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. In the early eighteen eighties,
Speaker 2: a man known as Doc Carver rode his horse across
Speaker 2: the open plains of Nebraska, lost in thought. Carver was
Speaker 2: a drift He was an expert sharpshooter, and he'd spent
Speaker 2: the past few years traveling around the world in touring
Speaker 2: exhibitions in vaudeville shows. He had even teamed up with
Speaker 2: another famous showman, Buffalo Bill Cody, to start their own
Speaker 2: traveling circus, but they had had a bitter falling out,
Speaker 2: and now Carver was striking out on his own once again.
Speaker 2: He wanted to start his own show, but he was
Speaker 2: having trouble finding a hook that people would be drawn to.
Speaker 2: He needed a fresh idea, something that no other circus
Speaker 2: was doing. As he crossed a bridge over the Platte River,
Speaker 2: his mind wandered with possibilities. Then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: he heard a deep groan. The bridge was collapsing. There
Speaker 2: was a loud snap, and Carver and his horse both
Speaker 2: tumbled down toward the river with a graceful arc. The
Speaker 2: horse s dove down and splashed into the water. Carver
Speaker 2: clung to its back as it swam toward the banks.
Speaker 2: As he climbed onto the grass, Carver hopped down to
Speaker 2: check the horse for injuries, and amazingly, they had both
Speaker 2: made it out unscathed. As Carver remounted his horse and
Speaker 2: navigated it toward the road, an idea began to form
Speaker 2: in his mind. Everyone had animals in the circus, but
Speaker 2: no one else had animals doing water tricks. Soon enough,
Speaker 2: at a fairgrounds in Saint Louis, Missouri, a curious audience
Speaker 2: gathered around a tall, wooden ramp that rose at the
Speaker 2: edge of a deep tank of water. Dot Carver greeted
Speaker 2: the crowd and told them to prepare for something they
Speaker 2: had never seen before, a high diving horse. And then
Speaker 2: he mounted a sleek mare named Black Bess, patted her back,
Speaker 2: and led her up the ramp. Once they had reached
Speaker 2: the top, Carver got Black Best into position on a
Speaker 2: small wooden platform, waited for the crowd's anticipation to reach
Speaker 2: its peak, and then tapped his legs against the horse's sides.
Speaker 2: On command, Black Best dove down into the tank of water.
Speaker 2: The audience gasped as they fell. They splashed into the
Speaker 2: fourteen foot deep pool, and as they bobbed to the
Speaker 2: surface and Carver shook the water out of his ears,
Speaker 2: he heard the crowd cheering and whooping.
Speaker 1: Horse diving was an instant hit. Over the next few years,
Speaker 1: droves of curious spectators poured in to see Carver's traveling exhibition.
Speaker 1: He gradually exped band of the operation until he had
Speaker 1: a total of six horses performing in various cities all
Speaker 1: across the country. Carver passed away in nineteen twenty seven,
Speaker 1: but the show, as they say, must go on. His son,
Speaker 1: Al took over, and just a year later Al married
Speaker 1: Sarna Webster, one of the first female horse divers in history,
Speaker 1: who had worked for Al's father. Under their guidance, a
Speaker 1: permanent horse diving attraction was opened on the boardwalk at
Speaker 1: Atlantic City's Steel Pier in nineteen thirty one. However, tragedy
Speaker 1: struck when Sonora lost her balance and hit the water
Speaker 1: with her eyes wide open. The impact caused her retinas
Speaker 1: to detach, causing instant blindness. Despite this, though, she continued
Speaker 1: to dive riding horses off the platform and into the
Speaker 1: tank without being able to see, just like Daredevil, only cooler.
Speaker 1: Sonora retired in nineteen forty five, but the act kept
Speaker 1: going strong until the nineteen seventies. That's when the audiences
Speaker 1: gradually dwindled, helped along by animal rights groups that had
Speaker 1: begun to protest the shows, and so in nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: the last diving horse took its final leaps off steel
Speaker 1: pier before the exhibit was shuddered for good. In the
Speaker 1: decades since, there have been two attempts to revive this
Speaker 1: bizarre sport, neither of which got off the ground. No
Speaker 1: pun intended, I swear, and in nineteen ninety one, the
Speaker 1: story of Sonora's miraculous career was turned into a movie
Speaker 1: called Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken. She passed away in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, less than five months shy of
Speaker 1: her one hundredth birthday. Horse diving certainly was a curious
Speaker 1: bit of entertainment, but just like the vaudeville shows and
Speaker 1: sharpshooters of the wild West. It's one that might best
Speaker 1: be left a thing of the past. The famous theorem
Speaker 1: that's taught in geometry classes everywhere, A squared plus B
Speaker 1: squared equals C squared. It's meant to help us find
Speaker 1: the hypotenuse of a right angle, and it was named
Speaker 1: for the famous Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras. Now it's
Speaker 1: easy to picture him as a sage robed scholar lecturing
Speaker 1: a class of engaged students about his chosen field. But
Speaker 1: if you did that, you'd only be getting a fraction
Speaker 1: of the truth. To get a much clearer picture, you
Speaker 1: have to also include a few other strange angles. His
Speaker 1: belief that souls wandered between humankind and the animals, the
Speaker 1: secrecy around his mathematical discoveries, and of course, his absolute
Speaker 1: refusal to eat beans. The school of Pythagoras founded gives
Speaker 1: us the first clue of his peculiarities. It wasn't merely
Speaker 1: a lecture hall. What he created instead was more of
Speaker 1: a commune where his students lived and ate together and
Speaker 1: took an oath swearing them to absolutely secrecy. To be inducted,
Speaker 1: one had to pass through secret rites, and the oath was,
Speaker 1: in Pythagoras's mind, protective to keep the world from learning
Speaker 1: truths that might destabilize the established order. This suppression of
Speaker 1: knowledge was key to a culture of silence that has
Speaker 1: kept much of the mathematician's life and works mysterious to
Speaker 1: this day. We do know that Pythagoras was obsessed with
Speaker 1: numerology and believe that numbers constituted the very core of reality.
Speaker 1: He taught as students that the distance between planets and
Speaker 1: stars created a type of cosmic music that he alone
Speaker 1: could hear. He also taught that a triangular arrangement called
Speaker 1: a tatractus could be used to align one's soul with
Speaker 1: the greater universal order. He would conduct rituals wherein his
Speaker 1: initiates would arrange and rearrange small objects into the tatractus pattern,
Speaker 1: which he believed could channel that heavenly order into the
Speaker 1: material realm. The philosopher also insisted upon on a strict
Speaker 1: dietary regimen, including forbidding that any of his disciples eat beans.
Speaker 1: There was a practical reason for this, He said he
Speaker 1: believed that lagume caused flatulence could be a distraction to
Speaker 1: his teachings. It's hard to focus on sacred geometry when
Speaker 1: the lecture hall stinks. But there was a stranger, more
Speaker 1: mystical reason for disallowing beans, the belief that within them
Speaker 1: dwelled the souls of the dead. And yes, I get it,
Speaker 1: it's quite weird. But this view came from his belief
Speaker 1: in metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls, and it led
Speaker 1: him and his followers into a life of strict vegetarianism.
Speaker 1: By avoiding the killing of animals, he hoped not to
Speaker 1: harm the souls that were transmitted between beast and man,
Speaker 1: and in this way he could extend his beliefs into
Speaker 1: a practical, everyday application. Although it's unclear to this day
Speaker 1: why beans were also spiritually excluded. There are a host
Speaker 1: of other peculiarities about the guy. For instance, tales of
Speaker 1: the mathematician won walking around in golden sandals. It kept
Speaker 1: his footfalls silent, they say, as well as allowing him
Speaker 1: to walk a path of spiritual virtue. There were also
Speaker 1: rumors that he could tame wild animals, stop a raging
Speaker 1: bull in its tracks, and predict earthquakes by sensing the
Speaker 1: deep vibrations of the Earth before they struck, and in
Speaker 1: all these rumors, along with the cult like behavior of
Speaker 1: his students and the deep secrecy around his teachings, gave
Speaker 1: him a mystical air. This mysterious persona was further supported
Speaker 1: by his students, who warned of a terrible curse that
Speaker 1: would befall any man who dared spread his secret teaching.
Speaker 1: You see, the Pythagoreans believe that the universe was a
Speaker 1: living tapestry. It was woven out of the souls, numbers,
Speaker 1: and harmonies hidden too most of humankind. They guarded this
Speaker 1: tapestry fiercely. Their belief that the cosmos sang in precise
Speaker 1: ratios made ordinary mathematics a sacred art, while their dietary
Speaker 1: bands and mystical rituals turn daily life into a continual
Speaker 1: right of devotion. Even the discovery of an irrational number
Speaker 1: was treated as a sort of philosophical crisis to hide
Speaker 1: from those who could not or would not understand, lest
Speaker 1: the spread of that knowledge publicly unravel their entire worldview.
Speaker 1: And so as time passed by, the legend of Pythagorasts
Speaker 1: grew the beam shunning soul traveling mystic who claimed to
Speaker 1: hear the music of the planets became a cultural archetype,
Speaker 1: a symbol of the uneasy marriage between rational inquiry and
Speaker 1: mystical belief. Modern scholars today, armed with archaeological fragments and
Speaker 1: ancient testimonies, continue to untangle fact from fiction, but the
Speaker 1: weirder elements persist because they illuminate a world in which
Speaker 1: mathematics was not a neutral tool, but a pathway to
Speaker 1: the divine. I hope you enjoyed today's guide tour through
Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by me
Speaker 1: Aaron Manke in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written
Speaker 1: by the Grim and Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk.
Speaker 1: Learn more about the show and the people who make
Speaker 1: it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also
Speaker 1: find a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book,
Speaker 1: available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook.
Speaker 1: And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider
Speaker 1: joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without
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Speaker 1: sign up over at Patreon dot com slash grimandmild, and
Speaker 1: until next time, stay curious.