# Mind Games

An episode of [Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1396546917), 30 Apr 2026, 12 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/arttrk.com/p/D5CA5/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/e062c374-9a39-42fa-888f-ae2c007b3c85/a8f0a323-72b4-4173-b4b2-b43b0159cf38/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=f0f95fe5-d5de-4abe-ada4-ae2c007b3c8e

Two strange characters, two curious tales. Both, though, should be highly entertaining. Order the official Cabinet of Curiosities book by clicking here today, and get ready to enjoy some curious reading! Join our Patreon for ad-free episodes!: https://www.patreon.com/grimandmild See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:04] Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
[0:07] Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
[0:14] Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
[0:18] Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
[0:22] Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
[0:36] Speaker 1: Every single one of us, in our own way, is
[0:38] Speaker 1: passing through history. We have no way of knowing exactly
[0:41] Speaker 1: who is going to earn their place in a history
[0:44] Speaker 1: book on the main page, or who will wind up
[0:47] Speaker 1: as mere footnotes. For those of us who read history
[0:50] Speaker 1: for a living know one thing to be true. There's
[0:53] Speaker 1: more life in between the lines than any history book
[0:56] Speaker 1: can tell us, and it's there that the most fascinating
[0:59] Speaker 1: questions live. Follow me to the Haymarket Theater in London
[1:03] Speaker 1: in the year seventeen forty five, an opera called lyn
[1:06] Speaker 1: Costanza de Luza has just premiered. A lavish spectacle. But
[1:11] Speaker 1: what made this opera notable was not its content or
[1:14] Speaker 1: its production, but a little known musician who contributed three
[1:18] Speaker 1: arias that he'd written. He had just arrived in Europe,
[1:21] Speaker 1: and writers of the time described him as suave and charming,
[1:24] Speaker 1: with dark hair and a fine sense of dress. This
[1:27] Speaker 1: man was arrested in London that same year under suspicion
[1:31] Speaker 1: of spine, but later released due to lack of evidence.
[1:35] Speaker 1: Horace Walpole, the famous British author and politician, referred to
[1:39] Speaker 1: him in one of his letters, he has been here
[1:41] Speaker 1: these two years and will not tell who he is
[1:44] Speaker 1: or whence, but professed that he does not go by
[1:47] Speaker 1: his right name. He sings, plays the violin wonderfully, composes,
[1:52] Speaker 1: is mad and not very sensible. He has called an Italian,
[1:56] Speaker 1: a Spaniard, a poll a, somebody that married a great
[2:00] Speaker 1: fortune in Mexico and ran away with her jewels to Constantinople,
[2:04] Speaker 1: a priest of fiddler, a vast noblemen. The man who
[2:08] Speaker 1: fits this intriguing description was known by a single French title,
[2:13] Speaker 1: the Compe de Saint Germain. He seemingly came out of
[2:16] Speaker 1: nowhere in the seventeen forties, impressing high society in London
[2:20] Speaker 1: with his musical talents, but after his arrest in seventeen
[2:23] Speaker 1: forty five, he did not stay long in London. Instead,
[2:27] Speaker 1: he traveled to mainland Europe, where he ingratiated himself with
[2:30] Speaker 1: the French courts of King Louis the fifteenth. By the
[2:33] Speaker 1: late seventeen forties he had become a close counselor and
[2:37] Speaker 1: occasional political agent for the French crown. He spoke many languages,
[2:42] Speaker 1: including French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, and Spanish, and was
[2:47] Speaker 1: able to converse on a wide variety of topics, from
[2:50] Speaker 1: politics to science. Although perhaps science might be overstating it
[2:56] Speaker 1: just a little, you see, one of the count's primary interests,
[2:59] Speaker 1: according to the stories, was the field of alchemy. It was,
[3:03] Speaker 1: at this point in history, on the decline in comparison
[3:06] Speaker 1: to other natural sciences, but there were still many eager practitioners.
[3:11] Speaker 1: After all, goals like turning lead into gold or achieving
[3:15] Speaker 1: immortality will always inspire some people. As the decades wore on,
[3:20] Speaker 1: members of high society pointed out that he barely seemed
[3:23] Speaker 1: to age. One anecdote tells of an encounter with an
[3:26] Speaker 1: elderly countess in the seventeen sixties who expressed disbelief at
[3:31] Speaker 1: seeing him. She said that she had known account Saint
[3:34] Speaker 1: Germain and Venice back in seventeen ten. She asked if
[3:37] Speaker 1: it was his father that she had met, and instead,
[3:40] Speaker 1: Saint Germain said that he had lived in Venice at
[3:43] Speaker 1: that time, so it was he that she remembered, and
[3:46] Speaker 1: she was amazed. The man she knew was forty five
[3:49] Speaker 1: years old at the time, meaning that he would be
[3:51] Speaker 1: one hundred years old. During their conversation. Saint Germain accepted
[3:56] Speaker 1: the suggestion proudly, still never confirming what his original name
[4:00] Speaker 1: was nor where he came from. Later, at various dinner parties,
[4:04] Speaker 1: he would claim to be over three hundred years old.
[4:07] Speaker 1: Both Voltaire and Casanova wrote about him with skepticism, referring
[4:12] Speaker 1: to him as a teller of enormous lies. Voltaire referred
[4:15] Speaker 1: to him as and I quote, a man who never dies,
[4:19] Speaker 1: who knows everything, but Casanova conceded that as a liar,
[4:23] Speaker 1: Saint Germain was an incredibly persuasive one. In seventeen sixty,
[4:28] Speaker 1: for example, he talked his way into the Hague and
[4:30] Speaker 1: began peace talks to end the Seven Years War between
[4:33] Speaker 1: England and France. No one ever knew where all his
[4:36] Speaker 1: money came from either. He seemed to be wealthy, but
[4:39] Speaker 1: had no bank account or land to speak of. This observation,
[4:42] Speaker 1: of course, fueled rumors of him being a powerful alchemist.
[4:46] Speaker 1: After all, if you can turn any substance into gold,
[4:49] Speaker 1: then you don't need a bank account, do you. After
[4:52] Speaker 1: forty years of traveling freely throughout Europe, charming high society,
[4:56] Speaker 1: and writing music, Saint Germain spent the last few years
[4:59] Speaker 1: of his life life in Central Germany doing alchemy experiments
[5:03] Speaker 1: with the Danish Prince Charles Now In his eighties, he
[5:06] Speaker 1: confided to the Prince that he was the son of
[5:08] Speaker 1: Francis the second Racozzi, a renowned nobleman from Transylvania, which
[5:13] Speaker 1: would explain his wealth and comforts among nobility. Like all
[5:17] Speaker 1: of his stories, this part was never confirmed. Saint Germain
[5:21] Speaker 1: seemingly died in seventeen eighty four, but that was not
[5:24] Speaker 1: the end of his story. Sightings of him persisted long
[5:28] Speaker 1: after his death. After his tall tales, a growing number
[5:32] Speaker 1: of people believe that he really was immortal. In the
[5:35] Speaker 1: two hundred years that followed, many copycats have appeared, claiming
[5:39] Speaker 1: to be the man himself, still alive after all these years.
[5:43] Speaker 1: The most recent was in the nineteen seventies. Even if
[5:47] Speaker 1: the original Count of Saint Germain was just an incredibly
[5:50] Speaker 1: skilled con artist, a talented mister Ripley of the eighteenth century.
[5:54] Speaker 1: There is still something about him that makes even skeptics
[5:58] Speaker 1: want to believe the impossible. Through his lies and charms,
[6:03] Speaker 1: he cast a spell on history. The animal rights movement
[6:20] Speaker 1: seems like a modern phenomenon. You might think that people
[6:23] Speaker 1: only started to speak out against killing animals once food
[6:26] Speaker 1: became plentiful in the second half of the twentieth century. However,
[6:30] Speaker 1: even in the past, when modern conveniences were still a
[6:33] Speaker 1: long ways off, there were compassionate individuals begging others to
[6:37] Speaker 1: think of the animals. One such person was Anna Kingsford,
[6:41] Speaker 1: a nineteenth century physician with some very curious methods when
[6:46] Speaker 1: it came to furthering the cause. Anna was born near
[6:49] Speaker 1: London in eighteen forty six to a wealthy merchant family.
[6:53] Speaker 1: From an early age, she claimed to receive strange visions
[6:56] Speaker 1: and communicate with fairies. These communications gave her a profound
[7:01] Speaker 1: sense of spiritualism and a connection to the natural world.
[7:05] Speaker 1: Though she initially enjoyed fox hunting with her family, a
[7:08] Speaker 1: vision where she saw herself as a fox being hunted
[7:12] Speaker 1: led to her never wanting to participate again. As she
[7:15] Speaker 1: grew older, her love for animals only increased. She had
[7:19] Speaker 1: a pet guinea pig named Rufus, who she confided in.
[7:22] Speaker 1: She became a vegetarian and realized that she needed to
[7:25] Speaker 1: pursue a medical degree if she wanted to convince others
[7:29] Speaker 1: that her diet was the healthiest now. Women weren't allowed
[7:32] Speaker 1: to become doctors in England at the time, and so
[7:35] Speaker 1: she traveled across the Channel to Paris, but she soon
[7:38] Speaker 1: found herself in her own personal hell. It was while
[7:42] Speaker 1: studying at the Natural History Museum there that she heard
[7:45] Speaker 1: a horrible scream of pain from down the hall. Afraid
[7:48] Speaker 1: that someone was being hurt, she raced toward the sound,
[7:51] Speaker 1: only to find a lab where a professor was dissecting
[7:54] Speaker 1: a live dog. At this time, anesthesia wasn't common and
[7:58] Speaker 1: it wasn't used on animal These vivisections, as they were known,
[8:02] Speaker 1: were a horrible thing to behold. Anna was mortified, and
[8:06] Speaker 1: she continued to be every time she saw one of
[8:08] Speaker 1: these experiments. As part of her coursework, she began her
[8:12] Speaker 1: own studies into the chemical composition of both meat and
[8:15] Speaker 1: plant matter, and was encouraged when she found that they
[8:18] Speaker 1: can contain the same chemical compounds. It seems obvious to
[8:22] Speaker 1: us now, but finding that you could get protein from
[8:25] Speaker 1: both meat and certain plants, for example, was a big discovery.
[8:28] Speaker 1: At the time, Darwin's theory of evolution was growing in
[8:32] Speaker 1: prominence as well, and the idea that we are all
[8:35] Speaker 1: related to every other animal on the planet only further
[8:38] Speaker 1: encouraged her. She wrote her thesis on the Benefits of
[8:41] Speaker 1: a vegetarian diet, including some of these discoveries, while also
[8:45] Speaker 1: including some less scientific assertions. For example, she believed that
[8:50] Speaker 1: eating meat made someone more violent and lowered their IQ,
[8:53] Speaker 1: and she also believed that all great warriors in history,
[8:57] Speaker 1: like the Spartans, were great because they ate bread. And
[9:00] Speaker 1: her legacy would continue to be a mixture of science
[9:04] Speaker 1: and superstition. Although she had become a doctor, she would
[9:07] Speaker 1: never let go of her spiritual side. She continued to
[9:10] Speaker 1: claim to have visions and believed in frequent prayer to
[9:13] Speaker 1: evoke God into saving animals. Anna disliked organized religion, though,
[9:18] Speaker 1: believing that it was corrupt, but she did believe in God,
[9:21] Speaker 1: and she believed that if he was the divine source
[9:24] Speaker 1: of life in all humans and animals were a part
[9:26] Speaker 1: of him. But her compassion didn't always extend to her
[9:30] Speaker 1: fellow human beings. You see, Anna maated her life's mission
[9:34] Speaker 1: to put an end to the kind of vivisection that
[9:36] Speaker 1: she witnessed in medical school. She decided to start practicing
[9:39] Speaker 1: what she called white magic, which was essentially the use
[9:42] Speaker 1: of prayer to try and cast spells in the physical world.
[9:46] Speaker 1: Most famously, or perhaps most infamously, this included directing psychic
[9:51] Speaker 1: attacks against some of the greatest vivisectionists of the day.
[9:55] Speaker 1: Among them were names that are still recognizable, such as
[9:58] Speaker 1: Louis Pasteur, Claude Bernard, and Paul Bert died in eighteen
[10:03] Speaker 1: seventy eight and eighteen eighty six. Anna took credit, claiming
[10:07] Speaker 1: that she had used her abilities to assassinate them. Of course,
[10:11] Speaker 1: no one took her seriously. They had died of natural causes,
[10:14] Speaker 1: of course, But to be fair, it wasn't as if
[10:17] Speaker 1: every other scientist of this era behaved rationally all the
[10:20] Speaker 1: time and that Anna was just an outlier. For example,
[10:23] Speaker 1: many scientists of her day had the opposite view of hers,
[10:26] Speaker 1: believing that eating meat actually made someone superior. They used
[10:31] Speaker 1: this to justify racist beliefs that Asians and Africans who
[10:35] Speaker 1: ate a mixed diet were somehow inferior to Europeans. Today,
[10:39] Speaker 1: we know that eating a well rounded diet is best,
[10:42] Speaker 1: although vegetarianism has benefits when it comes to heart health
[10:46] Speaker 1: and a carnivore diet has some advantages for those dealing
[10:49] Speaker 1: with certain chronic diseases. And so Anna's legacy is less
[10:53] Speaker 1: about accurate scientific discovery and more about compassion and determination.
[10:58] Speaker 1: She reminds us to remain curious about the world around us,
[11:02] Speaker 1: to not take anything for granted. In the end, how
[11:05] Speaker 1: we treat our fellow animals may impact us in ways
[11:09] Speaker 1: we simply can't imagine. I hope you enjoyed today's guided
[11:16] Speaker 1: tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created
[11:20] Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manke in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched
[11:24] Speaker 1: and written by the Grim and Mild team, and produced
[11:26] Speaker 1: by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the
[11:29] Speaker 1: people who make it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities.
[11:34] Speaker 1: You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of
[11:36] Speaker 1: Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well
[11:40] Speaker 1: as ebook and audiobook, and if you're looking for an
[11:43] Speaker 1: ad free option, consider joining our Patreon It's all the
[11:46] Speaker 1: same stories, but without the interruption for a small monthly fee.
[11:50] Speaker 1: Learn more and sign up over at patreon dot com.
[11:53] Speaker 1: Slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.