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Trust the Process · 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. 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: Boxing has always attracted big and strange personalities who use
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  Speaker 1: the sport as performance art, becoming what we might call
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  Speaker 1: professional trolls. Comedian Andy Kaufman used to challenge random women
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  Speaker 1: to box with him in the ring before pro wrestler
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  Speaker 1: Jerry Lawler put him in a neck brace. But all
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  Speaker 1: these modern performance artist boxers were preceded by an even
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  Speaker 1: stranger character, one who may have just been the first
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  Speaker 1: professional boxing troll. Born in eighteen eighty seven, Arthur Craven
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  Speaker 1: liked to introduce himself as and this is the quote,
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  Speaker 1: the world's shortest haired poet, boxer, hotel rat, muleteer, snake Charmer, chauffeur,
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  Speaker 1: illuriphile gold prospector, grandson of the Queen's Chancellor, nephew of
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  Speaker 1: Oscar Wilde. Yeah, put that one on a tombstone. Oh
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  Speaker 1: and If you're wondering what an alluriphile is, it's someone
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  Speaker 1: who loves cats. Arthur grew up in Switzerland, but always
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  Speaker 1: found life there to be a little too constricting. He
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  Speaker 1: traveled around Europe and became a boxer. He was always
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  Speaker 1: a big man and so the sport suited him, but
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  Speaker 1: even trading blows in the ring wasn't exciting enough for him.
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  Speaker 1: He liked to add a bit of theater to his
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  Speaker 1: matches by giving speeches on art, trash talking the other boxers,
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  Speaker 1: threatening suicide, firing a gun into the air, and throwing
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  Speaker 1: his briefcase at the audience. In other words, he liked
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  Speaker 1: to troll the crowd. It's like he only ever felt
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  Speaker 1: alive if everyone in the room hated him. He took
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  Speaker 1: this to a new extreme once he arrived in Spain,
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  Speaker 1: where he arranged a match with world champion boxer Jack Johnson.
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  Speaker 1: Some claim the match was rigged from the start to
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  Speaker 1: earn both boxers a bunch of money, and others claimed
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  Speaker 1: that Arthur was just out of his depth. Either way,
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  Speaker 1: the match ultimately resulted in Arthur being knocked out in
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  Speaker 1: the sixth round. This caused such an uproar that the
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  Speaker 1: crowd rioted and Arthur had to escape out the side
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  Speaker 1: of the venue. He fled to New York, where he
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  Speaker 1: seemed to step away from boxing, instead focusing on his
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  Speaker 1: performance art. He continued to troll, writing articles and making
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  Speaker 1: speeches where he insulted just about every other artist he
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  Speaker 1: could think of, whether they were a poet, painter, actor,
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  Speaker 1: or otherwise. He was even arrested once for exposing himself
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  Speaker 1: on stage again anything to get a rise out of people.
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  Speaker 1: But as much as Arthur seemed to like to antagonize
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  Speaker 1: his fellow human beings, he did have a soft spot
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  Speaker 1: for the poet Mina Loy. She too had left Europe
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  Speaker 1: after being dissatisfied with life there, and although she didn't
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  Speaker 1: like Arthur when they first met, she soon fell for him.
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  Speaker 1: He had a passion for life and a fearlessness that
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  Speaker 1: endeared him to her. They decided to move to Mexico
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  Speaker 1: in late nineteen seventeen. As Arthur was always worried that
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  Speaker 1: one Allied country or another would try to draft him
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  Speaker 1: into the Great War, the boxer poet troll seemed to
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  Speaker 1: finally calm down, content to teach boxing lessons and pass
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  Speaker 1: his days with Mina. They got married and soon she
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  Speaker 1: became pregnant with a daughter. But life in Mexico was hard,
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  Speaker 1: and the couple struggled to make ends meet. They heard
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  Speaker 1: that they could live more affordably in Buenos Aires, but
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  Speaker 1: they could only afford to buy passage there for Mina.
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  Speaker 1: So that's what they did, and in late nineteen eighteen,
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  Speaker 1: Arthur decided to go there ahead of her by traveling
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  Speaker 1: with a friend in an old row boat. It's maybe
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  Speaker 1: not the best plan to try to sail the length
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  Speaker 1: of South America in such a small vessel, and maybe
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  Speaker 1: this was yet another one of Arthur's strange performance art stuff.
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  Speaker 1: It turned out to be his last two because after
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  Speaker 1: Mina wave goodbye to him on the dock, she never
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  Speaker 1: saw him again. Now, conventional wisdom would say that he
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  Speaker 1: drowned right, although there have been theories over the years
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  Speaker 1: that he was merely escaping responsibility and started a new
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  Speaker 1: life elsewhere. If Mina believe this, she didn't hold it
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  Speaker 1: against him, though. Even after his disappearance, she claimed that
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  Speaker 1: her happiest years were the ones she spent with him.
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  Speaker 1: She gave birth to their daughter the following year. In
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  Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, Arthur left behind a curious legacy of trolling
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  Speaker 1: audiences with a body of work that mostly consisted of
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  Speaker 1: insulting diatribes against other artists, and as despicable as he
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  Speaker 1: could be at times, he set a bold example of
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  Speaker 1: living life to the fullest and refusing to bow to
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  Speaker 1: the expectations of others. He had no fear and endless curiosity.
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  Speaker 1: For some of us, it's easy to lose focus. We
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  Speaker 1: use coping mechanisms to fight distractions, like keeping a strict
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  Speaker 1: work schedule, meditating, finding a quiet place to concentrate, or
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  Speaker 1: even locking our phones. But what do you do when
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  Speaker 1: it feels like nothing you try helps. Sometimes you have
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  Speaker 1: to go to extremes, like how in the nineteenth century
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  Speaker 1: one man used an unorthodox method to lay his procrastination
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  Speaker 1: habit bare. Victor had a problem, you see. To put
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  Speaker 1: it simply, he was just too popular. Born in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: oh two to an upper class family, he had shown
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  Speaker 1: a special talent for words. At an early age, he
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  Speaker 1: became obsessed with romantic writers, devouring works about passion, beauty,
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  Speaker 1: and heroes with rich emotional lives. By eighteen seventeen, he'd
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  Speaker 1: written a poem for a French academy competition, which was
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  Speaker 1: so mature the judges refused to believe a fifteen year
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  Speaker 1: old could have written it. By eighteen thirty one, twenty
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  Speaker 1: nine year old Victor's career was rising to new heights.
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  Speaker 1: He'd been working for the past few years as a
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  Speaker 1: novelist and a playwright, and was even starting to get
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  Speaker 1: some acclaim for it. In fact, the collection of poems
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  Speaker 1: that he published at the age of twenty was so
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  Speaker 1: well received the French king granted him a royal pension.
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  Speaker 1: With royal recognition came royal innovations, and soon Victor found
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  Speaker 1: himself at the center of Paris high society. Every night
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  Speaker 1: was a party, or a ball, or a night at
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  Speaker 1: the opera. The evenings with no invitations, Victor amused himself
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  Speaker 1: by hosting nearly thirty guests for dinner, and most nights
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  Speaker 1: Victor would stay out late, roaming the streets of Paris,
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  Speaker 1: visiting bars and brothels. But as his social life soared,
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  Speaker 1: his writing suffered. The life of a writer has to be,
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  Speaker 1: in some respects a solitary one to crack poems or
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  Speaker 1: pen novels any long stretches of uninterrupted time alone. As
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  Speaker 1: long as Victor was the life of the party, it
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  Speaker 1: would be the death of his career. So one day
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen teen thirty one, with a deadline for his
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  Speaker 1: latest novel, Looming, Victor took a new approach. He knew
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  Speaker 1: if he had the free will to leave his house
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  Speaker 1: and party, he would never stay home long enough to
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  Speaker 1: finish the book. So he made it so that he
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  Speaker 1: could never leave. First, he purchased a large gray shawl. Next,
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  Speaker 1: he summoned a servant to his chambers and had them
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  Speaker 1: gather up all of his clothes, And then he had
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  Speaker 1: the servant take the clothes, lock them away, and hide
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  Speaker 1: the key from him. Now, when invitations to the palace
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  Speaker 1: or the opera came, Victor had to refuse. He literally
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  Speaker 1: had nothing to wear. He couldn't even leave to go
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  Speaker 1: to the bar lest he be arrested for public indecency.
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  Speaker 1: For months, Victor worked like this, wrapped in nothing but
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  Speaker 1: the gray shawl. And perhaps it was the influence of
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  Speaker 1: that shawl that led Victor to start thinking about social inequality.
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  Speaker 1: He'd grown up rich and never gone cold or hungry,
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  Speaker 1: but every day in Paris people were forced to get
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  Speaker 1: by on not much more than his gray shawl, And
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  Speaker 1: as the months passed by with no clothes, a story
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  Speaker 1: took shape in Victor's mind, one about people at both
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  Speaker 1: ends of society, about a powerful archdeacon, a poor roma girl,
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  Speaker 1: and a physically disabled man hidden away from the rest
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  Speaker 1: of the world in a Gothic tower. In eighteen thirty one,
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  Speaker 1: French literary hero Victor Hugo emerged from his close free
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  Speaker 1: cell with the manuscript for The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
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  Speaker 1: written almost entirely in the buff Throughout the rest of
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  Speaker 1: his career, Victor Hugo had a huge impact on French culture.
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  Speaker 1: He published more novels and got involved in politics, becoming
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  Speaker 1: a champion of social reforms like free education, universal suffrage,
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  Speaker 1: and an end to the death penalty. After speaking out
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  Speaker 1: against Emperor Napoleon the Third's seizure of the French government,
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  Speaker 1: he went into exile for fifteen years on the Channel
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  Speaker 1: island of Guernsey, and it was during this time, over
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  Speaker 1: a period of nearly seventeen years, that Victor wrote his masterpiece,
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  Speaker 1: Les Miserab, a sweeping epic novel. The story follows rich
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  Speaker 1: and poor French people in a time of great social upheaval.
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  Speaker 1: At the center is Jean Valjean, an ex convict who
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  Speaker 1: becomes a good man even as his past in the
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  Speaker 1: form of Inspector Javert, catches up to him. As far
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  Speaker 1: as we know, Victor Hugo never gave up his habit
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  Speaker 1: of writing sant's clothing, so it's more than likely that
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  Speaker 1: he spent a good chunk of those seventeen years wrapped
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  Speaker 1: up in his handy shawl. They say great work requires
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  Speaker 1: stripping away the distractions, and it seems in the case
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  Speaker 1: of Victor Hugo, he took that quite literally. I hope
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  Speaker 1: 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 the Worldoflore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.