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Acoustic Kitty · 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.
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  Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Everyone loves their pets.
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  Speaker 2: Human domestication of animals goes back over ten thousand years.
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  Speaker 2: In ancient times, we learn that dogs, cats, and even
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  Speaker 2: bores could be fed and taught to follow orders. Most
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  Speaker 2: of the time, all we ask is that the animals
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  Speaker 2: be our cute little companions and pose for videos and
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  Speaker 2: photos for social media. As history has progressed, domestication has
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  Speaker 2: grown more and more sophisticated. In the modern age, this
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  Speaker 2: process often goes too far, becoming horrific rather than cute.
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  Speaker 2: Many of us can hardly stomach the thought of the
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  Speaker 2: slaughter houses that mass produce meat. But if you go
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  Speaker 2: back just a few decades, you can find one example
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  Speaker 2: of domestication gone wrong that's more horrific than any other.
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  Speaker 2: The CIA's Cold War experiments are now infamous. What was
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  Speaker 2: once thought to be a conspiracy theory has now through
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  Speaker 2: declassified documents proved to be actual conspiracy. One such document
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  Speaker 2: reveals the existence of Operation Acoustic Kitty, an experiment meant
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  Speaker 2: to assess the use of cats in spy operations. The
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  Speaker 2: documents are still heavily redacted, so we don't know the
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  Speaker 2: names of many of the people involved, but that's perhaps appropriate,
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  Speaker 2: as from the cat's point of view, the CIA agents
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  Speaker 2: were all strangers doing strange things. In order to make
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  Speaker 2: the cat ready for the operation, several surgeries were performed.
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  Speaker 2: The cat was cut open and batteries and a receiver
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  Speaker 2: were sewn into its stomach lining. After this, the agents
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  Speaker 2: ran a microphone from the receiver in the cat's stomach,
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  Speaker 2: up its digestive tract and into its head out its
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  Speaker 2: ear canal. And that's right, the cat had a microphone
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  Speaker 2: and a speaker in its ear. And finally, the agents
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  Speaker 2: ran a wire from the microphone in the cat's ear
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  Speaker 2: down the cat's spine, this time weaving the wire into
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  Speaker 2: its fur. This led to an antenna in its tail
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  Speaker 2: that could both receive messages and broadcast whatever was being
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  Speaker 2: picked up on the microphone. With their Acoustic Kitty now complete,
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  Speaker 2: the agents sewed the cat back up and let it
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  Speaker 2: recover from its surgery, and we can only imagine how
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  Speaker 2: the cat felt. But once it was recovered, it was
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  Speaker 2: time for its training. The agents played different tones in
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  Speaker 2: the cat's ear, using obstacle courses to train it to
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  Speaker 2: associate certain tones with certain directions. One tone told it
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  Speaker 2: to go left, another told it to go right, and
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  Speaker 2: so on. Now, if you own a cat, or you've
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  Speaker 2: heard the phrase trying to herd cats, you're probably surprised
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  Speaker 2: to hear that this worked.
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  Speaker 1: But the truth it is that it didn't. Always, not
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  Speaker 1: for more than ten minutes at a time, the cat's
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  Speaker 1: various instincts often took over and led it to do
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  Speaker 1: whatever it wanted. Some reports suggest that the agents did
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  Speaker 1: more surgeries to suppress those urges, but exactly how that
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  Speaker 1: worked is unclear. Regardless, the agents were eventually satisfied enough
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  Speaker 1: where they felt that the cat was ready for a
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  Speaker 1: field test. They packed it up in a van with
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  Speaker 1: a variety of other surveillance equipment and drove to a
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  Speaker 1: park outside the Russian embassy in Washington, DC. Their goal
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  Speaker 1: was to have the cat spy on some civilians On
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  Speaker 1: a park bench, they unloaded the cat onto the street
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  Speaker 1: and began to issue commands. Now, what happened next varies
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  Speaker 1: depending on the source. If you want the happy ending,
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  Speaker 1: the cat performed its job but was still hard to control. Afterward,
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  Speaker 1: surgery was done to remove all the electronic components, and
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  Speaker 1: the cat lived on after that. But if you want
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  Speaker 1: the sad and to be honest, darker ending, one report
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  Speaker 1: says that the cat began to cross the street and
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  Speaker 1: was immediately hit by a taxi, destroying years of hard
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  Speaker 1: work and millions of dollars in taxpayer money. Whatever the
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  Speaker 1: true story, the CIA came to the conclusion that cats
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  Speaker 1: would never be an ideal ally in the spy trade.
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  Speaker 1: This is one example of domestication that went way too
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  Speaker 1: far and yielded no results in the process. They say
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  Speaker 1: that curiosity killed the cat, but in this case, the
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  Speaker 1: curiosity was the CIA's lights, camera action. Those three magical
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  Speaker 1: words are the first thing we learn about the process
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  Speaker 1: of making films, a cliche that by now is a
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  Speaker 1: little out of date. These days, if a director has
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  Speaker 1: to call for the lighting to be turned on right
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  Speaker 1: before a shot, something else has gone very very wrong.
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  Speaker 1: Since the dawn of the twentieth century, though, motion xture.
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  Speaker 1: Producers have been striving to create something worth seeing on
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  Speaker 1: the silver screen, imagery that's so transporting that you just
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  Speaker 1: have to go out and see it for yourself. Today,
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  Speaker 1: thousands of artists work over computer screens to make such
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  Speaker 1: spectacles happen. In the nineteen twenties, though, if you wanted
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  Speaker 1: something spectacular, you had to invent it in physical reality,
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  Speaker 1: which brings us to the story of Noah's Ark, not
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  Speaker 1: the Bible tale, but the nineteen twenty eight film adaptation
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  Speaker 1: of it, produced by the Warner Brothers. Adapting works from
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  Speaker 1: the Bible was a popular strategy for Blockbuster's success. Just
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  Speaker 1: four years earlier, Cecil B. De Mill had directed a
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  Speaker 1: silent film version of The Ten Commandments, which made Paramount
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  Speaker 1: Pictures almost four times its budget. So producer Darryl F.
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  Speaker 1: Zanik saw the opportunity. He gave the story to a
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  Speaker 1: hand picked screenwriter and hired an up and coming director
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  Speaker 1: for the job, a thirty eight year old Hungarian American
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  Speaker 1: named Michael Curtiz. Now, in case you've never seen it,
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  Speaker 1: the climax of this film would involve a truly tear
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  Speaker 1: fine amount of manpower. The Great flood in the Bible
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  Speaker 1: this flood destroys every living thing on earth save for
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  Speaker 1: Noah and his family and the animals that they managed
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  Speaker 1: to save in the ark. So in order for this
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  Speaker 1: divine apocalypse to play out on screen, it had to
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  Speaker 1: be a showstopper. As many as seven thousand extras were
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  Speaker 1: brought on for this scene along with livestock. The plan
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  Speaker 1: was to actually flood the set with all of these
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  Speaker 1: people there. The biblical city was built to break away
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  Speaker 1: in the water, dramatically collapsing as Man's hubris was squashed
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  Speaker 1: by the wrath of God. Cinematographer how Moore was an
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  Speaker 1: early voice speaking up against the plan. He confronted the
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  Speaker 1: director and producer Daryl Zanak. Allegedly he asked what would
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  Speaker 1: be done about the extra people, and Curtis replied, they'll
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  Speaker 1: have to take their chances, and it was then that
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  Speaker 1: Moore walked off the set to be replaced by a
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  Speaker 1: different cameraman. On the final day when the flood sequence
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  Speaker 1: was to be filmed, there were fourteen cameras rolling and
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  Speaker 1: on q torrential waves of water were released onto the set. Now,
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  Speaker 1: accounts differ on how much water the flood required, some
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  Speaker 1: say four million gallons others point the estimate closer to
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  Speaker 1: one million. Whatever the case, the effect was intense. The
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  Speaker 1: set broke and shattered, not just at the key points
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  Speaker 1: designed to give way. One of the leading actors, George O'Brien,
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  Speaker 1: had two of his toenails ripped off by the water pressure,
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  Speaker 1: but that was the least of the damage. Extras and
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  Speaker 1: cattle went from performing to fighting for their lives. Many
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  Speaker 1: accounts afterward claimed that the water ran red with blood.
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  Speaker 1: After the scene, thirty five ambulances rushed to the rescue.
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  Speaker 1: It is frequently claimed that in the chaos three people
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  Speaker 1: lost their lives, and hell more has even said that
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  Speaker 1: at least one man lost a leg. Many of the
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  Speaker 1: stars involved spoke openly in their later years about how
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  Speaker 1: harrowing the sequence was, how the producers were not just reckless,
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  Speaker 1: but ruthless. Alfred Hitchcock would infamously say that actors should
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  Speaker 1: be treated like cattle, and in circumstances like these, it's
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  Speaker 1: hard to argue that they were treated much better, but
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  Speaker 1: there was only so much they could do. In an
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  Speaker 1: era before robust safety regulations and labor unions had entered,
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  Speaker 1: Hollywood performers were only safe if a studio wanted them
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  Speaker 1: to be protected. Production records from Noah's Ark have either
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  Speaker 1: been lost or destroyed, and all we have to go
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  Speaker 1: on are the accounts of those who were there, like
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  Speaker 1: the actors and the crew. Their description of a flood
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  Speaker 1: flecked with blood and a set crashing down around them
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  Speaker 1: paint a terrifying picture, even if the tangible details remained
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  Speaker 1: something of a mystery. But what we do have are
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  Speaker 1: the names of some of the survivors. One of the
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  Speaker 1: men involved in the flood who very nearly lost his
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  Speaker 1: life was an over six foot tall prop man named
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  Speaker 1: Maryan Morrison. If he hadn't survived that shoot, today, the
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  Speaker 1: history of film would have turned out quite differently. Later
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  Speaker 1: in his career, he'd be known by a different name
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  Speaker 1: as the Western hero John Wayne. While making films is
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  Speaker 1: a lot safer now than it was in the nineteen twenties,
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  Speaker 1: there is a less to take from all of this.
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  Speaker 1: Whether you're a movie producer, a business owner, or anyone
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  Speaker 1: people trust with their safety, be careful of who you
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  Speaker 1: think is expendable, because you never know which extra is
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  Speaker 1: a future star. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
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  Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time,
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  Speaker 1: stay curious.