1
00:00:04,080 --> 00:00:07,480
Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of

2
00:00:07,480 --> 00:00:13,840
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is

3
00:00:13,960 --> 00:00:17,960
Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,

4
00:00:18,280 --> 00:00:21,640
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

5
00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:27,600
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

6
00:00:27,840 --> 00:00:39,520
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Good help is always hard to find. Proper

7
00:00:39,560 --> 00:00:41,920
Speaker 1: training can do a lot to ensure a job well done,

8
00:00:41,960 --> 00:00:44,640
Speaker 1: but those training materials need to be tested and proven.

9
00:00:44,880 --> 00:00:47,199
Speaker 1: They must be written by people with experience who have

10
00:00:47,280 --> 00:00:50,839
Speaker 1: gone through and vetted the methods being taught. For example,

11
00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:53,320
Speaker 1: if a decision needs to be made, it should go

12
00:00:53,400 --> 00:00:56,440
Speaker 1: through as many channels as possible. Time is not of

13
00:00:56,480 --> 00:01:00,560
Speaker 1: the essence. Bureaucracy is always best. Another way to increase

14
00:01:00,560 --> 00:01:03,960
Speaker 1: productivity and maximize efficiency is to clog up meetings with

15
00:01:04,040 --> 00:01:06,440
Speaker 1: issues that have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

16
00:01:06,800 --> 00:01:09,640
Speaker 1: If something was resolved at a previous meeting, bring it

17
00:01:09,720 --> 00:01:12,080
Speaker 1: up again and ask whether it was the right decision

18
00:01:12,680 --> 00:01:16,039
Speaker 1: more than once. When in doubt's play, it's safe, every

19
00:01:16,040 --> 00:01:18,720
Speaker 1: task should take as long as possible. You know the

20
00:01:18,720 --> 00:01:22,040
Speaker 1: old saying measured twice, cut once, but only after you've

21
00:01:22,080 --> 00:01:25,679
Speaker 1: measured another eight times. Managers can also get on board

22
00:01:25,720 --> 00:01:28,479
Speaker 1: by having their most efficient employees focus on the most

23
00:01:28,560 --> 00:01:32,200
Speaker 1: unimportant tasks. When those tasks are completed, the employees can

24
00:01:32,240 --> 00:01:35,560
Speaker 1: then go back to fix even the smallest flaws. Every

25
00:01:35,600 --> 00:01:40,320
Speaker 1: meaningless job should be completed to utter perfection. Meanwhile, employees

26
00:01:40,319 --> 00:01:42,560
Speaker 1: known for being slow and lazy should be given the

27
00:01:42,600 --> 00:01:47,520
Speaker 1: complex jobs that require careful attention. Upon completion. Incorrectly, of course,

28
00:01:47,760 --> 00:01:50,800
Speaker 1: those employees should be praised and promoted in full view

29
00:01:50,880 --> 00:01:54,720
Speaker 1: of everyone else. This will shatter morale and in turn

30
00:01:54,880 --> 00:01:58,480
Speaker 1: increase productivity among the group. Oh and those meetings we

31
00:01:58,560 --> 00:02:01,760
Speaker 1: talked about should happen often and with no agendas. Let

32
00:02:01,800 --> 00:02:04,320
Speaker 1: attendees wonder why they're they're in the first place, and

33
00:02:04,400 --> 00:02:08,239
Speaker 1: what the point of each meeting might actually be. Now,

34
00:02:08,280 --> 00:02:10,359
Speaker 1: if all of this sounds like the opposite of what

35
00:02:10,400 --> 00:02:13,399
Speaker 1: we've learned in order to succeed at our jobs, that's

36
00:02:13,400 --> 00:02:16,600
Speaker 1: because it is. These instructions were part of a deliberate

37
00:02:16,639 --> 00:02:20,239
Speaker 1: plan by the United States to sabotage foreign governments from within,

38
00:02:21,600 --> 00:02:25,160
Speaker 1: developed by the Office of Strategic Services, the organization that

39
00:02:25,160 --> 00:02:29,520
Speaker 1: would eventually become the CIA. The simple sabotage field Manual

40
00:02:29,720 --> 00:02:32,960
Speaker 1: was a training guide developed during World War Two. Its

41
00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:35,799
Speaker 1: goal was to help citizens and government workers who were

42
00:02:35,840 --> 00:02:40,119
Speaker 1: sympathetic to the Allies but stuck inside access help countries.

43
00:02:41,280 --> 00:02:45,400
Speaker 1: It's techniques extended beyond white color jobs as well. Factory

44
00:02:45,440 --> 00:02:49,720
Speaker 1: workers could deliberately gum up the works by accidentally shorting

45
00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:53,280
Speaker 1: out wires or contaminating a vat of molten rubber by

46
00:02:53,320 --> 00:02:57,600
Speaker 1: spilling unnecessary ingredients into it, which would render it unusable.

47
00:02:58,360 --> 00:03:02,200
Speaker 1: Surfaces that needed to be smooth could be sanded instead.

48
00:03:02,360 --> 00:03:05,280
Speaker 1: Tools could be forgotten or lost so that certain jobs

49
00:03:05,280 --> 00:03:08,040
Speaker 1: couldn't even be done at all. It wasn't about outright

50
00:03:08,120 --> 00:03:11,360
Speaker 1: hostility toward the enemy. Instead, it was death by a

51
00:03:11,440 --> 00:03:14,720
Speaker 1: thousand cuts, or in this case, death by a thousand

52
00:03:14,880 --> 00:03:19,280
Speaker 1: silly avoidable mistakes, and regular citizens could get in on

53
00:03:19,320 --> 00:03:23,040
Speaker 1: the fund too. Chewing gum and hairpins made excellent tools

54
00:03:23,080 --> 00:03:26,240
Speaker 1: for jamming locks, heck, one of the more ingenious methods

55
00:03:26,240 --> 00:03:29,959
Speaker 1: of civil disobedience involved a bag of moths. A person

56
00:03:30,040 --> 00:03:33,160
Speaker 1: would walk into a movie theater showing propaganda films with

57
00:03:33,320 --> 00:03:36,240
Speaker 1: a bag of moths tucked in their coat. Once seated,

58
00:03:36,360 --> 00:03:38,720
Speaker 1: they would set the bag down and open it up,

59
00:03:38,840 --> 00:03:42,160
Speaker 1: releasing the moths into the theater. The flying insects would

60
00:03:42,200 --> 00:03:44,520
Speaker 1: then flutter up to the light of the projector and

61
00:03:44,640 --> 00:03:47,520
Speaker 1: obscure the film so no one else could watch the movie.

62
00:03:48,520 --> 00:03:51,119
Speaker 1: There were also instructions on how to keep average citizens

63
00:03:51,160 --> 00:03:55,280
Speaker 1: motivated while performing simple acts of abotage by assuring them

64
00:03:55,280 --> 00:03:57,760
Speaker 1: that they were part of a larger movement or promising

65
00:03:57,800 --> 00:04:00,480
Speaker 1: a future where an unwanted leader might be moved due

66
00:04:00,520 --> 00:04:03,720
Speaker 1: to their inactions. The OSS was able to get help

67
00:04:03,760 --> 00:04:08,800
Speaker 1: from folks behind enemy lines. The manual was declassified in

68
00:04:08,840 --> 00:04:11,440
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight and is freely available on the

69
00:04:11,480 --> 00:04:15,520
Speaker 1: CIA's website, although most workers probably won't need it, with

70
00:04:15,560 --> 00:04:19,320
Speaker 1: a countless meetings and never ending bureaucracy clogging up our

71
00:04:19,360 --> 00:04:23,000
Speaker 1: own workdays, today, the modern workspace is well suited to

72
00:04:23,040 --> 00:04:28,159
Speaker 1: crippling productivity, destroying employee morale, and bringing government agencies to

73
00:04:28,240 --> 00:04:31,000
Speaker 1: a halt. You know what they say, if you want

74
00:04:31,040 --> 00:04:33,440
Speaker 1: to do something right, going to have to do it

75
00:04:33,480 --> 00:04:50,800
Speaker 1: yourself badly. When we experienced the unthinkable, it's easy to

76
00:04:50,880 --> 00:04:53,800
Speaker 1: lose hope. The human body can only handle so much.

77
00:04:54,240 --> 00:04:57,200
Speaker 1: Exposing ourselves to the extremes for too long can shorten

78
00:04:57,240 --> 00:05:01,279
Speaker 1: our chances of survival. Anna was a stranger to extremes.

79
00:05:03,400 --> 00:05:06,320
Speaker 1: Born in Sweden in nineteen seventy, Anna's focus was on

80
00:05:06,440 --> 00:05:10,400
Speaker 1: helping others while studying in Norway to become an orthopedic surgeon.

81
00:05:10,480 --> 00:05:13,640
Speaker 1: Her mentor invited her to his retirement party. He was

82
00:05:13,680 --> 00:05:15,880
Speaker 1: set to close one chapter of his life in May

83
00:05:15,880 --> 00:05:19,360
Speaker 1: of nineteen. But before arriving at the party, Anna had

84
00:05:19,440 --> 00:05:23,039
Speaker 1: just one more stop to make. She and two colleagues

85
00:05:23,080 --> 00:05:25,320
Speaker 1: headed for the mountains just outside of town for a

86
00:05:25,400 --> 00:05:28,359
Speaker 1: quick ski trip. Anna was no stranger to the slopes.

87
00:05:28,680 --> 00:05:31,640
Speaker 1: Those outings were common after work, and she had been

88
00:05:31,640 --> 00:05:36,120
Speaker 1: down one particular mountain side numerous times. But on May nine,

89
00:05:37,320 --> 00:05:41,280
Speaker 1: she made a fateful mistake. Anna slipped and lost her

90
00:05:41,279 --> 00:05:45,200
Speaker 1: footing tumbling down the mountain side, she skidded across a

91
00:05:45,240 --> 00:05:48,440
Speaker 1: frozen stream before being partially swallowed by a hole in

92
00:05:48,480 --> 00:05:51,520
Speaker 1: the ice. Trapped among the rocks in the water with

93
00:05:51,560 --> 00:05:54,360
Speaker 1: no way to get out, she was eventually found twenty

94
00:05:54,360 --> 00:05:58,279
Speaker 1: minutes later by her friends. They rushed to her side

95
00:05:58,400 --> 00:06:00,920
Speaker 1: and tried to pull her out, but she wouldn't budge.

96
00:06:01,360 --> 00:06:03,640
Speaker 1: After ten minutes of struggling, one of them called the

97
00:06:03,680 --> 00:06:07,200
Speaker 1: police for help. Anna clung to life, breathing with the

98
00:06:07,200 --> 00:06:09,719
Speaker 1: help of an air pocket she had found while submerged.

99
00:06:10,200 --> 00:06:12,640
Speaker 1: Her friends held on to her skis until the police

100
00:06:12,680 --> 00:06:17,200
Speaker 1: and emergency workers could reach them. Well ten minutes turned

101
00:06:17,240 --> 00:06:21,039
Speaker 1: into forty. Then the cold started to set in. Anna's

102
00:06:21,080 --> 00:06:23,520
Speaker 1: heart slowed to a point where it couldn't pump enough

103
00:06:23,520 --> 00:06:27,040
Speaker 1: blood to keep her awake. She went into circulatory arrest

104
00:06:27,279 --> 00:06:31,279
Speaker 1: just as the medics had reached her. First, they tied

105
00:06:31,320 --> 00:06:33,600
Speaker 1: a rope around her and pulled, but they couldn't move

106
00:06:33,640 --> 00:06:37,520
Speaker 1: her without causing serious injury. Snow shovels weren't strong enough

107
00:06:37,560 --> 00:06:40,239
Speaker 1: to cut through the ice around her either. A metal

108
00:06:40,320 --> 00:06:43,600
Speaker 1: garden shovel finally did the trick, though, They hacked away

109
00:06:43,640 --> 00:06:47,279
Speaker 1: at the surrounding ice and finally freed her after eighty

110
00:06:47,360 --> 00:06:50,920
Speaker 1: minutes in the water. Her body temperature had dropped to

111
00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:54,360
Speaker 1: almost fifty seven degrees fahrenheit, the blood in her veins

112
00:06:54,440 --> 00:06:58,240
Speaker 1: had practically stopped flowing, and she wasn't breathing. Her colleagues

113
00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:00,800
Speaker 1: tried to administer CPR on the a to the hospital,

114
00:07:01,080 --> 00:07:04,600
Speaker 1: but it didn't work. A defibrillator couldn't even bring her back.

115
00:07:04,920 --> 00:07:07,760
Speaker 1: Her skin had gone ice cold, and by all measures,

116
00:07:07,800 --> 00:07:10,880
Speaker 1: she was technically dead. Doctors hooked her up to an

117
00:07:10,880 --> 00:07:13,880
Speaker 1: e c G and it showed nothing but a flat line.

118
00:07:15,280 --> 00:07:18,000
Speaker 1: Dr Gilbert, the e R chief attending to her case,

119
00:07:18,320 --> 00:07:21,640
Speaker 1: immediately whisked her to an operating room. He wasn't ready

120
00:07:21,680 --> 00:07:24,440
Speaker 1: to declare her dead just yet. Along with the team

121
00:07:24,480 --> 00:07:27,360
Speaker 1: of dozens of doctors and nurses, Dr Gilbert worked for

122
00:07:27,440 --> 00:07:30,960
Speaker 1: over nine hours to bring Anna back. His hope was

123
00:07:31,040 --> 00:07:34,000
Speaker 1: that the extreme cold had slowed down her metabolism enough

124
00:07:34,040 --> 00:07:37,200
Speaker 1: to keep her brain from experiencing any long term damage.

125
00:07:37,640 --> 00:07:40,280
Speaker 1: You see, when the human body reaches such a low temperature,

126
00:07:40,520 --> 00:07:44,120
Speaker 1: the brain requires a lot less oxygen to survive. That's,

127
00:07:44,240 --> 00:07:46,880
Speaker 1: along with the CPR the medics had performed on her,

128
00:07:47,120 --> 00:07:50,520
Speaker 1: should have been enough to keep her alive. The first

129
00:07:50,520 --> 00:07:52,880
Speaker 1: thing Dr Gilbert did in the operating room was connect

130
00:07:52,920 --> 00:07:55,800
Speaker 1: Anna to a heart lung machine. It pumped her cold

131
00:07:55,840 --> 00:07:58,920
Speaker 1: blood out of her body and warmed it externally before

132
00:07:58,960 --> 00:08:02,320
Speaker 1: circulating it back in. It took hours, but it worked.

133
00:08:02,560 --> 00:08:06,160
Speaker 1: Her body temperature began to rise. She stayed on life

134
00:08:06,160 --> 00:08:09,320
Speaker 1: support for another twenty four hours. The following day, her

135
00:08:09,320 --> 00:08:11,760
Speaker 1: heart started to pump on its own again. It took

136
00:08:11,760 --> 00:08:15,960
Speaker 1: another agonizing month on a ventilator before her body regained functionality,

137
00:08:16,280 --> 00:08:18,840
Speaker 1: and when she woke up and couldn't move anything below

138
00:08:18,880 --> 00:08:22,720
Speaker 1: her neck, she panicked, but the paralysis was only temporary,

139
00:08:22,760 --> 00:08:26,480
Speaker 1: nothing more than a side effect of the accident. Anna

140
00:08:26,560 --> 00:08:29,280
Speaker 1: begging Home wasn't the first person to be frozen alive,

141
00:08:29,400 --> 00:08:32,160
Speaker 1: but she was the first to have survived. She fully

142
00:08:32,200 --> 00:08:35,920
Speaker 1: recovered with no detectable brain damage. Her case not only

143
00:08:35,960 --> 00:08:39,520
Speaker 1: broke records, but it helped doctors better understand the effects

144
00:08:39,520 --> 00:08:44,040
Speaker 1: of hypothermia on the human body. Thankfully, Anna received the

145
00:08:44,080 --> 00:08:47,320
Speaker 1: finest medical care that Norway had to offer, so when

146
00:08:47,360 --> 00:08:49,840
Speaker 1: she got back on her feet four months later, she

147
00:08:49,880 --> 00:08:52,600
Speaker 1: couldn't help but pay it forward. She took a job

148
00:08:52,679 --> 00:08:55,679
Speaker 1: as a radiologist at the very same hospital that had

149
00:08:55,720 --> 00:09:00,720
Speaker 1: saved her life, and apparently she received a warm welcome.

150
00:09:03,600 --> 00:09:06,280
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

151
00:09:06,280 --> 00:09:10,200
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn

152
00:09:10,240 --> 00:09:14,800
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.

153
00:09:14,840 --> 00:09:18,400
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership

154
00:09:18,440 --> 00:09:21,720
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show

155
00:09:21,840 --> 00:09:25,920
Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,

156
00:09:26,160 --> 00:09:28,040
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the

157
00:09:28,200 --> 00:09:34,000
Speaker 1: World of lore dot com, and until next time, stay curious. Yeah,