Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Any police officer will tell you that in their line
Speaker 1: of work they've seen some very strange things. But for
Speaker 1: two officers in Philadelphia, the weirdness went to a whole
Speaker 1: other level. John Collins and Joe Keenan were patrolling the
Speaker 1: streets of Philly on the night of September twenty sixth
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty when all of a sudden, they saw
Speaker 1: a mysterious object fall from the sky and land on
Speaker 1: a telephone pole. Curious, they went to get a close look.
Speaker 1: Dangling off of the pole was a ton of slimy
Speaker 1: purple goop. The blob was at least six feet wide
Speaker 1: and a foot thick. These guys were understandably confused. Just
Speaker 1: imagine how you would react if you saw a huge
Speaker 1: vat of colored snot fall from the sky. Personally, I
Speaker 1: would probably turn around and run in the opposite direction,
Speaker 1: but they didn't do that. Instead, they called for backup.
Speaker 1: Two other officers arrived, and all four of them were
Speaker 1: looking at the goop trying to figure out what it
Speaker 1: was when it evaporated right before their eyes. It was
Speaker 1: literally just there one moment and then gone the next.
Speaker 1: The police officers were so freaked out that they contacted
Speaker 1: the FBI. An investigation revealed no further clues about the
Speaker 1: disappearing goop's nature or origins, but it did make headlines.
Speaker 1: The next morning, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article entitled
Speaker 1: flying Saucer just dissolves and that saucer with air quotes
Speaker 1: like the goop might have been some kind of extraterrestrial pastatoping.
Speaker 1: Now fast forward to nineteen fifty seven. Film producers Jack
Speaker 1: Harris and Irving Millgate were looking for their next big idea,
Speaker 1: and they remembered reading about the gooup in the Inquirer
Speaker 1: a few years earlier. This inspired them to write a
Speaker 1: screenplay about a mindless, faceless purple ooze that came from
Speaker 1: outer space and was the embodiment of pure evil. Thus,
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifty eight blockbuster movie The Blob was born.
Speaker 1: If you've never seen it. It stars a young Steve
Speaker 1: McQueen fighting for his life against the extraterrestrial snot monster,
Speaker 1: and honestly, it's better than it sounds. The original movie
Speaker 1: was a hit, followed by multiple re releases, a sequel,
Speaker 1: and a remake in nineteen eighty eight. But despite the
Speaker 1: success of The Blob, one question still remains, what exactly
Speaker 1: did those police officers see that night? It turns out
Speaker 1: to unexplainable jelly like substances have been reported well, much
Speaker 1: more often than you would probably imagine. As early as
Speaker 1: the fourteenth century, European writers mentioned the group under various
Speaker 1: names like star slime and star jelly because it was
Speaker 1: believed the substance fell to the earth during meteor showers,
Speaker 1: and although it was most often described as clear or white,
Speaker 1: it could also be purple, and some people believe that
Speaker 1: it had magical or at least medicinal properties. One medieval
Speaker 1: English physician claimed the stuff could be used to treat injuries.
Speaker 1: The so called star jelly appeared in other continents too.
Speaker 1: Locals in Vera, Cruz, Mexico, called it to put a
Speaker 1: kindly moon poop. These days, though we know starjelly can't
Speaker 1: come from space because it would be destroyed by the
Speaker 1: Earth's atmosphere before it reached the planet's surface. But there
Speaker 1: are quite a few other theories about the origin of
Speaker 1: the ooze. Some scientists believe that it could be a
Speaker 1: type of algae that soaks up water, turning it into
Speaker 1: a gelatinous mass when the weather is just right. Others
Speaker 1: think that it might be glycoprotein, which is a guey
Speaker 1: substance that female frogs store their eggs in. Perhaps the
Speaker 1: grossest theory is that star jelly is just vomit, like
Speaker 1: maybe an animal accidentally ate a poison toad or a
Speaker 1: worm and then puked it up, leaving a pile of
Speaker 1: goop behind. However, none of these theories can explain why
Speaker 1: those Philadelphia officers saw the stuff falling from the sky.
Speaker 1: Plus a two thousand and nine study seem to rule
Speaker 1: all of those other ideas out. Scientists commissioned by the
Speaker 1: National Geographic Society determined that the star jelly did not
Speaker 1: contain DNA, meaning it likely wasn't of plant or animal origin.
Speaker 1: While we might not know what starjelly really is, the
Speaker 1: iconic nineteen fifties Snot monster is still going strong these days.
Speaker 1: The Blob movie remains a cult classic, and the silicone
Speaker 1: gel used to simulate the viscous villain during its filming
Speaker 1: actually still exists. The curious collectible belongs to one Wes Shank,
Speaker 1: who bought it from the film crew in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: five and has kept it stored in a can inside
Speaker 1: his house ever since. Music changes at lightning speed. For example,
Speaker 1: only a handful of years separate the end of the
Speaker 1: big band era and the dawn of rock and roll. Today,
Speaker 1: popular genres changed almost every year. What's in right now
Speaker 1: probably won't be in fashion much longer. But in nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: one man turned the music world upside down and gave
Speaker 1: us an instrument that will never go out of style,
Speaker 1: especially around Halloween. His name was Lev Sergeyevitch Tairman. He
Speaker 1: was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: and from a young age he demonstrated a fascination with electricity.
Speaker 1: He would give presentations of his electrical experiments to classmates
Speaker 1: and even built a lab at home where he could
Speaker 1: dabble in things like circuits and magnetic fields. He also
Speaker 1: attended college lectures as a teen and got to know
Speaker 1: big names in the scientific community like physicist abram Iyofa,
Speaker 1: and it paid off too. Lev's brilliant mind and networking
Speaker 1: skills managed to earn him a place at the Universityoa
Speaker 1: had attended, and along with his admission came his own laboratory.
Speaker 1: As part of his research, he constructed a million volt
Speaker 1: tesla coil, which led to studies of gas and light.
Speaker 1: Lev was so smart he was recommended by the university's
Speaker 1: leadership to attend a military engineering school in Petrograd when
Speaker 1: he was only in his second year of college. They
Speaker 1: typically restricted enrollment to fourth year students. He managed to
Speaker 1: graduate in six months and entered the military as a
Speaker 1: radio engineer. He was then tasked with connecting Moscow to
Speaker 1: the Vulgar region by way of a radio station. Lev
Speaker 1: did a lot of work over the next several years
Speaker 1: for the war effort, but eventually his past came calling literally.
Speaker 1: Abramofa had just founded a new physical technical institute in
Speaker 1: Petrograd and wanted Lev to work with him. The young
Speaker 1: scientists showed up ready to put his scientific mind to
Speaker 1: the test. One of his primary focuses was a government
Speaker 1: sponsored project to test proximity censers. Lev built a special
Speaker 1: device the utilized electromagnetic waves to detect how close an
Speaker 1: object was. The apparatus, developed in nineteen twenty, was built
Speaker 1: inside a large wooden box on thin, spindily legs. It
Speaker 1: looked more like a writing desk than scientific equipment. On
Speaker 1: the top was an antenna, and jutting out one side
Speaker 1: was a loop of metal that looked like someone had
Speaker 1: curled the second antenna and then shoved an open end
Speaker 1: back into the box. Lev noticed that his machine made
Speaker 1: a high pitched, whining sound akin to the upper strings
Speaker 1: of a violin the closer that he moved his hand
Speaker 1: to it. When he pulled his hand back, the pitch
Speaker 1: dropped lower. There was more to this contraption than its
Speaker 1: original intent, and it had awakened another one of his passions.
Speaker 1: You see, in addition to his love for physics and electricity,
Speaker 1: Lev was also a cellist. So he brought the device
Speaker 1: to Yofa and showed him what he had found. With
Speaker 1: his hands in the air, as though he were playing
Speaker 1: an invisible cello, Lev moved them about the box as
Speaker 1: a haunting sound reverberated around them. He did his best
Speaker 1: to remember songs that he had played before sussing out
Speaker 1: the notes by changing the position of his hands, and
Speaker 1: Iofa was enthralled. He summoned students and professors who were
Speaker 1: nearby to come and hear Lev play. But his colleague
Speaker 1: wasn't the only one to see the machine's utility, so
Speaker 1: did another important Russian figure, Vladimir Lenin. In nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: Lenin asked Lev to bring his new instrument, now called
Speaker 1: an atherophone, to the Kremlin. The inventor played several pieces
Speaker 1: for him, which were enough to impress him, so much
Speaker 1: so that Lenin shipped him out on a European a
Speaker 1: Theophone Tour, and the tour was a smash. Lev took
Speaker 1: his show overseas the next year, playing to packed houses
Speaker 1: at Carnegie Hall and the Mets in New York City.
Speaker 1: But he was more than a musician. He was also
Speaker 1: a scientist, and to Lenin, the perfect spy. And with
Speaker 1: a hot new instrument that was garnering rave reviews, it
Speaker 1: was only a matter of time before a major American
Speaker 1: company arrived with the goal of selling it to the masses.
Speaker 1: That company was RCA. Lev sold them the manufacturing rights
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty nine, and pretty soon his atherophones were
Speaker 1: reaching well, not a lot of people. They were very
Speaker 1: expensive and hard to play. Once the Great Depression hit,
Speaker 1: RCA stopped making them entirely, and things only got worse
Speaker 1: for Lev, who returned to his home country just as
Speaker 1: Joseph Stalin was rising to power. He was arrested for
Speaker 1: treason and forced to work in a gulag making all
Speaker 1: kinds of spy technology for the Soviets. But not all
Speaker 1: was lost. Lev's atherophone found its way to the film industry.
Speaker 1: Its haunting, ethereal tones were perfect for mysteries and thrillers,
Speaker 1: and eventually science fiction pictures as well. Most famously, Bernard
Speaker 1: Hermann used it in his score for the nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: one film The Day the Earth Stood Still. Since then,
Speaker 1: it's been heard in movies like Batman, Forever, Mars Attacks,
Speaker 1: and Ghostbusters. But we don't call it the Atherophone anymore.
Speaker 1: It's taken on the name of its inventor, Lev Sergeyevich Tahreman,
Speaker 1: better known today as Leon Thehreman. 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. This 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 Worldoflore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.