Latest / Smithsonian Magazine / 11.20.25
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebeccashore for Radio Eye, and today I
- 0:04will be reading the Smithsonian magazine dated November twenty twenty five.
- 0:09As a reminder, RADIOI is a reading service intended for
- 0:13people who are blind or have other disabilities that make
- 0:17it difficult to read printed material. Please join me now
- 0:21for the first article, which is part two of why
- 0:25Paris designed its peculiarly popular grand graveyards to evoke a
- 0:30celebration of life amid all the death by Peter Ross.
- 0:37In the first part of our story, we learned that
- 0:39Paris's cemeteries, especially pere Lechise, montmart and Montparnasse, are celebrated
- 0:46not just as resting places for the dead, but as
- 0:49vibrant spaces that evoke a celebration of life. These grand
- 0:54graveyards were designed to be more than somber memorials. They
- 0:59are landscaped, guard burdens, and cultural landmarks that attract millions
- 1:03of visitors each year. Their influence extends beyond Paris, inspiring
- 1:08the rural cemetery movement in the United States and even
- 1:12the creation of urban parks like Central Park in New York.
- 1:17The cemetery's unique blend of history artistry and natural beauty
- 1:22has made them unlikely tourist attractions, where the stories of
- 1:26the famous and the ordinary intertwine. Part one highlighted how
- 1:31these cemeteries serve as living museums, with graves of renowned
- 1:35figures such as Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaff, Jim Morrison, and
- 1:40Simone de Beauvoirs, drawing visitors from around the world. Traditions
- 1:45and rituals have developed around these sites, from offerings left
- 1:50at graves to annual gatherings commemorating the dead. The presence
- 1:55of animals like the cats cared for by volunteers adds
- 1:59warmth and las life to the cemeteries, further blurring the
- 2:02line between spaces of mourning and celebration. The cemeteries also
- 2:08reflect evolving social values, as seen in the feminist tours
- 2:13and commemorations that seek to honor overlooked women and reshape
- 2:17public memory. Here now is Part two. The streets of
- 2:24the Catacombs. This subterranean city cover more than one hundred
- 2:28and eighty miles, of which the ossuaries form a tiny part.
- 2:33In eighteen o nine, city authorities decided to allow the
- 2:37public to visit this strange land of the dead, and
- 2:40the catacombs, much as we see them now, were laid out.
- 2:45Aurette seti si Lampierre de la mour. Helene Fermineaux, head
- 2:51of communications for the Catacombs, read aloud the words carved
- 2:55into the litel above the entrance. There was nothing actorly
- 2:59in her intonation. The instruction was dramatic enough. Stop here
- 3:05is the empire of death. We did stop, just for
- 3:08a moment, then went on right away. We were among
- 3:13the bones. They were stacked about five feet high. On
- 3:17either side of us. Three layers of skulls divided walls
- 3:22of femurs and tibias, their joint ends facing into the passage,
- 3:26suggesting flowers or butterflies. The skulls were biscuit brown eye
- 3:32sockets dark in the dim light. You can get right
- 3:35up to them face to face, but touching is not allowed.
- 3:39Stealing a sign, explains, carries a fine of fifteen thousand
- 3:44euros and up to one year in prison. There were
- 3:47lots of gaps where skulls over the past couple of
- 3:50centuries had been stolen. Staff checked bags at the exit.
- 3:56The corridors go on and on behind the walls called hags,
- 4:01stretching more than a dozen yards into the darkness, is
- 4:05a chaos of smaller bones. These are believed to represent
- 4:09most of the population of Paris between the twelfth and
- 4:13eighteenth centuries. The catacombs are a shadow version of Parlichise.
- 4:19In the Great Cemetery you see no human remains, but
- 4:23from the graves you learn something of the people buried there.
- 4:27The ossuary presents the opposite, all the bodies, none of
- 4:31the stories. The first impression is that all skulls look
- 4:36the same, Fermeneus said, But when you are in the deep,
- 4:40calm silence of the catacombs and you take the time
- 4:44to look at them individually, you really see and feel
- 4:47the differences. I find it full of emotion, because you
- 4:51realize that each person has some joy and sadness in life.
- 4:58We paused by a stretch of wall in which fourteen
- 5:01heads had been arranged in the pattern of a heart.
- 5:05Don't you think this one looks a little angry, she asked,
- 5:08pointing to a skull with a distinctive frown. Perhaps it
- 5:12is Robespierre, I said, the revolutionary leader was put to
- 5:17death in seventeen ninety four. A lot of the people
- 5:20who were guillantined during the terror are here from mineus,
- 5:24said nodding, And the people who ordered their execution are
- 5:28also here, so they are reunited in death, not as lovers,
- 5:33but as people who hated each other. We came at
- 5:37last to an area known as the Crypt of the
- 5:40Passion of the Christ, the central feature of which is
- 5:43a large barrel shaped pillar of bones. It was here
- 5:47one midnight in April eighteen ninety seven that a secret
- 5:51concert was attended by around one hundred patrons. An engraving
- 5:56published in a newspaper at the time shows men and
- 6:00toppers and women in floral hats seated among the skulls.
- 6:04As a conductor leeds musicians. The program included Chopin's Funeral
- 6:10March and Sonsane's Dons Macabre. The recital was echoed in
- 6:17twenty twenty four when the American rock band Queens of
- 6:21the Stone Age was granted permission to perform. They played
- 6:25a short set of acoustic versions of their songs, recording
- 6:30it for an ep Alive in the Catacombs and an
- 6:34accompanying film. No fans were present, just the band and crew,
- 6:39but the singer Josh Holm had a strong sense of
- 6:42the dead. As an audience, it felt like trying to
- 6:46entertain people who don't get much entertainment, to show love
- 6:50to a group who are almost forgotten. He told me.
- 6:53When we spoke by video call, people witnessed them with
- 6:57fear and amazement, but no one's given them anything. That's
- 7:01why our song choices were about family and acceptance and
- 7:05overcoming difficulty. If he were dead in the dark, he
- 7:09would find those themes comforting, so he offered his music
- 7:13as a kind of consolation. When I was alone, I
- 7:16got on my knees, shut my eyes, bowed my head
- 7:20and made a vow, I'll do the very best that
- 7:23I can possibly do to day. Holme was seriously ill
- 7:27during the shoot. He has not disclosed the nature of
- 7:31his condition, but he was treated for cancer in twenty
- 7:34twenty two. While filming in the Catacombs, he was in
- 7:38pain and had a dangerously high temperature at the end
- 7:42of the chute. He took an emergency flight home and
- 7:45within two hours of landing in Los Angeles was prept
- 7:49for surgery. What was it like, I asked him, to
- 7:53be inside a living and suffering body, when you were
- 7:57surrounded by people beyond suffering. It was a luxury I
- 8:01was thankful for. In the end, he replied, he felt
- 8:05that it put him on the same frequency somehow as
- 8:08the place and those buried there. I was witnessing people
- 8:13whose struggle had ended, so my struggle, my pain, seemed less.
- 8:18He found the catacomb's heartening rather than frightening. I never
- 8:22focused on the dark side, home went on. The skulls
- 8:26are almost like a light bulb. You don't stare at
- 8:29a light bulb, you look at what it's illuminating. So
- 8:33I didn't think about death. I thought about life illuminated.
- 8:39The bell had tolled in Perlichaise, as it always does.
- 8:43Before closing Benoir, Gallot unlocked the side door on Rue
- 8:48de Rapot and invited me in. The last visitors had left,
- 8:53The hour of the fox had arrived. Gallo, in his
- 8:57early forties, is conservatory of pearlichse the man in charge.
- 9:03He also shapes the way it is seen through his
- 9:06popular Instagram account at L Underscore v I E Underscore
- 9:12A U Underscore c I M E T I E
- 9:16R E, and a recent book, The Secret Life of
- 9:20a Cemetery. I love this place, he told me, and
- 9:23I want to do my best for it. He lives
- 9:28on the grounds with his wife, Colombe and their four children.
- 9:32He has run perliches since twenty eighteen, but his relationship
- 9:37with the place became truly profound on April twenty third,
- 9:41twenty twenty, during the COVID nineteen lockdown, when he was
- 9:45walking through the deserted cemetery and encountered a fox cub.
- 9:50It looked at him. He looked at it. Galot found
- 9:54himself experiencing an emotion that had been in short supply. Joy.
- 10:00It was a key moment in my life, he recalled.
- 10:03That was a very dark time, lots of stress. Burials
- 10:08were up by forty percent, but we only had half
- 10:11the usual number of people working here, and we did
- 10:14not know what the full impact of the virus was
- 10:17going to be. The cub somehow offered hope. Until then,
- 10:23Gallot had never seen a fox in bear Lachise and
- 10:26never expected to yet here it was bright of eye,
- 10:31and when the cemetery keeper returned later with his camera
- 10:35there were four cubs playing among the graves. A photograph
- 10:39he took that evening ended up on the front page
- 10:42of the daily paper La Parisienne. For me, it was
- 10:47a symbol of recovery. He said. The return of the
- 10:50foxes during lockdown was such a strong contrast. People at
- 10:55that time were talking only of death, death, death, But
- 11:00here were these baby foxes, and now people talked of
- 11:03perlichise for a different reason. It completely changed the feeling
- 11:08of working here. I felt that life would overcome around
- 11:14ten foxes live in the cemetery. He believes the population varies.
- 11:19Not all cubs survive, and the adults live only so long.
- 11:24Gallott is more attached than he would like. He worries
- 11:28for them and is sad when they die. He can
- 11:31identify individuals and wonders whether they recognize him. Yet he
- 11:36is careful to respect their nature. I never give them
- 11:40food and am always discreet. I see a fox sleeping
- 11:44on a tomb I take two pictures and sneak away.
- 11:48I want them to keep their wildness. Between six in
- 11:52the evening and eight in the morning, there are no
- 11:55human interactions, and that's good. Let them live their lives.
- 12:00We would walk together, he said, and try to seize
- 12:03some foxes. No promises. Pere laches. After hours was transformed,
- 12:10The staff had gone, the gates were locked, Paris lay
- 12:14unseen beyond the trees and walls, its presence indicated by
- 12:18sirens and church bells. The painstaking tap of stone cutter's
- 12:23chisels had given way to the ratitat tat of a
- 12:26woodpecker's beak. We kept to the curb, moving in single file,
- 12:32placing our feet so as not to kick stones or
- 12:35crunch leaves. Very beautiful, Galo murmured about the evening light
- 12:40on the statues. For him, pear Laches is a living place. Certainly,
- 12:46it is full of life, the foxes, the wild flowers,
- 12:51the necrophagus trees that grow around headstones and devour them.
- 12:56Before working here, Galot had little appreciation of such. Now
- 13:02he is familiar with the different species of flora and fauna,
- 13:06and has learned to cope with his phobia of birds,
- 13:09to the extent that he seemed thrilled by a j
- 13:12flashing blue from branch to branch. But pere Lechise is
- 13:17also living in the sense that people continue to be
- 13:21laid to rest there. Around one thousand coffins are buried
- 13:25each year. Grief is the pulse of a cemetery, the
- 13:29beat beneath one's feet. Gallot and I had been out
- 13:34for forty minutes and see no sign of a fox.
- 13:38Then he whispered, ahhui, see la veeu briscard. He knew
- 13:44this animal, leveeu Briscard, the old veteran. The name suggests
- 13:49a grizzled soldier who was seen it all, perhaps five
- 13:53years old, a little dark around the eyes and snout.
- 13:57It walked with the parade ground swagger as if it
- 14:00owned the place, and climbed up on a grave. Gaillot
- 14:05likes the idea that this may have been the first
- 14:08cub he encountered during lockdown. He raised his camera. The
- 14:13fox seemed to pose for a moment, mouth open, and
- 14:17then eased himself down from the stone slab and trotted off.
- 14:22The conservatur admires these fleet creatures, the quick among the dead,
- 14:27raising their families in parlichaise as he is. Our safari concluded.
- 14:34We walked to higher ground and sat on a bench
- 14:37overlooking Paris. Dusk was settling on the rooftops and spires.
- 14:43We could see him on Parnas's Tower, near Simone de
- 14:46Bevoir's lipsticked grave and the dome of the Pantheon, where
- 14:50Voltaire and Rousseau are entombed during the pandemic, when the
- 14:55gates closed to everyone but those attending funeral processions. Galeau
- 15:01came to this spot with his wife and kids, and
- 15:04he holds those moments of castaway intimacy as a fond memory.
- 15:09The city before them, the sky above and below their
- 15:13feet in the ossuary, the bones of thousands of Parisians.
- 15:18You have a good job, I said, yes, he replied,
- 15:22it is a privilege. Galeot does not believe in destiny
- 15:27and cannot say how long he will be at perliches
- 15:30but he feels he is in the right place. The
- 15:33man who helps the world see the cemetery, the cemetery
- 15:37that helps the man truly see the world. Accompanying this
- 15:43article fun fact a heartless burial. The Polish composer Frederic
- 15:49Chopin is among the one hundred and fourteen famous people
- 15:53buried at Perlichees Cemetery, but his heart, at his request,
- 15:58was removed before he was laid to rest and installed
- 16:02at a church in his hometown of Warsaw. Next. Audi
- 16:09Murphy was an idol of the silver screen that came
- 16:13after he was the most decorated American hero of World
- 16:17War two, he single handedly held off two hundred and
- 16:21fifty German troops and six tanks, saving an entire company.
- 16:26And that was just the start of what he accomplished
- 16:29in his too short life. By Jeff MacGregor. Every story
- 16:35about Audi Murphy is a story about America. On January
- 16:40twenty sixth, nineteen forty five, just outside Holtzwege in northeastern France,
- 16:46Army second Lieutenant Audi Murphy climbed onto a burning tank
- 16:51destroyer and single handedly held off six tanks and two
- 16:55hundred and fifty attacking Germans. Wounded and bleeding, he he
- 17:00stood at a fifty caliber machine gun for more than
- 17:03an hour defending his unit. His actions saved the entire
- 17:07company and stopped the German advance. By the end of
- 17:12the war, Murphy had won around thirty decorations, including the
- 17:17Medal of Honour, two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, three
- 17:21Purple Hearts, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the French Cua
- 17:26de Guerre. Rising from buck private to first lieutenant, he
- 17:31became the most decorated and arguably most famous soldier of
- 17:36World War II. An estimated three hundred thousand Texans turned
- 17:41out for his homecoming parade. Audi Leon Murphy was born
- 17:47into a dirt poor family near Kingston, Texas, around nineteen
- 17:52twenty five. His parents had twelve children, and he dropped
- 17:57out of school to support the family after his sharecropper
- 18:01father abandoned them. As a boy, he often hunted for
- 18:05their food. He became a marksman early out of hunger
- 18:09and necessity. When the United States entered World War II,
- 18:15he wanted to enlist in the Marines, but was too young,
- 18:19about to turn seventeen. Even after his sister helped falsify
- 18:23a birth certificate, the Army and Marines rejected him as
- 18:28under weight, a mere one hundred and ten pounds and
- 18:31too short around five foot five. In nineteen forty two,
- 18:36he was mustered into the Army. He served with the
- 18:40third Infantry Division, which was mainly attached to the seventh Army.
- 18:45So Murphy started in North Africa and fought his way
- 18:48through Sicily, Italy, France, and finally Germany. An accompanying photograph
- 18:56depict an olive drab wool Eisenhower jacket size thirty six
- 19:01that clothed Murphy during the European campaign. The irregular stitching
- 19:06around the blue and white striped third Infantry Division service
- 19:10patch proves the jacket was his. He would have sown
- 19:14it on himself, says Frank A. Blaizig, Junior Curator of
- 19:19Modern Military History at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History,
- 19:25and the jacket appears to be identical to the one
- 19:28he wears in photographs taken during the war. Murphy's stitching
- 19:33is crude, Blaizich says, but he has his insignia properly
- 19:37aligned and properly spaced. He certainly wants to present a
- 19:42proper appearance in uniform. Along with his fame, Murphy also
- 19:48came home from the war with post traumatic stress disorder,
- 19:52or combat fatigue as it was known. He became an
- 19:56insomniac and said he could only sleep with a loaded
- 20:00pistol under his pillow. He would advocate on behalf of
- 20:04veterans mental health for the rest of his life. He
- 20:08also embarked on a new pursuit after the war. James
- 20:12Cagney saw Murphy on the cover of Life magazine and
- 20:16invited him to Hollywood, signed him to a performance contract,
- 20:21got him acting lessons, and helped launch a prolific career
- 20:25that landed Murphy in more than forty feature films and
- 20:29TV series. The best of these is arguably The Red
- 20:33Badge of Courage, adapted from the novel by Stephen Crane.
- 20:38But Murphy's most indelible performance was as himself Into Hell
- 20:43and Back nineteen fifty five, which is based on his
- 20:46best selling autobiography and stood for almost twenty years as
- 20:52Universal Pictures biggest box office hit. Over those years, Murphy
- 20:57played many roles, a reluctant gun run, a pilot, a spy,
- 21:02a boxer, but the classic western was his most natural theater.
- 21:08Few things in this world feel as reassuring as an
- 21:11Audie Murphy horse opera, with his clean shaven probity, the
- 21:15harmless choreography of stunt violence, the simple triumph of good
- 21:20over evil, the chaste school marm kiss as the credits roll.
- 21:26He's a better actor than you'd think. His drawl is soft,
- 21:31his face pale and smooth and imperturbable as a pre
- 21:35Raphaelite saint. He can handle a gun or a punch line,
- 21:40low key, handsome, polite and composed. He can play the
- 21:44hero or the heel. But you'll notice his smile never
- 21:48quite reaches his eyes. There's something a little hurt and
- 21:52haunted in every expression. Murphy wrote poems and popular songs too,
- 21:59even charting a hit in nineteen sixty two with Shutters
- 22:03and Boards. His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
- 22:07is at sixteen o one Vine Street. Every story about
- 22:12Audie Murphy is a meditation on American fame and bravery
- 22:17in nearly every mythology. As Joseph Campbell, the famous scholar
- 22:22of myth reminds us, the hero saves what is almost
- 22:25lost and then becomes lost himself, forever changed, never quite
- 22:31returning home, he remains outside the society he defends. Audi
- 22:37Murphy was a war hero and a movie star, and
- 22:41a veteran with PTSD and a prescription sleeping pill habit,
- 22:46who couldn't sleep, who raised and raced quarter horses, who
- 22:51gambled and lost and spent too much, who did his best,
- 22:55and was as human as you or me. He was
- 22:59killed in a plain crash in nineteen seventy one. By then,
- 23:03Audie Murphy was much too old to die so young.
- 23:07He was forty five. His grave at Arlington National Cemetery
- 23:12remains one of its most visited. Millions did their duty
- 23:16in the Second World War, but Murphy's kind of courage
- 23:20was singular even then. The jacket reminds us of this
- 23:25that he was an ordinary man who rose to the
- 23:27most extraordinary challenge of his time. Fun fact Addie Murphy's
- 23:34humble Hollywood beginning before to Hell and Back became a hit.
- 23:40Murphy lived like a struggling actor in Hollywood, at one point,
- 23:44residing in a tiny converted garage that he affectionately called
- 23:49my cigar box. Next, after motorcycle daredevil Evil Knieval failed
- 23:57to clear thirteen buses on a jump attempt, there was
- 24:00only one thing to do, try fourteen. A wreck at
- 24:05London broke his bones but not his spirit, so he
- 24:08got back on his two wheeled horse and sailed through
- 24:11the Ohio sky with half the country watching by Ilana's Share.
- 24:18By the mid nineteen seventies, after a decade of stunt's
- 24:21professional daredevil, Evil Knieval was more famous for crashing than landing.
- 24:27Many of his exploits put him in the hospital for weeks,
- 24:31and when he limped out, every kid in America and
- 24:34their worried parents would be waiting to see what he
- 24:37did next. A bid to expand his fame, in May
- 24:41nineteen seventy five brought Knieval across the Atlantic, where he
- 24:46tried and failed to clear his stars and stripes painted
- 24:50Harley Davidson XAR seven fifty over thirteen buses in London's
- 24:54Wembley Stadium. Just five months later, on October twenty fifth,
- 25:00was with his semi heeled bones barely knitted together beneath
- 25:04his star spangled leathers, Knieval mounted again to conquer an
- 25:08even bigger jump. It was a day of cold drizzle
- 25:12at King's Island Amusement Park in Ohio, but the crowds came,
- 25:16not none the less twenty five thousand people or more.
- 25:20The cameras were fixed on Knieval as he revved his
- 25:23engine and squinted at the steep ramp that would send
- 25:27him skyward over a row of fourteen buses. As he
- 25:31made his ramp warm ups, he seemed to hesitate, but
- 25:35after his fourth approach to the ramp, just when Knieval
- 25:38appeared to have lost his nerve, he gave a thumbs up.
- 25:42Then he reset his bike and pinned the throttle, and
- 25:46was traveling at roughly ninety five miles per hour by
- 25:50the time he hit the air as Knievl began his
- 25:53latest dispute with gravity. He said afterward his bike's front
- 25:58wheel came up in the air so high that if
- 26:01the jump had been any longer, he would have flipped
- 26:03over backward at the far end. With his bike losing
- 26:08altitude and the crowd breathless, Knieval touched the rear wheel
- 26:12down safely and rode along the landing ramp to abulian applause.
- 26:18He had cleared one hundred and thirty three feet, a
- 26:20world record, and landed so hard he'd broken the bike's frame. Knieval,
- 26:26for a change, was uninjured. The jump would stand as
- 26:29the longest and most successful of his career. The King's
- 26:34Island Jump also took place in front of Knieval's biggest audience,
- 26:38thanks to the crew from a b c's Wide World
- 26:41of Sports, which beamed it into waiting households all over
- 26:45the country. The episode remains the most fewed in the
- 26:48show's history. With his epic rides, Knieval, who survived his
- 26:54stunts and died in two thousand seven at age sixty nine,
- 26:58inspired to day's high flying mortar cross tricks and sporting
- 27:02events like the X Games. His showmanship paved the way
- 27:07for stunt led productions such as Johnny Knoxville's Jackass. His
- 27:12approach to life resembled his jumps. Wild, risky, bold, and thrilling.
- 27:17Knieval left us with the reminder that sometimes you simply
- 27:21have to rev up and take the leap. Fun fact
- 27:26was he actually named Evil Knieval Robert Kanievl got his
- 27:31devilish nickname in nineteen fifty six after he stole a
- 27:36motorcycle and ended up in jail. Knieval met another inmate
- 27:40named William Knofel, known in the jail as Awful Canoeful.
- 27:46In some versions of the story, a jailer gave Knieval
- 27:50his moniker. In other versions, Knieval bestowed it on himself.
- 27:57This concludes readings from the Smithsonian Man magazine for to day.
- 28:01Your reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening,
- 28:05and have a great day.