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Brain Waves · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
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  Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Medicine has come a long way from the
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  Speaker 1: days of blood letting and drilling holes in skulls to
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  Speaker 1: release the demons. The more we learn about the human body,
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  Speaker 1: the better we get at curing what ails us. Surgeries
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  Speaker 1: are more precise, computerized scans give us a clear picture
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  Speaker 1: of what might be going on inside us, and tiny
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  Speaker 1: cameras can access areas previously unseen. But some problems cannot
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  Speaker 1: be cut out or removed. In fact, some problem can't
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  Speaker 1: be fixed at all. But that doesn't mean we can't try.
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  Speaker 1: Back in nineteen seventeen, one man believed that he could
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  Speaker 1: cure the brain of a common and debilitating disease, one
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  Speaker 1: that plagued humanity across the globe. That man was Nicola Tesla,
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  Speaker 1: the inventor and electrical engineer known for his work on
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  Speaker 1: the modern alternating current. Decades before we could charge our
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  Speaker 1: phones and earbuds simply by dropping them onto an inductive
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  Speaker 1: charging pad. Tesla was working on a way to transmit
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  Speaker 1: AC power from his Tesla coil using inductive and capacity
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  Speaker 1: of coupling. That's just a fancy way of saying that
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  Speaker 1: he was inventing wireless lighting. He was even seen on
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  Speaker 1: stage a few times lighting various tubes and incandescent bulbs
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  Speaker 1: from several feet away. Tesla poured his heart and soul
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  Speaker 1: into electricity. He wanted to change the world with it,
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  Speaker 1: from wireless power to bladeless turbines. Edison gets all the
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  Speaker 1: credit these days, but Tesla was the true genius. However,
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  Speaker 1: there was one area where the ingenious inventor saw a
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  Speaker 1: perfect application for his new technology, the medical field. Tesla
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  Speaker 1: noticed that one of his assistants was performing tests with
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  Speaker 1: high frequency current, but wasn't following directions properly. After a while, though,
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  Speaker 1: and with more exposure to the current, the assistant started
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  Speaker 1: doing better. Tesla was quoted as saying, a high frequency
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  Speaker 1: current intensifies the action of the brain. It is a
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  Speaker 1: mental stimulant like alcohol, but instead of hurtful to the
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  Speaker 1: brain cells, the electricity is beneficial. He believed that he
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  Speaker 1: could use high frequency current to improve brain functions. In
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  Speaker 1: other words, Nikola Tesla wanted to electrocute the stupidity out
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  Speaker 1: of people. To test his theory, he sought out a
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  Speaker 1: group of people whose brains had not fully developed. Children.
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  Speaker 1: Tesla hypothesized that special wiring inside the insulated walls of
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  Speaker 1: school classrooms could amplify millions of electric waves into the
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  Speaker 1: local atmosphere, waking up dormant brain cells in the fresh
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  Speaker 1: faced kiddos, and he put that hypothesis to work in Stockholm, Sweden.
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  Speaker 1: Two different classrooms were used, one of which was outfitted
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  Speaker 1: with Tesla's special wiring. Fifty children sat in that room,
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  Speaker 1: while another fifty sat in a normal classroom without the wiring.
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  Speaker 1: Both groups completed their schoolwork each day over the course
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  Speaker 1: of six months, with one set of kids getting bombarded
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  Speaker 1: by electric waves in the air the whole time. According
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  Speaker 1: to Tesla's findings, the end of the six month projects
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  Speaker 1: saw that children in the wired room grow by two
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  Speaker 1: and a half inches, while those in the normal room
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  Speaker 1: only grew by one and a quarter inches. The electrified
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  Speaker 1: children also gained weight and became more physically developed than
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  Speaker 1: their counterparts next door. But the most important question, of course,
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  Speaker 1: was how did their brains fair while exposed to a
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  Speaker 1: constant flow of electric current. Well, unsurprisingly, the children in
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  Speaker 1: the room that wasn't wired performed the same as they
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  Speaker 1: had at the start of the study. The other kids, however,
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  Speaker 1: saw a stark change. They averaged a twenty increase in
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  Speaker 1: their grades compared to those in the regular classroom. Tesla's
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  Speaker 1: research became quite popular, after all, imagine what could be
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  Speaker 1: accomplished with a quick jolt to the brain. Of course,
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  Speaker 1: we know how that turned out. For decades, hospitals and
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  Speaker 1: mental facilities used electro shock machines to induce seizures and
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  Speaker 1: modify the brain's functions, especially to cure various mental disorders,
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  Speaker 1: and though many places have banned the practice, it's still
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  Speaker 1: used today all over the world despite its controversial effects.
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  Speaker 1: But Nikola Tesla didn't think about that. He just wanted
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  Speaker 1: to make us all smarter the only way he knew how,
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  Speaker 1: by electrifying the stupid out of us, one current at
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  Speaker 1: a time. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. There's no real
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  Speaker 1: proof that constant exposure to electric current can improve one's intelligence.
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  Speaker 1: Put another way, as Blue collar. Comedian Ron White has
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  Speaker 1: often said, you can't fix stupid. Everyone makes mistakes, but
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  Speaker 1: as anyone who was picked on at school can tell you,
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  Speaker 1: people are often remembered for their tiniest slip ups. They're
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  Speaker 1: given nicknames and often become the butts of countless jokes.
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  Speaker 1: But not Monica. For one English writer, her faux pause
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  Speaker 1: didn't lead to a life of shame. It actually gave
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  Speaker 1: a name to one of the most recognizable dialects in
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  Speaker 1: the world. Monica, often called Monty by her family and friends,
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  Speaker 1: was born in Paris, France, in nineteen fifteen, but she
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  Speaker 1: was raised in London. Her parents were fairly wealthy, and Monty,
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  Speaker 1: being from a well to do family, was expected to
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  Speaker 1: follow certain customs of her social class. However, she refused,
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  Speaker 1: choosing instead to be something of an iconoclast. For one,
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  Speaker 1: she was expelled from her private girls school after she
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  Speaker 1: chucked her uniform into the Thames River. Monty had been
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  Speaker 1: on her way to court to be presented as a debutante.
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  Speaker 1: She also chose to work as a cook and servant
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  Speaker 1: rather than enjoy the life of leisure that would have
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  Speaker 1: been afforded to her. In fact, Monty did a number
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  Speaker 1: of jobs throughout her life. She was a nurse, a
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  Speaker 1: fact reworker, and she worked for a small town newspaper.
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  Speaker 1: The amount of experience that she acquired could have filled
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  Speaker 1: several books, which it did. You see, Monty was also
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  Speaker 1: a prolific author. She used her time as a cook
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  Speaker 1: and a nurse, and all her other occupations to fuel
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  Speaker 1: her true passion writing. Her first book, One Pair of Hands,
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  Speaker 1: was published in nineteen thirty nine and told the story
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  Speaker 1: of her time as a domestic servant. Her nineteen forty
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  Speaker 1: two memoir, One Pair of Feet, described her work as
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  Speaker 1: a nurse during World War Two. Over the course of
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  Speaker 1: her career, Monty wrote dozens of books for both adults
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  Speaker 1: and children, going on to great literary success. Then, in
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  Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, Monty married an officer in the United
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  Speaker 1: States Navy, and the two moved to America to raise
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  Speaker 1: a family, and she continued to write, publishing a new
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  Speaker 1: book nearly every year or two for the next thirty years.
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  Speaker 1: But it was on a trip to Sydney, Australia in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four where Monty would make a mistake that
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  Speaker 1: would change the future of an entire country and its language.
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  Speaker 1: She was at a book signing when a young woman
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  Speaker 1: approached her. In her hands was a copy of one
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  Speaker 1: of Monty's books. She held it out and asked how
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  Speaker 1: much is it? But Monty couldn't understand the woman's Australian accent.
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  Speaker 1: She thought the customer had said her name, and so
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  Speaker 1: Monty inscribed the book to one Emma chise It. The
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  Speaker 1: story of the misunderstanding made its way to a man
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  Speaker 1: named Alistair Ardoc Morrison, an Australian writer and graphic artist.
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  Speaker 1: He saw an opportunity to capitalize on an honest mistake
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  Speaker 1: and have a bit of fun at Monty's expense. In
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  Speaker 1: the process, he adopted the pseudonym afribec Lauder, a variation
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  Speaker 1: on the phrase alphabetical order, as if it had been
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  Speaker 1: said in an Australian accent. Under his new moniker, Morrison
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  Speaker 1: wrote a number of articles for The Sydney Morning Herald
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  Speaker 1: about the strange and exotic dialect that had perplexed Monica.
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  Speaker 1: He called it strine. Say it out loud and you
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  Speaker 1: might be able to hear its origins. It's how the
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  Speaker 1: word Australian might sound in that accent. Morrison wrote several
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  Speaker 1: books on Strine, in which he took on the persona
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  Speaker 1: of Afribet Lauder, professor of Strine Studies at the University
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  Speaker 1: of Sydney, with Sydney being the Strine form of Sydney.
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  Speaker 1: The books detailed the fictional professor's journey with the dialect.
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  Speaker 1: Within their pages, readers were given phonetic diagrams of different
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  Speaker 1: words and phrases that had been translated from Strine into
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  Speaker 1: common English. Morrison even published a dictionary jam packed with
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  Speaker 1: entries for things like split their dyke, fraf lee and
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  Speaker 1: eggnersher Did you catch those? They were the Strine versions
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  Speaker 1: of phrases splitting, headache, frightfully an air conditioner. Morrison kept
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  Speaker 1: the identity of afribet Laud hidden for only a few years.
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  Speaker 1: The truth finally came out in nineteen sixty eight, but
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  Speaker 1: that didn't negate the work he had done for Australian culture.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, the country adopted the term strine as the
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  Speaker 1: official description of its accent, and thought there might be
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  Speaker 1: variations depending on where in Australia it's spoken or the
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  Speaker 1: speaker's social status. It's all strine in the end, as Fermonty,
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  Speaker 1: while she didn't let her gaff get her down. She
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  Speaker 1: continued to write and publish books for the rest of
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  Speaker 1: her life. After all, it was in her blood. Literally,
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  Speaker 1: Monica Monty Dickens was none other than the great granddaughter
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  Speaker 1: of the legendary English author Charles Dickens. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.