Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full 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. So few of us ever get a second chance,
Speaker 1: whether it's with our careers, are loved ones, or with
Speaker 1: life itself. We get one shot to make the most
Speaker 1: of what we're given, and then one day it's game over.
Speaker 1: But life is not a game. Sure, there are winners
Speaker 1: and losers, but the stakes are far higher than we
Speaker 1: might realize. Just ask us At Bernstein. Bernstein was born
Speaker 1: in the Ukraine in a teen eighty two, back when
Speaker 1: his hometown was part of the Russian Empire. In nineteen
Speaker 1: o six, he received his doctorate in law from Heidelberg
Speaker 1: University and became a practicing financial lawyer. Shortly after that,
Speaker 1: Bernstein saw great success in his legal career, earning a
Speaker 1: comfortable living for himself and his family. Unfortunately, as he
Speaker 1: would come to learn several times in his life, considerable
Speaker 1: gains were often followed by immense losses, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: his fault. He wasn't a gambler and he didn't play
Speaker 1: the stock markets, although he did enjoy the occasional game chess.
Speaker 1: To be specific, he picked it up in law school
Speaker 1: and found that he had a talent for it. One
Speaker 1: year after he started playing, he was entering competitions all
Speaker 1: over Europe. In June of nineteen o two, his win
Speaker 1: at the General Chess Federation of Berlin earned him a
Speaker 1: master title, kicking off a spree of tournaments with varying results.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he placed first or second, other times he tied
Speaker 1: for third or fourth. Yet the more he played, the
Speaker 1: more of a reputation he built for himself, and he
Speaker 1: was also outspoken against certain players, such as Jose Capablanca,
Speaker 1: who beat him several times over the years. But there
Speaker 1: was something fascinating about this up and coming wonder kid.
Speaker 1: Chess champions and enthusiasts alike spook highly of him, and
Speaker 1: his name often appeared on high profile lists, although not
Speaker 1: always in a good way. The Bolshevik Revolution of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventeen brought a lot of turmoil to Russia, with Lennon's
Speaker 1: Red Army overthrowing the government in setting up its own
Speaker 1: Capitalists and their enablers were rounded up for contributing to
Speaker 1: the plight of the workers, and among them was as Bernstein.
Speaker 1: Ossip wasn't a banker, but as a financial lawyer, he
Speaker 1: certainly helped them get richer, oftentimes on the backs of
Speaker 1: the most vulnerable. He was practicing in Odessa, Ukraine, when
Speaker 1: he was arrested by the Bolshevik's secret police in nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 1: There was no trial or due process. Many people who
Speaker 1: were apprehended were automatically sentenced to death by firing squad,
Speaker 1: and Ossip was no exception. On the day of his execution,
Speaker 1: he was lined up with the other prisoners, waiting for
Speaker 1: the bullet that would end his life. Instead, he heard
Speaker 1: a superior officer ask one of his men for the
Speaker 1: list of offenders before him. As the officers skimmed the
Speaker 1: list of names, the man recognized Bernstein and asked him
Speaker 1: if he was the chess champion he had read about.
Speaker 1: Bernstein said yes, he was not convinced. The officer demanded proof,
Speaker 1: but no identification would tell him what he wanted to know.
Speaker 1: He needed to see the man in action, so he
Speaker 1: gave him an ultimatum if he won the game, he
Speaker 1: would be free to go, and if he lost or
Speaker 1: drew the match, he would be shot with the others. Quietly,
Speaker 1: Bernstein agreed. The two men sat across from each other
Speaker 1: as the game was set up. Ponds, knights, and rooks
Speaker 1: flew across the board. The commanding officer may have been
Speaker 1: a chess aficionado, but he wasn't much of a player,
Speaker 1: and Bernstein was able to best him in a handful
Speaker 1: of moves, and the officer, true to his word, leased
Speaker 1: him right then and there. Satisfied with having played against
Speaker 1: a real chess master, Bernstein and his family immediately fled
Speaker 1: Ukraine to Paris to start their lives over far from
Speaker 1: the dangers at home. Austin Bernstein went back to playing chess,
Speaker 1: becoming a legend of the game by the end of
Speaker 1: his life in nineteen sixty two. However, nothing would ever
Speaker 1: measure up against the match he played on that day
Speaker 1: that he was scheduled to be executed. He had played
Speaker 1: the game of his life, quite literally, and survived, the
Speaker 1: perfect embodiment of that famous word checkmate. Isador had a problem.
Speaker 1: So many of the texts he was using needed to
Speaker 1: be read out loud, but the written word on a page, well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really tell you how the words should sound,
Speaker 1: and Isadore wanted to change that. You see, he was
Speaker 1: from Spain, but he was also well traveled. He had
Speaker 1: met people from all around Europe and the Mediterranean, and
Speaker 1: he knew just how important it was to communicate clearly.
Speaker 1: But not everyone he met shared the same culture, the
Speaker 1: same habits, or the same ways of talking, let alone
Speaker 1: the same language or way of reading. And even if
Speaker 1: they could read the same language, it was a rare
Speaker 1: thing for two people with different backgrounds to see things
Speaker 1: the same way. Isador wanted to smooth some of that out.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be sure that anyone, just by reading
Speaker 1: a written page could tell what it was really supposed
Speaker 1: to mean. Now he wasn't the first person to think
Speaker 1: about this, of course, but he may just be the
Speaker 1: first one to think about it the hardest and to
Speaker 1: try and come up with a solution. So is a
Speaker 1: Door started to experiment, and he had some good ideas too.
Speaker 1: He started to come up with a new series of
Speaker 1: complex symbols to appear around a writer's letter that could
Speaker 1: guide someone who was reading the words, and he thought
Speaker 1: about the marks already on the page around the letters. First,
Speaker 1: he watched the way that other Spanish writers did things
Speaker 1: like market quotation. Some of what they did made sense
Speaker 1: to him. Some of it, though, seemed a little fussy,
Speaker 1: a little too or nate. Then there were too many
Speaker 1: flourishes before they got to the point. Complexity wasn't what
Speaker 1: he actually wanted. If readers from all over Spain and
Speaker 1: beyond were going to be able to follow the directions,
Speaker 1: he wanted to actually have it be simple, elegant, not
Speaker 1: or nate would be the rule. So that's when Isador
Speaker 1: looked to history. Like many other writers in Europe, he
Speaker 1: looked back to Greece. There he picked up on some
Speaker 1: ideas from the writer Aristophanes and the simple idea he
Speaker 1: had developed. It wasn't waves and flourishes that he had
Speaker 1: used to mark the context of words. Instead, he used
Speaker 1: a simple system of three dots. They marched along with
Speaker 1: the letters and marked their meaning by where they were placed,
Speaker 1: one at the top of the line, one in the middle,
Speaker 1: and one at the bottom. It was just the thing.
Speaker 1: Armed with that old method is a door set out
Speaker 1: to give it a new spin. Now in ancient Greek texts,
Speaker 1: the idea had been that these dots would guide someone
Speaker 1: reading the texts out loud. Isadore was more interested in
Speaker 1: guiding someone who was reading the text quietly to themselves.
Speaker 1: But the point remained. If everyone could agree on the
Speaker 1: meaning of a few simple marks, it could help readers
Speaker 1: follow the tone and rhythm of the written word. So
Speaker 1: Isador worked to spread his revival of the Greek thoughts.
Speaker 1: He included a description of his system in a book
Speaker 1: he called the Etymologies. Fortunately for the spread of his ideas,
Speaker 1: at least it proved popular, and it quickly spread out
Speaker 1: from Spain, and even long after Isadore was gone, people
Speaker 1: were still reading and studying his work, including what he
Speaker 1: had to say about language and what he had to
Speaker 1: say about writing it. His book became the standard text
Speaker 1: for teaching new writers in country after country, generation after generation,
Speaker 1: and those little dots they stuck around. In fact, they
Speaker 1: even became a standard way of marking writing from one
Speaker 1: language to another. They endured for so long, in fact,
Speaker 1: that we're still using them today in English, even if
Speaker 1: they've changed slightly. They've moved around the page a little bit,
Speaker 1: but they're more or less doing what Isador thought they
Speaker 1: should showing the breaks between parts of sentences to let
Speaker 1: readers know where the writer intended one idea to stop
Speaker 1: and another to begin. Because those three dots, since Isador
Speaker 1: of Seville invented them in the seventh century, they became
Speaker 1: three of the marks we know today as punctuation, the colon,
Speaker 1: the period, and the comma. I hope you've enjoyed today's
Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
Speaker 1: me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,