WEBVTT - Disco Fever 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:07.440 Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:14.440 iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.440 the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:22.159 of these amazing tales are right there on display, just 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:28.840 waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:39.159 On the Yale campus in New Haven, Connecticut is the 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:42.640 Binicky Rare Book and Manuscript Library. It's one of the 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:46.159 largest of its kind, and its vast collection includes the 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:50.160 Gutenberg Bible, the first text printed mechanically, as well as 0:00:50.200 --> 0:00:53.120 a twelve hundred and fifty year old Buddhist text and 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:57.200 thousands of other folios. But hidden in the stacks is 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:00.440 also a tome that has baffled scholars for over a century. 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:04.040 A four hundred and eighty page work covered in calfskin, 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:08.440 written in a language unknown to any living person. Its 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:12.319 pages are filled with cryptic tables and illustrations of bizarre 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:16.360 plants and astrological signs. Carbon dating places it in the 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:20.280 early fifteenth century, but there is no explanation for its 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:24.160 purpose or even a name for its author. It's called 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:28.280 the Voinage Manuscript, and it has utterly baffled scholars for 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:32.319 over a century. Uv imaging has shown a signature in 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:36.120 the book from the seventeenth century of one Yakubus Horsiki 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:40.440 de Tepenesh, the court pharmacist to the Habsburg Emperor Rudolph 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:43.160 the Second, suggesting that it was once held in their 0:01:43.200 --> 0:01:46.240 imperial library, and from there we know that it ended 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:49.080 up decades later in the hands of a Jesuit scholar 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:52.440 named Marcus Barrish. Because of the small note that he 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:55.680 left in the margins in it, he asked a colleague 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:58.760 to help translate the script. He never found a solution 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:02.040 to the question of its meaning its origin, though. The 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:06.160 manuscript then disappeared from record until nineteen twelve, when it 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:09.520 reappeared at an auction at Sotheby's in London and was 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:14.080 sold to a Polish American antiquarian named Wilfrid Voinich. Now 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:17.800 Voynache must have been gobsmacked when he first perused the manuscript. 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:22.120 Inside its cafskin cover, there were six distinct sections, the 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:26.280 first containing herbs, presented over one hundred drawings, each labeled 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.920 in the inscrutable language. Only about thirty percent of the 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:34.280 illustrations of medieval plants are familiar to scientists. The other 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:38.120 seventy percent seem to be composites of known herbs or 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:42.680 are else made up entirely. The next section was astronomical 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:47.120 in nature, showing star clusters, suns and moons, and zodiac signs. 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:51.800 The biological section is truly bizarre, showing naked women in 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:56.400 water interacting with strange tubes and anatomical structures. Many who 0:02:56.480 --> 0:03:00.400 have studied the manuscript believe it concerns alchemy or may 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:05.920 be human reproduction. Then there's the pharmacological section, with bottles, vials, 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:08.880 and jars that one might find in an old apothecary shop. 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:12.320 And then there's another section with blocks of text that's 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:16.359 interspersed with numbers, leading scholars to believe they are formulas 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:19.440 for medicine. All of this was written in a language 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:23.679 that no one can decipher that eventually became known as Voyinagees. 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:28.200 The language itself contains about two hundred glyphs used to 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:31.080 form the words of the text. Scientists have found that 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:35.440 their distribution across the document is extremely similar to modern languages, 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:38.920 meaning that it isn't merely random gibberish, but it follows 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:43.560 its own real linguistic logic. Voinage spent years studying and 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.240 sharing the book with his contemporaries, to the point that 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:50.560 his name itself became its unofficial title. Eventually, the Voyage 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:54.360 Manuscript landed at the Binikey Library at Yale University, where 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:58.640 cryptologists and linguists all used different types of language models 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:02.920 and statistical analysis to try to understand how the language works. 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:06.800 They were able using simple ciphers and machine learning to 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:11.000 reproduce Voyage style texts, but still could not translate it 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:15.160 into a modern language. Experts from other areas of study 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:17.920 have likewise tried to make sense of the strange document. 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:22.240 Historians have suggested a Northern Italian style to the illustrations, 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:25.359 and the carbon dating, as well as that original signature 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:29.039 in the book, place it squarely in Bohemia. Botanists have 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:33.279 thoroughly cataloged its illustrations and have identified many of the 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:37.000 real herbs portrayed. Astronomers have confirmed that the symbols of 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:39.920 the zodiac and the positions of the planets and stars 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:44.520 depicted adhere to what their medieval predecessors knew. Recently, the 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:48.800 Binicky Library's digital archives of the manuscript have been made public, 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:53.479 allowing amateur sleuths and cryptographers to assist in deciphering a 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:57.720 relic that has continued to prove itself stubbornly unreadable. An 0:04:57.720 --> 0:05:02.560 annual symposium brings together experts across all interested fields to 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:06.919 discuss new discoveries, and recent advances in machine learning have 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:10.960 uncovered thematic groupings of texts that support the idea that 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:15.160 text is organized around specific topics. But the puzzle at 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:18.200 the core of the Voyage manuscript remains the same the 0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:21.680 language itself. Could it be a lost tongue or the 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:26.800 author's personal shorthand maybe an intricate cipher. Whatever it is, 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:30.159 neither experts nor ai have been able to solve it, 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:35.039 and so it stands a reminder of humankind's unrelenting curiosity, 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:39.440 whether It's secrets are ever fully uncovered or remain an 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:42.240 enduring enigma. It reminds us that the thrill of a 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:48.320 mystery unites professional scientists, technologists, and amateur sleuths alike, all 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:52.640 drawn together by the shared desire to crack a good puzzle. 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.280 There is one thing that unites almost every culture across 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:13.240 human history, a love of dancing. It's a primal part 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:15.520 of who we are. Whether it's at a concerts or 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:19.240 a nightclub or a family wedding, whenever anyone around you 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:21.880 is moving to the same rhythm, the urge to get 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.320 up and join them can seem uncontrollable. But for the 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:29.040 residents of Strasbourg in the year fifteen eighteen, that urge 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:33.920 was literally uncontrollable. It started on a hot July day 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:36.679 when a woman walked on to the cobbled streets outside 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.800 her home and started twisting and shaking as if she 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:43.120 were dancing the music only she could hear. As minutes 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:46.960 turned to hours, she kept dancing, and nearby merchants and 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:51.640 curious townspeople gathered around to watch. The woman was breathing 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:54.400 hard and sweat was rolling down her face, but it 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:57.200 was like she physically could not stop, no matter how 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:00.839 hard she tried. As the sun went down, she finally 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:03.880 collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. A man in the 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:06.200 crowd stepped forward and knelt down to check on her, 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:08.839 but after taking a moment to catch her breath, the 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:12.960 woman got right back up and kept on dancing. By 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:16.440 the next morning, she was still going, and another passerby 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:19.160 was so inspired that he dropped what he was doing, 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:22.880 and enjoined the dance as well. So did another and another, 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:26.440 and within a week there were thirty people compulsively dancing 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:29.080 in the streets. Every so often, one of them would 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:31.520 fall down in exhaustion, but after a bit of rest, 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:34.400 they would get back up, despite bloody feet and even 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:37.960 broken limbs. As July turned to August, the number of 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:41.400 dancers had climbed into the hundreds. City officials were so 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:44.400 worried they called together a group of doctors and religious 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:47.880 leaders to figure out a solution. The clergy thought that 0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:51.680 the townspeople had become possessed by Saint Vitas, a Christian 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:55.400 murdyr whose feast day is celebrated with dancing, but the 0:07:55.480 --> 0:08:00.440 doctors theorized that it was a disease caused by overheated blood. Essentially, 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:05.160 they diagnosed the locals with boogiey fever. The group of experts, however, 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:08.360 agreed on the same solution. They just had to dance 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:11.000 it off and get it out of their system. So, 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.160 in an effort to encourage the frenzy, the city hired 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:17.360 carpenters to build massive dance floors for the dancers to 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:21.040 gather on. They brought in musicians to accompany the movement, 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:24.640 and they even hired professional dancers to help everyone keep 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:28.280 up the tempo. But the city officials had underestimated what 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:31.840 they were dealing with. The dancers indeed wore themselves out, 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:35.200 but they didn't or couldn't slow down, so as the 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:38.079 weeks wore on, some of them began to drop dead 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:42.240 from strokes or heart attacks. By late August, around four 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:45.120 hundred people were dancing, and more than a dozen of 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:48.480 them were dying each and every day. In an act 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:52.400 of desperation, the city council reversed course and banned both 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:56.000 music and dancing. The dance halls were torn down, and 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:58.880 anyone who refused to sit still was hauled off to 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:02.439 the shrine of Saint Vida and forced to pray for forgiveness. 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:05.720 Within a couple of weeks, the so called dancing plague 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:09.640 began to subside, just as mysteriously as it had begun. 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:12.960 By the end of September, after two months of chaos, 0:09:13.320 --> 0:09:16.760 it was finally over. To this day, no one is 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:20.360 sure what caused the dancing plague. Some historians believe it 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:23.960 was food poisoning from a mind altering fungus called ergot. 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:27.079 Others think that it was simply a case of mass hysteria, 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:30.120 an extreme version of something that we all know to 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:36.960 be true. In the right time and place, dancing is contagious. 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:42.400 I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:46.040 of Curiosities. This show was created by me Aaron Manke 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:49.760 in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:53.120 Grim and Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:55.200 more about the show and the people who make it 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:59.760 over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:02.880 a lo to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:07.040 available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook. 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:09.600 And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:12.920 joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:16.120 the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:20.360 sign up over at patreon dot com, slash Grimandmild, and 0:10:20.640 --> 0:10:23.080 until next time, stay curious.