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Ticketmasters · 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. In nineteen eighty two,
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  Speaker 2: Martha Stewart published her debut book called Entertaining, a breathed
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  Speaker 2: new life into the idea of cocktail hours and themed
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  Speaker 2: dinner parties. Martha gave instructions on how to throw elaborate
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  Speaker 2: celebrations with friends. She thought of everything too, from the
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  Speaker 2: menu to the decor. The book quickly became a bestseller.
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  Speaker 2: Forty three years later, it sold over a million copies,
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  Speaker 2: and people still loved the recipes and tricks hidden within
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  Speaker 2: its pages. It just goes to show that hosting is
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  Speaker 2: an art. Stephen understood that when he.
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  Speaker 1: Decided to throw a reception at the college where he worked,
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  Speaker 1: everything had to be perfect because his guests were traveling
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  Speaker 1: a long way to attend. But with careful preparation and
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  Speaker 1: attention to detail, he was able to throw a party
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  Speaker 1: for the ages in fact, it's still talked about today,
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  Speaker 1: and if all went according to plan, it would be
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  Speaker 1: remembered for centuries to come. On June twenty eighth of
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  Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, an event planner hurried around a
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  Speaker 1: reception hall at the University of Cambridge. She wanted everything
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  Speaker 1: to be perfect for that day's reception, especially considering who
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  Speaker 1: was hosting the party. She covered the tables with crisp
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  Speaker 1: Linen's so that the caterers could arrange the appetizers. She
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  Speaker 1: blew up balloons to decorate the hall, and placed champagne
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  Speaker 1: glasses on the nearest table by the door, and then
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  Speaker 1: a finishing touch, a cherry bouquet of flowers at the
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  Speaker 1: center of the food table. The room looked perfect. At
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  Speaker 1: twelve pm, on the nose, the party's host came into
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  Speaker 1: the room, Professor Stephen Hawking, the world famous theoretical physicist
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  Speaker 1: and cosmologist. He was a professor of mathematics at Cambridge
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  Speaker 1: and the director of Research at the Center for Theoretical Cosmology,
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  Speaker 1: so any party he threw was bound to be well attended.
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  Speaker 1: And yet the minutes crept by and the reception hall
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  Speaker 1: stayed empty. Not one person pop by to say hello.
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  Speaker 1: The staff there exchanged looks. Stephen Hawking was a renowned
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  Speaker 1: scientist and one of the most respected minds in his field.
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  Speaker 1: When he threw a party, people showed up. It had
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  Speaker 1: been a long road to get there. Hawking began his
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  Speaker 1: study of physics at the age of seventeen at University
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  Speaker 1: College Oxford. He then went on to earn a PhD
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  Speaker 1: in applied mathematics and theoretical physics from Cambridge. But a
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  Speaker 1: year into his PhD program, when Hawking was just twenty
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  Speaker 1: one years old, he was diagnosed with a rare, slow
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  Speaker 1: moving form of motor neuron disease. It would slowly paralyze
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  Speaker 1: him over the course of his life. Soon enough, he
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  Speaker 1: was bound to a wheelchair, and then he lost his
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  Speaker 1: ability to speak and relied on a speech generating computer
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  Speaker 1: to be his voice. But while Hawking was physically limited,
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  Speaker 1: his mind traversed the cosmos. As a scientist, he made
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  Speaker 1: a number of breakthroughs and furthered our understanding of the
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  Speaker 1: laws that govern our universe. He wanted a wider audience
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  Speaker 1: to understand his findings, so he wrote books that managed
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  Speaker 1: to simplify complex scientific ideas so that non scientists like
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  Speaker 1: us could better understand time and space. His most popular book,
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  Speaker 1: A Brief History of Time, was on the New York
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  Speaker 1: Times bestsellers list for an astounding two hundred and thirty
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  Speaker 1: seven weeks. All of which is to say he was
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  Speaker 1: not the kind of person to throw a dud of
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  Speaker 1: a party. But Haking didn't seem upset. In fact, a
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  Speaker 1: small smile crept across his face. He moved around the
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  Speaker 1: room passing time, and finally, after a few hours, he
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  Speaker 1: thanked the staff for their work and told them the
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  Speaker 1: party had been a great success. The event planner was
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  Speaker 1: obviously confused, but told the staff to go ahead and
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  Speaker 1: clean up. The next morning, on June twenty ninth, Stephen
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  Speaker 1: Hawking told his assistant that he had an errand to run.
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  Speaker 1: He gestured to a stack of invitations on his desk
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  Speaker 1: and said that they needed to be mailed out immediately.
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  Speaker 1: They were invitations for the previous night's party. The assistant
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  Speaker 1: raised an eyebrow, after all, people usually send out invitations
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  Speaker 1: a few weeks before a party, not to the day
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  Speaker 1: after when nobody could show up. But when she read
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  Speaker 1: one of the invitations on Hawking's desk, she suddenly understood
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  Speaker 1: and burst out laughing. The invitations read you are cordially
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  Speaker 1: invited to a reception for time Travelers twelve pm, June
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  Speaker 1: twenty eighth, two thousand and nine. No RSVP required. Stephen
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  Speaker 1: Hawking had thrown a party for time travelers, but waited
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  Speaker 1: to mail out the invitations until the next day. Hawking
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  Speaker 1: wanted to prove whether or not time travel was possible.
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  Speaker 1: He was confident that at least one copy of his
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  Speaker 1: invitation would survive for hundreds or even thousands of years.
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  Speaker 1: Surely someone from the future would travel back in time
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  Speaker 1: and join him for a glass of bubbly. But nobody
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  Speaker 1: showed up, which meant that time travel is either impossible
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  Speaker 1: or is never achieved by humans. Of course, there's always
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  Speaker 1: a chance that his party invitations got lost, or that
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  Speaker 1: time traveler simply had no interest in attending his party.
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  Speaker 1: So in twenty eighteen, when Stephen Hawking passed away, his
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  Speaker 1: estate made one last attempt to prove time travel might
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  Speaker 1: be real. They allowed anyone with a birthday through December
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  Speaker 1: thirty first, twenty thirty eight to register for tickets to
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  Speaker 1: his public funeral. That way, if someone from the future
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  Speaker 1: wanted to come, they'd be able to register online. What
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  Speaker 1: is entertainment worth to the average person? This question existed
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  Speaker 1: ever since the first person paid for a poem or
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  Speaker 1: commissioned a bard to write a song. It's deeply personal
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  Speaker 1: and inextricably linked to our priorities as people living in
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  Speaker 1: the world. When we buy a concert or movie ticket,
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  Speaker 1: how do we know that we're getting our money's worth?
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  Speaker 1: And the further back in history we go, the higher
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  Speaker 1: stakes this question becomes, especially since there were far fewer
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  Speaker 1: avenues for entertainment.
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  Speaker 2: Well.
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  Speaker 1: This issue came to a head in eighteen oh nine
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  Speaker 1: in London. Live theater was extremely popular than the previous year.
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  Speaker 1: The theaters at Covent Garden and Drury Lane burned down.
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  Speaker 1: Covid Garden rebuilt and planned to reopen its doors to
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  Speaker 1: the British public, who was eager to get back to
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  Speaker 1: the theater. However, there was a sticking point. To recoup
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  Speaker 1: the costs of theater repair, Covid Garden theater management increased
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  Speaker 1: their ticket prices, so box seats now cost seven shillings
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  Speaker 1: rather than six. Seats in the pits were raised from
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  Speaker 1: three shillings to four, and worst of all, the third
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  Speaker 1: tier of seating was no longer available for individual shows,
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  Speaker 1: but rented yearly to the tune of three hundred pounds,
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  Speaker 1: prohibitively expensive for the average member of the British public,
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  Speaker 1: and the theater management knew that people wouldn't be happy
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  Speaker 1: in their play bills. They explained the reasoning for the
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  Speaker 1: ticket prices. The reconstruction had cost one hundred and fifty
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  Speaker 1: thousand pounds and they were dealing with rent prices that
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  Speaker 1: had shot up since the fire. Opening nights was Monday,
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  Speaker 1: September eighteenth of eighteen oh nine. The theatre's manager, John Kembell,
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  Speaker 1: was scheduled to go up before the show for a
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  Speaker 1: brief address about the refurbished auditorium. He was also an
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  Speaker 1: actor who was to play the lead role of the
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  Speaker 1: play that night. When he stepped out on stage, he
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  Speaker 1: was greeted with polite applause from the wealthy patrons in
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  Speaker 1: the boxes, and then hissing and jeers overtook the applause.
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  Speaker 1: The voices predominantly came from the pit the floor of
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  Speaker 1: the theater, and they continued to loudly protest throughout the performance.
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  Speaker 1: Policemen were called in to try and calm them down,
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  Speaker 1: but it only made matters worse. For show after show,
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  Speaker 1: people filled the pit with the intention of disrupting the
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  Speaker 1: action on stage. Some banged pots and pans, others shouted
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  Speaker 1: loudly or sang songs. A public relations war broke out
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  Speaker 1: between the theater management and the supporters of the riots.
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  Speaker 1: Posters went up defending the new prices, and the riots
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  Speaker 1: continued no matter how many times they were hauled away
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  Speaker 1: and jailed. The series of disruptions became known as the
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  Speaker 1: Old Price Riots, with participants referring to themselves as ops.
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  Speaker 1: Their disruptions were aggressive, loudly criticizing the theater for greed,
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  Speaker 1: but very little of the theater itself was damaged in
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  Speaker 1: the chaos. The disruption, however, was too much for the
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  Speaker 1: managers to handle. In December, John Kemball had the theater
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  Speaker 1: closed while the managing directors looked over the books to
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  Speaker 1: make a decision. They settled on returning to the original
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  Speaker 1: pricing for the remainder of the season. Kemball issued a
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  Speaker 1: public apology and was greeted by a sign in the
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  Speaker 1: pits reading simply we are satisfied. Hoping that it would
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  Speaker 1: be soon forgotten, Kemball attempted to bring back the idea
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  Speaker 1: of private boxes at the start of the following season,
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  Speaker 1: when the rioters returned in force, the idea was quickly scrapped.
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  Speaker 1: At the center of the old price riots was class.
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  Speaker 1: Live theater, which today is extremely expensive, was an entertainment
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  Speaker 1: accessible by all, and attempting to cut working class Londoners
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  Speaker 1: out of the experience was seen as offensive. Works by
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  Speaker 1: playwrights like Shakespeare shouldn't be restricted to the ruling class.
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  Speaker 1: It was a hard learned lesson for the season thespian
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  Speaker 1: and businessmen like Kemball, but he took it to heart.
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  Speaker 1: Although the riots caused little property damage, injuries had been
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  Speaker 1: common throughout the months of protest. It is sad to
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  Speaker 1: say that in the chaos twenty people died, although historical
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  Speaker 1: accounts are fuzzy on how these deaths occurred and who
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  Speaker 1: these twenty people had been. But what it shows to
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  Speaker 1: us now is that affordable theater was important to them,
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  Speaker 1: It was worth fighting for. And the play that opened
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  Speaker 1: that fateful season at Covent Garden naturally it was a
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  Speaker 1: popu one that would bring in the crowds, and it
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  Speaker 1: was also the most famous cursed play ever written. William
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  Speaker 1: Shakespeare's Macbeth. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
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  Speaker 1: 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.