Cosmology,
so any party he threw was bound to be well attended.
And yet the minutes crept by and the reception hall
stayed empty. Not one person pop by to say hello.
The staff there exchanged looks. Stephen Hawking was a renowned
scientist and one of the most respected minds in his field.
(02:33):
When he threw a party, people showed up. It had
been a long road to get there. Hawking began his
study of physics at the age of seventeen at University
College Oxford. He then went on to earn a PhD
in applied mathematics and theoretical physics from Cambridge. But a
year into his PhD program, when Hawking was just twenty
one years old, he was diagnosed with a rare, slow
(02:54):
moving form of motor neuron disease. It would slowly paralyze
him over the course of his life. Soon enough, he
was bound to a wheelchair, and then he lost his
ability to speak and relied on a speech generating computer
to be his voice. But while Hawking was physically limited,
his mind traversed the cosmos. As a scientist, he made
a number of breakthroughs and furthered our understanding of the
(03:17):
laws that govern our universe. He wanted a wider audience
to understand his findings, so he wrote books that managed
to simplify complex scientific ideas so that non scientists like
us could better understand time and space. His most popular book,
A Brief History of Time, was on the New York
Times bestsellers list for an astounding two hundred and thirty
(03:38):
seven weeks. All of which is to say he was
not the kind of person to throw a dud of
a party. But Haking didn't seem upset. In fact, a
small smile crept across his face. He moved around the
room passing time, and finally, after a few hours, he
thanked the staff for their work and told them the
party had been a great success. The event planner was
(03:58):
obviously confused, but told the staff to go ahead and
clean up. The next morning, on June twenty ninth, Stephen
Hawking told his assistant that he had an errand to run.
He gestured to a stack of invitations on his desk
and said that they needed to be mailed out immediately.
They were invitations for the previous night's party. The assistant
raised an eyebrow, after all, people usually send out invitations
(04:21):
a few weeks before a party, not to the day
after when nobody could show up. But when she read
one of the invitations on Hawking's desk, she suddenly understood
and burst out laughing. The invitations read you are cordially
invited to a reception for time Travelers twelve pm, June
twenty eighth, two thousand and nine. No RSVP required. Stephen
(04:45):
Hawking had thrown a party for time travelers, but waited
to mail out the invitations until the next day. Hawking
wanted to prove whether or not time travel was possible.
He was confident that at least one copy of his
invitation would survive for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Surely someone from the future would travel back in time
(05:05):
and join him for a glass of bubbly. But nobody
showed up, which meant that time travel is either impossible
or is never achieved by humans. Of course, there's always
a chance that his party invitations got lost, or that
time traveler simply had no interest in attending his party.
So in twenty eighteen, when Stephen Hawking passed away, his
(05:26):
estate made one last attempt to prove time travel might
be real. They allowed anyone with a birthday through December
thirty first, twenty thirty eight to register for tickets to
his public funeral. That way, if someone from the future
wanted to come, they'd be able to register online. What
(05:56):
is entertainment worth to the average person? This question existed
ever since the first person paid for a poem or
commissioned a bard to write a song. It's deeply personal
and inextricably linked to our priorities as people living in
the world. When we buy a concert or movie ticket,
how do we know that we're getting our money's worth?
And the further back in history we go, the higher
(06:18):
stakes this question becomes, especially since there were far fewer
avenues for entertainment.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Well.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
This issue came to a head in eighteen oh nine
in London. Live theater was extremely popular than the previous year.
The theaters at Covent Garden and Drury Lane burned down.
Covid Garden rebuilt and planned to reopen its doors to
the British public, who was eager to get back to
the theater. However, there was a sticking point. To recoup
the costs of theater repair, Covid Garden theater management increased
(06:47):
their ticket prices, so box seats now cost seven shillings
rather than six. Seats in the pits were raised from
three shillings to four, and worst of all, the third
tier of seating was no longer available for individual shows,
but rented yearly to the tune of three hundred pounds,
prohibitively expensive for the average member of the British public,
(07:07):
and the theater management knew that people wouldn't be happy
in their play bills. They explained the reasoning for the
ticket prices. The reconstruction had cost one hundred and fifty
thousand pounds and they were dealing with rent prices that
had shot up since the fire. Opening nights was Monday,
September eighteenth of eighteen oh nine. The theatre's manager, John Kembell,
(07:27):
was scheduled to go up before the show for a
brief address about the refurbished auditorium. He was also an
actor who was to play the lead role of the
play that night. When he stepped out on stage, he
was greeted with polite applause from the wealthy patrons in
the boxes, and then hissing and jeers overtook the applause.
The voices predominantly came from the pit the floor of
(07:48):
the theater, and they continued to loudly protest throughout the performance.
Policemen were called in to try and calm them down,
but it only made matters worse. For show after show,
people filled the pit with the intention of disrupting the
action on stage. Some banged pots and pans, others shouted
loudly or sang songs. A public relations war broke out
(08:10):
between the theater management and the supporters of the riots.
Posters went up defending the new prices, and the riots
continued no matter how many times they were hauled away
and jailed. The series of disruptions became known as the
Old Price Riots, with participants referring to themselves as ops.
Their disruptions were aggressive, loudly criticizing the theater for greed,
(08:31):
but very little of the theater itself was damaged in
the chaos. The disruption, however, was too much for the
managers to handle. In December, John Kemball had the theater
closed while the managing directors looked over the books to
make a decision. They settled on returning to the original
pricing for the remainder of the season. Kemball issued a
public apology and was greeted by a sign in the
(08:53):
pits reading simply we are satisfied. Hoping that it would
be soon forgotten, Kemball attempted to bring back the idea
of private boxes at the start of the following season,
when the rioters returned in force, the idea was quickly scrapped.
At the center of the old price riots was class.
Live theater, which today is extremely expensive, was an entertainment
(09:16):
accessible by all, and attempting to cut working class Londoners
out of the experience was seen as offensive. Works by
playwrights like Shakespeare shouldn't be restricted to the ruling class.
It was a hard learned lesson for the season thespian
and businessmen like Kemball, but he took it to heart.
Although the riots caused little property damage, injuries had been
(09:38):
common throughout the months of protest. It is sad to
say that in the chaos twenty people died, although historical
accounts are fuzzy on how these deaths occurred and who
these twenty people had been. But what it shows to
us now is that affordable theater was important to them,
It was worth fighting for. And the play that opened
that fateful season at Covent Garden naturally it was a
(09:59):
popu one that would bring in the crowds, and it
was also the most famous cursed play ever written. William
Shakespeare's Macbeth. 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
(10:21):
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 about it
over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time,
stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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