Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Imagine that you're strolling along a beach searching for shells.
Speaker 1: You wade through ankle deep water, keeping your eyes peeled
Speaker 1: for anything bright, round, or shiny, and then suddenly your
Speaker 1: foot brushes against something that feels like a large shell.
Speaker 1: You reach your hand into the water and pull out
Speaker 1: a glass bottle. But it's not mere trash. The bottle's
Speaker 1: top is sealed and there's a letter inside. Discover a
Speaker 1: message in a bottle. A find such as this would
Speaker 1: be a thrill, a rare chance to hear from someone
Speaker 1: all the way across the ocean. The letter's writer would
Speaker 1: be a complete mystery to you, except for what they
Speaker 1: choose to include in their message. And it makes you wonder,
Speaker 1: what if you sent a message of your own, what
Speaker 1: would you want the reader to know about you and
Speaker 1: the world you come from? In the winter of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, a man named Carl began working on such
Speaker 1: a message. But it wasn't a letter written in a bottle.
Speaker 1: It was a record. Carl had a unique opportunity to
Speaker 1: produce something for what could potentially be the biggest audience
Speaker 1: the music world had ever known. Now, Carl was a scientist.
Speaker 1: He didn't have a background in music, but it was
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, an era known for musical innovation and experimentation. Plus,
Speaker 1: Carl did have a background in math, and he was
Speaker 1: fascinated with patterns found in music. However, he also knew
Speaker 1: that a great record is more than just a series
Speaker 1: of logical patterns, so he needed help from people who
Speaker 1: knew more about music than he did. Carl reached out
Speaker 1: to some friends and told them about the opportunity. He
Speaker 1: explained how music serves as a universal language and told
Speaker 1: them that he wanted this project to express human emotion
Speaker 1: on a deeper level than any album had before. Carl's
Speaker 1: friends found this fascinating they were eager to help him out,
Speaker 1: but the project did come with one catch. They had
Speaker 1: a few months to get it done, otherwise they would
Speaker 1: miss their chance to release it. They had to work fast.
Speaker 1: Oh and one more thing to know about the record
Speaker 1: is that it was actually more of a mixtape, or,
Speaker 1: if you're from the younger generation, a playlist. Carl and
Speaker 1: his team weren't producing original tracks. They were compiling famous ones.
Speaker 1: To some this might not sound like the best way
Speaker 1: to make money, but Carl wasn't out to make a buck.
Speaker 1: He was out to make history. His teammates were on
Speaker 1: board with this too. Among others, Carlin listed two ethnomusicologists.
Speaker 1: They use their knowledge of world music to teach Carl
Speaker 1: how the mathematical rules of music can be broken. With
Speaker 1: this core principle in mind, the team collected tracks. In all,
Speaker 1: they gathered over ninety minutes of content. It included symphonies
Speaker 1: by Beethoven and Bach, Chuck Berry's Johnny be Good Greetings
Speaker 1: in fifty five languages, the Sound of a Mother kissing
Speaker 1: her baby, and Whale Song. But perhaps one of the
Speaker 1: most iconic tracks on the album is a recording of
Speaker 1: Carl's wife's brain waves that was taken just a couple
Speaker 1: of days after the pair got engaged. Many have referred
Speaker 1: to this track as the sound of Love. Even with
Speaker 1: all of this, though the team completed the project by
Speaker 1: their deadline. They even had a little time to spare,
Speaker 1: so they came up with another idea. Once all the
Speaker 1: tracks were in place, the team thought about the vast
Speaker 1: audience that could reach and considered ways to ensure that
Speaker 1: it caught the listener's attention. And there was another catch too.
Speaker 1: They were only creating one copy of this album, so
Speaker 1: to honor its rarity, the team had the record plated
Speaker 1: with gold, thus it became known as the Golden Record.
Speaker 1: As a final touch, the Golden Record was coded in
Speaker 1: a type of uranium that would take over eight billion
Speaker 1: years to decay. In the summer of nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: it was time to release the Golden Record. There's one
Speaker 1: final thing to know about it. Though it wasn't for
Speaker 1: sale and the target audience wasn't even human. Carl and
Speaker 1: his teammates produced the album for extraterrestrial listeners. You see.
Speaker 1: Carl's full name was Carl Sagan, and he was a
Speaker 1: world famous astronomer. As NASA prepared to launch the Voyager spacecraft,
Speaker 1: Carl had been tasked with finding a way to mark
Speaker 1: the ship's launch date and location in case aliens came
Speaker 1: across the vessel in deep space. In the past, Carl
Speaker 1: had designed plaques for this very same reason, but this
Speaker 1: time he wanted to make something that would help alien
Speaker 1: life understand the deep emotional complexity of human beings. The
Speaker 1: project evolved to include all kinds of earthly wonders. The
Speaker 1: record was plated in gold to show that it was
Speaker 1: a special gift, and coded in long lasting uranium so
Speaker 1: that other intelligent beings could determine how long it had
Speaker 1: been in space. In twenty twelve, the Voyager became the
Speaker 1: first spacecraft to cross into interstellar space. Only time will
Speaker 1: tell whether another life form will find it and be
Speaker 1: inspired by the curious creatures known as human beings. In
Speaker 1: the year five twenty five BCE, thousands of Egyptian soldiers
Speaker 1: stood at attention outside the city of Pelusium, the last
Speaker 1: stronghold between their empire and the rugged wilderness of the
Speaker 1: Sinai Peninsula. They tensed ready for battle as the Persian
Speaker 1: army came into view. This was an old dance to
Speaker 1: these soldiers. They had been there many times before, standing
Speaker 1: on the battlefield waiting for their enemy, and nearly every
Speaker 1: time before they had fended off the invaders. They were
Speaker 1: confident that this time would be no different. At least
Speaker 1: they were on That was until they heard the sound
Speaker 1: that would signal the end of the ancient Egyptian Empire,
Speaker 1: the plaintive innocent miao of a cat. The ancient Battle
Speaker 1: of Pelusium may have been one of the earliest examples
Speaker 1: of an enemy using psychological warfare. Yet one of the
Speaker 1: most surprising things about the battle, and in fact, the
Speaker 1: entire downfall of Egypt, was that it was supposedly in
Speaker 1: response to a petty insult several years before. The Persian
Speaker 1: king Cambiasis the Second wanted to strengthen relations between his
Speaker 1: kingdom and Egypt, and so he asked the pharaoh Amasus
Speaker 1: to send a daughter to him to marry. Amasis was
Speaker 1: reluctant to do so, so he sent another woman to Persia,
Speaker 1: claiming that she was his daughter. When Cambisas discovered the deception,
Speaker 1: he declared war. As the Persians were preparing to invade,
Speaker 1: Amasus died, leaving his inexperienced son saw Metek, the third
Speaker 1: in charge of the empire. Never having fought a war before,
Speaker 1: he prepared to meet the invaders at Pelusium, the city
Speaker 1: that guarded the entry to the Nile Delta, although he'd
Speaker 1: only been pharaoh for six months. As his scout spotted
Speaker 1: Cambiasis's troops heading toward the city, he felt completely confident
Speaker 1: that his soldiers were ready to repel the Persian invaders,
Speaker 1: and the poor young pharaoh didn't count on Cambiass's unorthodox tactics.
Speaker 1: Cambisis believed in knowing his enemy and exploiting even the
Speaker 1: smallest weaknesses. He was fascinated with ancient Egyptian culture, and
Speaker 1: he knew that at this time, animals were revered by Egyptians.
Speaker 1: Many were associated with certain gods and goddesses, and harming
Speaker 1: animals was seen as an affront to their divine representative.
Speaker 1: As a result, Egyptians were mainly pescatarians, eating mostly grains, vegetables,
Speaker 1: and fish. One of the most sacred animals in Egyptian
Speaker 1: culture was the cat. They were the special favorites of
Speaker 1: the goddess Bastet, who was pictured with a woman's body
Speaker 1: in a cat's head. Bastet was a goddess of the
Speaker 1: domestic realm, associated with fertility, childbirth, motherhood, and the home,
Speaker 1: but was also associated with metting out harsh justice for wrongdoers.
Speaker 1: As a result, Egyptians venerated cats, even mummifying them. When
Speaker 1: they died, mournful owners would shave their eyebrows to show
Speaker 1: their grief. The punishment for killing a cat was harsh
Speaker 1: as well. On earth, you were put to death, then
Speaker 1: in the afterlife you had to face Bastet's wrath. Knowing
Speaker 1: all this, Cambiasis unleashed a veritable army of sacred animals
Speaker 1: against the Egyptians. He drove dogs, sheep, birds, dozens upon
Speaker 1: dozens of cats, all in front of his soldiers, placing
Speaker 1: them at the center of the battlefield. He had his
Speaker 1: soldiers paint the cat headed goddess Bastet on their shields
Speaker 1: and faced them toward the Egyptian army, and the impact
Speaker 1: was immediate. The Egyptians couldn't harm these sacred animals, especially
Speaker 1: with their own goddess staring them down from their enemies shields.
Speaker 1: They beat a hasty retreat, signaling surrender to the Persians.
Speaker 1: The defeats at Pelusium marked the beginning of the end
Speaker 1: for Egypt. The Persian army followed the retreating Egyptians, slaughtering
Speaker 1: any who remained behind. They chased the Egyptians down the
Speaker 1: Nile to the empire's capital at Memphis, and there they
Speaker 1: laid siege to the city, ultimately capturing it and imprisoning pharosamitec.
Speaker 1: Egypt passed from Persian hands to the Greeks, and eventually
Speaker 1: to the Romans. Except for a handful of years here
Speaker 1: and there. Ancient Egypt was never again under its own control.
Speaker 1: Two thousand, six hundred years of empire, and it was
Speaker 1: all lost in one single game of cat and mouse.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at Theworldoflore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.