Let's Get Metaphysical

and she was born weighing sixteen pounds. To put that in perspective, the average newborn weighs about seven pounds. Anna Swan was huge, and it seems like she would never stop growing. By the time when she was six years old, Anna was taller than her mom. At eleven, she towered over her dad too. She finally topped out at seventeen years old, by which point she stood at a whopping seven feet eleven inches tall and weighed over four hundred pounds.

As you might imagine being nearly eight feet tall, post some logistical problems, especially in the eighteen hundreds, the world just wasn't built to accommodate a person of Anna's size. It was hard for her to get around, hard to make friends, and practically impossible to get a job. That is until she crossed paths with the famous circus master P. T. Barnum. When Barnum saw Anna, he saw dollar signs. She was exactly the kind of curiosity that people would pay money

to see. And if that sounds a little dehumanizing, well it was, but it was also an opportunity that Anna couldn't pass up. At seventeen years old, she moved from Canada to New York, where she became a side show at Barnum and Bailey's Museum. Five years later, P. T. Barnum invited Anna on a nation War circus tour. Anna probably had an inkling that traveling in the United States would change her life, but she didn't realize just how much.

While performing in Kentucky in eighteen sixty eight, twenty two year old Anna met a man. His name was Martin Van Buren Bates, a Southerner through and through. He'd been a Confederate captain in the Civil War, and he prided himself on his chivalry, and Anna was smitten. It didn't hurt that Martin was seven feet nine inches tall. The towering pair hit it off. Before long, they were both traveling with the circus, making a good living, and seeing

the nation together. Less than a year after they met, they took a trip to London where they got married, officially earning them the Guinness World Record for the tallest married couple in history. Their nuptials made the news, of course, and the couple skyrocketed to international fame. Queen Victoria herself sent Anna and Martin a pair of watches made out of diamonds and gold. In eighteen seventy one, the newly minted Bates couple moved to the small town of Seville, Ohio,

where Martin set to work building a house. Everything had to be scaled up from the average right. Their ceilings were fourteen feet tall and each doorway measured at least eight feet high. Their countertops had to be raised, their chairs had to be extra large and extra strong. It was a massive amount of work, but when it was all said and done, Anna, who had never really fit anywhere, finally had a place that fit her. But as beautiful as their love story was, the Baits faced more than

their fair share of tragedy. Anna soon became pregnant and gave birth to a girl who weighed eighteen pounds. That's two more than Anna herself weighed as a newborn. Sadly, the baby died almost immediately. The following year, Anna gave birth to a second child, a boy they called Babe. Babe was twenty eight inches long and weighed twenty two pounds. In Martin's own words, he looked at birth like an

ordinary child of six months. This made Babe baits the largest newborn in recorded history, but just like his he didn't live long. Babe died just eleven hours after he was born. Anna and Martin never had any more children after that. They continued to tour with the circus until eighteen eighty eight, when Anna passed away at forty one years old. She left behind a legacy of truly gargantuan proportions, with world records for both her marriage and her son

that haven't been surpassed in one hundred and fifty years. Martin, of course, was devastated to lose the woman who had taken up such a big space in his heart and his life. He had a statue custom made to put atop Anna's grave, It showed his wife as he saw her, a fifteen foot tall Greek goddess. These days, life sized replicas of Anna and Martin are on display at the Seville, Ohio Historical Society. You can stand right next to the curious couple, although if you want to see their faces,

you're gonna have to look up pretty far. In the course of human history, the line between science and magic has almost always been blurred. Take alchemy, for example, Aristotle wanted to turn lead into gold. Nicholas Flamel, who was a real person, by the way, sought the Philosopher's Stone. These were learned men who indulged what we might consider to be silly fantasies. But ancient alchemy wasn't a total wash.

In fact, the idea that one element can be transmuted into another is central to our understanding of modern chemistry. You see, things are usually only ever considered magical until we understand how they work. That's why history is full of scientists turned spiritualists who explore both the physical and the metaphysical world. Among them are Marie Currie and her husband Pierre. In nineteen oh three of the Curies were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their work researching radioactivity.

They were a scientific power couple. Marie was the first woman to earn a doctorate degree in France and Pierre was a professor of a prestigious university. But despite their achievements, they were quick to admit how much they did not know. In a joint statement from nineteen oh two, they said, and I quote, we know little about the medium that surrounds us, since our knowledge is limited to phenomena which

can affect our senses directly or indirectly. In other words, Marie and Pierre left open the possibility that there were forces in the world beyond human perception, and for much of history, radioactivity was one of those forces. It was invisible, it was powerful, It was in a word, magical. But Marie and Pierre had harnessed that radioactive magic and begun

to understand it. They wanted to learn even more about the world's unseen dimensions, which is why in nineteen oh five they attended a seance with a renowned Italian medium named Eusapia Palladino. Palladino's reputation preceded her. She was known as one of the best psychics in Europe, and she held seances with a number of scientists, including the French

physicist and astronomer Camille Flammarion. Palladino claimed that she could summon spirits, make objects move without touching them, and directly communicate with the dead. Now, not everyone believed in Palladino's power. She'd actually been caught using her hands, feet, and even hidden strings to move supposedly haunted objects in the past. But nevertheless, when the self proclaimed psychic came to Paris, the curies were curious and true to form, they approached

the seance scientifically. It wasn't the shadowy candlelight affair that you might expect. Instead, the lights were bright. That way, if Palladino tried to play any tricks, it would be easy to see. People held down her hands and feet, so she wouldn't be able to pull any secret strings. And even with these precautions, things inside the seance room

got spooky. In a letter written to a friend, Pierre said that he saw and I quote, tables raised from all four legs, movement of object from a distance, hands that pinch or caress you, and luminous apparitions. The curies were so impressed by Palladino's abilities that they kept attending her seances. Despite their initial skepticism, they couldn't find any proof that the medium was faking it then, so Marie

and Pierre became some of her biggest supporters. The following year, in nineteen oh six, Pierre wrote, these phenomena really exist, and it is no longer possible for me to doubt it. There is here, in my opinion, a whole domain of entirely new facts and physical states in space of which we have no conception. Thanks to Eusapia Palladino, the Nobel Prize winning physicists became entirely convinced that magic in some form was real. Just a few months after that, though,

Pierre suffered a sudden and heartbreaking death. He was walking down a busy street in Paris when he slipped and fell, and a horse drawn carriage rolled over him, killing him instantly. In the wake of this horrible loss, Marie's grief seemed to amplify her spiritual beliefs. Shortly after Pierre's death, she wrote in her journal, then I quote, I put my head against the coffin and I spoke to you. I told you that I loved you, and that I had

always loved you with all my heart. It seemed to me that from this cold contact of my forehead with the casket, something came to me, something like a calm and an intuition that I would yet find the courage to live. Maybe, Marie continued, this feeling of calm was energy coming from her late husband. She could feel his love emanating even from beyond the grave. It was the most beautiful kind of radiation, almost like magic. 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 so called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.