Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. If certain people channeled even a fraction of
Speaker 1: their energy and dedication into noble pursuits, the world would
Speaker 1: be a better place. People like Alan Abel, born in Zanesville, Ohio,
Speaker 1: in August of able, learned how to be successful from
Speaker 1: his father, who owned a small shop in town. To
Speaker 1: help boost his numbers, Mr Abel would artificially limit sales
Speaker 1: of unsold items to give customers a sense that suff
Speaker 1: fly was low, and it worked every time. Allen carried
Speaker 1: that know how with him to college and graduated from
Speaker 1: Ohio State University with the bachelor's in education. He wanted
Speaker 1: to shape the minds of America's youth, a dream that
Speaker 1: eventually expanded into helping corporate big wigs improve their golf
Speaker 1: swing quite literally. In the nineteen fifties, he took a
Speaker 1: job teaching executives from Westinghouse about how different ballet positions
Speaker 1: could help them do better at their game, similar to
Speaker 1: how American football players took up ballet to be lighter
Speaker 1: on their feet during the game in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty eight, Able started a campaign to get
Speaker 1: a then unknown grandmother from the Bronx elected President of
Speaker 1: the United States. Her name was yet A Bronstein, a
Speaker 1: member of a political party called the Best Party, and
Speaker 1: with Abel's help, she ran on a comprehensive platform that
Speaker 1: seemed to appeal to almost everyone. Yet Ah promised to
Speaker 1: place a suggestion box outside the White House and put
Speaker 1: truth serum in the Senate water fountains. She also advocated
Speaker 1: for a national bingo. Her campaign slogan vote for Yetta
Speaker 1: and things will get better. In May of nineteen fifty nine, however,
Speaker 1: Able undertook what could become the greatest project of his
Speaker 1: life and the reason he is still known to this
Speaker 1: day that even earned him guest spots on television shows
Speaker 1: like CBS Evening News and The Mike Douglas Show. Able
Speaker 1: became an activist for a cause near and dear to
Speaker 1: his heart, one that plagued the entire planet. He called
Speaker 1: it Sina. The Society for indecency to naked animals. You see,
Speaker 1: he believed that animals, from the smallest squirrel to the
Speaker 1: largest elephant should be just as modest as humans were,
Speaker 1: which meant fitting them all for pants. Able first published
Speaker 1: a piece in the Saturday Evening Post outlining his plan
Speaker 1: before giving interviews and speaking directly to the people. For example,
Speaker 1: he wanted horses to wear Bermuda shorts, claiming a nude
Speaker 1: horse is a rude horse. Deers were to be clad
Speaker 1: in burlap sacks. He even referred to zoos as burlesque shows.
Speaker 1: Two years later, Able and his wife Jean started picketing
Speaker 1: in front of the White House, where they called out
Speaker 1: President Kennedy for allowing his horses to wander around the
Speaker 1: grounds completely naked. A friend of Abel's named ge Clifford
Speaker 1: Prout also believed in the cause, and he willed four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars to a clothing fund for any creature
Speaker 1: that stands higher than four inches or is longer than
Speaker 1: six inches following his death. If all of this sounds absurd,
Speaker 1: well and that's because it was Sina. Yet a Bronstein
Speaker 1: and the ballet golf lessons were just some of the
Speaker 1: pranks pulled off by master hoaxer Alan Abel Sina had
Speaker 1: been a satirical commentary on how various books and movies
Speaker 1: were being censored in America. Abel had convinced comedian Buck
Speaker 1: Henry to play the part of g Clifford prout his
Speaker 1: yet a Bronstein campaign pokes fun at the absurdity of
Speaker 1: American politics. Whenever a news outlet needed a sound bite
Speaker 1: for Yetta for their broadcast, it was his wife Jean
Speaker 1: who spoke to them as Yetta. And the picture on
Speaker 1: all of Yetta's and paign signs and posters, well, that
Speaker 1: was a photo of Alan's own mother. There would be
Speaker 1: more pranks, of course. In nineteen seventy two, Able pulled
Speaker 1: off a major stunt at the St. Regis Hotel in
Speaker 1: New York City. He wrapped himself in bandages like a
Speaker 1: living mummy and announced to the press that he was,
Speaker 1: in fact, noted recluse and aviator Howard Hughes, preparing to
Speaker 1: be cryogenically frozen until the stock markets improved. Two days later,
Speaker 1: he came clean and let everyone in on the joke.
Speaker 1: Most of Abel's hoaxes preyed upon the nation's gullibility, specifically
Speaker 1: that of the news media. He held a press conference
Speaker 1: after the Watergate scandal broke and pretended to be the
Speaker 1: informant Deep Throat able as deep Throat was even offered
Speaker 1: a book deal worth one thousand dollars for his story. Sadly,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, all of Abel's pranks and hoaxes
Speaker 1: caught up with him. The fifty five year old jokester
Speaker 1: had been skiing near Sundance Ski Lodge in Utah when
Speaker 1: he suffered a fatal heart attack. His widow phone the
Speaker 1: New York Times to break the traged news, which they
Speaker 1: published in his obituary on January two of nine, But
Speaker 1: the following day, Abel stood before a group of reporters
Speaker 1: to announce, in the paraphrased words of Mark Twain, the
Speaker 1: reports of my demise have been grossly exaggerated. The Times
Speaker 1: printed a retraction shortly thereafter. Alan Abele continued to pull
Speaker 1: fast ones on politicians and celebrities for the next thirty years.
Speaker 1: Upon his actual death in two thousand eighteen, before we
Speaker 1: had The Daily Show and The Onion, we had Alan Abel,
Speaker 1: a man who spent his whole life raising kine Let's
Speaker 1: be honest. Everyone has a bad day at work. They
Speaker 1: might hit traffic during the morning commute, or misfile and
Speaker 1: important report. Maybe they even embarrassed the boss in a
Speaker 1: big meeting. Whatever the case, these fleeting moments of minor
Speaker 1: drama are often forgotten about the following day. People move on,
Speaker 1: They go about their lives and continue doing their jobs,
Speaker 1: just as before. Nobody has to worry about their silly
Speaker 1: mistakes being preserved for eternity. Right. Sadly, Kushim wasn't so lucky.
Speaker 1: Kushim was, according to a five thousand, four hundred year
Speaker 1: old clay tablet, an administrator in the ancient Sumerian city
Speaker 1: of Uruk. Despite the idea of a desk jobbing a
Speaker 1: fairly modern concept, there were actually middle managers thousands of
Speaker 1: years ago too. Kushim happened to be in charge of
Speaker 1: a grain silo and was responsible for tracking the barley
Speaker 1: that it received. He kept tabs on the shipments using
Speaker 1: clay tablets on which he engraved the calculations of his
Speaker 1: own accounting system. The grain was tabulated in bowls, with
Speaker 1: one bowl equivalent to just over one point three gallons. Now,
Speaker 1: if he drew a bowl on its side, and then
Speaker 1: added a dot that equaled nine thousand bowls of barley
Speaker 1: or about eleven thousand, four hundred gallons, and then the
Speaker 1: final totals were noted on the other side of the tablet,
Speaker 1: and he always signed his work Kushim, represented by the
Speaker 1: symbols coup and sim etched into the top left corner
Speaker 1: of each tablet above the tabulations. Seventy seven such records
Speaker 1: were discovered in the Temple of Inana in Uric, located
Speaker 1: today in what is known as southern Iraq. Inana was
Speaker 1: the goddess of love and war, first worshiped in ancient
Speaker 1: sumer The Babylonians, the Acadians, and the Assyrians all referred
Speaker 1: to her as Ishtar. The tablets found in the temple
Speaker 1: bore this signature and title of Kushim administrator, and depicted
Speaker 1: a lot more than just the barley totals. They were
Speaker 1: also dated with pictographs of a brick building, a stalk
Speaker 1: of the barley plant, and a small bottle at the end,
Speaker 1: which represented the final product. In other words, Kushim was
Speaker 1: tracking beer production. The discovery of these tablets was important
Speaker 1: for several reasons. For one, much of what had been
Speaker 1: analyzed already was comprised of artwork and tablets once owned
Speaker 1: by the ruling lass. For a long time, scholars weren't
Speaker 1: interested in mundane transactional records, but Kushim's tablets were business records,
Speaker 1: the kind of unique proto writing. They were a rare
Speaker 1: glimpse into administrative life in ancient Uruk by the people
Speaker 1: working on behalf of the rich. Second, literacy among the
Speaker 1: average citizens was not widespread. It was a skill reserved
Speaker 1: mainly for the elites and their scribes. Kushim didn't know
Speaker 1: how to write or do basic arithmetic. His system had
Speaker 1: been designed for himself, simply to help him do his
Speaker 1: job better. Unfortunately, he wasn't entirely careful in his calculations.
Speaker 1: On one of the eight teen surviving tablets, he had
Speaker 1: added up the barley and finally arrived at the total
Speaker 1: of three thousand, nine hundred and ten bowls. But that
Speaker 1: wasn't what he had written on the back. The opposite
Speaker 1: side of the tablet bore the number three thousand, eight
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety five, and his supervisor, Nissa had signed
Speaker 1: off on that total as well. So where did those
Speaker 1: other fifteen bowls go? Well, It's possible that Kushim had
Speaker 1: simply done the math wrong and that Nissa didn't know
Speaker 1: any better, just taking him at his word. But the
Speaker 1: other theory is more sneaky, that Kushem and Nissa were
Speaker 1: skimming a little barley off the top to make their
Speaker 1: own beer on the side. To be honest, we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure what caused the discrepancy, but we do
Speaker 1: know that Kushim made what maybe the earliest known accounting
Speaker 1: error on record. Not only that, but the name Kushim
Speaker 1: itself is the oldest example of a person's name ever
Speaker 1: captured in writing. And that's what I love about this story,
Speaker 1: because sometimes our mistakes can be frustrating, while other times
Speaker 1: they can be more than a little curious. I hope
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com and until next time, stay curious, yeah,