Mixed Signals

from our parents. New careers, new relationships, and new generations only widened that gap, but not for Kailash Geary Brahmachari of India. He and his mother are close. In fact, Kailash takes her everywhere and anywhere she wants to go. When he was eight years old, Kailash fell from a tree he was climbing and broke one of his bones. His family didn't have money for treatment, so his mother

did the only thing she could do. She prayed. If he recovered, his mother would travel to the most religious locations in India and pray and give thanks. Her prayer seemed to work, as Kailash fracture healed without medical intervention of any kind. His mother had hoped to honor her promise immediately, but wasn't able to make the journey on her own. Kai Lash's father had died when he was only ten years old. It wasn't until her son turned twenty four when she could repay her debt and begin

her pilgrimage. One day, Kailash packed up all their belongings and set out into the world with the goal of visiting the most sacred sites in India before his mother died. They've been traveling for over twenty years and have covered almost twenty four thousand miles together. His mother is in her mid nineties now. They have no money and no means of transportation, So how do they get around? On foot? Of course, well, Kailash travels on foot. His mother, however,

has more comfortable accommodations. She sits in a basket which hangs from a wooden planks slung over her son's shoulder. It's counterbalanced on the opposite side. Using their clothes and the few belongings that they own, Kailash has carried his mother this way for half his life. He begins the trek each day at six thirty a m. And travels until the early afternoon. At that time, they eat and

rest before resuming their journey. When the sun isn't so overbearing, they walk until dark, covering about three to four miles per day, sleeping in local temples. People who meet them along the way offer them food and other donations to aid in their travels. They referred to Kailash as a real life Schravin Kumar. According to the ancient Hindu epic Ramayana, Schravin was a mythological character who was very devoted to his parents. His mother and father were blind and almost

never left their home. As they got older, however, they decided they wanted to take a pilgrimage to the forty Whole sites they believed would purify their souls before they died. Much like Kailash, Travin's family didn't have a lot of money, so he placed his mother in one basket and his father in another, and suspended each from the end of a long bamboo pole, which he supported across his shoulders.

The story is well known, and Kailash his own journey with his mother has made people wonder if Chavan has somehow come to life before their eyes. But Kailash isn't doing this for the fame or the glory. He's doing it to help the woman who prayed for his health and took care of him when he got hurt. Together, they visited a long list of religious sites in India,

but they have several more to go. With twenty four thousand miles behind them and many more ahead, it's not clear when their pilgrimage will ever come to an end. All that matters, though, is that they've got each other for support every step of the way. People are never just one thing. They can have numerous passions and interests across different areas of their lives. In other words, people

are complex. Try to put them in a little box, and they'll do their best to break out of it, showing you that there's more to them than meets the eye. Eva didn't fit into any kind of box, no matter how hard the people around her tried to squash her into one. Born in Vienna in nineteen fourteen, she worked various jobs in the nineteen twenties and early thirties, trying

to make a name for herself. In the early thirties, she fell in love with a man named Friedrich, who despite being half Jewish, was involved with fascist Italian leader Benito Mussolini and eventually Adolf Hitler. Friedrich married Eva in nineteen thirty three, and immediately trying to curb her ambitions. He kept her locked up in their castle on the check border, only letting her out to accompany him on business deals. Friedrich, you see, was an arms dealer, and

he supplied fascist governments with weapons. He also assisted their scientists with developing new military technologies. Those consultations were where his wife found out about a new passion applied science. The trouble was Eva wouldn't have been able to pursue any kind of future in the field with her husband keeping tabs on her night and day, so she planned

an elaborate escape. One night, she and her husband had been invited to a dinner party, one of the few events where she would be allowed out of their home. She convinced Fredrich to let her wear all the jewelry she owned to the party. Afterwards, still wearing every necklace, bracelet and ring in her possession, she dressed up as the maid and left in the dead of night. She

chose Paris to start her new life. The fascist governments in Italy and Germany kept growing, and even knew that if she didn't get her mother out of Vienna soon, she would also be taken away. So in ninety eight, she helped her mother escaped to the United States right after the Nazis annexed Austria, and Eva was resourceful too. Now living full time in the United States, she learned how to speak perfect English and got a job to sustain both herself and her mother, But she wanted to

do more, specifically for the war effort. She talked to a member of the newly formed National Inventors Council about joining their organization. It seemed that her fascination with science and technology had not waned in the years since she had married Friedrich. However, he turned her away, encouraging her to do other things to help the boys oversea, like

selling war bonds. Undeterred, she turned to another inventor, a man named Howard Hughes, and Hughes put her to work in modifying his aircraft designs, which he felt were too boxy and slow. He gave her whatever resources she required, including his own team of engineers and scientists. Eva purchased books on the fastest birds and fish in the world. She borrowed Nature's eye for aerodynamics, using it to streamline

a new wing shape for us as airplanes. She also used her time with Hughes to develop a tablet that could be dropped into a glass of water to carbonate it. The taste was something akin to alka seltzer, which couldn't be avoided even with Hughes's own chemists working on the project. As the war raged on, though, she got word of an evacuee ship that had been carrying ninety children from Britain to Canada. A German sub in the area had fired two torpedoes at it, sending it to the bottom

of the ocean. Within thirty minutes. Seventy seven of the ninety children on board were lost. Eva saw that selling war bonds wouldn't be enough to end the war and remembered what she learned on those business meetings she attended with her husband. She knew the radio signals that controlled torpedoes could be jammed by an enemy, sending the missiles off course. In order for those signals to avoid detection, they would need to jump from frequency to frequency over

a wide spectrum. Eva even illustrated this concept by partnering with a pianist who used sixteen player pianos controlled by one transmitter. There developed MINT came to be known as frequency hopping spread spectrum or f h s S, and would have given the United States a huge advantage at sea by making their torpedoes almost impossible to jam. She and the musician filed the patent for the technology, which was granted in ninete. The military, however, had no interest

in adopting it. She was simply ahead of her time, way ahead. It seems as her design has gone on to influence such widespread technologies as Bluetooth, GPS, and WiFi. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Navy ships were installed with f h s S systems based on Eva's research as well. Even after the war, she never stopped inventing. She went on to develop all sorts of new things, like updates to the traffic light and a glow in the dark

dog color. She also helped streamline the design of the Concord supersonic jetliner, and yet she's not typically known for her scientific work. In fact, she wasn't recognized for it until the end of the twentieth century. People knew her better for her beauty than her brains. After all, while Disney used her face as the model for snow White,

but she was more than that. In fact, she was a star of the silver screen and often called the most beautiful actress in the world, which explains why Hedwig Eva Maria Kisler, one of the greatest scientific minds of the century, spent decades known only by her stage name hetty Lamar. 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.