March 27, 2025 • 9 mins
There are a lot of things in like to worry about, but these two examples are on the more curious side.
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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. Are we truly alone
(00:37):
in this universe? This question can mean many different things
based on the tone in which it's asked. If asked
in a tone of hope and wonder, it makes us
reflect on the majesty of the universe, infinite space and
possibility among the stars and all that. But it can
also be asked in a tone of apprehension or fear.
Loneliness is comforting in a sense, because that would mean
(00:57):
that no intelligence is beyond our own. Are a scrutinizing
the planet from dark void of space? Anxiety about extraterrestrial
invasions is well over a century old. First we looked
to the heavens and saw gods. Then, as the industrial
age took over post Enlightenment, we looked to the heavens
and saw another version of ourselves.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
And in the HG. Wells book the War of the Worlds.
Britain at its colonial peak is itself colonized by a
force whose technology far strips their own. Even then, the
fear of extraterrestrials was just a fantasy. It wasn't until
the mid twentieth century that these fears seemed to becoming true. First,
the Roswell incident in nineteen forty seven triggered a wave
(01:39):
of speculation about spacecraft from another world. Then, over the
ensuing decades, many individuals throughout the world started sharing their
own strange stories. The earliest UFO encounters were spiritual, optimistic,
but starting in the nineteen sixties, something changed in the
character of these stories. They started to become more sinister.
(02:00):
In nineteen sixty one, the husband and wife couple Betty
and Barney Hill, told the story of their own encounter
with aliens, But their story had a gap in it,
a lapse in memory seemingly explained by alien technology. For
a brief time, the aliens had taken both of them
aboard their ship and studied them like animals. More and
more stories of this kind proliferated over the decades. Abductions
(02:23):
became terrifying, scientific, and more the concept of probes, implants,
bodily invasion all became fodder for the study of aliens,
stoking the imagination of a public that had been absorbing
alien invasion movies since the nineteen fifties. In nineteen eighty five,
a woman named Kathy Davis claimed that, in the midst
(02:44):
of several abduction experiences, she had been impregnated with a
hybrid child, half alien, half human. Over the years, experts
and entertainers have argued about the veracity of the alien
abduction reports, but no one has argued that the fear
these stories per is very real. The creatures of nightmares
don't need to exist in physical space to provoke the imagination,
(03:08):
so it's perhaps unsurprising that enterprising business people sought to
make a profit off this fear. In the mid nineteen nineties,
a Florida based insurance brokerage began providing insurance policies for
people who were concerned about the risk of alien abduction.
A largely sarcastic enterprise, this insurance provider issued ten million
dollar policies that would pay out at a rate of
(03:30):
a dollar per year. A few years later, the London
based brokerage Goodfellow Rebecca Ingram's and Parson started issuing policies
of their own. These policies insured customers against not only abduction,
but impregnation as well. This claim could be purchased regardless
of your sex, as the possibilities of alien technology remain unknown,
(03:51):
and this British company wound up selling thousands of these policies,
but only came close to paying out twice, once for
an Enfield man who in nineteen ninety six claimed a
one point six million dollar policy, showing as evidence a
claw left behind by his abductors. The second time, however,
gave them pause. You see, sometime in the nineteen nineties,
the cult known as Heaven's Gate purchased one million dollar
(04:14):
policies for each of its approximately thirty members, and this
very nearly backfired in Goodfellow's face when the entire cult
died in ritual suicide in nineteen ninety seven. Warry that
someone would come to try to collect over thirty million dollars,
the brokerage paused any new policies for a time. Since then,
they have resumed their policies and have never paid out
(04:35):
a single one. We turn to insurance to protect ourselves
from unseen accidents and tragedy. The most unpredictable of these
are also known as acts of God. Even though most
insurance policies cover acts of God, it seems that aliens
require a higher burden of proof. I think we can
(05:06):
all agree that we live in a chaotic universe, and
sometimes it can feel like we are powerless in the
face of tragedy. But as history loves to remind us,
there is no problem so great that a human being
can't make worse. For proof, look no further than Justinian
the First, a late Roman emperor who reigned during the
sixth century. Now the title Roman Emperor deserves massive air
(05:28):
quotes here because Justinian came to power over one hundred
years after the city of Rome was sacked by Germanic tribes.
By the time Justinian was crowned in five twenty seven,
the Empire was in the late stage of its long,
slow collapse. While the western territories had virtually all fallen
to different armies, the weakened eastern half had reformed around Constantinople. Now,
(05:50):
like a lot of people of his day, Justinian was
obsessed with the past. He talked constantly about returning the
empire to its former glory, something a lot of people
thought was possible. To accomplish his lofty goals, he levied
heavy taxes, which he used to raise armies and revitalize
long dead trade networks. Feeding his armies required massive amounts
of grain, which he purchased, largely from Africa. Justinian's early
(06:14):
military campaigns were surprisingly successful, and he was actually making
some headway on rebuilding the empire when disaster struck. It
came in the form of an inconspicuous but deadly stowaway
Ursinia pestis, also known as the bubonic plague. The microbe
was carried by rats or some people think the fleas
or other animals, which traveled within the grain supplies that
(06:37):
Justinian imported in five pin forty one. They caused an
outbreak in the Egyptian port of Pelusium. If Justinian had
acted quickly, he might have stopped the disease in its tracks,
but he ignored the warnings, and within a year the
plague was in Constantinople. Now I should note that this
wasn't the first bubonic outbreak in history, and it certainly
(06:57):
wouldn't be the last. Scientists believe the back materia has
been killing humans since around three thousand BCE. Meanwhile, the
most famous outbreak of bubonic plague is known as the
Black Death, which didn't hit Europe until the fourteenth century.
All that said, Justinian's outbreak in the sixth century was
special because of how far and how quickly it spread.
(07:18):
His armies and their supply trains carried the disease across
three continents, resulting in the first plague pandemic. The effects
were disastrous, especially for Constantinople. At one point, the capitol
was losing five thousand people a day. Justinian had his
soldiers dig massive pits to hold all the bodies, while
other corpses were dumped onto ships and just pushed out
(07:40):
to sea. Justinian himself fell ill sometime in five point
forty two. We don't know how badly he suffered, but
for most people, the bubonic plague wasn't pretty. Early symptoms
included fever, swelling around the growing armpits and neck, and
dark boils and pustules. This rapidly progressed to delirium before
most victims fell into a coma and then died. Not Justinian, though,
(08:04):
with treatments, he managed to survive and While you might
think that the brush with death would cause him to
refocus on eradicating the disease, that's not what happened. After recovering,
Justinian was more determined than ever to reclaim Rome's former glory.
He continued to raise taxes despite the fact that the
economy was cratering and most people couldn't even afford to eat,
(08:25):
and instead of using the money for the public, he
poured the funds into his military campaigns, which, of course
furthered the spread of the pandemic. The epidemic took almost
a decade to fade away, and outbreaks continued for the
next few hundred years. While estimates vary, somewhere between twenty
five and fifty million people were killed, roughly a quarter
(08:45):
of the empire's population. As you might expect, that level
of loss caused Justinian's trade networks to collapse, foiling his
military exploits. He had dreamed of returning the Roman Empire
to its former glory, but wound up hastening its demid
guy But at least historians give credit where credits due
to this day, the pandemic of five point forty one
(09:06):
is remembered as Justinian's plague. 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 Stuff Works. I
(09:29):
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. Are we truly alone
(00:37):
in this universe? This question can mean many different things
based on the tone in which it's asked. If asked
in a tone of hope and wonder, it makes us
reflect on the majesty of the universe, infinite space and
possibility among the stars and all that. But it can
also be asked in a tone of apprehension or fear.
Loneliness is comforting in a sense, because that would mean
(00:57):
that no intelligence is beyond our own. Are a scrutinizing
the planet from dark void of space? Anxiety about extraterrestrial
invasions is well over a century old. First we looked
to the heavens and saw gods. Then, as the industrial
age took over post Enlightenment, we looked to the heavens
and saw another version of ourselves.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
And in the HG. Wells book the War of the Worlds.
Britain at its colonial peak is itself colonized by a
force whose technology far strips their own. Even then, the
fear of extraterrestrials was just a fantasy. It wasn't until
the mid twentieth century that these fears seemed to becoming true. First,
the Roswell incident in nineteen forty seven triggered a wave
(01:39):
of speculation about spacecraft from another world. Then, over the
ensuing decades, many individuals throughout the world started sharing their
own strange stories. The earliest UFO encounters were spiritual, optimistic,
but starting in the nineteen sixties, something changed in the
character of these stories. They started to become more sinister.
(02:00):
In nineteen sixty one, the husband and wife couple Betty
and Barney Hill, told the story of their own encounter
with aliens, But their story had a gap in it,
a lapse in memory seemingly explained by alien technology. For
a brief time, the aliens had taken both of them
aboard their ship and studied them like animals. More and
more stories of this kind proliferated over the decades. Abductions
(02:23):
became terrifying, scientific, and more the concept of probes, implants,
bodily invasion all became fodder for the study of aliens,
stoking the imagination of a public that had been absorbing
alien invasion movies since the nineteen fifties. In nineteen eighty five,
a woman named Kathy Davis claimed that, in the midst
(02:44):
of several abduction experiences, she had been impregnated with a
hybrid child, half alien, half human. Over the years, experts
and entertainers have argued about the veracity of the alien
abduction reports, but no one has argued that the fear
these stories per is very real. The creatures of nightmares
don't need to exist in physical space to provoke the imagination,
(03:08):
so it's perhaps unsurprising that enterprising business people sought to
make a profit off this fear. In the mid nineteen nineties,
a Florida based insurance brokerage began providing insurance policies for
people who were concerned about the risk of alien abduction.
A largely sarcastic enterprise, this insurance provider issued ten million
dollar policies that would pay out at a rate of
(03:30):
a dollar per year. A few years later, the London
based brokerage Goodfellow Rebecca Ingram's and Parson started issuing policies
of their own. These policies insured customers against not only abduction,
but impregnation as well. This claim could be purchased regardless
of your sex, as the possibilities of alien technology remain unknown,
(03:51):
and this British company wound up selling thousands of these policies,
but only came close to paying out twice, once for
an Enfield man who in nineteen ninety six claimed a
one point six million dollar policy, showing as evidence a
claw left behind by his abductors. The second time, however,
gave them pause. You see, sometime in the nineteen nineties,
the cult known as Heaven's Gate purchased one million dollar
(04:14):
policies for each of its approximately thirty members, and this
very nearly backfired in Goodfellow's face when the entire cult
died in ritual suicide in nineteen ninety seven. Warry that
someone would come to try to collect over thirty million dollars,
the brokerage paused any new policies for a time. Since then,
they have resumed their policies and have never paid out
(04:35):
a single one. We turn to insurance to protect ourselves
from unseen accidents and tragedy. The most unpredictable of these
are also known as acts of God. Even though most
insurance policies cover acts of God, it seems that aliens
require a higher burden of proof. I think we can
(05:06):
all agree that we live in a chaotic universe, and
sometimes it can feel like we are powerless in the
face of tragedy. But as history loves to remind us,
there is no problem so great that a human being
can't make worse. For proof, look no further than Justinian
the First, a late Roman emperor who reigned during the
sixth century. Now the title Roman Emperor deserves massive air
(05:28):
quotes here because Justinian came to power over one hundred
years after the city of Rome was sacked by Germanic tribes.
By the time Justinian was crowned in five twenty seven,
the Empire was in the late stage of its long,
slow collapse. While the western territories had virtually all fallen
to different armies, the weakened eastern half had reformed around Constantinople. Now,
(05:50):
like a lot of people of his day, Justinian was
obsessed with the past. He talked constantly about returning the
empire to its former glory, something a lot of people
thought was possible. To accomplish his lofty goals, he levied
heavy taxes, which he used to raise armies and revitalize
long dead trade networks. Feeding his armies required massive amounts
of grain, which he purchased, largely from Africa. Justinian's early
(06:14):
military campaigns were surprisingly successful, and he was actually making
some headway on rebuilding the empire when disaster struck. It
came in the form of an inconspicuous but deadly stowaway
Ursinia pestis, also known as the bubonic plague. The microbe
was carried by rats or some people think the fleas
or other animals, which traveled within the grain supplies that
(06:37):
Justinian imported in five pin forty one. They caused an
outbreak in the Egyptian port of Pelusium. If Justinian had
acted quickly, he might have stopped the disease in its tracks,
but he ignored the warnings, and within a year the
plague was in Constantinople. Now I should note that this
wasn't the first bubonic outbreak in history, and it certainly
(06:57):
wouldn't be the last. Scientists believe the back materia has
been killing humans since around three thousand BCE. Meanwhile, the
most famous outbreak of bubonic plague is known as the
Black Death, which didn't hit Europe until the fourteenth century.
All that said, Justinian's outbreak in the sixth century was
special because of how far and how quickly it spread.
(07:18):
His armies and their supply trains carried the disease across
three continents, resulting in the first plague pandemic. The effects
were disastrous, especially for Constantinople. At one point, the capitol
was losing five thousand people a day. Justinian had his
soldiers dig massive pits to hold all the bodies, while
other corpses were dumped onto ships and just pushed out
(07:40):
to sea. Justinian himself fell ill sometime in five point
forty two. We don't know how badly he suffered, but
for most people, the bubonic plague wasn't pretty. Early symptoms
included fever, swelling around the growing armpits and neck, and
dark boils and pustules. This rapidly progressed to delirium before
most victims fell into a coma and then died. Not Justinian, though,
(08:04):
with treatments, he managed to survive and While you might
think that the brush with death would cause him to
refocus on eradicating the disease, that's not what happened. After recovering,
Justinian was more determined than ever to reclaim Rome's former glory.
He continued to raise taxes despite the fact that the
economy was cratering and most people couldn't even afford to eat,
(08:25):
and instead of using the money for the public, he
poured the funds into his military campaigns, which, of course
furthered the spread of the pandemic. The epidemic took almost
a decade to fade away, and outbreaks continued for the
next few hundred years. While estimates vary, somewhere between twenty
five and fifty million people were killed, roughly a quarter
(08:45):
of the empire's population. As you might expect, that level
of loss caused Justinian's trade networks to collapse, foiling his
military exploits. He had dreamed of returning the Roman Empire
to its former glory, but wound up hastening its demid
guy But at least historians give credit where credits due
to this day, the pandemic of five point forty one
(09:06):
is remembered as Justinian's plague. 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 Stuff Works. I
(09:29):
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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