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The Ghosts Between Us · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke'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: There are many different kinds of beauty. There's the internal
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  Speaker 1: beauty of a person's heart and character, and the beauty
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  Speaker 1: of a singer's voice. Someone might have deep blue eyes
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  Speaker 1: or a pearly white smile. Beauty is not limited to
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  Speaker 1: someone's look or style. As the old saying goes, it's
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  Speaker 1: in the eye of the beholder. But some people might
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  Speaker 1: be the total package. At least that's what two men
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  Speaker 1: thought of the girl they saw on the beach one day.
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  Speaker 1: Her name was Alo Pinero, and she was something of
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  Speaker 1: a fixture on the sandy shores of Brazil, well one
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  Speaker 1: particular shore. She was born in Rio de Janeiro in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen forty three. As a teen, she would hang out
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  Speaker 1: on the beach in her neighborhood, walking up and down
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  Speaker 1: the sand. She kept to herself as she passed the
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  Speaker 1: shops and restaurants along the way. Little did she know, however,
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  Speaker 1: she would become the obsession of two men lurking nearby.
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  Speaker 1: Their names were Antonio and Venicius. Alo would often stroll
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  Speaker 1: past the Valso Bar cafe, where the two men often
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  Speaker 1: drank and talked. At the time, Antonio was thirty five
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  Speaker 1: and married, while Vensius was fifty and already had a
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  Speaker 1: few marriages under his belt. So this wasn't some schoolyard
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  Speaker 1: crush among teenagers. It was actually kind of creepy. To
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  Speaker 1: make matters worse, Elyo had to deal with them every
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  Speaker 1: time she came into the bar to buy cigarettes for
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  Speaker 1: her mother. These grown men, with their bellies full of alcohol,
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  Speaker 1: would cat call and whistle at her, and she just
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  Speaker 1: kept going, not paying them any attention. But then something
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  Speaker 1: strange happened. Alo spoke to them. Eventually the three became friends,
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  Speaker 1: and Antonio wanted more. He even promised to leave his
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  Speaker 1: wife for her and asked a Loo for her hand
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  Speaker 1: in marriage, and she did not accept, but that didn't
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  Speaker 1: quell his desire for her, so he partnered with Vnisius
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  Speaker 1: to immortalize her the only way he knew how. In song,
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  Speaker 1: the pair had been collaborators for several years already. In
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  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six, their musical play Orpheus of the Conception
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  Speaker 1: premiered on the Brazilian stage, with songs by Antonio and
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  Speaker 1: lyrics by Vnisius. In fact, Vnicius was already working on
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  Speaker 1: lyrics for an upcoming musical and was in need of
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  Speaker 1: a song for the show, and Antonio had been tinkering
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  Speaker 1: with a new tune on his piano, which he titled
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  Speaker 1: Menina Capasa. The words were different at first, until Vnsius
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  Speaker 1: changed them to honor Alo's Beauty and Charm the BASSA
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  Speaker 1: nova song he came up with was then released in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two and was sung by Brazilian artist Perry Rebbeo.
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  Speaker 1: Two years later, though, it found new life in America
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  Speaker 1: when jazz saxophonist Stan Getz decided to include it on
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  Speaker 1: a new album of his. He was in a New
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  Speaker 1: York City recording studio working on the song with Brazilian
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  Speaker 1: guitarist Jauel Gilberto. That was when someone suggested putting out
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  Speaker 1: an English version. Lyricist Norman Gimble reworked the lyrics for
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  Speaker 1: an English speaking audience, but they still needed a singer
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  Speaker 1: Gilberto's wife, Ostrud stepped up to the mic. She spoke
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  Speaker 1: English well enough and had a clean, clear voice that
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  Speaker 1: seemed perfect for the song's simple melody, and their last
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  Speaker 1: minute idea paid off. The song became a massive hit
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  Speaker 1: in America, landing at number one on the Billboard Adult
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  Speaker 1: Contemporary Charts and number fifty one on the Hot one
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  Speaker 1: hundred for nineteen sixty four. Since then, it has become
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  Speaker 1: one of the most recorded pop songs in history, second
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  Speaker 1: only to Yesterday by the Beatles. Alo Pinero, despite being
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  Speaker 1: the song's inspiration, did not see any financial gain from
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  Speaker 1: its success. She did, however, go on to become a
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  Speaker 1: model and a businesswoman and did quite well for herself.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, she had no idea that she had been
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  Speaker 1: the muse for the song until after its release. To
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  Speaker 1: her friends and family, she was a low but to
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  Speaker 1: the rest of the world she would forever be known
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  Speaker 1: as the girl from Ipanema. When people reach a certain
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  Speaker 1: level of celebrity, everything changes. Travel becomes more complicated. Simply
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  Speaker 1: eating out or going for a walk can be difficult.
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  Speaker 1: So much of day to day life is affected, So
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  Speaker 1: it makes sense why many celebrities find that they relate
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  Speaker 1: best to other famous people. This has spawned some unusual friendships,
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  Speaker 1: like Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart or Elton John and Eminem.
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  Speaker 1: But one of the most unlikely celebrity pairings in history
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  Speaker 1: was between two men who couldn't have had less in common,
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  Speaker 1: Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. One was a
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  Speaker 1: famous illusionist who made elephants disappear, and the other was
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  Speaker 1: the creator of the great literary detective Sherlock Holmes. Houdini
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  Speaker 1: was a Hungarian immigrant to America who grew up living
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  Speaker 1: hand to mouth and started working as a vaudeville performer
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  Speaker 1: when he was just a kid. Doyle went to a
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  Speaker 1: private school and had careers as a medical doctor and
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  Speaker 1: a botanist before becoming an author. But for all their differences,
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  Speaker 1: they had at least one thing in common, a fascination
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  Speaker 1: with the parent normal. Of course, they weren't the only ones.
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  Speaker 1: After the mass death caused by World War One, people
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  Speaker 1: all around the world were hungry for answers about the afterlife.
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  Speaker 1: Many turned to spiritualism, a movement that believed that the
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  Speaker 1: souls of the dead could contact the living, usually through
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  Speaker 1: seances performed by psychic mediums. Houdini and Doyle were both
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  Speaker 1: fascinated by spiritualism before they met at one of Houdini's
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  Speaker 1: performances in nineteen twenty, they were already two of the
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  Speaker 1: most notable speakers on the top, and their shared interest
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  Speaker 1: sparked in immediate friendship. But it wasn't all rose colored glasses,
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  Speaker 1: because while they were both fascinated by the possibility of
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  Speaker 1: an afterlife, they held sharply different perspectives. Doyle was a
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  Speaker 1: passionate believer. Since the death of his son, he had
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  Speaker 1: made it his mission to spread spiritualism to the public.
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  Speaker 1: His wife, Jean, was even a medium who performed automatic writing,
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  Speaker 1: summoning spirits to guide her in writing out messages to
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  Speaker 1: their loved ones. Houdini, on the other hand, grew up
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  Speaker 1: working in vaudeville acts, where fake psychics were a dime
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  Speaker 1: a dozen. He had peeked behind the curtain and had
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  Speaker 1: come to see most mediums as Charlatan's. So his goal
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  Speaker 1: wasn't to spread the message of spiritualism, but to debunk it,
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  Speaker 1: and this led to some healthy, heated debates that first,
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  Speaker 1: the conversations were friendly, then in nineteen twenty two, Doyle
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  Speaker 1: invited the illusionists to participate in a seance at his home.
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  Speaker 1: During the experience, Doyle's wife claimed to have been contacted
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  Speaker 1: by the spirits of Houdini's mother, who then proceeded to
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  Speaker 1: transcribe a long letter from the dead woman to her son.
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  Speaker 1: Houdini seemed shaken when he left, and Doyle thought that
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  Speaker 1: his friend was finally convinced, But soon after Houdini published
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  Speaker 1: an account of the experience in which he claimed he
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  Speaker 1: did not believe the seance had been successful. His reasoning
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  Speaker 1: his mother's English had never been very good, so he
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  Speaker 1: couldn't see how she would manage a fifteen page letter
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  Speaker 1: in that language. Also, she had failed to mention that
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  Speaker 1: it was her birthday that day. Harry Houdini and Sir
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  Speaker 1: Arthur Conan Doyle's friendship was never the same after that.
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  Speaker 1: In the coming years, they only became more entrenched in
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  Speaker 1: their points of view. They remained rivals until Halloween of
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  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty six, when Houdini died of a ruptured appendix,
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  Speaker 1: and that should have put an end to their feud,
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  Speaker 1: But in nineteen thirty Doyle published his belief that Houdini
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  Speaker 1: had possessed psychic powers all along. If true, that would
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  Speaker 1: make the illusionist a special kind of fraud, one who
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  Speaker 1: denied the benefits of spiritualism in order to profit from them.
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  Speaker 1: It was quite the accusation and difficult for Houdini to
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  Speaker 1: deny now that he was dead right, and yet still
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  Speaker 1: he managed a small rebuttal as a sort of final
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  Speaker 1: test of spiritualism. Before his death, Houdini and his wife
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  Speaker 1: created a secret code that only they knew. For years afterwards,
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  Speaker 1: she held seances trying to contact him. If he reached
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  Speaker 1: out and gave her the code, they'd have proof of
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  Speaker 1: an afterlife. But he never did, and the meaning of
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  Speaker 1: it all is a matter of perspective. This was either
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  Speaker 1: evidence against spiritualism and psychic mediums, or that Houdini's ghost
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  Speaker 1: didn't want to admit that he was wrong. Either way,
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  Speaker 1: he got the last word from beyond the grave. I
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  Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at Theworldoflore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.