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The Mastermind · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The French have graced
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  Speaker 1: our streets and shores with architectural wonders for hundreds of years,
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  Speaker 1: from soaring Gothic spires to ornate palaces to Gustav Eiffel's
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  Speaker 1: towering feet of engineering in the middle of Paris. France's
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  Speaker 1: architectural movements have influenced the world over, which brings me
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  Speaker 1: to a man you might not have heard of, which
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  Speaker 1: is odd because for twenty five years he's been solely
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  Speaker 1: responsible for developing one of the largest cities in Europe.
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  Speaker 1: Gil Traheen had a unique childhood. From a very early age,
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  Speaker 1: it was clear his brain was wired in a way
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  Speaker 1: that escaped the adults around him. For example, he had
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  Speaker 1: perfect pitch and taught himself to play the bass. His
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  Speaker 1: innate sense of numbers and mathematics allowed him to perform
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  Speaker 1: calculations off the top of his head that most people
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  Speaker 1: needed calculators for, and he could draw too, not stick
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  Speaker 1: figures or superheroes, but enormous buildings, taking them from simple
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  Speaker 1: doodles to three D structures with incredible accuracy. Like Thomas
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  Speaker 1: Jefferson before him, Traheen was self educated in the principles
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  Speaker 1: of architecture, and his knack for learning took him to
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  Speaker 1: great heights. Literally, the city of Orville became the bustling
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  Speaker 1: metropolis it is now because of him. Boasting a population
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  Speaker 1: of twelve million, Orville traces its roots back to the
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  Speaker 1: twelfth century BC, when the city passed through the hands
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  Speaker 1: of the Romans to the Austro Guards, all the way
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  Speaker 1: up to its eventual ruling by the Kingdom of France
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  Speaker 1: in the seventeen hundreds. Things settled down for a long
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  Speaker 1: time time until the French Revolution, when the population exploded
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  Speaker 1: to two point eight million. Town planners needed a way
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  Speaker 1: to accommodate so many people in such a small area,
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  Speaker 1: so they built urban housing developments that still stand today.
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  Speaker 1: And while World War One missed Orville entirely, World War
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  Speaker 1: Two brought with it numerous bombings, reducing much of the
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  Speaker 1: city to rubble and cutting the population down by two
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  Speaker 1: hundred thousand. But Orville and its citizens refused to quit,
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  Speaker 1: and after the war, as more people felt compelled to
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  Speaker 1: move out of the country and into cities. Its population
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  Speaker 1: skyrocketed again. It continued to grow over the next forty years,
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  Speaker 1: and with it came taller buildings, more shops, movie theaters,
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  Speaker 1: and public parks, the kind of advancements seen in cities
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  Speaker 1: like Chicago and New York over the same period of time.
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  Speaker 1: Enter Traheen, master architect who single handedly created Orville's most
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  Speaker 1: iconic structures at the age of fifteen. An enormous glass cover,
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  Speaker 1: a skyscraper that seems to point toward heaven with its
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  Speaker 1: pyramid like top, A beautiful covered bridge spanning the river
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  Speaker 1: that runs down the middle of the city. A port
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  Speaker 1: boasting modern speedboats and historic sloops, all of it constructed
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  Speaker 1: by one man with a vision. Surprisingly, not much is
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  Speaker 1: known about Trahean. You'd think the man responsible for expanding
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  Speaker 1: a city from three million to twelve million would have
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  Speaker 1: a few books written about him, maybe an article or
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  Speaker 1: two in Architectural Digest. But by all accounts, Traheen is
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  Speaker 1: nothing more than a blip on the radar and anomaly
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  Speaker 1: which brings me back to Orville. If you look at
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  Speaker 1: a map and use a magnifying glass, you might find Orville,
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  Speaker 1: Ube Commune in the northeastern corner of France. It's population
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  Speaker 1: of one forty seven is a far cry from the
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  Speaker 1: cramped masses of Trehean's version of Orville. You wouldn't find
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  Speaker 1: glistening skyscrapers or sprawling parks either. In fact, you won't
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  Speaker 1: find much of anything. You see. The erville that has
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  Speaker 1: become the third most populated city in Europe doesn't actually exist, well,
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  Speaker 1: not physically. The only way to find Orville is among
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  Speaker 1: three hundred individual sketches by trading a French autistic savant
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  Speaker 1: who first imagined the city back in it's history. Its founders,
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  Speaker 1: and its design are all fiction, though you never know
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  Speaker 1: it by looking at the incredibly detailed sketches. He began
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  Speaker 1: his city twenty five years ago, and he's still building today.
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  Speaker 1: Obsession has that effect, a compulsion to complete something when
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  Speaker 1: we know it will never truly be finished. Cities are organic,
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  Speaker 1: always changing, and those of us who live within them
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  Speaker 1: change too. Humans, by nature, inhabit the places we call
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  Speaker 1: home sometimes, though places can inhabit us, even if it's
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  Speaker 1: just all in our head. On average, there are fewer
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  Speaker 1: than one airplane crashes each year. Your chance of dying
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  Speaker 1: in one is one in eleven million. In fact, since
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  Speaker 1: your odds of dying in a car accident are higher
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  Speaker 1: at one in five thousand, you're better off in the
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  Speaker 1: air than on the ground. Still, no matter how low
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  Speaker 1: the chances are, we hear the stories small aircraft and
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  Speaker 1: jumbo jets go down and people die without ever reaching
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  Speaker 1: their destinations. It's a sad truth about air travel, and
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  Speaker 1: nobody knows this better than the pilots and flight attendants
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  Speaker 1: who work on these planes every day. One such attendant
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  Speaker 1: was Vesna Vulich, born in Belgrade in nineteen fifty. Vezna
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  Speaker 1: loved to travel. It was her love for the Beatles
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  Speaker 1: that took her to London when she happened to see
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  Speaker 1: a friend of hers wearing a flight attendants uniform and thought,
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  Speaker 1: that's what I want to do, traveling to distant lands,
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  Speaker 1: seeing new places and meeting new people. It was the
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  Speaker 1: life she'd dreamed of. To satisfy her wander lust, Vesna
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  Speaker 1: returned to Serbia in the early nineteen seventies and joined
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  Speaker 1: j A T Airways, where she was hired as a
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  Speaker 1: flight attendant. It was a dangerous time for Yugoslavi and
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  Speaker 1: travel as Croatian nationalists had been carrying out terrorist attacks
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  Speaker 1: across the country. None of that bothered Vesna though. She
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  Speaker 1: had her crisp new uniform and a ticket to adventure,
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  Speaker 1: and things were fine for the first year as she
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  Speaker 1: settled into her new life. But this would not be
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  Speaker 1: the fairy tale she'd imagined. On the morning of January
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  Speaker 1: seventy two, Vesna was called into work flight three sixty seven,
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  Speaker 1: which would be landing in Copenhagen the next day, to
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  Speaker 1: pick her and the rest of the crew up before
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  Speaker 1: flying to her hometown of Belgrade. She'd made trips like
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  Speaker 1: this four, but this one seemed different. There was something
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  Speaker 1: in the air no pun intended. The rest of the
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  Speaker 1: crew could feel it too, dread, hopelessness, despair. Vesna had
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  Speaker 1: planned to do a little sight seeing before taking off,
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  Speaker 1: but decided to join the other crew members in a
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  Speaker 1: shopping trip instead. All of them seemed sad, like they
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  Speaker 1: knew what was about to happen. The captain had gone
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  Speaker 1: as far as to lock himself in his hotel room
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  Speaker 1: the previous day, not coming out until a few hours
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  Speaker 1: before the flight. Even the passengers felt it as they
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  Speaker 1: deplaned at Copenhagen Airport. One man in particular, was so
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  Speaker 1: frustrated he refused to get back on the plane, leaving
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  Speaker 1: his baggage behind. When flight three sixty seven took off
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  Speaker 1: a few hours later, there were twenty eight passengers and
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  Speaker 1: crew on board, including Vesna. She handed out drinks and
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  Speaker 1: snacks and attended to passengers needs as the airplane climbed
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  Speaker 1: higher and higher. About an hour into the trip, it's
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  Speaker 1: the plane had reached its maximum altitude. It happened the vague,
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  Speaker 1: ominous threat that had been hanging over their heads had
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  Speaker 1: finally found them. An explosion, which began in the baggage compartment,
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  Speaker 1: ripped through the plane, tearing it in half like a napkin.
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  Speaker 1: Vestna and the other people on board fell over thirty
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  Speaker 1: three thousand feet into a small check village below. Authorities
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  Speaker 1: determined the explosion had been caused by a briefcase bomb,
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  Speaker 1: allegedly left behind by that frustrated man who refused to
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  Speaker 1: board the plane back in Copenhagen. At least, that's who
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  Speaker 1: Vesna pointed out when they questioned her. You see, a
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  Speaker 1: villager heard screaming from inside the wreckage, not too far
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  Speaker 1: from his home, peering inside, he saw a woman in
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  Speaker 1: a flight attendants uniform covered in blood. It was Vesna,
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  Speaker 1: and despite her six mile fall to earth, she had lived.
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  Speaker 1: Vesna Voolich spent months in the hospital recovering from her wounds,
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  Speaker 1: which included a fractured skull and temporary paralysis, but she
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  Speaker 1: didn't let her injury stop her. When she finally healed,
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  Speaker 1: she got back on with her life, including her job
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  Speaker 1: at J A. T Airlines, albeit in the less exciting
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  Speaker 1: role of negotiating freight contracts from the safety of the ground.
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  Speaker 1: Many people don't bounce back after a serious injury. Athletes
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  Speaker 1: leave the field, writers never get back on the horse,
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  Speaker 1: Shark attack victims don't get back in the water. But
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  Speaker 1: once in a while, a person like Vesna Vulich manages
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  Speaker 1: to fall out of the sky and land on her feet.
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  Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
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  Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
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  Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership
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  Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
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  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast book series and television show,
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  Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
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  Speaker 1: World of lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.