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Red Sky in Morning · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: They say that trends happen in cycles. We often see
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  Speaker 1: resurgences in fashion, food, music, you name it. But every
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  Speaker 1: time something becomes popular again, new generations add their own twist.
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  Speaker 1: And in the digital age, trends spread faster and wider.
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  Speaker 1: This means anyone's ideas can take hold and reshape our culture.
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  Speaker 1: Let's start with the current day. The fashion trend known
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  Speaker 1: as ballet core has become popular in recent years. In turn,
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  Speaker 1: ballet has been used a lot in fashion marketing, and
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  Speaker 1: because of the Internet, people on social media make fun.
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  Speaker 1: It seems like it's usually experienced ballerinas who point out
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  Speaker 1: poor representations of ballet. There's a whole Instagram account dedicated
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  Speaker 1: to making fun of ads where the models obviously don't
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  Speaker 1: know what they are doing, but the power of advertising
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  Speaker 1: prevails because what started as a fashion trend has become
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  Speaker 1: a genuine interest in ballet. There's a whole world of
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  Speaker 1: ballet on Instagram and TikTok. Novice dancers share videos of
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  Speaker 1: themselves practicing it's their ballet journey, if you will, but
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  Speaker 1: experienced dancers also post their own videos about how dangerous
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  Speaker 1: it can be to try certain moves without knowing the
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  Speaker 1: right technique. To some, this might seem a little snobby,
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  Speaker 1: like they're gatekeeping a historic art form, especially since ballet
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  Speaker 1: was built on taking risks. In the early nineteenth century,
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  Speaker 1: ballet was entering its Romantic era. Ballets such as Giselle
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  Speaker 1: featured the forest dwelling spirits of women scorn, But as
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  Speaker 1: the art form evolved, a choreographer named Charles Louis Didelo
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  Speaker 1: saw his dancer's potential for conveying emotion through movement. Didelo
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  Speaker 1: was a professionally trained dancer, but a leg injury ended
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  Speaker 1: his career early, but he still taught others. It's possible
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  Speaker 1: that his inability to express himself through dance gave way
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  Speaker 1: to his ingenuity in helping others do so, because he
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  Speaker 1: made some key contributions to the art form. Overall, one
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  Speaker 1: simple but impactful change was the way Didelo simplified costumes.
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  Speaker 1: He wanted to make it easier for dancers to move,
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  Speaker 1: so he did away with the aristocratic layers, ruffles, and
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  Speaker 1: petticoats and replaced them with shorter, one or two piece costumes.
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  Speaker 1: By then, the original ballet shoe, a slipper with a
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  Speaker 1: low heel, had also been revised. A French ballerina named
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  Speaker 1: Marie Camargo removed the heel from her shoe, and this
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  Speaker 1: made it easier for her to perform leaps and complex footwork. Today,
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  Speaker 1: Camargo is now credited with creating the first ballet slipper
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  Speaker 1: and Charles Louis Didelo also made a more daring change.
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  Speaker 1: As dancers techniques evolved and stories became more dramatic, he
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  Speaker 1: wanted performers to reach new heights literally. He designed a
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  Speaker 1: pully mechanism with the wire which he attached to the dancers.
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  Speaker 1: The mechanism could lift them just enough to make it
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  Speaker 1: look like they were dancing on the tips of their toes.
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  Speaker 1: This became known as Didelo's flying machine, and it made waves.
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  Speaker 1: Choreographers used the machine to distinguish mortal characters from the
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  Speaker 1: supernatural by eighteen twenty, ballerinas realized that they could imitate
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  Speaker 1: the art Didallo had introduced by dancing on their toes
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  Speaker 1: all on their own. But it wouldn't be easy. That
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  Speaker 1: was when an Italian dancer named Amalia Bruniuli don square
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  Speaker 1: tip slippers for extra support. While she was able to
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  Speaker 1: rise onto her toes, it took an obvious amount of
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  Speaker 1: strain and effort, still it was unprecedented. About ten years later,
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  Speaker 1: Bruniulli's achievements inspired another dancer named Marie Talioni. Talioni is
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  Speaker 1: known to be the first ballerina to perform a full
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  Speaker 1: length ballet on point, and unlike those before her, Marie's
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  Speaker 1: shoes had leather soles and were tied with ribbons for
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  Speaker 1: extra stability, and this was a major milestone. Dancing on
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  Speaker 1: points became the norm. Later that century, Italian shoemakers began
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  Speaker 1: adding stiff boxes at the toe. Point shoes have continued
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  Speaker 1: to evolve over the years. Some brands even offer high
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  Speaker 1: tech shock absorption. Today. A ballet dancers prepared to go
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  Speaker 1: on point from a young age, although it's not recommended
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  Speaker 1: they do so before around the age of eleven, when
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  Speaker 1: their feet are fully developed. Otherwise they risk serious injury.
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  Speaker 1: Adult dancers can go on point two even if they're
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  Speaker 1: new to ballet. In this case, orthopedics recommend about three
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  Speaker 1: years of training first, and this is why today experienced
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  Speaker 1: dancers urge others not to dance in point shoes that
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  Speaker 1: they haven't been properly fitted for or without training for it.
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  Speaker 1: It's been two hundred years since Didelo's flying machine revolutionized ballet,
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  Speaker 1: and the art form is much more inclusive Nowadays. Dancers
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  Speaker 1: can find point shoes in different skin tones, and professional
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  Speaker 1: companies hire more diverse casts every day. There's still a
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  Speaker 1: long way to go, but with the level of interest
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  Speaker 1: scene on social media, I think it's fair to say
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  Speaker 1: that every day people can help propel the world of
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  Speaker 1: ballet to new heights. It's one of the most famous
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  Speaker 1: paintings in the world. A bridge stretching far into the background,
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  Speaker 1: a squirreling sky of unsettling yellows in reds, and a
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  Speaker 1: figure hands to its ears features hazy, its mouth open
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  Speaker 1: wide in an unending whale. When Norwegian artist Edward Munk
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  Speaker 1: unveiled this scream in eighteen ninety three, people thought he
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  Speaker 1: was losing his mind. They believed a work that captured
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  Speaker 1: anguish and terror like that reflected something deeply wrong inside
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  Speaker 1: the artist. Psyche Monk, frustrated with the public's reaction, wrote
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  Speaker 1: a hidden message on the piece in protest. In one corner,
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  Speaker 1: he wrote, the words can only have been painted by
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  Speaker 1: a madman. But the inspiration for Munk's masterpiece didn't come
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  Speaker 1: from inside his mind. Instead, it was a true reaction
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  Speaker 1: to an evening stroll he took in Oslo in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: eighty three. Those horrible hellish skies that he painted in
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  Speaker 1: the scream, those were very real, the result of a
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  Speaker 1: natural disaster half a world away. On August twenty seventh
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  Speaker 1: of eighteen eighty seven, a tremendous boom came from a small,
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  Speaker 1: uninhabited island in Indonesia. It was and still is, the
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  Speaker 1: loudest sound ever recorded. The source was Mount Krakatoa. After
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  Speaker 1: belching out smoke and lava for months, the volcano erupted
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  Speaker 1: in spectacular fashion. It killed an estimated thirty six thousand people,
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  Speaker 1: sent shockwaves rippling throughout the ocean, and its blast was
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  Speaker 1: heard as far away as Australia and Africa. When the
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  Speaker 1: smoke cleared, only a deep caldera remained where the island
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  Speaker 1: once stood. The eruption became one of the first viral
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  Speaker 1: news stories, spreading across the world via telegraph wires in
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  Speaker 1: a matter of hours. But news wasn't the only thing
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  Speaker 1: that Krakatoa sent circling the globe. The destructive force of
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  Speaker 1: the explosion set millions of tons of sulfur dioxide and
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  Speaker 1: volcanic ash into the atmosphere. Clouds of both spread as
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  Speaker 1: far as Europe and the Americas, drastically affecting weather patterns
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  Speaker 1: in some places. The next summer, eighteen eighty four, was
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  Speaker 1: cooler than the average by two degrees celsius, and scientists
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  Speaker 1: have found sulfur dioxide from Krakatoa trapped in glaciers as
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  Speaker 1: far away as Greenland and Antarctica. Now while the sulfur
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  Speaker 1: dioxide affected how people felt, the ash changed what they saw.
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  Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty three and in eighty four, Europeans recorded
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  Speaker 1: that the moon appeared blue, and the sky would sometimes
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  Speaker 1: look green, orange, and even pink in the middle of
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  Speaker 1: the day. The red skies created by the ash were
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  Speaker 1: so intense that some people mistook them for fires roaring
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  Speaker 1: on the horizon, and so that was what happened in
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  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty three in Oslo, when Edvard Monk was enjoying
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  Speaker 1: an afternoon walk. He described what he saw and felt
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  Speaker 1: that day in a journal entry nearly a decade later.
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  Speaker 1: Suddenly the sky turned blood red. He wrote, there was
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  Speaker 1: blood and tongues of fire above the blue black fjord
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  Speaker 1: and the city. My friend walked on and I stood alone,
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  Speaker 1: trembling with anxiety. I felt a great, unending scream piercing
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  Speaker 1: through nature. And of course he committed this feeling to canvas,
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  Speaker 1: and in eighteen ninety three unveiled The Scream, complete with
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  Speaker 1: hell fire skies. For many years, the real life inspiration
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  Speaker 1: for the screams red sky was lost to the annals
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  Speaker 1: of history. Many patrons just sort of assumed the bloody
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  Speaker 1: clouds were representative of the screamer's turbulent inner world. But
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  Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, researchers at the University of
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  Speaker 1: Texas were able to track down scientific proof that the
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  Speaker 1: red skies were not just symbolism. By comparing meteorological data,
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  Speaker 1: news reports, and Monk's own observations, they concluded that the
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  Speaker 1: scream owed its desolate atmosphere to Krakatoa, out of a
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  Speaker 1: natural disaster, came one of the world's most famous paintings.
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  Speaker 1: The Scream isn't the only lasting art that owes its
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  Speaker 1: creation to volcanic destruction. Even though Krakatoa's impact was huge,
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't the first eruption to change the world. Back
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen fifteen, another mountain blew its top in Indonesia.
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  Speaker 1: The eruption of Mount Tambora also sent ash and sulfur
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  Speaker 1: dioxide into the air, affecting climate patterns as far away
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  Speaker 1: as Europe. And thanks to Tambora, the summer of eighteen
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  Speaker 1: sixteen was very cold and wet, destroying crops, herding economies,
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  Speaker 1: and worst of all, ruining vacations. In fact, it forced
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  Speaker 1: one particular group of writers and socialites to spend their
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  Speaker 1: trip to Lake Geneva inside looking for ways to pass
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  Speaker 1: the time. That was when one of the writers suggested
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  Speaker 1: that they could have a ghost story contest, writing gloomy
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  Speaker 1: tales to match the gloomy mood outside, and during their
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  Speaker 1: time there, the group came up with half finished sketches
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  Speaker 1: about vampires and ghosts and quickly moved on to other amusements.
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  Speaker 1: But one of them took it much more seriously. You see,
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  Speaker 1: one of the women had been haunted by the group's
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  Speaker 1: discussion of the nature of life. Kept inside by the
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  Speaker 1: incessant rain, she began to write a story about a
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  Speaker 1: doctor's quest to restore life to a corpse. Two years later,
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  Speaker 1: she published the book that long volcanic summer had inspired,
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  Speaker 1: and she called it Frankenstein. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
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  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
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  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
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  Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.