Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke'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: As any art lover will tell you, paintings can be beautiful.
Speaker 1: They can be emotional, moving, and deeply important to history
Speaker 1: and culture. But they can also be brutal, unsettling, even visceral.
Speaker 1: A good example of this is the work of Italian
Speaker 1: painter at Caravaggio. Born in Milan in fifteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: he was orphaned after both his parents died of the plague.
Speaker 1: He moved to Rome in fifteen ninety five and began
Speaker 1: selling paintings to support himself. Caravaggio rose to fame as
Speaker 1: one of the most unique artists of the Baroque era.
Speaker 1: He was particularly well known for his use of light.
Speaker 1: The backgrounds of his paintings tended to be very dark,
Speaker 1: serving as a stark contrast to the yellow lit characters
Speaker 1: in the forefront. Many of his pieces centered around religious
Speaker 1: and mythological imagery, and he didn't shy away from the
Speaker 1: uglier aspects of these stories. For example, one of his
Speaker 1: most famous works is titled Head of Medusa. It's painted
Speaker 1: on a circular wooden shield and it shows the serpent
Speaker 1: headed woman with her face contorted in a scream of
Speaker 1: fury and terror. But here's the real kicker. Medusa's head
Speaker 1: isn't connected to anything. It's cut off at the neck
Speaker 1: and the bottom of the picture is a huge theatrical
Speaker 1: spray of blood red paint. Now, if you look at
Speaker 1: Caravaggio's catalog, you'll find that decapitation is actually a pretty
Speaker 1: common theme. He painted one canvas called Judith Beheading Holophernies
Speaker 1: and another called the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you don't need any more details about those.
Speaker 1: Clearly Caravaggio had a flare for the dramatic and the
Speaker 1: uh violence in his art. But what most people don't
Speaker 1: know is the same hell true in his real life.
Speaker 1: You see, Caravaggio was a scoundrel of the absolute worst variety.
Speaker 1: Between fifteen ninety eight and sixteen oh one, when he
Speaker 1: was in his late twenties, he got into legal trouble
Speaker 1: on at least two occasions, once for carrying a sword
Speaker 1: without a permit and once for beating a man with
Speaker 1: a stick. He was also accused of attacking a different
Speaker 1: man with the aforementioned sword, although apparently that charge was
Speaker 1: never proven. A couple of years later, when the painter
Speaker 1: was in his early thirties, he developed a somewhat problematic
Speaker 1: relationship with another artist, Giovanni Baglioni. While many of the
Speaker 1: details have been lost to history, we do know one
Speaker 1: thing for sure. In sixteen oh three, Caravaggio wrote a
Speaker 1: poem mocking Baglioni's art, and the things he said were
Speaker 1: so cruel and inappropriate I cannot and will not repeat
Speaker 1: them here. Baglioni, of course, was furious. He sued his
Speaker 1: rival artist for libel and one Caravaggio spent two weeks
Speaker 1: in jail as a result, but his bad behavior didn't
Speaker 1: stop there. Over the next three years, he went to
Speaker 1: court for a number of reasons, some of which are
Speaker 1: honestly just bizarre. Again, he was caught carrying a sword
Speaker 1: without a permit. He threw rocks at one police officer
Speaker 1: and cursed at another. Once at a restaurant, he threw
Speaker 1: an entire plate of artichokes into a waiter's face and
Speaker 1: the icing on top of the cake. He was six
Speaker 1: months behind on rent, and his landlady was threatening to
Speaker 1: seize all of his furniture as payment, as if his
Speaker 1: life couldn't become any more of a mess. In sixteen
Speaker 1: oh six, the painter made his worst decision yet. He
Speaker 1: killed a man named Renukio Tomasoni. Now the circumstances of
Speaker 1: the murder, which happened over four hundred years ago, are
Speaker 1: now unclear, and autopsy showed that Renukio bled out through
Speaker 1: a cut in his femoral artery, which runs through the
Speaker 1: upper leg. Some historians believe the men got into a
Speaker 1: bar fight, or brawled after a ten huts match, or
Speaker 1: even battled over a woman. Either way, though the result
Speaker 1: was the same. Caravaggio, who let blood flow so freely
Speaker 1: in his paintings, now had literal blood on his hands.
Speaker 1: He fled Rome in the hopes of evading prison time,
Speaker 1: and for the next four years, it's believed that he
Speaker 1: lived in various small towns throughout Italy. He died in
Speaker 1: sixteen ten, although again it's not quite clear what killed him.
Speaker 1: It could have been syphilis, an infected wound, or even
Speaker 1: lead poisoning. But however, the artist's life ended. His legacy
Speaker 1: lives on now, four centuries later. Most people don't know
Speaker 1: about Caravaggio's personal life. Instead, they know the iconic look
Speaker 1: of his paintings, which are still on display in churches
Speaker 1: and museums throughout Italy and the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: If you're lucky enough to ever see one in person,
Speaker 1: Remember that the man behind the canvas wasn't just a
Speaker 1: brilliant artist. He was also a notorious criminal. It's hard
Speaker 1: to think about twentieth century literature without thinking about the
Speaker 1: concept of dystopia. A dystopia is a nightmare world, a
Speaker 1: society rife with suffering and injustice. In the wake of
Speaker 1: not one, but two World wars, Twentieth century authors used
Speaker 1: fictional dystopian settings to comment on politics, violence, and oppression
Speaker 1: in the real world. There are two dystopian novels that
Speaker 1: stand out even today, though nineteen eighty four by George
Speaker 1: Orwell and Brave New World by Aldus Huxley. The two
Speaker 1: books have some key differences, though, for example, in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, people are constantly watched by quote unquote Big Brother,
Speaker 1: and they can be jailed by the so called thought police.
Speaker 1: The oppressive rules of the society are enforced through violence.
Speaker 1: My contrast, in Brave New World, infants and adolescents are
Speaker 1: conditioned to accept their place in the social hierarchy. By
Speaker 1: the time they're adults, people have been effectively brainwashed. Plus
Speaker 1: they're given a concert flow of drugs to keep them happy.
Speaker 1: There are also quite a few things that the novels
Speaker 1: have in common. Both feature totalitarian governments that control the
Speaker 1: lives of their citizens. Both were widely banned because the
Speaker 1: ideas within them were considered dangerous, and both authors, Alvius
Speaker 1: Huxley and George Orwell, had a curious real life connection.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the year nineteen eleven. Alvius Huxley
Speaker 1: was just seventeen years old, but he'd been through a
Speaker 1: lot in his short life. His mother had died three
Speaker 1: years earlier, and he had recently developed a condition called carotitis.
Speaker 1: This is inflammation of a cornea, or the outer layer
Speaker 1: of the eye, and it left Huxley with significantly impaired
Speaker 1: vision for much of his life. He'd intended to pursue
Speaker 1: a career as a medical doctor, but his poor eyesight
Speaker 1: had now made it impossible, so Huxley made a pretty
Speaker 1: unclear career shift. Instead of medicine, he decided to study
Speaker 1: English literature. He enrolled at Oxford University, and as we
Speaker 1: already know, he soon found that he had quite a
Speaker 1: knack for writing. In nineteen sixteen he graduated and also
Speaker 1: published his first poetry collection. But as any writer will
Speaker 1: tell you, jobs are not easy to find. While he
Speaker 1: worked on building up his resume as an author, he
Speaker 1: made ends meet by working as a teacher at England's
Speaker 1: Eton College. Even though it was called a college, it
Speaker 1: wasn't really a university, though it was an elite prep school,
Speaker 1: the same place that Huxley himself had gone as a teenager.
Speaker 1: Huxley spent his days teaching English and French, and well,
Speaker 1: let's just say he didn't love it. He had trouble
Speaker 1: maintaining discipline over his classroom, and he had one student
Speaker 1: named Eric Blair who was constantly making trouble. Still, Huxley
Speaker 1: was determined to stick it out. He continued teaching, but
Speaker 1: spent his evenings hunched over a desk, writing furiously. Between
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen and nineteen eighteen, he published two more poetry collections. Finally,
Speaker 1: in nineteen nineteen, he was offered a job at a
Speaker 1: well known literary magazine. He could finally quit teaching and
Speaker 1: write full time. From then on, Huxley wrote at a
Speaker 1: break neck pace. He was a bit of a chameleon, too,
Speaker 1: pennying everything from poems in short stories to feature articles.
Speaker 1: Eventually he began writing novels too, and he published Brave
Speaker 1: New World in nineteen thirty two, when he was just
Speaker 1: thirty eight years old. By the nineteen forties, Huxley was
Speaker 1: widely known as one of the most significant authors of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. People looked up to him, which is
Speaker 1: part of the reason why in nineteen forty nine he
Speaker 1: received a newly published book in the mail. It was
Speaker 1: called nineteen eighty four. George Orwell had requested that his
Speaker 1: publisher sen Huxley a copy. Huxley read it and sent
Speaker 1: back a thoughtful, although quite critical note, which began and
Speaker 1: I quote, agreeing with all that the critics have written
Speaker 1: of it. I need not tell you yet once more
Speaker 1: how fine and profoundly important nineteen eighty four is. However,
Speaker 1: after this initial compliment, Huxley picked a fight with the author.
Speaker 1: He basically said that his own dystopia, the one that
Speaker 1: he imagined in Brave New World, was much more believable.
Speaker 1: Huxley wrote as if he had something to teach Orwell,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's because he used to be his teacher.
Speaker 1: You see, George Orwell was a pseudonym. His real name
Speaker 1: was Eric Blair. As in Aldous Huxley's Problem Students, the
Speaker 1: two giants of literature had been connected before either of
Speaker 1: them rose to fame, which certainly helps explain why their
Speaker 1: nightmare worlds were so curiously similar. I hope you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manke in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the Worldolore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.