June 5, 2025 • 10 mins
Let's meet two curious characters who took unique approaches to the world around them to become famous.
Order the official Cabinet of Curiosities book by clicking here today, and get ready to enjoy some curious reading!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
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. 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.
(00:36):
Boxing has always attracted big and strange personalities who use
the sport as performance art, becoming what we might call
professional trolls. Comedian Andy Kaufman used to challenge random women
to box with him in the ring before pro wrestler
Jerry Lawler put him in a neck brace. But all
these modern performance artist boxers were preceded by an even
(00:56):
stranger character, one who may have just been the first
professional boxing troll. Born in eighteen eighty seven, Arthur Craven
liked to introduce himself as and this is the quote,
the world's shortest haired poet, boxer, hotel rat, muleteer, snake Charmer, chauffeur,
illuriphile gold prospector, grandson of the Queen's Chancellor, nephew of
(01:20):
Oscar Wilde. Yeah, put that one on a tombstone. Oh
and If you're wondering what an alluriphile is, it's someone
who loves cats. Arthur grew up in Switzerland, but always
found life there to be a little too constricting. He
traveled around Europe and became a boxer. He was always
a big man and so the sport suited him, but
even trading blows in the ring wasn't exciting enough for him.
(01:42):
He liked to add a bit of theater to his
matches by giving speeches on art, trash talking the other boxers,
threatening suicide, firing a gun into the air, and throwing
his briefcase at the audience. In other words, he liked
to troll the crowd. It's like he only ever felt
alive if everyone in the room hated him. He took
this to a new extreme once he arrived in Spain,
(02:04):
where he arranged a match with world champion boxer Jack Johnson.
Some claim the match was rigged from the start to
earn both boxers a bunch of money, and others claimed
that Arthur was just out of his depth. Either way,
the match ultimately resulted in Arthur being knocked out in
the sixth round. This caused such an uproar that the
crowd rioted and Arthur had to escape out the side
(02:25):
of the venue. He fled to New York, where he
seemed to step away from boxing, instead focusing on his
performance art. He continued to troll, writing articles and making
speeches where he insulted just about every other artist he
could think of, whether they were a poet, painter, actor,
or otherwise. He was even arrested once for exposing himself
(02:46):
on stage again anything to get a rise out of people.
But as much as Arthur seemed to like to antagonize
his fellow human beings, he did have a soft spot
for the poet Mina Loy. She too had left Europe
after being dissatisfied with life there, and although she didn't
like Arthur when they first met, she soon fell for him.
He had a passion for life and a fearlessness that
(03:09):
endeared him to her. They decided to move to Mexico
in late nineteen seventeen. As Arthur was always worried that
one Allied country or another would try to draft him
into the Great War, the boxer poet troll seemed to
finally calm down, content to teach boxing lessons and pass
his days with Mina. They got married and soon she
became pregnant with a daughter. But life in Mexico was hard,
(03:33):
and the couple struggled to make ends meet. They heard
that they could live more affordably in Buenos Aires, but
they could only afford to buy passage there for Mina.
So that's what they did, and in late nineteen eighteen,
Arthur decided to go there ahead of her by traveling
with a friend in an old row boat. It's maybe
not the best plan to try to sail the length
(03:53):
of South America in such a small vessel, and maybe
this was yet another one of Arthur's strange performance art stuff.
It turned out to be his last two because after
Mina wave goodbye to him on the dock, she never
saw him again. Now, conventional wisdom would say that he
drowned right, although there have been theories over the years
that he was merely escaping responsibility and started a new
(04:15):
life elsewhere. If Mina believe this, she didn't hold it
against him, though. Even after his disappearance, she claimed that
her happiest years were the ones she spent with him.
She gave birth to their daughter the following year. In
nineteen nineteen, Arthur left behind a curious legacy of trolling
audiences with a body of work that mostly consisted of
(04:35):
insulting diatribes against other artists, and as despicable as he
could be at times, he set a bold example of
living life to the fullest and refusing to bow to
the expectations of others. He had no fear and endless curiosity.
(05:04):
For some of us, it's easy to lose focus. We
use coping mechanisms to fight distractions, like keeping a strict
work schedule, meditating, finding a quiet place to concentrate, or
even locking our phones. But what do you do when
it feels like nothing you try helps. Sometimes you have
to go to extremes, like how in the nineteenth century
(05:24):
one man used an unorthodox method to lay his procrastination
habit bare. Victor had a problem, you see. To put
it simply, he was just too popular. Born in eighteen
oh two to an upper class family, he had shown
a special talent for words. At an early age, he
became obsessed with romantic writers, devouring works about passion, beauty,
(05:47):
and heroes with rich emotional lives. By eighteen seventeen, he'd
written a poem for a French academy competition, which was
so mature the judges refused to believe a fifteen year
old could have written it. By eighteen thirty one, twenty
nine year old Victor's career was rising to new heights.
He'd been working for the past few years as a
novelist and a playwright, and was even starting to get
(06:09):
some acclaim for it. In fact, the collection of poems
that he published at the age of twenty was so
well received the French king granted him a royal pension.
With royal recognition came royal innovations, and soon Victor found
himself at the center of Paris high society. Every night
was a party, or a ball, or a night at
the opera. The evenings with no invitations, Victor amused himself
(06:32):
by hosting nearly thirty guests for dinner, and most nights
Victor would stay out late, roaming the streets of Paris,
visiting bars and brothels. But as his social life soared,
his writing suffered. The life of a writer has to be,
in some respects a solitary one to crack poems or
pen novels any long stretches of uninterrupted time alone. As
(06:54):
long as Victor was the life of the party, it
would be the death of his career. So one day
in eighteen teen thirty one, with a deadline for his
latest novel, Looming, Victor took a new approach. He knew
if he had the free will to leave his house
and party, he would never stay home long enough to
finish the book. So he made it so that he
could never leave. First, he purchased a large gray shawl. Next,
(07:16):
he summoned a servant to his chambers and had them
gather up all of his clothes, And then he had
the servant take the clothes, lock them away, and hide
the key from him. Now, when invitations to the palace
or the opera came, Victor had to refuse. He literally
had nothing to wear. He couldn't even leave to go
to the bar lest he be arrested for public indecency.
(07:38):
For months, Victor worked like this, wrapped in nothing but
the gray shawl. And perhaps it was the influence of
that shawl that led Victor to start thinking about social inequality.
He'd grown up rich and never gone cold or hungry,
but every day in Paris people were forced to get
by on not much more than his gray shawl, And
as the months passed by with no clothes, a story
(08:00):
took shape in Victor's mind, one about people at both
ends of society, about a powerful archdeacon, a poor roma girl,
and a physically disabled man hidden away from the rest
of the world in a Gothic tower. In eighteen thirty one,
French literary hero Victor Hugo emerged from his close free
cell with the manuscript for The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
(08:22):
written almost entirely in the buff Throughout the rest of
his career, Victor Hugo had a huge impact on French culture.
He published more novels and got involved in politics, becoming
a champion of social reforms like free education, universal suffrage,
and an end to the death penalty. After speaking out
against Emperor Napoleon the Third's seizure of the French government,
(08:44):
he went into exile for fifteen years on the Channel
island of Guernsey, and it was during this time, over
a period of nearly seventeen years, that Victor wrote his masterpiece,
Les Miserab, a sweeping epic novel. The story follows rich
and poor French people in a time of great social upheaval.
At the center is Jean Valjean, an ex convict who
(09:06):
becomes a good man even as his past in the
form of Inspector Javert, catches up to him. As far
as we know, Victor Hugo never gave up his habit
of writing sant's clothing, so it's more than likely that
he spent a good chunk of those seventeen years wrapped
up in his handy shawl. They say great work requires
stripping away the distractions, and it seems in the case
(09:28):
of Victor Hugo, he took that quite literally. 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 dot com. The show
was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
(09:50):
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. 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.
(00:36):
Boxing has always attracted big and strange personalities who use
the sport as performance art, becoming what we might call
professional trolls. Comedian Andy Kaufman used to challenge random women
to box with him in the ring before pro wrestler
Jerry Lawler put him in a neck brace. But all
these modern performance artist boxers were preceded by an even
(00:56):
stranger character, one who may have just been the first
professional boxing troll. Born in eighteen eighty seven, Arthur Craven
liked to introduce himself as and this is the quote,
the world's shortest haired poet, boxer, hotel rat, muleteer, snake Charmer, chauffeur,
illuriphile gold prospector, grandson of the Queen's Chancellor, nephew of
(01:20):
Oscar Wilde. Yeah, put that one on a tombstone. Oh
and If you're wondering what an alluriphile is, it's someone
who loves cats. Arthur grew up in Switzerland, but always
found life there to be a little too constricting. He
traveled around Europe and became a boxer. He was always
a big man and so the sport suited him, but
even trading blows in the ring wasn't exciting enough for him.
(01:42):
He liked to add a bit of theater to his
matches by giving speeches on art, trash talking the other boxers,
threatening suicide, firing a gun into the air, and throwing
his briefcase at the audience. In other words, he liked
to troll the crowd. It's like he only ever felt
alive if everyone in the room hated him. He took
this to a new extreme once he arrived in Spain,
(02:04):
where he arranged a match with world champion boxer Jack Johnson.
Some claim the match was rigged from the start to
earn both boxers a bunch of money, and others claimed
that Arthur was just out of his depth. Either way,
the match ultimately resulted in Arthur being knocked out in
the sixth round. This caused such an uproar that the
crowd rioted and Arthur had to escape out the side
(02:25):
of the venue. He fled to New York, where he
seemed to step away from boxing, instead focusing on his
performance art. He continued to troll, writing articles and making
speeches where he insulted just about every other artist he
could think of, whether they were a poet, painter, actor,
or otherwise. He was even arrested once for exposing himself
(02:46):
on stage again anything to get a rise out of people.
But as much as Arthur seemed to like to antagonize
his fellow human beings, he did have a soft spot
for the poet Mina Loy. She too had left Europe
after being dissatisfied with life there, and although she didn't
like Arthur when they first met, she soon fell for him.
He had a passion for life and a fearlessness that
(03:09):
endeared him to her. They decided to move to Mexico
in late nineteen seventeen. As Arthur was always worried that
one Allied country or another would try to draft him
into the Great War, the boxer poet troll seemed to
finally calm down, content to teach boxing lessons and pass
his days with Mina. They got married and soon she
became pregnant with a daughter. But life in Mexico was hard,
(03:33):
and the couple struggled to make ends meet. They heard
that they could live more affordably in Buenos Aires, but
they could only afford to buy passage there for Mina.
So that's what they did, and in late nineteen eighteen,
Arthur decided to go there ahead of her by traveling
with a friend in an old row boat. It's maybe
not the best plan to try to sail the length
(03:53):
of South America in such a small vessel, and maybe
this was yet another one of Arthur's strange performance art stuff.
It turned out to be his last two because after
Mina wave goodbye to him on the dock, she never
saw him again. Now, conventional wisdom would say that he
drowned right, although there have been theories over the years
that he was merely escaping responsibility and started a new
(04:15):
life elsewhere. If Mina believe this, she didn't hold it
against him, though. Even after his disappearance, she claimed that
her happiest years were the ones she spent with him.
She gave birth to their daughter the following year. In
nineteen nineteen, Arthur left behind a curious legacy of trolling
audiences with a body of work that mostly consisted of
(04:35):
insulting diatribes against other artists, and as despicable as he
could be at times, he set a bold example of
living life to the fullest and refusing to bow to
the expectations of others. He had no fear and endless curiosity.
(05:04):
For some of us, it's easy to lose focus. We
use coping mechanisms to fight distractions, like keeping a strict
work schedule, meditating, finding a quiet place to concentrate, or
even locking our phones. But what do you do when
it feels like nothing you try helps. Sometimes you have
to go to extremes, like how in the nineteenth century
(05:24):
one man used an unorthodox method to lay his procrastination
habit bare. Victor had a problem, you see. To put
it simply, he was just too popular. Born in eighteen
oh two to an upper class family, he had shown
a special talent for words. At an early age, he
became obsessed with romantic writers, devouring works about passion, beauty,
(05:47):
and heroes with rich emotional lives. By eighteen seventeen, he'd
written a poem for a French academy competition, which was
so mature the judges refused to believe a fifteen year
old could have written it. By eighteen thirty one, twenty
nine year old Victor's career was rising to new heights.
He'd been working for the past few years as a
novelist and a playwright, and was even starting to get
(06:09):
some acclaim for it. In fact, the collection of poems
that he published at the age of twenty was so
well received the French king granted him a royal pension.
With royal recognition came royal innovations, and soon Victor found
himself at the center of Paris high society. Every night
was a party, or a ball, or a night at
the opera. The evenings with no invitations, Victor amused himself
(06:32):
by hosting nearly thirty guests for dinner, and most nights
Victor would stay out late, roaming the streets of Paris,
visiting bars and brothels. But as his social life soared,
his writing suffered. The life of a writer has to be,
in some respects a solitary one to crack poems or
pen novels any long stretches of uninterrupted time alone. As
(06:54):
long as Victor was the life of the party, it
would be the death of his career. So one day
in eighteen teen thirty one, with a deadline for his
latest novel, Looming, Victor took a new approach. He knew
if he had the free will to leave his house
and party, he would never stay home long enough to
finish the book. So he made it so that he
could never leave. First, he purchased a large gray shawl. Next,
(07:16):
he summoned a servant to his chambers and had them
gather up all of his clothes, And then he had
the servant take the clothes, lock them away, and hide
the key from him. Now, when invitations to the palace
or the opera came, Victor had to refuse. He literally
had nothing to wear. He couldn't even leave to go
to the bar lest he be arrested for public indecency.
(07:38):
For months, Victor worked like this, wrapped in nothing but
the gray shawl. And perhaps it was the influence of
that shawl that led Victor to start thinking about social inequality.
He'd grown up rich and never gone cold or hungry,
but every day in Paris people were forced to get
by on not much more than his gray shawl, And
as the months passed by with no clothes, a story
(08:00):
took shape in Victor's mind, one about people at both
ends of society, about a powerful archdeacon, a poor roma girl,
and a physically disabled man hidden away from the rest
of the world in a Gothic tower. In eighteen thirty one,
French literary hero Victor Hugo emerged from his close free
cell with the manuscript for The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
(08:22):
written almost entirely in the buff Throughout the rest of
his career, Victor Hugo had a huge impact on French culture.
He published more novels and got involved in politics, becoming
a champion of social reforms like free education, universal suffrage,
and an end to the death penalty. After speaking out
against Emperor Napoleon the Third's seizure of the French government,
(08:44):
he went into exile for fifteen years on the Channel
island of Guernsey, and it was during this time, over
a period of nearly seventeen years, that Victor wrote his masterpiece,
Les Miserab, a sweeping epic novel. The story follows rich
and poor French people in a time of great social upheaval.
At the center is Jean Valjean, an ex convict who
(09:06):
becomes a good man even as his past in the
form of Inspector Javert, catches up to him. As far
as we know, Victor Hugo never gave up his habit
of writing sant's clothing, so it's more than likely that
he spent a good chunk of those seventeen years wrapped
up in his handy shawl. They say great work requires
stripping away the distractions, and it seems in the case
(09:28):
of Victor Hugo, he took that quite literally. 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 dot com. The show
was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
(09:50):
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
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.