April 22, 2025 • 10 mins
Madness can be curious. On today's tour, we'll see it lead to military tragedy and powerful art.
Order the official Cabinet of Curiosities book by clicking here today, and get ready to enjoy some curious reading!
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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. Conquistadors are dark figures
(00:38):
from a modern perspective, warlords from the Spanish Empire who
brought disease and violence to Central and South America. Hernan
Cortes is one of the most infamous, known for his
defeat of the Aztec Empire, but the reality of that
history is more complicated than you might realize. He would
never have been able to defeat the Aztecs without the
help of a different native tribe, the lax Kalinz, and
(01:01):
it was their incredible ingenuity that handed him the most
important victory of the war. Cortes was a man whose
ego could not be contained. When he was sent to
the New World. He was supposed to submit to the
authority of the governor of Cuba, who just wanted him
to survey modern day Mexico and report back. Cortes ignored
this order, and in fifteen nineteen took his men further
(01:23):
inland to conquer the kingdom of tenoche Titlan. Some of
Cortez's men were loyal to the governor of Cuba, and
so Cortes ordered the men who were loyal to him
to disassemble their ships so that the Cuban loyalists couldn't
sail back to Cuba. But tinoche Titlan proved more difficult
to conquer than Cortes had hoped. It was a massive,
sprawling metropolis situated in the middle of an even larger lake,
(01:45):
Lake Texcoco. If the Spanish tried to use their horses
to ride into the city, they would be sitting ducks
on the various bridges that connected the city to the mainland.
Cortes suddenly wished that he had all those ships that
he ordered his men to disassemble, But then again, it's
not as if they could have carried them from the
ocean to the lake. But it turns out that the
Aztecs were pretty cruel leaders, and Cortes quickly made allies
(02:08):
with their neighbors, who had grown tired of Aztec rule.
But it was through these alliances that Cortes learned of
the forests of lax Kala, a mountain province with timber
that could be used to make new ships. Although this
was sixty miles from the lake, Cortes saw no other options.
Working with several native leaders, he ordered timber to be
cut and carefully shaped for the construction of new ships.
(02:30):
He also had his men returned to where they disassembled
their original ships, recovering the anchors, the sails, and other
pieces that could be used on the new vessels. But
Cortes didn't stop there, ordering the damming of a local
river so that his new ships could be tested before
they got anywhere near Lake tex Coco. This required that
the natives undertake an entirely separate engineering project before their
(02:52):
work on the ships could even begin, but they were
successful in damning the river and providing a deep enough
body of water.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
For one of the new boats to be tested on.
The Spanish and their indigenous allies constructed an entire brigantine
there in the mountains, made sure that it could float
on the river, and then deconstructed the whole thing again
so that it could be transported down the mountain. Once
all the pieces were ready, a massive convoy of thousands
of indigenous men carried the timber from the mountains to
(03:20):
Cortes's camp on the edge of Lake tex Coco. Once
they arrived, they got to work assembling the ships again.
This took months of time, and while they worked, Cortes's
army had to fend off multiple attacks from Tenochtitlan, but
at least on the lake shore, the Spanishes, horses, cannons,
and iron weapons gave them an advantage. Even once the
(03:40):
ships were finished, the indigenous work wasn't done. They next
dug a nine thousand foot canal from their work site
to the lake, allowing the ships to be released into
the water, and then, finally, after months of hard work,
the invasion could begin. The ships had been outfitted with cannons,
and as they approached the city they easily blew upon
part the Aztec navy, which consisted of small canoes that
(04:03):
fired arrows and darts. They then decimated the city's walls
and began a siege of the city. For years, tenote
Teklan had been safe on the water, but now it
was thoroughly outmatched by the combined ingenuity of the Spanish
and the local attackers. After weeks of back and forth fighting,
the Spanish finally overwhelmed the city. Their conquest was brutal.
(04:24):
Hundreds of thousands of Aztecs were killed. It was the
end of their empire and the beginning of Spanish rule
in Mexico. Soon enough, smallpox from the Spanish conquistadors spread
throughout the remaining Aztecs and the Spanish native allies, decimating
their populations even further. Cortes wasn't punished for disobeying the
orders of the governor of Cuba. He had delivered Mexico
(04:46):
to the king, and so he was made governor. He
spent the rest of his career conquering Mexico and rebuilding
tanoche Tilan, which of course became Mexico City. If you're wondering,
they drained the lake over time to where barely exists today. Curiously,
when Cortes finally returned to Spain in fifteen forty one,
he felt that the king never really gave him the
(05:08):
credit he deserved for accomplishing so much. Maybe the king
resented him for disobeying orders all those years before, or
maybe he knew that without the help of his native allies,
Cortes wouldn't have been able to accomplish what he did
either way. It was a curious case of landlocked naval
warfare that altered the course of history forever. In nineteen
(05:43):
oh four, a Danish art critic was touring the National
Museum of Norway when they made a startling discovery. One
of the museum's most controversial works had been vandalized. Someone
had used a pencil to scrawl a phrase in Old
Norwegian across the top of the painting. Translated to English,
it read could only have been painted by a madman.
(06:05):
While the delivery of the message was new, this wasn't
the first time that kind of criticism had been leveled
at the piece. The vandalized artwork was Edvard Munk's The Scream.
It's an unforgettable image and one that you'd probably recognize
in an instant. A gaunt, alien looking figure stands on
a long bridge beneath a blazing sky. The figure's hands
(06:26):
gripped the side of their skull like face, eyes and
mouth stretched wide in an expression of existential horror. That
expression is a pretty close approximation for the way viewers
reacted when The Scream was first displayed in eighteen ninety five,
many art critics thought the painting was proof that Monk
was clinically insane. One medical student said that he should
(06:47):
be locked up in an asylum and kept from ever
touching a paint brush again, and their reactions horrified Monk,
partly because they seemed to confirm his own worst fears.
Mental health problems ran in his face family, and he
had personally suffered from panic attacks in the past. One
of those experiences served as the original inspiration for the Scream.
(07:08):
In eighteen ninety three, he was out walking with some
friends at sunset when he looked up and saw the
sky filled with blood and flaming tongues. He was overcome
with pain and an inexplicable feeling of anxiety, and heard
what he later described as an infinite scream passing through nature.
The experience naturally left Monk badly shaken, and he feared
(07:28):
that the panic attacks would get worse with time, so
when people started calling him crazy based on his artwork,
it got to him. Eventually, the controversies surrounding his work faded,
and Monk continued to paint, and then, a decade after
he first revealed the Scream to the public, the inscription
was discovered. The writing was faint, almost blending in with
(07:49):
the swirling sky, but once seen it couldn't be ignored.
Closer inspection proved that it was added after the painting
was completed, and the museum curators were confident it hadn't
been there when they added the work to their collection,
which means that someone, perhaps a prankster or an angry critic,
snuck into the gallery while the guards were absent and
defaced the painting. The museum even brought in forensic experts
(08:11):
to analyze the writing, but they failed to come up
with any suspects. Meanwhile, Monk became increasingly obsessed with his critics.
His diaries and letters are full of complaints about the
people who called him mad, and that fixation eventually became
a self fulfilling prophecy. He was hospitalized in nineteen oh
eight after a nervous breakdown, but the treatment seems to
(08:33):
have helped. After his release, he painted more frequently and
was reportedly much happier. After he died in nineteen forty four,
the Scream only grew in prominence. Today it's one of
the most iconic paintings in the world, having been endlessly
reproduced in political cartoons and memes. It's even become an emoji,
which is all the proof you can ask for that
an image is still relevant today, and its stay in
(08:56):
power suggests that Monk wasn't half as mad as his
critics believed. Perhaps he was just ahead of his time,
an artist who foresaw the alienation and anxiety that would
come to define modern life. And it seems that he
had a sense of humor about it all, because in
twenty twenty one, a group of researchers finally solve the
riddle of the Scream's mysterious inscription. Using infrared scans and
(09:19):
handwriting analysis, they concluded that the culprit was none other
than Edvardmunk himself. It seems that sometime after the painting
was hung in the museum, he returned to vandalize his
own masterpiece with those words could only have been written
by a madman. Whether Monk meant that as a confession
or a self deprecating joke isn't clear today, but I
(09:41):
like to think that it was a message to his critics.
If you think I'm mad right now, just wait, You'll
all be joining me soon enough, 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
(10:05):
by me Aaron Manke 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. Conquistadors are dark figures
(00:38):
from a modern perspective, warlords from the Spanish Empire who
brought disease and violence to Central and South America. Hernan
Cortes is one of the most infamous, known for his
defeat of the Aztec Empire, but the reality of that
history is more complicated than you might realize. He would
never have been able to defeat the Aztecs without the
help of a different native tribe, the lax Kalinz, and
(01:01):
it was their incredible ingenuity that handed him the most
important victory of the war. Cortes was a man whose
ego could not be contained. When he was sent to
the New World. He was supposed to submit to the
authority of the governor of Cuba, who just wanted him
to survey modern day Mexico and report back. Cortes ignored
this order, and in fifteen nineteen took his men further
(01:23):
inland to conquer the kingdom of tenoche Titlan. Some of
Cortez's men were loyal to the governor of Cuba, and
so Cortes ordered the men who were loyal to him
to disassemble their ships so that the Cuban loyalists couldn't
sail back to Cuba. But tinoche Titlan proved more difficult
to conquer than Cortes had hoped. It was a massive,
sprawling metropolis situated in the middle of an even larger lake,
(01:45):
Lake Texcoco. If the Spanish tried to use their horses
to ride into the city, they would be sitting ducks
on the various bridges that connected the city to the mainland.
Cortes suddenly wished that he had all those ships that
he ordered his men to disassemble, But then again, it's
not as if they could have carried them from the
ocean to the lake. But it turns out that the
Aztecs were pretty cruel leaders, and Cortes quickly made allies
(02:08):
with their neighbors, who had grown tired of Aztec rule.
But it was through these alliances that Cortes learned of
the forests of lax Kala, a mountain province with timber
that could be used to make new ships. Although this
was sixty miles from the lake, Cortes saw no other options.
Working with several native leaders, he ordered timber to be
cut and carefully shaped for the construction of new ships.
(02:30):
He also had his men returned to where they disassembled
their original ships, recovering the anchors, the sails, and other
pieces that could be used on the new vessels. But
Cortes didn't stop there, ordering the damming of a local
river so that his new ships could be tested before
they got anywhere near Lake tex Coco. This required that
the natives undertake an entirely separate engineering project before their
(02:52):
work on the ships could even begin, but they were
successful in damning the river and providing a deep enough
body of water.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
For one of the new boats to be tested on.
The Spanish and their indigenous allies constructed an entire brigantine
there in the mountains, made sure that it could float
on the river, and then deconstructed the whole thing again
so that it could be transported down the mountain. Once
all the pieces were ready, a massive convoy of thousands
of indigenous men carried the timber from the mountains to
(03:20):
Cortes's camp on the edge of Lake tex Coco. Once
they arrived, they got to work assembling the ships again.
This took months of time, and while they worked, Cortes's
army had to fend off multiple attacks from Tenochtitlan, but
at least on the lake shore, the Spanishes, horses, cannons,
and iron weapons gave them an advantage. Even once the
(03:40):
ships were finished, the indigenous work wasn't done. They next
dug a nine thousand foot canal from their work site
to the lake, allowing the ships to be released into
the water, and then, finally, after months of hard work,
the invasion could begin. The ships had been outfitted with cannons,
and as they approached the city they easily blew upon
part the Aztec navy, which consisted of small canoes that
(04:03):
fired arrows and darts. They then decimated the city's walls
and began a siege of the city. For years, tenote
Teklan had been safe on the water, but now it
was thoroughly outmatched by the combined ingenuity of the Spanish
and the local attackers. After weeks of back and forth fighting,
the Spanish finally overwhelmed the city. Their conquest was brutal.
(04:24):
Hundreds of thousands of Aztecs were killed. It was the
end of their empire and the beginning of Spanish rule
in Mexico. Soon enough, smallpox from the Spanish conquistadors spread
throughout the remaining Aztecs and the Spanish native allies, decimating
their populations even further. Cortes wasn't punished for disobeying the
orders of the governor of Cuba. He had delivered Mexico
(04:46):
to the king, and so he was made governor. He
spent the rest of his career conquering Mexico and rebuilding
tanoche Tilan, which of course became Mexico City. If you're wondering,
they drained the lake over time to where barely exists today. Curiously,
when Cortes finally returned to Spain in fifteen forty one,
he felt that the king never really gave him the
(05:08):
credit he deserved for accomplishing so much. Maybe the king
resented him for disobeying orders all those years before, or
maybe he knew that without the help of his native allies,
Cortes wouldn't have been able to accomplish what he did
either way. It was a curious case of landlocked naval
warfare that altered the course of history forever. In nineteen
(05:43):
oh four, a Danish art critic was touring the National
Museum of Norway when they made a startling discovery. One
of the museum's most controversial works had been vandalized. Someone
had used a pencil to scrawl a phrase in Old
Norwegian across the top of the painting. Translated to English,
it read could only have been painted by a madman.
(06:05):
While the delivery of the message was new, this wasn't
the first time that kind of criticism had been leveled
at the piece. The vandalized artwork was Edvard Munk's The Scream.
It's an unforgettable image and one that you'd probably recognize
in an instant. A gaunt, alien looking figure stands on
a long bridge beneath a blazing sky. The figure's hands
(06:26):
gripped the side of their skull like face, eyes and
mouth stretched wide in an expression of existential horror. That
expression is a pretty close approximation for the way viewers
reacted when The Scream was first displayed in eighteen ninety five,
many art critics thought the painting was proof that Monk
was clinically insane. One medical student said that he should
(06:47):
be locked up in an asylum and kept from ever
touching a paint brush again, and their reactions horrified Monk,
partly because they seemed to confirm his own worst fears.
Mental health problems ran in his face family, and he
had personally suffered from panic attacks in the past. One
of those experiences served as the original inspiration for the Scream.
(07:08):
In eighteen ninety three, he was out walking with some
friends at sunset when he looked up and saw the
sky filled with blood and flaming tongues. He was overcome
with pain and an inexplicable feeling of anxiety, and heard
what he later described as an infinite scream passing through nature.
The experience naturally left Monk badly shaken, and he feared
(07:28):
that the panic attacks would get worse with time, so
when people started calling him crazy based on his artwork,
it got to him. Eventually, the controversies surrounding his work faded,
and Monk continued to paint, and then, a decade after
he first revealed the Scream to the public, the inscription
was discovered. The writing was faint, almost blending in with
(07:49):
the swirling sky, but once seen it couldn't be ignored.
Closer inspection proved that it was added after the painting
was completed, and the museum curators were confident it hadn't
been there when they added the work to their collection,
which means that someone, perhaps a prankster or an angry critic,
snuck into the gallery while the guards were absent and
defaced the painting. The museum even brought in forensic experts
(08:11):
to analyze the writing, but they failed to come up
with any suspects. Meanwhile, Monk became increasingly obsessed with his critics.
His diaries and letters are full of complaints about the
people who called him mad, and that fixation eventually became
a self fulfilling prophecy. He was hospitalized in nineteen oh
eight after a nervous breakdown, but the treatment seems to
(08:33):
have helped. After his release, he painted more frequently and
was reportedly much happier. After he died in nineteen forty four,
the Scream only grew in prominence. Today it's one of
the most iconic paintings in the world, having been endlessly
reproduced in political cartoons and memes. It's even become an emoji,
which is all the proof you can ask for that
an image is still relevant today, and its stay in
(08:56):
power suggests that Monk wasn't half as mad as his
critics believed. Perhaps he was just ahead of his time,
an artist who foresaw the alienation and anxiety that would
come to define modern life. And it seems that he
had a sense of humor about it all, because in
twenty twenty one, a group of researchers finally solve the
riddle of the Scream's mysterious inscription. Using infrared scans and
(09:19):
handwriting analysis, they concluded that the culprit was none other
than Edvardmunk himself. It seems that sometime after the painting
was hung in the museum, he returned to vandalize his
own masterpiece with those words could only have been written
by a madman. Whether Monk meant that as a confession
or a self deprecating joke isn't clear today, but I
(09:41):
like to think that it was a message to his critics.
If you think I'm mad right now, just wait, You'll
all be joining me soon enough, 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
(10:05):
by me Aaron Manke 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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