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. Science and magic may seem like opposites, but they've always been very close friends in the ancient world. Religion, superstition, philosophy, and mathematics were all
intersecting fields of study. In ancient Greece and Persia. For example, thinkers who practiced astrology also broke new ground in geometry. In the modern age, we tend to keep the natural and the supernatural separate. After all, science we can cured disease and fly to the stars. Isn't that magical enough? But for Jack Parsons, one of the pioneers of rocketry, enchantments and experiments literally went hand in hand. Jack was born on October second of nineteen fourteen in Pasadena, California.
His childhood was a lonely one, and he spent more time with comic books and Jules Verne novels than with other kids reading science fiction, Jack could dream of escaping his life in the suburbs to explore the galaxy. As he got older, he focused on how to get there in real life. By the age of twelve, Jack had found a kindred spirit in Edward Foreman, another boy who loves science fiction. The two engage themselves in typical safe preteen boy activities, namely creating their own rockets out of
aluminum foil and fireworks. Around this time, Jack also got interested in magic in the Saint pulp magazines, where he read sci fi stories. He also found incantations to summon demons. They didn't necessarily work when he tried them, but it did spark his interest in the occult. In nineteen thirty three, nineteen year old Jack went to work at an explosives.
Plant, where he got a crash course in the chemistry behind making things go boom. Armed with ingredients stolen from the factory, Jack and Edward's backyard experiments became incredibly advanced. At the time, the field of rocket science was treated like science fiction. The Chinese had first developed rockets in twelve thirty two and used them as weapons against the
invading Mongols. Rocket Tree hadn't really advanced much since then. Sure, some scientists had proposed that rockets might one day be able to reach outer space, but in the early nineteen thirties that seemed like it was a far off possibility. Rockets weren't even being studied in universities except for a very small group of students. At cal Tech. Jack and Edward met one of those students, a guy named Frank Molina, and the three began pushing the boundaries of rocket science.
Scientists at cal Tech dubbed them the Suicide Squad for how often they blew things up on campus. But between explosions, Jack Parsons made great strides. He invented a new type of rocket fuel, a breakthrough that would eventually help humans get to the Moon. As the Nazis ramped up their rocket research for use for long range explosives, the Suicide Squad's experiments became important parts of the war effort. Jack, Edward, and Frank created their own company, Aerojet, which eventually became
NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. In nineteen thirty nine, the same year that Parsons co founded the Jet Propulsion Lab, he first encountered a new religion called Thelema, a mix of occult traditions, philosophy, and magic. Thelima was the brainchild of the infamous magician Aleister Crowley. At the core of Thelema was one concept, do what thou wilt, meaning you have the freedom to follow your desires. Under Crowley, Themalites practice free love, performed magical rituals, and lived a life of excess,
and of course, Jack was hooked. For the next few years, Jack worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab, trying to achieve his dream of reaching the stars. At nights, he would use magic for the same purpose, leading rituals, participating in dark masses, and worshiping the sun. These practices didn't make him popular with serious scientists or with the US government. The FBI actually investigated Jack, and he eventually lost his
security clearances. By nineteen forty four, the Jet Propulsion Lab had forced him to resign, worried that his less than savory actions might damage the company's reputation, and by nineteen forty nine Jack was penniless, scraping by making explosives for Hollywood Special Effects. On June seventeenth of nineteen fifty two, Jack Parsons was experimenting with chemicals in his garage in Pasadena. When it's believed that he dropped a tin of volatile compounds,
the resulting explosion ripped through the garage, killing Jack. He was thirty seven years old. Jack Parsons was a conundrum. He was a brilliant scientist and a devout magician. The same dry that caused him to reach for the stars also compelled him to cross the veil into the spirit world. But maybe Jack's dual interests weren't totally at odds. After all, you can't make a scientific breakthrough without a little magical thinking. If you're a fan of fine dining, you know these
days it's only half about the food, right. Modern restaurants are desperate to provide unique experiences, whether that means dining next to wild animals, inside remote ice caves or in total darkness. Heck, at this very moment, companies are racing to sell you dinner at the edge of space. And this trend isn't exactly new. We can trace it back
to Tudor England. That's the period of British history right after the Late Middle Ages, and it's the moment when a chef with a unique flare vision appeared on the culinary scene. His name was Robert May, and he had pretty much the exact biography that you would expect a prodigy restaurant tour The son of a private chef, he grew up in the kitchen and was employed as a cook at the tender age of ten. As a teenager,
he spent five years in Paris studying European cuisine. He returned to England at the age of twenty one and immediately began working in the kitchens of the tutor aristocrats. With his talent and experience, May probably could have made a good living sticking to the typical dishes of the day, but he wasn't interested in the typical. He wanted to give his guests an experience that would stay with them
long after the meal was done. May was particularly inspired by the medieval feasts of England's past, when royals would dine at long tables way down with more food and wine than they could stomach, serenaded by minstrels and heckled by court jesters. He wanted to recreate that feeling of spectacle, but update it for a new age. For what he was a man dinner and a show wouldn't be enough, No,
his dinners would be the show. May began developing feasts around breathtaking spectacle, which he lovingly called triumphs and trophies in cookery. They were often as dangerous as they were exciting, and nothing was off limits. For one dinner, he created a pastry castle and a ship outfitted with tiny functioning cannons. When his staff lit the fuses, the cannons fired, filling the dining hall with smoke and the odor of gunpowder. And another feast, he hollowed out eggshells and filled them
with rose water, then distributed them around the tables. Dinner. Guests soon started hurling the fragile eggshells at each other, causing them to burst and fill the room with perfumed water. He particularly loved incorporating live animals into his dishes. Pie crusts would be filled with live birds and frogs. When guests cut into the crust, the animals came flapping and hopping out onto the table, knocking over candles and started
the guests. These feasts, as you might imagine, were a sensation, and for the next fifty years, Robert May toured the country dazzling nobles and aristocrats with his taste for spectacle. But as he turned seventy one, he started to think more about his legacy. He realized that his feasts were inherently transient things, and worried that his work would soon be forgotten. So he did what all good celebrity chefs do once they've hit it big. He wrote a cookbook.
It was called The Accomplished Cook and it was a massive tome. And while May had made his career working for aristocrats, his book had something for everyone, with approachable dishes right alongside more aspirational ones. Like his spectacle feasts, May's cookbook was ahead of its time in many ways. He organized his recipes into logical categories, provided woodprint reliefs of the dishes, and even included a self portrait inside
the front cover. These elements would eventually become typical of recipe book, and they made The Accomplished Cook an overnight bestseller. The book became a major self promotional tool for Robert May, cementing him as one of the most significant chefs of his age. So while it was ostensibly a recipe book of European dishes, it can also be read as a template for a celebrity chef, one part creativity, two parts talent.
Fold in lots of hard work and a heaping spoonful of showmanship and mix it all together and you've got history. 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 Lor dot com. And until next time, stay curious.