Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Kine, Welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Candice Giftson, joined by Josh Clark. How's it going. That's
Speaker 1: going pretty well, Candice. I'm feeling very curious today, Curious
Speaker 1: like a cat, precisely, hungry like the wolf precisely. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's fortunate for us that's two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: because you know, if this were like oh, nine oh eight,
Speaker 1: a d um, I'd probably be killed right now because
Speaker 1: scientific inquiry was pretty much frowned upon, right. Um. The
Speaker 1: good thing is is that, um, we kind of emerged
Speaker 1: from this dark age, the medieval ages, into the Age
Speaker 1: of Exploration, where Europe just suddenly blew like dandelion feathers
Speaker 1: into the into the wind and started looking around this big,
Speaker 1: wild world, which is good for us, usually bad for
Speaker 1: the people, you know, who already lived in the places
Speaker 1: of the Europeans discovered. I just made air quotes, um.
Speaker 1: But it did give rise to the Age of Enlightenment,
Speaker 1: where scientific inquiry and curiosity just took off like a rocket, right,
Speaker 1: and people were curious and tangible things to people who
Speaker 1: traveled to these far in distant lands would bring back artifacts,
Speaker 1: and it was considered very fashionable among Europe's elite to
Speaker 1: come and gaze upon these items. I know, I know
Speaker 1: you're talking about under Calmer right or vunder cam right right,
Speaker 1: or cabinets of curiosity um. And they'd have all sorts
Speaker 1: of weird stuff in it, right, and give me an example. Well,
Speaker 1: these were precursors to the modern museum. So pretty much
Speaker 1: anything you've seen a museum today from like oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe not mastered on skeleton necessarily, but like
Speaker 1: a starfish or you know, and an idol from an
Speaker 1: equatorial cult, things like this, right, So I can totally
Speaker 1: buy that. The thing is is I have heard that
Speaker 1: one guy, in particular, Peter the Great, who was fascinated
Speaker 1: by this kind of stuff and actually had his own
Speaker 1: under Calmer um a very ledge and dary one had
Speaker 1: baby skeletons in it, which just strikes me as weird,
Speaker 1: like starfish, equatorial cult fetishes. Whatever I get that baby
Speaker 1: skeleton is there is that factor fiction, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: that's fact. So yeah, these just weren't metaphorical skeletons in
Speaker 1: his closet. Don't know why. I took that pregnant pause there.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm picturing these creepy little things. I I
Speaker 1: would I would advise self doubt, but they're not really
Speaker 1: that creepy. I mean, it's for the sake of science.
Speaker 1: And Peter was really in love with um the work
Speaker 1: of one particular Dutch scientist named Frederick Roisch. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm saying that correctly, but I hope I
Speaker 1: am Rois. Anyway, he put together a little dioramas of
Speaker 1: Sylvan scenes that featured fetal skeletons. And instead of these
Speaker 1: little baby skeletons wandering through brambles and trees and shrubs,
Speaker 1: they were wandering through tangles of arteries and veins. And
Speaker 1: some of them were a little more excited to be
Speaker 1: captured in the diorama than others, those who have rather
Speaker 1: disappointed at their state of eternal torment, cried into tissues,
Speaker 1: made a flayed brain tissue. Actually, so they were quite
Speaker 1: interesting to gaze upon, and and Peter had a couple.
Speaker 1: They were really prized possessions. And uh, this wasn't just
Speaker 1: for you know, his own six sense of humor. He
Speaker 1: was really hoping to pull Russia out of the Dark
Speaker 1: Ages to catch up with the rest of Europe. He
Speaker 1: wanted his people to appreciate this thing, you know, for science,
Speaker 1: for what it is, rather than being a freak of nature.
Speaker 1: So you can actually see a picture of this creepy
Speaker 1: diorama in Josh's article when you read the question what
Speaker 1: was in Peter The Great Cabinet of Curiosities? On how
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