Human behavior is often a source of curious observation. Today's tour will help you see how that's never not true.
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 are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The passage of time is inevitable, and the longer we live, the more disconnected from the past we become. We forget about the things that we used to enjoy as children, and we tuck away the parts of us that don't fit in with who we are now. Those pieces of us get boxed up or buried, sometimes literally. I'm sure most of us remember burying a time capsule at our school or as part of a town ceremony to unearthed in the decades to come. It's fun to think about what will our future selves and those who come after us think about the music we listen to or the books we read. What will people think about our generation. The thing is, for hundreds of years, people all over the world didn't bury time capsules. They left behind something else, something that doesn't need to be dug up to be found. Although it might require the use of a sledgehammer. Since about the thirteen hundreds, at least, according to archaeologist's findings, people have been hiding shoes within their homes, not in closets or under beds. These shoes have been found in much harder to reach places, like inside walls and chimneys. The practice is known as concealment, which is why researchers referred to these as concealed shoes, the earliest example being one that was discovered in the choir stalls of Winchester Cathedral in thirteen oh eight. The reasons for their concealment vary, but almost all of them have to do with superstitions and fervent beliefs in the spirit world. It was believed that a shit shoe that had been worn for a very long time would have permanent scars from its owners, things like scuff marks, a footprint on the inside, and marred leather that signified that the shoe was practically an extension of its wearer. In other words, it contained their spiritual essence, and that essence was necessary in keeping evil spirits and witches from getting inside their house. That's why so many shoes were hidden over doorways or stashed inside chimneys. Complicating things, though, is that a significant number of children's shoes have also been found within the walls of homes across the globe, including Europe and Canada. This footwear was most likely placed there for one of several reasons. It could have been a method of encouraging fertility in the home of a husband and wife trying to conceive. This isn't too different from the practice of tying shoes to the bumper of a newlywed couple's car, and according to one archaeologist, women living in Lancashire County, England used to put on the shoes of a woman who had recently given birth in hopes of jumpstarting the conception process for themselves. Kid's shoes may also have been placed in a home's walls to protect the children that were already living there, similar to the adult shoes that were meant to keep witchcraft away. Sadly, the presence of a child's shoe might have signified a memorial to one who was lost to disease or injury as well. Russians believed a home that had a certain kind of boot or shoe under the stove might lure a domovoi or a domestic spirit meant to protect the home and the people within it. In Northampton, England, there is a facility where many of these shoes have been collected and cataloged. It's called the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery and it is home to over fifteen thousand pairs of shoes. About two thousand of them have been recovered from inside various buildings. The practice of hiding shoes in walls ended for many during the twentieth century, although it's still done on occasion. For example, a pair of high legg boots made by the shoe company Norvik was built into the foundation of the factory they had constructed in nineteen six four, and in nineteen ninety one an old shoe was discovered behind the paneling of an English mansion called Nebworth House. It was replaced with the shoe of an estate worker instead. Shoes have been found inside workhouses, colleges, townhouses, cottages and even hospitals, and not just in England either Australia and the United States are also on the list. So the next time you plan on renovating that kitchen or adding another room to your house, keep an eye out for shoes and your walls, and maybe leave them be. They were put there for a reason, and you don't want to find out why. If you ask people to name twentieth century psychologists, they're likely to say Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung. Maybe someone will even suggest Jean Piaget, and sure, each of them remembered for certain things, ranging from thoughtful to controversial. But when it comes to behavioral science, be up. Skinner stands out from the crowd. You see, he believed that free will had little to do with why humans and animals do the things they do. He theorized that actions were the result of environmental conditioning, and to say that Skinner was a bit quirky would be an understatement. He initially wanted to be a writer, but became frustrated with literary agents, even with the mentorship of Robert Frost at his side. Then his life changed. One day, while working at a bookstore. Along the rows of books, he came across the works of Pavlov and decided to enter Harvard's psychology graduate program. Mental health professionals and animal trainers know the brilliant psychologist by his extensive work in operant conditioning, a method of using rewards and consequences to get a preferred behavior. He used pigeons to demonstrate that. To teach the birds to spin in a circle, Skinner offered food for the slightest movement in the desired direct Before long, the pigeons learned a full spin in a direction earned them even higher rewards, and no movement equaled no payoff. Over time, Skinner taught them to play ping pong, much to the amusement of his peers and the general public. Weirdly enough, the military used operant conditioning to train the birds to guide missiles during World War II by sitting inside the missile and tapping on a glass screen to navigate. Fortunately, radar was in development and Project Pigeon, as it was dubbed, was very short lived. To demonstrate the experiment in a controlled environment, though, Skinner placed a hungry rat in a box. While trying to climb out of the box, the rodent pressed a lever that dispensed food. You guessed it that rat learned to pull the lever. And while you might be thinking that this works for, say, stopping your dog from jumping on guests or teaching pigeons to spin in circles. Teachers and mental health professionals have used the technique with plenty of success on people. Operant conditioning has also influenced how parents raise their children. Skinner argued that kids learn from consequences. Both positive and negative. Actions followed by a positive response were likely to be repeated. He called this positive reinforcement. He also invented a teaching machine. The device gave students immediate feedback on math problems. Eventually it evolved to offer incremental responses to help develop student's knowledge before advancing to some more challenging idea. Throughout his career, Skinner wrote over twenty books at almost two hundred articles on behavioral and experimental psychology. All told, he received several accolades, including the Humanist of the Year in nineteen seventy two, and in nineteen ninety, the American Psychological Association gave him the Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology Award. Skinner's methods might seem a bit odd, especially the ping pong experiment, but today pigeons have been taught a wide range of tasks, including spotting cancer. Even still, critics scoff that Skinner's beliefs on behavioral training. They claimed that rewards given during operant conditioning were nothing more than bribery. But maybe his most controversial invention came when his daughter was born. Skinner created a climate and humidity controlled crib enclosure. Unfortunately, his idea of regulating the temperature through the linen like surface of this air crib didn't receive much support from the market. Although this crib was only used at night, some critics considered it to be an inhumane and experimental approach to child rearing. The reaction must have stung in his mind. The crib was a way for Skinner to keep his daughter from becoming too warm or too cool during the night, and just like his quirky but effective method of behavioral science experiments, Skinner found humor in the crib, even finding a clever name for it. He called the invention the air conditioner, and that's air with an he. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided to 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 Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.