Welcome to Aaron Menke'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. The late nineteenth century in Europe, often referred to as the Victorian Era, was a time of rapid scientific development.
But as much as Victorian Europe embraced science, there was also a social movement in the opposite direction, embracing spiritualism or mysticism. Seances were a popular part of this movement. Friends and family would gather around a table and attempt to contact the dead. They was such a commonplace practice that the lines between mysticism and science often blurred, as researchers were attracted to seances to learn if there was any truth to them or if it were all just
a hoax. In eighteen ninety six, twenty one year old Karl Gustav or CG as his friends called him, was invited to the home of his cousin, Helly Preisberg. She was a medium known for conducting seances. Although CG was a medical student, he had an open mind when it came to the supernatural. He was raised in a religious home and had been plagued by strange, vivid dreams from a young age. Both science and religion had always failed
to explain his dreams. They were frightening episodes, full of monsters, ghosts, and twisted imagery. If anyone could help him get to the bottom of these visions, perhaps it was his cousin Helly. It was said that she could not only contact the dead, but travel between different realms, maybe even into the realm of his dreams. He was a frail fifteen year old girl, but she and cig got along well. They had a shared enthusiasm for the supernatural, and so when they conducted
this first seance together, they took it very seriously. At first, they attempted to contact the dead. They laid their fingers on an upside down glass over a sheet of paper covered with letters. Helly then channeled the ghosts in the room, asking them to identify themselves by using her body to move the glass and spell out their names. A spirit soon took control of her and revealed itself to be their late grandfather, the Reverend Samuel Preisberg. Helly suddenly fell
to the ground. Sig rushed to her side, shaking her, asking the spirit to free her. But when Helly spoke next, it didn't sound like her at all. Her voice was deep and mature, like that of their grandfathers. Do not fear see. I am with you every day, it said, I am your grandfather Samuel, who dwells with God. Pray to him the Lord, and ask him that my dear
grandchild reaches her goal. What was her goal, you might ask, well, Apparently their grandfather had sent Helly's spirit to the Americas, where their relative Bertie was and I quote, in danger from having a baby with a black man. He wanted Helly to somehow stop it, because, unfortunately, it seems that racism continues on into the afterlife. Helly returned to her body, claiming that she was unsuccessful in her mission to stop
Bertie from having the baby. Cig obviously found all of this very strange, but he found it even stranger weeks later when he received a letter from Bertie revealing that she had indeed had a baby. Cig and Helly continued their seances for years, with Helly explaining more and more
about the supernatural realms that she supposedly visited. But when Sig finished his undergraduate and he moved on to the blossoming world of psychology, he began to read the works of Sigmund Freud and learned about the idea of the unconscious mind, the part of our brain that we don't have access to, that's filled with dark imagery and forgotten memories. And Cig saw similarities between his dreams, Helly's spirits, and
Freud's descriptions of the unconscious. It made more sense to him that he and Helly were both experiencing psychological rather than supernatural phenomena, and this became even more apparent a few years into the seances, when Cig caught Helly hiding objects in her dress that she would throw across the room, trying to make it look like the spirits were doing it. He spent the first several years of his psychotherapy career writing about Helly and how he believed that her spirits
were just manifestations of her unconscious mind. Her ability to know things that she shouldn't was either outright deception or just simple coincidence, and SIG's skepticism grew to the point where he eventually challenged his own mentor, Sigmund Freud and Freud's obsession with human sexuality as the driving force of all psychological behavior. Eventually, even cg's work would meet with some criticism from his successors, but again, that's just how
science works regardless. CG or Carl Jung as he's better known today, was one of the founding fathers of modern psychiatry. He ensured that reason, not superstition, emerged as the prevailing force of the Victorian era. If reality TV has taught us anything it's that humans can make a competition out of just about anything. Food is no exception, whether it's in the breezy tent of the Great British Bakeoff or the bowels of Hell's Kitchen. We love watching chefs go
toe to toe in culinary battles. The incredible popularity of these shows might lead you to think that cookoffs are a modern invention, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Can trace them back centuries, all the way back to medieval Baghdad. During the ninth century. The city was one of the culinary capitals of the world. It was perfectly situated between Europe and Asia, giving its chefs access to
spices and recipes from the four corners of the globe. Meanwhile, the Khalif, or ruler of Baghdad, was a massive foodie and a decent amateur chef in his own right. Well. One day, the Khalif got into an argument with his brother over which of them was a better cook. Determined to prove himself, he sent his servants to the market with orders to bring back the ingredients for a feast.
There was lamb and chicken, eggplants and apricots, salt, saffron, honey, half a dozen kinds of oils and spices from China and India. With everything assembled, the Khalif told his brother that they would each prepare a dish of their own, choosing using any ingredients they pleased, in the palace's state of the art kitchen. A panel of the best chefs of the city would serve as their judges. There would be no prize, though, you see, the brothers would simply
be competing purely for bragging rights. But they weren't working alone. They would each be supported by an assistant pulled from the Khalif's cooking staff. And herein lay the Khalif's secret. For his assistant, he selected a young chef named Ibada. The young man was talented, but had a reputation in
the kitchens for being difficult to work with. The other cook said that he was devious and not above sabotaging his co workers to get ahead, and the Khalif knew that Abada couldn't be trusted, and that's why he wanted him on his team. As the brothers got to work, the kitchen became a storm of activity. The assistants rushed back and forth, stoking the ovens and chopping herbs with abandon. Soon fragrant aromas were wafting from opposite corners of the room.
The Khalif grinned as he tasted his dish, confident that he would be crowned the victor, but his assistant, Ibada, wasn't so sure. The smell coming from their opponents area was unbelievable, better than anything prepared in that kitchen before. Worried, he drifted over, making a show of inspecting the competitor's dish. The Kalif's brother looked proud until Ibada wrinkled his nose in an expression of disgust. With a sigh, he remarked how unfair it was that the Khalif had neglected to
share their secrets ingredient. Hearing this, the Kalif's brother scowled, Of course, it was just like his brother to goad him into a competition only to cheat. Furious, he demanded to know what secret ingredient the Khalif was using. Ibada glanced back at the Khalif to make sure he wasn't watching, and then handed over a small jar of fermented sauce. It was only fair, he said, that everyone had access to the same materials, even if it lost him the competition.
The brother's eyes flashed with triumph as he added his sauce to his dish, but within seconds, its fragrant smell had become a noxious odor. The brother immediately realized that he had been tricked, but it was too late to salvage the dish. They were out of time, and upon tasting it, the judges unanimously proclaimed the Khaliph the winner. The ruler was so pleased by the victory he immediately
promoted his assistant to head chef. Ibada left the kitchen feeling quite clever, but it wasn't long before he paid the price for his trickery. The Khalif died a few years later, and his brother took the throne. The new ruler had never forgiven Ibada and came dangerously close to having him executed. In the end, he decided the chef wasn't worth the trouble and simply exiled him. So as brutal as modern competitions might seem, Ibada's story shows that things could be a lot worse. In the world of
medieval cookoffs. You could go from top of the pack to the bottom in the blink of an eye. The stakes were sometimes a matter of life and death, and one wrong move could get you chopped. 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 Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.