1
00:00:04,120 --> 00:00:07,480
Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of

2
00:00:07,520 --> 00:00:14,480
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of

3
00:00:14,520 --> 00:00:18,480
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all

4
00:00:18,520 --> 00:00:22,200
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just

5
00:00:22,239 --> 00:00:28,880
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

6
00:00:36,680 --> 00:00:39,320
Speaker 1: Those who stand up for their convictions are often remembered

7
00:00:39,360 --> 00:00:42,920
Speaker 1: for their dedication and bravery. Well, not everyone is remembered

8
00:00:42,920 --> 00:00:47,080
Speaker 1: that way exactly, people like French philosopher and writer Francois

9
00:00:47,120 --> 00:00:50,320
Speaker 1: Marie Aroway. Although you probably don't know him by that name,

10
00:00:50,640 --> 00:00:54,760
Speaker 1: he's better remembered by his pen name Voltaire. And Voltaire

11
00:00:54,840 --> 00:00:58,400
Speaker 1: wrote a lot to paraphrase a popular musical about a

12
00:00:58,400 --> 00:01:02,160
Speaker 1: certain founding father, writing like he was running out of time,

13
00:01:02,520 --> 00:01:07,640
Speaker 1: composing everything from plays, novels, poems, essays, and even scientific papers.

14
00:01:08,040 --> 00:01:10,960
Speaker 1: By the time he died in seventeen seventy eight, Voltaire

15
00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:14,320
Speaker 1: had written tens of thousands of works, and although he'd

16
00:01:14,319 --> 00:01:19,200
Speaker 1: found popularity both domestically and overseas, he was not universally liked.

17
00:01:19,200 --> 00:01:22,880
Speaker 1: While he was still alive, the Roman Catholic Church loathed

18
00:01:22,959 --> 00:01:27,520
Speaker 1: him for referring to Christianity as propagandistic. He also perpetuated

19
00:01:27,520 --> 00:01:30,000
Speaker 1: a number of myths about the Church. For example, he

20
00:01:30,040 --> 00:01:32,240
Speaker 1: claimed that they had cut the number of Gospels down

21
00:01:32,240 --> 00:01:36,759
Speaker 1: from fifty to four. But Christianity and the Church weren't alone.

22
00:01:36,920 --> 00:01:39,760
Speaker 1: Voltaire seemed to aim his pen in any direction he

23
00:01:39,800 --> 00:01:43,800
Speaker 1: deemed worthy of criticism. He was also wildly anti Semitic

24
00:01:43,840 --> 00:01:47,080
Speaker 1: in his writings about Judaism and the Jewish people, and

25
00:01:47,200 --> 00:01:50,240
Speaker 1: also lobbed a heavy amount of vitriol toward Islam and

26
00:01:50,280 --> 00:01:53,480
Speaker 1: people of color. He disagreed with the idea of Adam

27
00:01:53,520 --> 00:01:56,600
Speaker 1: and Eve as represented in the Bible, and suggested that

28
00:01:56,640 --> 00:01:59,880
Speaker 1: each race came to be through various means across the globe,

29
00:02:00,200 --> 00:02:03,400
Speaker 1: rather than descended from one couple. But in the same

30
00:02:03,440 --> 00:02:07,840
Speaker 1: breath he would disparage black Africans as possessing less natural

31
00:02:07,960 --> 00:02:13,600
Speaker 1: humanity than white Europeans. Voltaire was the embodiment of cognitive dissonance,

32
00:02:13,840 --> 00:02:17,880
Speaker 1: perhaps best expressed in his stance on slavery. Scholars argue

33
00:02:17,880 --> 00:02:20,800
Speaker 1: as to whether he actually opposed the slave trade itself,

34
00:02:21,080 --> 00:02:24,280
Speaker 1: nor simply the harsh and violent conditions to which enslaved

35
00:02:24,320 --> 00:02:28,040
Speaker 1: people were subjected. Regardless and a bit surprising. He was

36
00:02:28,080 --> 00:02:30,840
Speaker 1: more enlightened than others on the subject, and that got

37
00:02:30,919 --> 00:02:33,400
Speaker 1: him into hot water with the powers that be. His

38
00:02:33,480 --> 00:02:37,080
Speaker 1: body of work, although problematic and downright offensive at times,

39
00:02:37,080 --> 00:02:41,240
Speaker 1: made him wildly popular, especially among his fellow writers. Victor

40
00:02:41,320 --> 00:02:44,640
Speaker 1: Hugo once said, to name Voltaire is to characterize the

41
00:02:44,800 --> 00:02:48,280
Speaker 1: entire eighteenth century. Depending on who you were, that could

42
00:02:48,320 --> 00:02:50,799
Speaker 1: either be a good thing or a very bad thing.

43
00:02:51,400 --> 00:02:55,240
Speaker 1: Napoleon Bonaparte admired him, as did Frederick the Great, but

44
00:02:55,320 --> 00:02:58,640
Speaker 1: those ringing endorsements don't exactly endear him to us today.

45
00:02:59,080 --> 00:03:03,680
Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler insulted Frederick's conversations with Voltaire while outlining his

46
00:03:03,800 --> 00:03:07,560
Speaker 1: plans for world conquest during World War II. The racist

47
00:03:07,680 --> 00:03:11,560
Speaker 1: and nationalistic rhetoric within Voltaire's works have led to a

48
00:03:11,639 --> 00:03:14,880
Speaker 1: backlash today. In fact, a statue of the philosopher that

49
00:03:14,919 --> 00:03:17,920
Speaker 1: once stood in Paris was torn down back in August

50
00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:21,880
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty. His legacy is tainted, some might say

51
00:03:22,160 --> 00:03:25,480
Speaker 1: it's cursed. After Voltaire died in seventeen seventy eight, a

52
00:03:25,520 --> 00:03:28,560
Speaker 1: French polymath by the name of Beaumarche purchased the rights

53
00:03:28,600 --> 00:03:31,080
Speaker 1: to as much of his back catalog as possible from

54
00:03:31,160 --> 00:03:34,880
Speaker 1: his old publisher, but Voltaire's work had been banned in France,

55
00:03:35,080 --> 00:03:38,480
Speaker 1: so in seventeen ninety nine beau Marche printed the manuscripts

56
00:03:38,480 --> 00:03:41,520
Speaker 1: in Germany instead, but he lost a lot of money

57
00:03:41,560 --> 00:03:44,520
Speaker 1: on the venture and his life. He died a mere

58
00:03:44,600 --> 00:03:47,800
Speaker 1: three months after he started publishing a complete collection of

59
00:03:47,880 --> 00:03:52,120
Speaker 1: Voltaire's writing, and then in the early eighteen hundreds, another

60
00:03:52,200 --> 00:03:55,720
Speaker 1: publisher put out a sixty volume edition of Voltaire's works.

61
00:03:55,960 --> 00:04:00,000
Speaker 1: The endeavor practically bankrupted them. Over the next seventy years,

62
00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:04,240
Speaker 1: at least eight publishers went broke by releasing complete Voltaire collections.

63
00:04:04,680 --> 00:04:07,320
Speaker 1: One went blind, while another was killed by a woman

64
00:04:07,400 --> 00:04:11,000
Speaker 1: he accused of stealing. It appeared that whenever someone tried

65
00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:14,320
Speaker 1: to publish a full series of Voltaire's portfolio, they met

66
00:04:14,360 --> 00:04:19,800
Speaker 1: an unfortunate end, either financially or mortally. Voltaire was a

67
00:04:19,839 --> 00:04:24,479
Speaker 1: controversial figure when he was alive. His opinions alienated almost everyone,

68
00:04:24,640 --> 00:04:27,360
Speaker 1: and he was no stranger to having his work cursed

69
00:04:27,360 --> 00:04:30,800
Speaker 1: by his contemporaries. What no one realized, though, was that

70
00:04:30,839 --> 00:04:34,560
Speaker 1: the twenty thousand letters and two thousand books about religion

71
00:04:34,640 --> 00:04:38,400
Speaker 1: and other cultures that he left behind might actually have

72
00:04:38,520 --> 00:04:55,880
Speaker 1: been cursed. Some fictional characters are so iconic that they

73
00:04:55,920 --> 00:04:59,080
Speaker 1: almost feel real. Think about Michael Scott from the Office

74
00:04:59,200 --> 00:05:02,200
Speaker 1: or Walter White in Breaking Bad. I'm not embarrassed to

75
00:05:02,240 --> 00:05:04,640
Speaker 1: admit that I can quote those guys verbatim, and I

76
00:05:04,680 --> 00:05:07,240
Speaker 1: know their personalities like the back of my hand. The

77
00:05:07,279 --> 00:05:09,560
Speaker 1: best characters are able to take on a life of

78
00:05:09,600 --> 00:05:12,000
Speaker 1: their own, and some of them are even based on

79
00:05:12,120 --> 00:05:15,880
Speaker 1: real people. In fact, one twentieth century writer created a

80
00:05:15,960 --> 00:05:18,440
Speaker 1: character that became so popular he has since been the

81
00:05:18,480 --> 00:05:21,719
Speaker 1: subject of a number of books and movies, and rumor

82
00:05:21,760 --> 00:05:24,400
Speaker 1: has it he's based on an actual person whose story

83
00:05:24,520 --> 00:05:28,200
Speaker 1: is as interesting as the fictional tales he inspired. Let

84
00:05:28,279 --> 00:05:30,719
Speaker 1: me set the scenario for you. It was June of

85
00:05:30,839 --> 00:05:33,880
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, right in the midst of World War Two,

86
00:05:34,160 --> 00:05:36,800
Speaker 1: and our real life hero was in Germany trapped at

87
00:05:36,839 --> 00:05:40,680
Speaker 1: the Nazi run Bukenwald concentration camp. He was there to

88
00:05:40,760 --> 00:05:44,360
Speaker 1: be executed. You see, he had been charged with terrorism.

89
00:05:44,560 --> 00:05:47,320
Speaker 1: Most Nazi officers knew his background too. They even had

90
00:05:47,360 --> 00:05:50,360
Speaker 1: a nickname for him, the White Rabbit. For the last

91
00:05:50,440 --> 00:05:52,200
Speaker 1: year and a half, the White Rabbit had worked with

92
00:05:52,240 --> 00:05:56,400
Speaker 1: the British Air Intelligence Agency. He parachuted into Nazi occupied

93
00:05:56,400 --> 00:05:59,839
Speaker 1: France three different times and set up a central resistance

94
00:06:00,200 --> 00:06:03,520
Speaker 1: quarters in Paris. When his work was discovered, the Gestapo

95
00:06:03,600 --> 00:06:05,640
Speaker 1: put a bounty on his head, and he spent the

96
00:06:05,640 --> 00:06:08,000
Speaker 1: next eight weeks on the run before escaping back to

97
00:06:08,040 --> 00:06:10,760
Speaker 1: his home country of England. As soon as he crossed

98
00:06:10,760 --> 00:06:13,679
Speaker 1: the border, he met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill

99
00:06:13,760 --> 00:06:17,520
Speaker 1: to request more weapons for French resistance fighters. In February

100
00:06:17,600 --> 00:06:21,120
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty four, four months before he landed in Buchenwald,

101
00:06:21,360 --> 00:06:24,839
Speaker 1: he re entered France to supervise those weapons shipments, but

102
00:06:24,920 --> 00:06:28,440
Speaker 1: things didn't go as planned. Someone betrayed him, and three

103
00:06:28,440 --> 00:06:31,520
Speaker 1: weeks later he was captured by the Gestapo. The Nazi

104
00:06:31,560 --> 00:06:34,400
Speaker 1: police hoped to get some valuable information out of the spy,

105
00:06:34,839 --> 00:06:37,520
Speaker 1: but his lips were sealed. They spent the next four

106
00:06:37,560 --> 00:06:40,560
Speaker 1: months subjecting him to every kind of torture you can imagine,

107
00:06:40,839 --> 00:06:44,360
Speaker 1: but he never cracked. Frustrated, the Gestapo shipped him off

108
00:06:44,400 --> 00:06:47,640
Speaker 1: to a concentration camp to die, but the White Rabbit

109
00:06:47,680 --> 00:06:50,480
Speaker 1: didn't go down without a fight. He managed to befriend

110
00:06:50,680 --> 00:06:54,120
Speaker 1: and probably bribe a German guard. Together they came up

111
00:06:54,160 --> 00:06:56,800
Speaker 1: with an idea to save our hero's life give him

112
00:06:56,839 --> 00:07:00,360
Speaker 1: a brand new identity, which was actually easy than you

113
00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:03,760
Speaker 1: might think. The German guard pretended to execute him, then

114
00:07:03,839 --> 00:07:06,200
Speaker 1: gave him an ID card that belonged to a Frenchman

115
00:07:06,200 --> 00:07:09,080
Speaker 1: who had already been killed at Buchenwald, and just like that,

116
00:07:09,520 --> 00:07:13,520
Speaker 1: the White Rabbit had a new name, Maurice Chaquette. Still,

117
00:07:13,720 --> 00:07:17,120
Speaker 1: Maurice hadn't really saved himself. He'd only bought some time.

118
00:07:17,560 --> 00:07:20,360
Speaker 1: Less than a year later, in April of nineteen forty five,

119
00:07:20,640 --> 00:07:23,280
Speaker 1: he was shoved onto a train filled with other prisoners

120
00:07:23,280 --> 00:07:26,520
Speaker 1: from Buchenwald. They were bound for an extermination camp in

121
00:07:26,640 --> 00:07:30,800
Speaker 1: Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia. At one point, the train had to

122
00:07:30,800 --> 00:07:33,280
Speaker 1: make a stop, and the White Rabbit jumped. On his

123
00:07:33,400 --> 00:07:36,080
Speaker 1: chance to escape, He and a small group of other

124
00:07:36,120 --> 00:07:40,040
Speaker 1: prisoners fled into the surrounding woods. Many were killed immediately,

125
00:07:40,080 --> 00:07:42,680
Speaker 1: but the White Rabbit spent the next eight days hiding

126
00:07:42,720 --> 00:07:46,240
Speaker 1: in the woods before being recaptured. Still going by the

127
00:07:46,320 --> 00:07:49,040
Speaker 1: name Maurice Chaquette, he was placed in a camp for

128
00:07:49,120 --> 00:07:52,280
Speaker 1: French prisoners of war near the Czech border. He was

129
00:07:52,280 --> 00:07:55,360
Speaker 1: only there for two days before hatching another escape plan.

130
00:07:55,680 --> 00:07:58,640
Speaker 1: He managed to make a convincing disguise and broke out

131
00:07:58,640 --> 00:08:00,760
Speaker 1: of the camp. But if if you can believe it,

132
00:08:00,840 --> 00:08:03,600
Speaker 1: he still wasn't free. He had to make it across

133
00:08:03,640 --> 00:08:07,240
Speaker 1: a literal minefield to reach the American Army. Only at

134
00:08:07,240 --> 00:08:10,280
Speaker 1: that point, after months of torture and two daring escapes,

135
00:08:10,680 --> 00:08:14,080
Speaker 1: was the White Rabbit finally going to be safe. Now,

136
00:08:14,280 --> 00:08:16,360
Speaker 1: this is just one of the stories of the White

137
00:08:16,440 --> 00:08:20,160
Speaker 1: Rabbit's incredible exploits. After World War II, he was awarded

138
00:08:20,200 --> 00:08:24,480
Speaker 1: thirteen Medals of Honor for his various contributions to Allied intelligence,

139
00:08:24,840 --> 00:08:27,840
Speaker 1: and in nineteen forty five, an author received a copy

140
00:08:27,880 --> 00:08:30,600
Speaker 1: of a letter the White Rabbit had written while in Buchenwald.

141
00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:35,080
Speaker 1: This letter contained the spy's real name, Forrest Jo Thomas.

142
00:08:35,480 --> 00:08:37,960
Speaker 1: I won't fault you if you've never heard that name before,

143
00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:40,600
Speaker 1: but I'm sure you would recognize the name of the author,

144
00:08:41,120 --> 00:08:44,840
Speaker 1: Ian Fleming and the character that he created after reading

145
00:08:44,880 --> 00:08:53,600
Speaker 1: this letter. The name was Bond, James Bond. I hope

146
00:08:53,600 --> 00:08:56,920
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

147
00:08:57,280 --> 00:09:00,400
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about

148
00:09:00,400 --> 00:09:04,920
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show

149
00:09:05,160 --> 00:09:08,400
Speaker 1: was created by me, Aaron Mankey in partnership with how

150
00:09:08,480 --> 00:09:12,080
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,

151
00:09:12,320 --> 00:09:15,920
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show and

152
00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:18,599
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore

153
00:09:18,880 --> 00:09:23,080
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.