Brain Waves

the better we get at curing what ails us. Surgeries are more precise, computerized scans give us a clear picture of what might be going on inside us, and tiny cameras can access areas previously unseen. But some problems cannot be cut out or removed. In fact, some problem can't be fixed at all. But that doesn't mean we can't try. Back in nineteen seventeen, one man believed that he could cure the brain of a common and debilitating disease, one

that plagued humanity across the globe. That man was Nicola Tesla, the inventor and electrical engineer known for his work on the modern alternating current. Decades before we could charge our phones and earbuds simply by dropping them onto an inductive charging pad. Tesla was working on a way to transmit AC power from his Tesla coil using inductive and capacity of coupling. That's just a fancy way of saying that

he was inventing wireless lighting. He was even seen on stage a few times lighting various tubes and incandescent bulbs from several feet away. Tesla poured his heart and soul into electricity. He wanted to change the world with it, from wireless power to bladeless turbines. Edison gets all the credit these days, but Tesla was the true genius. However, there was one area where the ingenious inventor saw a

perfect application for his new technology, the medical field. Tesla noticed that one of his assistants was performing tests with high frequency current, but wasn't following directions properly. After a while, though, and with more exposure to the current, the assistant started doing better. Tesla was quoted as saying, a high frequency current intensifies the action of the brain. It is a mental stimulant like alcohol, but instead of hurtful to the

brain cells, the electricity is beneficial. He believed that he could use high frequency current to improve brain functions. In other words, Nikola Tesla wanted to electrocute the stupidity out of people. To test his theory, he sought out a group of people whose brains had not fully developed. Children.

Tesla hypothesized that special wiring inside the insulated walls of school classrooms could amplify millions of electric waves into the local atmosphere, waking up dormant brain cells in the fresh faced kiddos, and he put that hypothesis to work in Stockholm, Sweden. Two different classrooms were used, one of which was outfitted with Tesla's special wiring. Fifty children sat in that room, while another fifty sat in a normal classroom without the wiring.

Both groups completed their schoolwork each day over the course of six months, with one set of kids getting bombarded by electric waves in the air the whole time. According to Tesla's findings, the end of the six month projects saw that children in the wired room grow by two and a half inches, while those in the normal room only grew by one and a quarter inches. The electrified children also gained weight and became more physically developed than

their counterparts next door. But the most important question, of course, was how did their brains fair while exposed to a constant flow of electric current. Well, unsurprisingly, the children in the room that wasn't wired performed the same as they had at the start of the study. The other kids, however, saw a stark change. They averaged a twenty increase in their grades compared to those in the regular classroom. Tesla's research became quite popular, after all, imagine what could be

accomplished with a quick jolt to the brain. Of course, we know how that turned out. For decades, hospitals and mental facilities used electro shock machines to induce seizures and modify the brain's functions, especially to cure various mental disorders, and though many places have banned the practice, it's still used today all over the world despite its controversial effects.

But Nikola Tesla didn't think about that. He just wanted to make us all smarter the only way he knew how, by electrifying the stupid out of us, one current at a time. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. There's no real proof that constant exposure to electric current can improve one's intelligence. Put another way, as Blue collar. Comedian Ron White has often said, you can't fix stupid. Everyone makes mistakes, but as anyone who was picked on at school can tell you,

people are often remembered for their tiniest slip ups. They're given nicknames and often become the butts of countless jokes. But not Monica. For one English writer, her faux pause didn't lead to a life of shame. It actually gave a name to one of the most recognizable dialects in the world. Monica, often called Monty by her family and friends, was born in Paris, France, in nineteen fifteen, but she

was raised in London. Her parents were fairly wealthy, and Monty, being from a well to do family, was expected to follow certain customs of her social class. However, she refused, choosing instead to be something of an iconoclast. For one, she was expelled from her private girls school after she chucked her uniform into the Thames River. Monty had been on her way to court to be presented as a debutante.

She also chose to work as a cook and servant rather than enjoy the life of leisure that would have been afforded to her. In fact, Monty did a number of jobs throughout her life. She was a nurse, a fact reworker, and she worked for a small town newspaper. The amount of experience that she acquired could have filled several books, which it did. You see, Monty was also a prolific author. She used her time as a cook and a nurse, and all her other occupations to fuel

her true passion writing. Her first book, One Pair of Hands, was published in nineteen thirty nine and told the story of her time as a domestic servant. Her nineteen forty two memoir, One Pair of Feet, described her work as a nurse during World War Two. Over the course of her career, Monty wrote dozens of books for both adults

and children, going on to great literary success. Then, in the nineteen fifties, Monty married an officer in the United States Navy, and the two moved to America to raise a family, and she continued to write, publishing a new book nearly every year or two for the next thirty years. But it was on a trip to Sydney, Australia in nineteen sixty four where Monty would make a mistake that would change the future of an entire country and its language. She was at a book signing when a young woman

approached her. In her hands was a copy of one of Monty's books. She held it out and asked how much is it? But Monty couldn't understand the woman's Australian accent. She thought the customer had said her name, and so Monty inscribed the book to one Emma chise It. The story of the misunderstanding made its way to a man named Alistair Ardoc Morrison, an Australian writer and graphic artist. He saw an opportunity to capitalize on an honest mistake

and have a bit of fun at Monty's expense. In the process, he adopted the pseudonym afribec Lauder, a variation on the phrase alphabetical order, as if it had been said in an Australian accent. Under his new moniker, Morrison wrote a number of articles for The Sydney Morning Herald about the strange and exotic dialect that had perplexed Monica. He called it strine. Say it out loud and you might be able to hear its origins. It's how the

word Australian might sound in that accent. Morrison wrote several books on Strine, in which he took on the persona of Afribet Lauder, professor of Strine Studies at the University of Sydney, with Sydney being the Strine form of Sydney. The books detailed the fictional professor's journey with the dialect. Within their pages, readers were given phonetic diagrams of different words and phrases that had been translated from Strine into

common English. Morrison even published a dictionary jam packed with entries for things like split their dyke, fraf lee and eggnersher Did you catch those? They were the Strine versions of phrases splitting, headache, frightfully an air conditioner. Morrison kept the identity of afribet Laud hidden for only a few years. The truth finally came out in nineteen sixty eight, but that didn't negate the work he had done for Australian culture.

In fact, the country adopted the term strine as the official description of its accent, and thought there might be variations depending on where in Australia it's spoken or the speaker's social status. It's all strine in the end, as Fermonty, while she didn't let her gaff get her down. She continued to write and publish books for the rest of her life. After all, it was in her blood. Literally, Monica Monty Dickens was none other than the great granddaughter

of the legendary English author Charles Dickens. 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 Manky 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.