March 18, 2025 • 11 mins
Reading minds and changing sides. Today's Cabinet tour is full of surprises.
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 Nke'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):
In the nineteen sixties and seventies, the US and the
Soviet Union were in a race for control, for nuclear power,
for outer space, and of course for our minds. But
I'm not talking about propaganda or even ideology. I'm talking
about how in nineteen seventy one lone housewife in Russia
set off a new type of Cold War where two
(00:57):
world powers tried to create weapons of psychic destruction. Sometime
in the early nineteen seventies, tapes smuggled out of the
Soviet Union made their way to the CIA. One video,
recorded on March tenth of nineteen seventy quickly became an
object of fascination to the agency. The tape showed forty
four year old Nina Cooliina, a housewife and former Red
(01:19):
Army soldier, in an observation room somewhere in Leningrad. Sitting
in front of her on a table was a tiny,
still beating heart. The heart had been taken from a
frog just minutes before and placed in a solution that
would allow it to keep beating for up to an
hour after death. Both Nina and the tiny heart were
wired with electrodes which recorded their heart rates. As CIA
(01:41):
analysts watched the small, dark haired woman on the tape
focused intently, to their amazement, the frog heart began to
beat faster. Nina screwed up her face in concentration again,
and the frog heart beat slowed, and finally, after a
few minutes, Nina focused one last time, and right before
the analyst's eyes, through the power of thought alone, she
(02:02):
stopped the frog heart cold. Dozens of tapes trickled in
from across the Iron Curtain, showing Nina moving matchsticks across
a table with her mind, separating egg whites from yokes,
even accelerating a researcher's heartbeat to dangerous levels. And needless
to say, the CIA was shocked. It seemed that the
Soviets had found someone who could master ESP or extrasensory perception.
(02:25):
You see for decades, researchers at the fringes of respectable
science had been looking into the world of ESP. Psychical researchers,
as they called themselves, were bent on discovering whether humans
could do extraordinary things with psychic energy, such as reading
another person's thoughts, viewing a place halfway around the world,
or even moving objects with their minds. With the discovery
(02:47):
of Nina's tapes, the world of psychical research immediately went
from crackpot theories to serious, government funded science. The American
government commissioned an intelligence report on what they called Soviet
psycho energetic threat. When it was finished, it was a bombshell.
Researchers and intelligence officials believed the Soviets were trying to
develop mind control and wanted to use people with powers
(03:11):
like Nina's to defeat their enemies. By nineteen seventy eight,
the CIA began its own top secret ESP program, which
they called Stargate, hoping to spy on the Soviets. Researchers
especially focused on remote viewing, or using a psychic to
see inside a place on the other side of the world.
They gave their subjects the coordinates of Soviet military bases
(03:33):
and asked them to describe what they saw in some cases,
the results were scarily accurate. Both countries continued psychical research
for the next few decades, although as far as we know,
they've yet to employ telekinesis or remote viewing as wide
scale weapons. However, sources report that military psychics were used
by Russia as recently as the Chechen Wars, which ended
(03:55):
in two thousand and nine. And as for Nina Well,
she gained international note notoriety for her part in the
psychic Cold War. She claimed the newspapers that she realized
her powers when she was young when she noticed that
things near her would move when she got angry. According
to her, her mother had the same ability to fine
tune it. She began to meditate to prepare herself to
(04:16):
concentrate intensely unmoving objects with her mind, and while she
had many supporters in the military, she found even more
critics once she went public with her powers. It was
pointed out that many of her miraculous tricks could be
faked using sleight of hand. Not to mention, the Soviet
Union had a reputation for exaggerating their victories for use
(04:36):
in propaganda, and wouldn't you know it, Nina was caught
cheating during demonstrations using magnets and tiny threads, and it
was believed by some that she had faked all of
her powers. Even Pravda, the official communist newspaper of the
Soviet Union, called her a fraud. In nineteen eighty seven,
another magazine called her a fake, and Nina sued and
(04:56):
won the lawsuit, and she maintained the truth of her
abilities until she died in nineteen ninety. Maybe Nina really
did have powers, or perhaps she was faking all along.
Either way, with all the news coverage of the debate,
she really did a great job of getting inside our heads.
(05:27):
When we think of World War II, we picture the
forces of the US and Western Europe coming together unanimously
to defeat the Germans. But it's easy to forget that
every nation had a diverse population with different views on
the war. There were Nazi sympathizers inside America, England, and France,
and there was resistance to the Nazis inside Germany and Austria.
(05:48):
Perhaps the most colorful example of this, though, came right
at the end of the war, when Americans, Germans, and
the French joined together at a castle in Austria to
defeat a Nazi assault. Castle. It was the Nazi version
of a luxury prison located in western Austria, sandwiched between
Germany and Italy. It housed French VIPs from the very
(06:09):
beginning of the war. Among the many who were held
there were Paul Renaud, former French Prime Minister, Marie Agnes Cayu,
sister of then leader of the French military Charles de Gaul,
and Tennis star Jean Buautra. As the Allies closed in
on Germany and Austria in April of nineteen forty five,
the guards at Castle Eiter fled, but the region was
(06:29):
still swarming with Nazis belonging to the ESS, the most
loyal and brutal organization within the German military, and the
French prisoners worried that if THEESS found them trying to escape,
they would kill them, and so they sent one of
their own to sneak out of the castle and through
the countryside to the nearest village, where they made contact
with Major Josef Gongel. Now Josef was Austrian, but he
(06:51):
had defected from the German military recently after seeing what
it had become under Hitler. He was filled with regrets
over his role in helping them conquer Europe. Joseph heard
about the plights of the French prisoners and immediately went
on a covert mission of his own, sneaking through the
countryside and making contact with a nearby American tank division.
It speaks to how late in the war this all was,
(07:13):
that these different factions were all right there on top
of each other. The combined pleas of Joseph and the
French prisoner were enough to motivate at least one of
the Americans, Captain John Kerrie Lee. He was only twenty
seven years old and a football player back home, and
as much as his men just wanted to keep their
heads down and avoid putting their lives on the line
this close to German surrender, Lee knew that it would
(07:36):
be wrong to leave the French prisoners there to die,
so he rallied his men and they began to drive
their tanks toward the castle. This was a process of attrition,
as they had to cross several bridges into the mountains
leading to the castle. The bridges were narrow and weak,
so Lee ended up leaving behind all but one of
his tanks. When they finally arrived at the castle, they
(07:57):
prepared to defend it from any SS troops who might
take an interest. Lee even blocked the entrance with his tank,
and the French prisoners were determined to help. Imagine the
elderly French prisoner Agnes holding a machine gun next to
a young American soldier, and of course Josef also continued
to assist, providing what insight he could into SS tactics.
(08:18):
They went to bed that night, hoping that all their
precautions wouldn't be needed, but as it so happened, a
lookout spotted grappling hooks on the castle walls. Just hours
into his watch, the SS were on their way, and
soon enough they were pouring out of the woods heading
for the castle. The Americans, the French, and Joseph all
stood side by side, firing machine guns down at the
(08:40):
invading army. Lee's tank fired off shells from the front gates,
blowing away any Germans who came close. But then things
took a turn for the worse. As morning arrived, German
eighty millimeter guns appeared on the horizon, blowing massive holes
in the side of the castle. Then one of the
shells got especially lucky, striking Lee's tank. His men had
(09:00):
just enough time to flee before it exploded into flames,
and so Joseph and Lee kept moving everyone further and
further into the castle. But this was a losing game.
In one last desperate gamble, they sent a volunteer, Jean
the Tennis Star, to pull vault over a castle wall
and sneak past the enemy lines to find help. While
(09:22):
they waited, Paul Renaud, the elderly former Prime Minister of France,
viciously fired down from a castle window, refusing to give up. Joseph,
sensing that Paul was in danger, rushed forward, throwing his
body in front of him. Joseph's instincts were correct, too.
A sniper's bullet meant for Paul struck him in the head,
killing him instantly. He had given everything to make up
(09:44):
for his role in the German Army, and that included
his life. Just as all hope seemed lost, new arrivals
appeared on the horizon. Jean the Tennis Star had been successful.
He'd found a second American tank division and led them
straight to the castle. He even showed up wearing one
of their uniforms, and soon enough the tanks tour through
the SS, driving them away from Castle Eider. The prisoners
(10:08):
were saved and the curious band of Americans, French and
German soldiers suffered zero casualties, that is except for Joseph,
who was later honored as an Austrian war hero, and
just three days later, the war in Europe was over.
I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
(10:29):
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 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
(10:51):
Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Nke'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):
In the nineteen sixties and seventies, the US and the
Soviet Union were in a race for control, for nuclear power,
for outer space, and of course for our minds. But
I'm not talking about propaganda or even ideology. I'm talking
about how in nineteen seventy one lone housewife in Russia
set off a new type of Cold War where two
(00:57):
world powers tried to create weapons of psychic destruction. Sometime
in the early nineteen seventies, tapes smuggled out of the
Soviet Union made their way to the CIA. One video,
recorded on March tenth of nineteen seventy quickly became an
object of fascination to the agency. The tape showed forty
four year old Nina Cooliina, a housewife and former Red
(01:19):
Army soldier, in an observation room somewhere in Leningrad. Sitting
in front of her on a table was a tiny,
still beating heart. The heart had been taken from a
frog just minutes before and placed in a solution that
would allow it to keep beating for up to an
hour after death. Both Nina and the tiny heart were
wired with electrodes which recorded their heart rates. As CIA
(01:41):
analysts watched the small, dark haired woman on the tape
focused intently, to their amazement, the frog heart began to
beat faster. Nina screwed up her face in concentration again,
and the frog heart beat slowed, and finally, after a
few minutes, Nina focused one last time, and right before
the analyst's eyes, through the power of thought alone, she
(02:02):
stopped the frog heart cold. Dozens of tapes trickled in
from across the Iron Curtain, showing Nina moving matchsticks across
a table with her mind, separating egg whites from yokes,
even accelerating a researcher's heartbeat to dangerous levels. And needless
to say, the CIA was shocked. It seemed that the
Soviets had found someone who could master ESP or extrasensory perception.
(02:25):
You see for decades, researchers at the fringes of respectable
science had been looking into the world of ESP. Psychical researchers,
as they called themselves, were bent on discovering whether humans
could do extraordinary things with psychic energy, such as reading
another person's thoughts, viewing a place halfway around the world,
or even moving objects with their minds. With the discovery
(02:47):
of Nina's tapes, the world of psychical research immediately went
from crackpot theories to serious, government funded science. The American
government commissioned an intelligence report on what they called Soviet
psycho energetic threat. When it was finished, it was a bombshell.
Researchers and intelligence officials believed the Soviets were trying to
develop mind control and wanted to use people with powers
(03:11):
like Nina's to defeat their enemies. By nineteen seventy eight,
the CIA began its own top secret ESP program, which
they called Stargate, hoping to spy on the Soviets. Researchers
especially focused on remote viewing, or using a psychic to
see inside a place on the other side of the world.
They gave their subjects the coordinates of Soviet military bases
(03:33):
and asked them to describe what they saw in some cases,
the results were scarily accurate. Both countries continued psychical research
for the next few decades, although as far as we know,
they've yet to employ telekinesis or remote viewing as wide
scale weapons. However, sources report that military psychics were used
by Russia as recently as the Chechen Wars, which ended
(03:55):
in two thousand and nine. And as for Nina Well,
she gained international note notoriety for her part in the
psychic Cold War. She claimed the newspapers that she realized
her powers when she was young when she noticed that
things near her would move when she got angry. According
to her, her mother had the same ability to fine
tune it. She began to meditate to prepare herself to
(04:16):
concentrate intensely unmoving objects with her mind, and while she
had many supporters in the military, she found even more
critics once she went public with her powers. It was
pointed out that many of her miraculous tricks could be
faked using sleight of hand. Not to mention, the Soviet
Union had a reputation for exaggerating their victories for use
(04:36):
in propaganda, and wouldn't you know it, Nina was caught
cheating during demonstrations using magnets and tiny threads, and it
was believed by some that she had faked all of
her powers. Even Pravda, the official communist newspaper of the
Soviet Union, called her a fraud. In nineteen eighty seven,
another magazine called her a fake, and Nina sued and
(04:56):
won the lawsuit, and she maintained the truth of her
abilities until she died in nineteen ninety. Maybe Nina really
did have powers, or perhaps she was faking all along.
Either way, with all the news coverage of the debate,
she really did a great job of getting inside our heads.
(05:27):
When we think of World War II, we picture the
forces of the US and Western Europe coming together unanimously
to defeat the Germans. But it's easy to forget that
every nation had a diverse population with different views on
the war. There were Nazi sympathizers inside America, England, and France,
and there was resistance to the Nazis inside Germany and Austria.
(05:48):
Perhaps the most colorful example of this, though, came right
at the end of the war, when Americans, Germans, and
the French joined together at a castle in Austria to
defeat a Nazi assault. Castle. It was the Nazi version
of a luxury prison located in western Austria, sandwiched between
Germany and Italy. It housed French VIPs from the very
(06:09):
beginning of the war. Among the many who were held
there were Paul Renaud, former French Prime Minister, Marie Agnes Cayu,
sister of then leader of the French military Charles de Gaul,
and Tennis star Jean Buautra. As the Allies closed in
on Germany and Austria in April of nineteen forty five,
the guards at Castle Eiter fled, but the region was
(06:29):
still swarming with Nazis belonging to the ESS, the most
loyal and brutal organization within the German military, and the
French prisoners worried that if THEESS found them trying to escape,
they would kill them, and so they sent one of
their own to sneak out of the castle and through
the countryside to the nearest village, where they made contact
with Major Josef Gongel. Now Josef was Austrian, but he
(06:51):
had defected from the German military recently after seeing what
it had become under Hitler. He was filled with regrets
over his role in helping them conquer Europe. Joseph heard
about the plights of the French prisoners and immediately went
on a covert mission of his own, sneaking through the
countryside and making contact with a nearby American tank division.
It speaks to how late in the war this all was,
(07:13):
that these different factions were all right there on top
of each other. The combined pleas of Joseph and the
French prisoner were enough to motivate at least one of
the Americans, Captain John Kerrie Lee. He was only twenty
seven years old and a football player back home, and
as much as his men just wanted to keep their
heads down and avoid putting their lives on the line
this close to German surrender, Lee knew that it would
(07:36):
be wrong to leave the French prisoners there to die,
so he rallied his men and they began to drive
their tanks toward the castle. This was a process of attrition,
as they had to cross several bridges into the mountains
leading to the castle. The bridges were narrow and weak,
so Lee ended up leaving behind all but one of
his tanks. When they finally arrived at the castle, they
(07:57):
prepared to defend it from any SS troops who might
take an interest. Lee even blocked the entrance with his tank,
and the French prisoners were determined to help. Imagine the
elderly French prisoner Agnes holding a machine gun next to
a young American soldier, and of course Josef also continued
to assist, providing what insight he could into SS tactics.
(08:18):
They went to bed that night, hoping that all their
precautions wouldn't be needed, but as it so happened, a
lookout spotted grappling hooks on the castle walls. Just hours
into his watch, the SS were on their way, and
soon enough they were pouring out of the woods heading
for the castle. The Americans, the French, and Joseph all
stood side by side, firing machine guns down at the
(08:40):
invading army. Lee's tank fired off shells from the front gates,
blowing away any Germans who came close. But then things
took a turn for the worse. As morning arrived, German
eighty millimeter guns appeared on the horizon, blowing massive holes
in the side of the castle. Then one of the
shells got especially lucky, striking Lee's tank. His men had
(09:00):
just enough time to flee before it exploded into flames,
and so Joseph and Lee kept moving everyone further and
further into the castle. But this was a losing game.
In one last desperate gamble, they sent a volunteer, Jean
the Tennis Star, to pull vault over a castle wall
and sneak past the enemy lines to find help. While
(09:22):
they waited, Paul Renaud, the elderly former Prime Minister of France,
viciously fired down from a castle window, refusing to give up. Joseph,
sensing that Paul was in danger, rushed forward, throwing his
body in front of him. Joseph's instincts were correct, too.
A sniper's bullet meant for Paul struck him in the head,
killing him instantly. He had given everything to make up
(09:44):
for his role in the German Army, and that included
his life. Just as all hope seemed lost, new arrivals
appeared on the horizon. Jean the Tennis Star had been successful.
He'd found a second American tank division and led them
straight to the castle. He even showed up wearing one
of their uniforms, and soon enough the tanks tour through
the SS, driving them away from Castle Eider. The prisoners
(10:08):
were saved and the curious band of Americans, French and
German soldiers suffered zero casualties, that is except for Joseph,
who was later honored as an Austrian war hero, and
just three days later, the war in Europe was over.
I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
(10:29):
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 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
(10:51):
Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!