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Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is

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Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,

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Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

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Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. So few of us ever get a second chance,

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Speaker 1: whether it's with our careers, are loved ones, or with

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Speaker 1: life itself. We get one shot to make the most

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Speaker 1: of what we're given, and then one day it's game over.

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Speaker 1: But life is not a game. Sure, there are winners

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Speaker 1: and losers, but the stakes are far higher than we

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Speaker 1: might realize. Just ask us At Bernstein. Bernstein was born

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Speaker 1: in the Ukraine in a teen eighty two, back when

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Speaker 1: his hometown was part of the Russian Empire. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: o six, he received his doctorate in law from Heidelberg

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Speaker 1: University and became a practicing financial lawyer. Shortly after that,

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Speaker 1: Bernstein saw great success in his legal career, earning a

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Speaker 1: comfortable living for himself and his family. Unfortunately, as he

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Speaker 1: would come to learn several times in his life, considerable

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Speaker 1: gains were often followed by immense losses, but it wasn't

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Speaker 1: his fault. He wasn't a gambler and he didn't play

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Speaker 1: the stock markets, although he did enjoy the occasional game chess.

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Speaker 1: To be specific, he picked it up in law school

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Speaker 1: and found that he had a talent for it. One

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Speaker 1: year after he started playing, he was entering competitions all

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Speaker 1: over Europe. In June of nineteen o two, his win

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Speaker 1: at the General Chess Federation of Berlin earned him a

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Speaker 1: master title, kicking off a spree of tournaments with varying results.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes he placed first or second, other times he tied

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Speaker 1: for third or fourth. Yet the more he played, the

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Speaker 1: more of a reputation he built for himself, and he

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Speaker 1: was also outspoken against certain players, such as Jose Capablanca,

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Speaker 1: who beat him several times over the years. But there

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Speaker 1: was something fascinating about this up and coming wonder kid.

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Speaker 1: Chess champions and enthusiasts alike spook highly of him, and

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Speaker 1: his name often appeared on high profile lists, although not

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Speaker 1: always in a good way. The Bolshevik Revolution of nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventeen brought a lot of turmoil to Russia, with Lennon's

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Speaker 1: Red Army overthrowing the government in setting up its own

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Speaker 1: Capitalists and their enablers were rounded up for contributing to

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Speaker 1: the plight of the workers, and among them was as Bernstein.

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Speaker 1: Ossip wasn't a banker, but as a financial lawyer, he

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Speaker 1: certainly helped them get richer, oftentimes on the backs of

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Speaker 1: the most vulnerable. He was practicing in Odessa, Ukraine, when

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Speaker 1: he was arrested by the Bolshevik's secret police in nineteen eighteen.

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Speaker 1: There was no trial or due process. Many people who

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Speaker 1: were apprehended were automatically sentenced to death by firing squad,

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Speaker 1: and Ossip was no exception. On the day of his execution,

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Speaker 1: he was lined up with the other prisoners, waiting for

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Speaker 1: the bullet that would end his life. Instead, he heard

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Speaker 1: a superior officer ask one of his men for the

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Speaker 1: list of offenders before him. As the officers skimmed the

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Speaker 1: list of names, the man recognized Bernstein and asked him

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Speaker 1: if he was the chess champion he had read about.

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Speaker 1: Bernstein said yes, he was not convinced. The officer demanded proof,

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Speaker 1: but no identification would tell him what he wanted to know.

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Speaker 1: He needed to see the man in action, so he

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Speaker 1: gave him an ultimatum if he won the game, he

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Speaker 1: would be free to go, and if he lost or

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Speaker 1: drew the match, he would be shot with the others. Quietly,

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Speaker 1: Bernstein agreed. The two men sat across from each other

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Speaker 1: as the game was set up. Ponds, knights, and rooks

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Speaker 1: flew across the board. The commanding officer may have been

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Speaker 1: a chess aficionado, but he wasn't much of a player,

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Speaker 1: and Bernstein was able to best him in a handful

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Speaker 1: of moves, and the officer, true to his word, leased

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Speaker 1: him right then and there. Satisfied with having played against

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Speaker 1: a real chess master, Bernstein and his family immediately fled

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Speaker 1: Ukraine to Paris to start their lives over far from

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Speaker 1: the dangers at home. Austin Bernstein went back to playing chess,

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Speaker 1: becoming a legend of the game by the end of

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Speaker 1: his life in nineteen sixty two. However, nothing would ever

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Speaker 1: measure up against the match he played on that day

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Speaker 1: that he was scheduled to be executed. He had played

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Speaker 1: the game of his life, quite literally, and survived, the

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Speaker 1: perfect embodiment of that famous word checkmate. Isador had a problem.

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Speaker 1: So many of the texts he was using needed to

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Speaker 1: be read out loud, but the written word on a page, well,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't really tell you how the words should sound,

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Speaker 1: and Isadore wanted to change that. You see, he was

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Speaker 1: from Spain, but he was also well traveled. He had

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Speaker 1: met people from all around Europe and the Mediterranean, and

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Speaker 1: he knew just how important it was to communicate clearly.

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Speaker 1: But not everyone he met shared the same culture, the

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Speaker 1: same habits, or the same ways of talking, let alone

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Speaker 1: the same language or way of reading. And even if

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Speaker 1: they could read the same language, it was a rare

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Speaker 1: thing for two people with different backgrounds to see things

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Speaker 1: the same way. Isador wanted to smooth some of that out.

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Speaker 1: He wanted to be sure that anyone, just by reading

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Speaker 1: a written page could tell what it was really supposed

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Speaker 1: to mean. Now he wasn't the first person to think

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Speaker 1: about this, of course, but he may just be the

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Speaker 1: first one to think about it the hardest and to

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Speaker 1: try and come up with a solution. So is a

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Speaker 1: Door started to experiment, and he had some good ideas too.

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Speaker 1: He started to come up with a new series of

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Speaker 1: complex symbols to appear around a writer's letter that could

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Speaker 1: guide someone who was reading the words, and he thought

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Speaker 1: about the marks already on the page around the letters. First,

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Speaker 1: he watched the way that other Spanish writers did things

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Speaker 1: like market quotation. Some of what they did made sense

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Speaker 1: to him. Some of it, though, seemed a little fussy,

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Speaker 1: a little too or nate. Then there were too many

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Speaker 1: flourishes before they got to the point. Complexity wasn't what

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Speaker 1: he actually wanted. If readers from all over Spain and

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Speaker 1: beyond were going to be able to follow the directions,

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Speaker 1: he wanted to actually have it be simple, elegant, not

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Speaker 1: or nate would be the rule. So that's when Isador

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Speaker 1: looked to history. Like many other writers in Europe, he

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Speaker 1: looked back to Greece. There he picked up on some

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Speaker 1: ideas from the writer Aristophanes and the simple idea he

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Speaker 1: had developed. It wasn't waves and flourishes that he had

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Speaker 1: used to mark the context of words. Instead, he used

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Speaker 1: a simple system of three dots. They marched along with

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Speaker 1: the letters and marked their meaning by where they were placed,

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Speaker 1: one at the top of the line, one in the middle,

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Speaker 1: and one at the bottom. It was just the thing.

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Speaker 1: Armed with that old method is a door set out

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Speaker 1: to give it a new spin. Now in ancient Greek texts,

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Speaker 1: the idea had been that these dots would guide someone

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Speaker 1: reading the texts out loud. Isadore was more interested in

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Speaker 1: guiding someone who was reading the text quietly to themselves.

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Speaker 1: But the point remained. If everyone could agree on the

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Speaker 1: meaning of a few simple marks, it could help readers

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Speaker 1: follow the tone and rhythm of the written word. So

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Speaker 1: Isador worked to spread his revival of the Greek thoughts.

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Speaker 1: He included a description of his system in a book

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Speaker 1: he called the Etymologies. Fortunately for the spread of his ideas,

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Speaker 1: at least it proved popular, and it quickly spread out

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Speaker 1: from Spain, and even long after Isadore was gone, people

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Speaker 1: were still reading and studying his work, including what he

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Speaker 1: had to say about language and what he had to

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Speaker 1: say about writing it. His book became the standard text

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Speaker 1: for teaching new writers in country after country, generation after generation,

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Speaker 1: and those little dots they stuck around. In fact, they

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Speaker 1: even became a standard way of marking writing from one

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Speaker 1: language to another. They endured for so long, in fact,

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Speaker 1: that we're still using them today in English, even if

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Speaker 1: they've changed slightly. They've moved around the page a little bit,

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Speaker 1: but they're more or less doing what Isador thought they

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Speaker 1: should showing the breaks between parts of sentences to let

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Speaker 1: readers know where the writer intended one idea to stop

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Speaker 1: and another to begin. Because those three dots, since Isador

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Speaker 1: of Seville invented them in the seventh century, they became

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Speaker 1: three of the marks we know today as punctuation, the colon,

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Speaker 1: the period, and the comma. I hope you've enjoyed today's

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Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free

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Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by

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Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by

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Speaker 1: me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I

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Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,

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Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all

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Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.

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Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,