Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Have you ever thought
Speaker 2: much about the common pigeon? If you spend any time
Speaker 2: in a major city, you've likely seen more of them
Speaker 2: than any other kind of bird. Many dismissed them as
Speaker 2: a nuisance rats with wings that exist to snatch crumbs
Speaker 2: from the trash, barely better than a pest. What we
Speaker 2: think of today as the common pigeon is more officially
Speaker 2: known as the rock dove, a sort of bird that
Speaker 2: originally was well suited to rocky coastal areas, and throughout
Speaker 2: human history we've realized that they are a versatile bird
Speaker 2: suited to all manner of tasks. In eighteen forties Germany,
Speaker 2: an apothecary owner named Neubranner realized this very thing. Carrier
Speaker 2: pigeons had been employed for centuries by King's army, commanders
Speaker 2: and spies, but Neubranner was the rare small businessman who
Speaker 2: figured out a way to make them useful in his
Speaker 2: small community. He distributed carrier pigeons to doctors in his
Speaker 2: city of Kronberg and told the doctors to send the
Speaker 2: pigeons back to him when they gave out an urgent prescription,
Speaker 2: and this way the apothecary would have the medicine ready
Speaker 2: before the patients ever arrived at his door. Neubranner's son,
Speaker 2: doctor Jules Neubranner, would continue this practice, expanding it to
Speaker 2: a wider variety of tasks. He'd have the pigeons convey
Speaker 2: messages to a nearby sanatorium, or even deliver medicines themselves. However,
Speaker 2: the younger Neubranner soon encountered an inevitable problem. Sometimes carrier
Speaker 2: pigeons would get lost, a message or a delivery would
Speaker 2: go awry, and he'd have no way of knowing for
Speaker 2: a very long time. Usually the pigeon in question would
Speaker 2: eventually return, but there was no guarantee of knowing what
Speaker 2: had happened while it was gone. This was a long
Speaker 2: time before the invention of GPS, but Jewles had a
Speaker 2: tool that his father had not. It was the twentieth
Speaker 2: century an era of invention, and one of the inventions
Speaker 2: that was taking the world by storm was photography. So
Speaker 2: doctor Neubroanner created a small harness of elastic bands that
Speaker 2: could fit comfortably on his pigeons, and on this harness
Speaker 2: he hung a small camera. As the pigeon flew, the
Speaker 2: camera shutter would operate automatically, snapping photos of landmarks on
Speaker 2: the pigeons route. That way, if a pigeon went astray
Speaker 2: and came back late, jewles could check the developed photographs
Speaker 2: to see where it had gone. This ingenious little piece
Speaker 2: of technology unwittingly became part of the global arms race
Speaker 2: as Europe Korean toward the First World War. German army
Speaker 2: officials heard of doctor Neubranner's device and immediately sought to
Speaker 2: harness it as a tool for the Fatherland, no pun intended.
Speaker 2: Once war broke out in Europe, intelligence became a necessity. Hundreds,
Speaker 2: maybe even thousands of pigeons were outfitted with little cameras
Speaker 2: and sent flying over the trenches in battlefields. They would
Speaker 2: weave their way above the shells and bullets, snapping photos constantly.
Speaker 2: Neubranner's device was of great use in the battles of
Speaker 2: Verdun and the sum Although the German military seemed to
Speaker 2: have turned on him after the German surrender, he made
Speaker 2: an inquiry and was told that the pigeons had no
Speaker 2: military value. In spite of this seeming dismissal, pigeon photography
Speaker 2: continued to develop, not just in Germany, but in France, Russia,
Speaker 2: and America as well. In nineteen thirty seven, a Swiss
Speaker 2: clockmaker named Christian Adrian Mitchell patented a version of Neuberanner's camera,
Speaker 2: adapted for sixteen millimeter film. It was just as lightweight
Speaker 2: and the shutter would be run by an internal clockwork.
Speaker 2: During the First and Second World Wars, it was noted
Speaker 2: that pigeon photographers were a more reliable source of intelligences
Speaker 2: than radio communication. American pigeons allegedly are the most decorated
Speaker 2: of any animal, earning medals of honor for distinguished service,
Speaker 2: and after the end of the Second World War, use
Speaker 2: of pigeon photography passed into civilian fields. The CIA also
Speaker 2: allegedly developed a battery powered pigeon camera in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: but its use is still classified. Apparently nowadays, the carrier
Speaker 2: pigeon and the photographer pigeon are curiosities of the past,
Speaker 2: eclipsed by instant messaging and drones.
Speaker 1: But in our modern age, perhaps we should revise the
Speaker 1: cultural view of the pigeon to be more forgiving. They
Speaker 1: may appear to be rats with wings, but maybe they've
Speaker 1: earned a place in our cities, a just reward for
Speaker 1: an animal that allowed humanity to communicate across thousands of
Speaker 1: miles and sea for the first time with a bird's
Speaker 1: eye view. It was holloween night nineteen ninety two and
Speaker 1: a cast and crew of BBC's ghost Watch was celebrating
Speaker 1: their ambitious program was going off without a hitch, giving
Speaker 1: the British viewing public a good scare. Before bed, they
Speaker 1: pulled off a feat never before seen in public television,
Speaker 1: a mockumentary ghost hunting show that every viewer thought was broadcasting. Live.
Speaker 1: Show creator Stephen Volk was just raising his glass to
Speaker 1: toast the crew to a job well done, when a
Speaker 1: woman burst into the studio. This woman, producer Ruth Baumgarten,
Speaker 1: was ashen faced. She told them that over at the
Speaker 1: BBC main offices, the switchboard was completely jammed. More than
Speaker 1: twenty thousand people had called in about their show, and
Speaker 1: every single caller was scared, confused, or simply furious. The
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two Ghostwatch debacle started, like most things, with
Speaker 1: good intentions. Stephen Volk had initially wanted to broadcast a
Speaker 1: simple six part drama about all haunting, but was convinced
Speaker 1: by Ruth Baumgarten to shorten it to ninety minutes. It
Speaker 1: was then that Vulk had a stroke of inspiration. Rather
Speaker 1: than filming a cinematic ghost story, what if they framed
Speaker 1: it like a BBC investigation, a special broadcast live from
Speaker 1: a real, live haunted house. Ruth loved the idea, and
Speaker 1: Ghostwatch was born. They put together a program following a
Speaker 1: supposedly live investigation team into a haunted house. The feed
Speaker 1: would cut back and forth to the studio, where a
Speaker 1: BBC host would react in real time to what he
Speaker 1: was seeing and hearing during the investigation. Of course, both
Speaker 1: of these pieces were pre recorded, but the effect was
Speaker 1: to make it seem like a live show. Ruth and
Speaker 1: Stephen went a step further too, casting known and trusted
Speaker 1: BBC anchors and presenters. Sarah Green, a host who was
Speaker 1: normally featured on children's shows, joined the investigative team in
Speaker 1: the haunted house. To someone watching at home on Halloween Night,
Speaker 1: all of these factors made Ghostwatch appear to be a
Speaker 1: live Broadway cast BBC documentary, which made its contents all
Speaker 1: the more frightening. Before their eyes, viewers saw things fly
Speaker 1: around the room and ghostly apparitions appear. Spirits wrestled for
Speaker 1: control of the cameras from the crew, and in the
Speaker 1: final minutes of the program, they watched Sarah Green, the
Speaker 1: children's TV host, as she was dragged backward through a
Speaker 1: door and disappeared into the darkness. To the crew of
Speaker 1: Ghostwatch celebrating at the studio, the night was marked as successful.
Speaker 1: But to the families watching at home and the children
Speaker 1: seeing their favorite TV host kidnapped by a ghost, the
Speaker 1: mood was much more horrifying. Thousands of complaints poured into
Speaker 1: the BBC, from hysterical children to priests convinced the BBC
Speaker 1: had just broadcast Witchcraft. Equal in number were the angry
Speaker 1: calls made by viewers who were upset that they had
Speaker 1: been duped. Remember that back in nineteen ninety two, reality
Speaker 1: TV as we know it was still a thing of
Speaker 1: the future. There had been a few shows that had
Speaker 1: blurred the line between documentary and scripted drama, for sure,
Speaker 1: But nineteen ninety two was the same year as the
Speaker 1: first season of the Real World. It would be another
Speaker 1: eight years before Survivor and another fourteen before The Hills,
Speaker 1: probably the most well known reality show that fully scripted
Speaker 1: most of its drama. So put yourself in the nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two viewers' shoes. These people were primed to think
Speaker 1: that documentary style investigative shows produced by the BBC were
Speaker 1: always going to be one hundred percent real. Ghostwatch had
Speaker 1: an immediate and wide ranging fallout. Viewers believe that they
Speaker 1: couldn't trust the BBC anymore. Multiple children were allegedly diagnosed
Speaker 1: with PTSD, and, perhaps most tragically, one young viewer even
Speaker 1: died by suicide. The British Broadcasting Standards Commission ruled that
Speaker 1: the BBC had a duty to make it clear that
Speaker 1: their program was fictional. It seemed that by featuring hosts
Speaker 1: commonly seen on children's programs, the BBC had made it
Speaker 1: seem like Ghostwatch was appropriate for children, much like the
Speaker 1: Orson Wells nineteen thirty eight broadcast of War of the
Speaker 1: World's The unexpected use of documentary style to present a
Speaker 1: drama through people into a panic. Ghostwatch was never broadcast again,
Speaker 1: and its creators were chastised by the public and the press.
Speaker 1: But in retrospect, it seems like ghost Watch was simply
Speaker 1: ahead of its time. If it had aired just a
Speaker 1: few years later, maybe then it would have had the
Speaker 1: ghost of a chance at success. I hope you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the Worldolore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.