In the early 1950's a man in the woods with nothing but knives and lint in his pockets was discovered along the borders of Poland and Czechoslovakia who would become an international mystery for decades to come. Knowledgable in many languages, with a variety of origin stories, no true knowledge of where he came from, and a deep well of strangeness, Karel Novak became one of the most strangely unknown humans of all time. Who was he? Why did he tell different stories of who he was? Pretend he was deaf and mute? Run from the police? We investigate this week on The What If? Podcast.

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