Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Switching between roles is an essential part of any performer's work, but sometimes the line can blur between where a character ends and the real person begins. During World War II, for example, Josephine Baker was one of the most famous performers in Europe. She was a burlesque dancer and an opera diva with a knack for shocking her audiences. As it turns out, though her star persona was just a cover for her real career espionage. Josephine was born freeda Josephine MacDonald in Saint Louis, Missouri, in nineteen oh six. Early on, she saw dancing and singing as her way out of poverty. While she was still a teenager, she joined a traveling vaudeville troupe and appeared in an all black revue on Broadway. She dreamed of becoming famous, but found that in deeply segregated America it was nearly impossible for a black woman to be a star, and so at the age of nineteen, when she was asked to appear in an all black burlesque in Paris, she jumped at the chance. France quickly proved to be everything America wasn't there, Josephine was an instant star. She performed in outrageous ensembles of feathers and pearls and honestly not much else, and she did well too. She strolled the streets of Paris with Chiquita, her pet cheetah, on a leash studded with diamonds, and in Paris she found the ability to write her own story, often making revisions. She told one source that she was the daughter of an influential black lawyer, and another that her father was a famous Spanish dancer. I don't lie, she was quoted as saying, I improve on life. A core part of Josephine's act was to provoke a strong reaction, but with fascism on the rise as the nineteen twenties came to a close, not every strong reaction was a positive one. In nineteen twenty eight, Josephine began a European tour in Vienna, Austria. As she arrived in town, protesters shouted at her and street signs labeled her a black devil. It wasn't a warm welcome, and Josephine would later go on to say that it brought her back to the racist riots that she saw in Saint Louis as a child. Over the next decade, Josephine found herself in the crosshairs of the German and Italian governments, probably because Josephine was an incredibly successful, provocative, self made black celebrity, and it didn't hurt that her husband was a French Jewish sugar merchant, and all of this made the Nazi publish a leaflet against her in the late nineteen thirties. According to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Gerbels, Josephine was the face of degenerate art. At the same time, she was banned from performance in Germany and Italy. So when the French Resistance came knocking on Josephine's door in the late nineteen thirties, they were a welcome company, and when their intelligence bureau suggested she act as a secret agent. She jumped at the chance. She dined with dignitaries and diplomats, and despite the performance ban, she still had influential fans in German, Italian and Japanese society. Everything Josephine did was big, loud, and attention getting. Nobody would suspect her of being a spy. She immediately got to work. She attended parties at Italian embassies, writing down overheard secrets on her arms. She flew her personal playing to drop aid and occupied French towns, and smuggled Jewish fugitives to neutral Portugal. She traveled under the guise of a European tour, pinning sensitive information to her bra and underwear. She banked on the fact that no one would subject the famous Josephine Baker to a strip search, and she was right. In November of nineteen forty, Baker arrived in Spain for a new performance. As she disembard arked, Spanish, German and Italian officials crowded around her, desperate for an autograph. None of them thought to check her bags. If they had, they would have found a complete dossier on Nazi air bases and plans all written in invisible ink on her sheet music. By nineteen forty one, Josephine was in Morocco helping to secure passports for Jews fleeing the Nazis. She fell sick with perry and titus and inflammation of the stomach lining, and spent the next year recovering in a Casablanca clinic. Her hospital room quickly became a rendezvous for agents to meet and share information, all posing as fans of Josephine. After the Allies won World War II in nineteen forty five, Josephine returned to her beloved Paris as a French national hero. For her work, she received two of the highest military honors that France awards while Josephine's heart was in Paris. After the war, she continued her fights in America. She protested against segregation, often publicly walking out of all white nightclubs, and she was even at the March on Washington in August of nineteen sixty three, where Martin Luther King Junior made his famous I Have a Dream speech. She gave a speech of her own there. Josephine Baker died in nineteen seventy five, after seventy one years of being a provocateur both on and off the stage. She remains the only American born person to be buried with full French military honors. She was a chorus girl and a burlesque dancer, an opera singer, and a movie star, but her finest role was as an undercover agent, and for that she should take a bow. He's an unsung hero of science and engineering. When we discussed the world's greatest inventions, we talk about the light bulb, the movie camera, and the phonograph, all of which are attributed to Thomas Edison. But if it wasn't for Nikola Tesla, we wouldn't have wireless radios or the remote control. Was not appreciated when he was alive, but he certainly revered now for his scientific contributions. Born in modern day Croatia in eighteen fifty six, Tesla came to America as an immigrant when he was twenty eight years old. At the time, he was working for the Edison Machine Works, a manufacturing company owned by his would be rival. He only spent six months there before striking out on his own, allegedly over an unpaid bonus that was denied by Edison himself. For the next fifty years, Tesla worked on his own inventions, including a motor that ran on alternating current, his famous Tesla coils, and wireless lighting. He was building the future. But in nineteen thirty five, when he was seventy eight years old, something odd happened. Time stopped. In other words, he met someone. The stranger had wandered into the New York hotel where he'd been living. She was brought to his room on the thirty third floor, as Tesla was known for taking in strays. By this time, he was in bad shape. He was destitute and had already been evicted from anner of hotels in the city, but that didn't stop him from offering help where it was needed, and he quickly noticed that there was something different about her. They were connected somehow. They could talk to each other using only their minds. During these telepathic chats, her eyes would emit beams of light right at him. He cared for her in a way that he had never cared for anyone else before, and she remained by his side for a long time until one fateful night she came to him while he was already in bed, ruminating on a problem in his mind. She sat on his desk and they spoke as they always had, one mind connected to another, the light shooting from her eyes. This was how he found out the terrible news that she was dying. He told his biographer John O'Neill. When that pigeon died, something went out of my life. I knew my life's work was finished. That's right. The woman that had captivated this old scientist's heart was a pigeon. Tesla had actually been obsessed with birds for a number of years. He made his own bird seed and kept baskets in his room as man makeshift nests, and he never closed his windows. They remained open at all hours so the neighborhood pigeons could come and go as they pleased. He would walk through the city at night and feed them as he passed by. He also used a special whistle to call them to him. They would fly over and perch themselves on his arms like pets. He even found himself in trouble with the law because of his love for pigeons. After trying to catch an injured homing pigeon in front of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, Tesla was taken to the local precinct and held for processing. He did everything he could to prove that he wasn't some random person on the street. He was Nikola Tesla, the once famous inventor. But of all the birds he cared for, it was this one female pigeon, white with great tipped wings that made him forget the rest. No matter where I was, that pigeon would find me, he said. When I wanted her, I only had to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. She understood me, and I understood her. I loved that pigeon. Nikola Tesla was a man of many eccentricities. For example, he had an obsession with the number three, and he hated pearls. In fact, he despised them so much that he refused to talk to any woman wearing pearls. He also never married, believing himself to be unworthy of a woman's affections. Instead, he poured his energy into science and inventions. But he did love one creature above all else, that white pigeon. Others may have seen it as just another wild animal, but to Tesla it was so much more. Because of this bird, his heart grew wings. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.

Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Switching between roles is an essential part of any performer's work, but sometimes the line can blur between where a character ends and the real person begins. During World War II, for example, Josephine Baker was one of the most famous performers in Europe. She was a burlesque dancer and an opera diva with a knack for shocking her audiences. As it turns out, though her star persona was just a cover for her real career espionage. Josephine was born freeda Josephine MacDonald in Saint Louis, Missouri, in nineteen oh six. Early on, she saw dancing and singing as her way out of poverty. While she was still a teenager, she joined a traveling vaudeville troupe and appeared in an all black revue on Broadway. She dreamed of becoming famous, but found that in deeply segregated America it was nearly impossible for a black woman to be a star, and so at the age of nineteen, when she was asked to appear in an all black burlesque in Paris, she jumped at the chance. France quickly proved to be everything America wasn't there, Josephine was an instant star. She performed in outrageous ensembles of feathers and pearls and honestly not much else, and she did well too. She strolled the streets of Paris with Chiquita, her pet cheetah, on a leash studded with diamonds, and in Paris she found the ability to write her own story, often making revisions. She told one source that she was the daughter of an influential black lawyer, and another that her father was a famous Spanish dancer. I don't lie, she was quoted as saying, I improve on life. A core part of Josephine's act was to provoke a strong reaction, but with fascism on the rise as the nineteen twenties came to a close, not every strong reaction was a positive one. In nineteen twenty eight, Josephine began a European tour in Vienna, Austria. As she arrived in town, protesters shouted at her and street signs labeled her a black devil. It wasn't a warm welcome, and Josephine would later go on to say that it brought her back to the racist riots that she saw in Saint Louis as a child. Over the next decade, Josephine found herself in the crosshairs of the German and Italian governments, probably because Josephine was an incredibly successful, provocative, self made black celebrity, and it didn't hurt that her husband was a French Jewish sugar merchant, and all of this made the Nazi publish a leaflet against her in the late nineteen thirties. According to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Gerbels, Josephine was the face of degenerate art. At the same time, she was banned from performance in Germany and Italy. So when the French Resistance came knocking on Josephine's door in the late nineteen thirties, they were a welcome company, and when their intelligence bureau suggested she act as a secret agent. She jumped at the chance. She dined with dignitaries and diplomats, and despite the performance ban, she still had influential fans in German, Italian and Japanese society. Everything Josephine did was big, loud, and attention getting. Nobody would suspect her of being a spy. She immediately got to work. She attended parties at Italian embassies, writing down overheard secrets on her arms. She flew her personal playing to drop aid and occupied French towns, and smuggled Jewish fugitives to neutral Portugal. She traveled under the guise of a European tour, pinning sensitive information to her bra and underwear. She banked on the fact that no one would subject the famous Josephine Baker to a strip search, and she was right. In November of nineteen forty, Baker arrived in Spain for a new performance. As she disembard arked, Spanish, German and Italian officials crowded around her, desperate for an autograph. None of them thought to check her bags. If they had, they would have found a complete dossier on Nazi air bases and plans all written in invisible ink on her sheet music. By nineteen forty one, Josephine was in Morocco helping to secure passports for Jews fleeing the Nazis. She fell sick with perry and titus and inflammation of the stomach lining, and spent the next year recovering in a Casablanca clinic. Her hospital room quickly became a rendezvous for agents to meet and share information, all posing as fans of Josephine. After the Allies won World War II in nineteen forty five, Josephine returned to her beloved Paris as a French national hero. For her work, she received two of the highest military honors that France awards while Josephine's heart was in Paris. After the war, she continued her fights in America. She protested against segregation, often publicly walking out of all white nightclubs, and she was even at the March on Washington in August of nineteen sixty three, where Martin Luther King Junior made his famous I Have a Dream speech. She gave a speech of her own there. Josephine Baker died in nineteen seventy five, after seventy one years of being a provocateur both on and off the stage. She remains the only American born person to be buried with full French military honors. She was a chorus girl and a burlesque dancer, an opera singer, and a movie star, but her finest role was as an undercover agent, and for that she should take a bow. He's an unsung hero of science and engineering. When we discussed the world's greatest inventions, we talk about the light bulb, the movie camera, and the phonograph, all of which are attributed to Thomas Edison. But if it wasn't for Nikola Tesla, we wouldn't have wireless radios or the remote control. Was not appreciated when he was alive, but he certainly revered now for his scientific contributions. Born in modern day Croatia in eighteen fifty six, Tesla came to America as an immigrant when he was twenty eight years old. At the time, he was working for the Edison Machine Works, a manufacturing company owned by his would be rival. He only spent six months there before striking out on his own, allegedly over an unpaid bonus that was denied by Edison himself. For the next fifty years, Tesla worked on his own inventions, including a motor that ran on alternating current, his famous Tesla coils, and wireless lighting. He was building the future. But in nineteen thirty five, when he was seventy eight years old, something odd happened. Time stopped. In other words, he met someone. The stranger had wandered into the New York hotel where he'd been living. She was brought to his room on the thirty third floor, as Tesla was known for taking in strays. By this time, he was in bad shape. He was destitute and had already been evicted from anner of hotels in the city, but that didn't stop him from offering help where it was needed, and he quickly noticed that there was something different about her. They were connected somehow. They could talk to each other using only their minds. During these telepathic chats, her eyes would emit beams of light right at him. He cared for her in a way that he had never cared for anyone else before, and she remained by his side for a long time until one fateful night she came to him while he was already in bed, ruminating on a problem in his mind. She sat on his desk and they spoke as they always had, one mind connected to another, the light shooting from her eyes. This was how he found out the terrible news that she was dying. He told his biographer John O'Neill. When that pigeon died, something went out of my life. I knew my life's work was finished. That's right. The woman that had captivated this old scientist's heart was a pigeon. Tesla had actually been obsessed with birds for a number of years. He made his own bird seed and kept baskets in his room as man makeshift nests, and he never closed his windows. They remained open at all hours so the neighborhood pigeons could come and go as they pleased. He would walk through the city at night and feed them as he passed by. He also used a special whistle to call them to him. They would fly over and perch themselves on his arms like pets. He even found himself in trouble with the law because of his love for pigeons. After trying to catch an injured homing pigeon in front of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, Tesla was taken to the local precinct and held for processing. He did everything he could to prove that he wasn't some random person on the street. He was Nikola Tesla, the once famous inventor. But of all the birds he cared for, it was this one female pigeon, white with great tipped wings that made him forget the rest. No matter where I was, that pigeon would find me, he said. When I wanted her, I only had to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. She understood me, and I understood her. I loved that pigeon. Nikola Tesla was a man of many eccentricities. For example, he had an obsession with the number three, and he hated pearls. In fact, he despised them so much that he refused to talk to any woman wearing pearls. He also never married, believing himself to be unworthy of a woman's affections. Instead, he poured his energy into science and inventions. But he did love one creature above all else, that white pigeon. Others may have seen it as just another wild animal, but to Tesla it was so much more. Because of this bird, his heart grew wings. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.