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Disco Fever · 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: On the Yale campus in New Haven, Connecticut is the
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  Speaker 1: Binicky Rare Book and Manuscript Library. It's one of the
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  Speaker 1: largest of its kind, and its vast collection includes the
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  Speaker 1: Gutenberg Bible, the first text printed mechanically, as well as
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  Speaker 1: a twelve hundred and fifty year old Buddhist text and
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  Speaker 1: thousands of other folios. But hidden in the stacks is
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  Speaker 1: also a tome that has baffled scholars for over a century.
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  Speaker 1: A four hundred and eighty page work covered in calfskin,
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  Speaker 1: written in a language unknown to any living person. Its
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  Speaker 1: pages are filled with cryptic tables and illustrations of bizarre
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  Speaker 1: plants and astrological signs. Carbon dating places it in the
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  Speaker 1: early fifteenth century, but there is no explanation for its
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  Speaker 1: purpose or even a name for its author. It's called
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  Speaker 1: the Voinage Manuscript, and it has utterly baffled scholars for
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  Speaker 1: over a century. Uv imaging has shown a signature in
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  Speaker 1: the book from the seventeenth century of one Yakubus Horsiki
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  Speaker 1: de Tepenesh, the court pharmacist to the Habsburg Emperor Rudolph
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  Speaker 1: the Second, suggesting that it was once held in their
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  Speaker 1: imperial library, and from there we know that it ended
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  Speaker 1: up decades later in the hands of a Jesuit scholar
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  Speaker 1: named Marcus Barrish. Because of the small note that he
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  Speaker 1: left in the margins in it, he asked a colleague
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  Speaker 1: to help translate the script. He never found a solution
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  Speaker 1: to the question of its meaning its origin, though. The
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  Speaker 1: manuscript then disappeared from record until nineteen twelve, when it
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  Speaker 1: reappeared at an auction at Sotheby's in London and was
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  Speaker 1: sold to a Polish American antiquarian named Wilfrid Voinich. Now
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  Speaker 1: Voynache must have been gobsmacked when he first perused the manuscript.
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  Speaker 1: Inside its cafskin cover, there were six distinct sections, the
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  Speaker 1: first containing herbs, presented over one hundred drawings, each labeled
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  Speaker 1: in the inscrutable language. Only about thirty percent of the
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  Speaker 1: illustrations of medieval plants are familiar to scientists. The other
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  Speaker 1: seventy percent seem to be composites of known herbs or
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  Speaker 1: are else made up entirely. The next section was astronomical
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  Speaker 1: in nature, showing star clusters, suns and moons, and zodiac signs.
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  Speaker 1: The biological section is truly bizarre, showing naked women in
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  Speaker 1: water interacting with strange tubes and anatomical structures. Many who
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  Speaker 1: have studied the manuscript believe it concerns alchemy or may
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  Speaker 1: be human reproduction. Then there's the pharmacological section, with bottles, vials,
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  Speaker 1: and jars that one might find in an old apothecary shop.
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  Speaker 1: And then there's another section with blocks of text that's
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  Speaker 1: interspersed with numbers, leading scholars to believe they are formulas
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  Speaker 1: for medicine. All of this was written in a language
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  Speaker 1: that no one can decipher that eventually became known as Voyinagees.
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  Speaker 1: The language itself contains about two hundred glyphs used to
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  Speaker 1: form the words of the text. Scientists have found that
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  Speaker 1: their distribution across the document is extremely similar to modern languages,
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  Speaker 1: meaning that it isn't merely random gibberish, but it follows
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  Speaker 1: its own real linguistic logic. Voinage spent years studying and
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  Speaker 1: sharing the book with his contemporaries, to the point that
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  Speaker 1: his name itself became its unofficial title. Eventually, the Voyage
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  Speaker 1: Manuscript landed at the Binikey Library at Yale University, where
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  Speaker 1: cryptologists and linguists all used different types of language models
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  Speaker 1: and statistical analysis to try to understand how the language works.
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  Speaker 1: They were able using simple ciphers and machine learning to
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  Speaker 1: reproduce Voyage style texts, but still could not translate it
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  Speaker 1: into a modern language. Experts from other areas of study
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  Speaker 1: have likewise tried to make sense of the strange document.
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  Speaker 1: Historians have suggested a Northern Italian style to the illustrations,
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  Speaker 1: and the carbon dating, as well as that original signature
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  Speaker 1: in the book, place it squarely in Bohemia. Botanists have
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  Speaker 1: thoroughly cataloged its illustrations and have identified many of the
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  Speaker 1: real herbs portrayed. Astronomers have confirmed that the symbols of
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  Speaker 1: the zodiac and the positions of the planets and stars
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  Speaker 1: depicted adhere to what their medieval predecessors knew. Recently, the
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  Speaker 1: Binicky Library's digital archives of the manuscript have been made public,
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  Speaker 1: allowing amateur sleuths and cryptographers to assist in deciphering a
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  Speaker 1: relic that has continued to prove itself stubbornly unreadable. An
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  Speaker 1: annual symposium brings together experts across all interested fields to
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  Speaker 1: discuss new discoveries, and recent advances in machine learning have
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  Speaker 1: uncovered thematic groupings of texts that support the idea that
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  Speaker 1: text is organized around specific topics. But the puzzle at
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  Speaker 1: the core of the Voyage manuscript remains the same the
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  Speaker 1: language itself. Could it be a lost tongue or the
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  Speaker 1: author's personal shorthand maybe an intricate cipher. Whatever it is,
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  Speaker 1: neither experts nor ai have been able to solve it,
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  Speaker 1: and so it stands a reminder of humankind's unrelenting curiosity,
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  Speaker 1: whether It's secrets are ever fully uncovered or remain an
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  Speaker 1: enduring enigma. It reminds us that the thrill of a
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  Speaker 1: mystery unites professional scientists, technologists, and amateur sleuths alike, all
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  Speaker 1: drawn together by the shared desire to crack a good puzzle.
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  Speaker 1: There is one thing that unites almost every culture across
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  Speaker 1: human history, a love of dancing. It's a primal part
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  Speaker 1: of who we are. Whether it's at a concerts or
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  Speaker 1: a nightclub or a family wedding, whenever anyone around you
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  Speaker 1: is moving to the same rhythm, the urge to get
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  Speaker 1: up and join them can seem uncontrollable. But for the
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  Speaker 1: residents of Strasbourg in the year fifteen eighteen, that urge
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  Speaker 1: was literally uncontrollable. It started on a hot July day
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  Speaker 1: when a woman walked on to the cobbled streets outside
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  Speaker 1: her home and started twisting and shaking as if she
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  Speaker 1: were dancing the music only she could hear. As minutes
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  Speaker 1: turned to hours, she kept dancing, and nearby merchants and
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  Speaker 1: curious townspeople gathered around to watch. The woman was breathing
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  Speaker 1: hard and sweat was rolling down her face, but it
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  Speaker 1: was like she physically could not stop, no matter how
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  Speaker 1: hard she tried. As the sun went down, she finally
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  Speaker 1: collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. A man in the
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  Speaker 1: crowd stepped forward and knelt down to check on her,
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  Speaker 1: but after taking a moment to catch her breath, the
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  Speaker 1: woman got right back up and kept on dancing. By
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  Speaker 1: the next morning, she was still going, and another passerby
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  Speaker 1: was so inspired that he dropped what he was doing,
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  Speaker 1: and enjoined the dance as well. So did another and another,
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  Speaker 1: and within a week there were thirty people compulsively dancing
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  Speaker 1: in the streets. Every so often, one of them would
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  Speaker 1: fall down in exhaustion, but after a bit of rest,
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  Speaker 1: they would get back up, despite bloody feet and even
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  Speaker 1: broken limbs. As July turned to August, the number of
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  Speaker 1: dancers had climbed into the hundreds. City officials were so
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  Speaker 1: worried they called together a group of doctors and religious
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  Speaker 1: leaders to figure out a solution. The clergy thought that
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  Speaker 1: the townspeople had become possessed by Saint Vitas, a Christian
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  Speaker 1: murdyr whose feast day is celebrated with dancing, but the
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  Speaker 1: doctors theorized that it was a disease caused by overheated blood. Essentially,
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  Speaker 1: they diagnosed the locals with boogiey fever. The group of experts, however,
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  Speaker 1: agreed on the same solution. They just had to dance
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  Speaker 1: it off and get it out of their system. So,
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  Speaker 1: in an effort to encourage the frenzy, the city hired
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  Speaker 1: carpenters to build massive dance floors for the dancers to
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  Speaker 1: gather on. They brought in musicians to accompany the movement,
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  Speaker 1: and they even hired professional dancers to help everyone keep
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  Speaker 1: up the tempo. But the city officials had underestimated what
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  Speaker 1: they were dealing with. The dancers indeed wore themselves out,
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  Speaker 1: but they didn't or couldn't slow down, so as the
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  Speaker 1: weeks wore on, some of them began to drop dead
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  Speaker 1: from strokes or heart attacks. By late August, around four
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  Speaker 1: hundred people were dancing, and more than a dozen of
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  Speaker 1: them were dying each and every day. In an act
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  Speaker 1: of desperation, the city council reversed course and banned both
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  Speaker 1: music and dancing. The dance halls were torn down, and
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  Speaker 1: anyone who refused to sit still was hauled off to
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  Speaker 1: the shrine of Saint Vida and forced to pray for forgiveness.
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  Speaker 1: Within a couple of weeks, the so called dancing plague
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  Speaker 1: began to subside, just as mysteriously as it had begun.
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  Speaker 1: By the end of September, after two months of chaos,
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  Speaker 1: it was finally over. To this day, no one is
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  Speaker 1: sure what caused the dancing plague. Some historians believe it
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  Speaker 1: was food poisoning from a mind altering fungus called ergot.
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  Speaker 1: Others think that it was simply a case of mass hysteria,
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  Speaker 1: an extreme version of something that we all know to
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  Speaker 1: be true. In the right time and place, dancing is contagious.
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  Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. This show was created by me Aaron Manke
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the
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  Speaker 1: Grim and Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn
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  Speaker 1: more about the show and the people who make it
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  Speaker 1: over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find
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  Speaker 1: a lo to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book,
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  Speaker 1: available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook.
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  Speaker 1: And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider
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  Speaker 1: joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without
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  Speaker 1: the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and
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  Speaker 1: sign up over at patreon dot com, slash Grimandmild, and
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  Speaker 1: until next time, stay curious.