So where did the idea of using an artificial electrical impulse to control the heartbeat begin? Well, as with most scientific progress, there’s a long chain of contributors, but I want to talk today about a transformational role played by an inquisitive man from Minneapolis, Minnesota named Earl Bakken; and the inspiration he got from a movie he saw when he was just a little boy.

Listen To find out more about:

•  How Mary Shelly's Frankenstein influenced the invention of the pacemaker.
• The Life of Mary Shelly, and the circumstances that lead to her writing Frankenstein 
• How Earl Bakken and other scientists  invented the pacemaker
• Earl Bakken (credited inventor of the pacemaker) and his life
• The first battery and how it was invented

For Full show notes visit: mydarkpath.com

Sources

REFERENCES/ADDITIONAL READING:

Tufts Now: Think you know your Frankenstein?

Thought Co: Frankenstein Themes, Symbols, and Literary Devices

Sparknots: Frankenstein

New York Times: Earl E Bakken Obituary 

Eetimes: Pacemaker was born of a blackout

Csoonline: What are the security implications of Elon Musk’s neuralink?

NBC News: Elon Musk’s Neuralink puts Chips in Pigs Brains

Encyclopeida: Luigi Galvani

Health Grades: Pacemakers

Heart: Pacemaker

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It’s one of the darkest stories we’ve told here – the story of a man who became famous for saying he saw a UFO, and who became a terrorist because his own government invited him to. The UFO wasn’t real, but the bombings, terror, and death that followed – they’re as real as it gets.

Listen to learn  more about:
 1. Cult psychology
 2. Aladino Felix's UFO Sighting
 3. The  former Brazilian government leaders that secretly supported a cult

See Full Show Notes at mydarkpath.com

REFERENCES/ADDITIONAL READING (more found on website):

Publica: Atentados de direita fomentaram AI-5
The Guardian: Brazil cult leader who 'contacted aliens' backed dictatorship with terror attacks
Kraspedon Contact Claims
Mysterious Universe: Investigation Finds Brazilian UFO Cult Leader Was a Terrorist
The Guardian: Brazil President Weeps
Encyclopedia: Krasperdon, Dino
Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s
Penn Today: Cult or Religious Movement
Eccentric Lives and Particular Notions by John Michell
USC NEWS: Powerful Years for Religion
Archive of Freeservers

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As well-documented as things are, there’s so much left that’s unknown. And the speculation about just what the Nazis could be capable of didn’t start in the aftermath as historians and scientists worked to put together a record of it all. It had an impact on the battlefield at the peak of the fighting.

Maybe the best way to capture this dark path of imagination where I found myself on this dark and stormy night, of wondering how far the reality of Nazi ambitions went, and how these other legends about them could have evolved, is to tell you the story of the Foo Fighters. And no, I’m not referring to the band from Seattle that was just voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I’m referring to how they got their name. It’s a story that involves a Chicago comic book artist, a 19th-century fantasy novel, and one of our favorite things here at My Dark Path – strange lights in the sky…listen to learn more about

•  Project Bluebook: the United States Military investigation into flying saucers and other unexplainable phenomena 
• the extraterrestrial kraut fireballs that troubled WWII pilots
• The Nazi's Flying Saucer Project
• How The Foo Fighters got their name 
• Project Bluebook
• The origins of the phrase, "a dark and stormy night" and "the pen is mightier than the sword"

SEE FULL SHOW NOTES AT  https://www.mydarkpath.com/season1episode13

REFERENCES/ADDITIONAL READING:

Smoky Stover
Smokin' Rockets by Patrick Lucanio

http://www.luft46.com/misc/sackas6.html

Washington City Paper

Pseudoscience in Naziland by Willy Ley

The Durant report of the Robertson Panel proceedings

The Coming Race PDF

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The Museum of Automatons is packed with automatons... mechanical figures that move and speak.  Imagine what Walt Disney would have designed in the 18th century - automatons were attempts to mimic human figures in remarkable ways.  Really, just the first glimpse at the future of robotics...or at least robots that would mimic humans and other animals.  But automatons weren’t just gifts wealthy European families commissioned and gifted to others.  An automaton like some exhibited here defeated Napoleon at the height of his military and political power. But it didn’t beat him on the battlefield. It defeated him on a chess board. (See Full Show notes and script  at mydarkpath.com)


REFERENCES/ADDITIONAL READING:

Levitt, Gerald M. The Turk, Chess Automaton (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000)

Standage, Tom: The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine (New York: Walker, 2002), 22–23.

MUSIC:

Prelude - Filthy, Brian Lowry
Intro - Brenner, Falls
Part 1 - Fleeting, Alice in Winter
Part 2 - Hidden Beneath, Michael Briguglio
Part 3 - Morning Call, Marie
Part 4 - Birds of Prey, Wicked Cinema
Rabbit Hole - Perfect Spades, Third Age & Nu Alkemi$t

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Air travel to Hawaii is actually an amazing story of innovation, imagination, and tremendous courage as well as a great deal of tragedy.  Like most opportunities we have in our lives, it’s easy to take for granted the sacrifices that made them possible.  So, it’s a dark path that eventually opens up into the sunny skies to the land of Aloha, and involves an event you may never have heard of, but which I don’t think you’re going to forget. Today, we’re telling the story of the Dole Derby. Keep your seatbelts fastened.

REFERENCES:

Race to Hawaii

Honolulu Star-Bulletin Features

1903-The First Flight - Wright Brothers National Memorial (US National Park Service)

Great Adventure Stories : Rafer Brent : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming

Actual newsreel footage of the participants and some of the takeoffs:

[Dole Air Race, 1927] : Kinograms : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming

MUSIC:

Stacks, Elision 

Brenner, Falls

Nuclear Conception, Alice in Winter

Paths of Glory, Stephen Keech

Moonchild, Elision 

Color of Distance, Chelsea McGough 

Perfect Spades, Third Age 

See full show notes on mydarkpath.com 

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In Singapore, there’s a park known as the Haw Par Villa, an expansive theme park filled with over 1,000 statues, and hundreds of detailed three-dimensional dioramas. Of course, lots of parks have statues and memorials of people from history. But these dioramas set Haw Par Villa apart; and make it a much wilder, much stranger place.  At the epicenter of the park is the Ten Courts of Hell. It’s a self-guided tour through the experiences one would expect from hell. Or at least, the Hell imagined by the multicultural mythology that makes Singapore so unique.  While the purpose of the park was to show children the consequences of their bad behavior, the implementation created something rather dark and foreboding.  And now, the park has gained a reputation as haunted.

So, perhaps it’s not a surprise that some of these spooky statues and dioramas are thought to be haunted.  But what about haunted dolls?  How does something created for a sweet and innocent purpose, something that provides comfort and safety to so many, come to get such an evil reputation? In a world with so many dolls, how does one single doll become infamous?

Learn more about the history of three famous haunted dolls; Peggy (who inspired the story of Annebelle), Robert & the girl-doll of the Yesterdays’ Museum.

For images and full show notes visit:  http://mydarkpath.com/season1episode9-1


References

Peggy & Annabelle:

• https://web.archive.org/web/20160522230945/http://www.warrens.net/annabelle.html
• https://www.nhregister.com/lifestyle/article/Real-Annabelle-story-shared-by-Lorraine-11382545.php
• https://www.glamour.com/story/real-story-behind-annabelle

Robert:

• https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/robert-doll
• https://www.ghostsandgravestones.com/key-west/robert-the-doll

Pediophobia & the Yesterdays’ Museum:

• Antoinette May, Haunted H

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Once upon a time, I was in Shanghai, and I needed a birthday present for a friend. 

Shanghai is a captivating city; one I love to visit. I always enjoy my time there. It’s vibrantly alive with culture, history, and commerce. For many years it was called “The Paris of the East,” due to its cosmopolitanism, and its sophistication. I love it so much that my next novel, Like Clockwork, is based in this incredible city. On this particular day on this particular trip, I went to the shopping district around Nanjing Road. There are so many little shops and stalls mixed with western brands crowding the marketplace that you can easily lose your bearings if you’re not careful.

…I picked up a so-called “Rolex” that I thought my friend would love, and examined it while the shopkeeper promised to make me a good price.

“Is it real?” I asked, jokingly.

“If you cannot tell the difference,” she asked, “does it matter?”


Listen to learn more about

• Four Treasuries Project – an entire library of books, meant to gather a comprehensive record of Chinese history, philosophy, and literature. 
• The creation of the Beijing Opera, a complex art from that combines song, dance, acrobatics, mime, acting, elaborate makeup and costumes, telling stories of romance, war, heroism and villainy. 
• How the performance of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Tokyo by Chinese students brought western theater styles to China.

  The full show notes can be found at https://www.mydarkpath.com/season1episode9

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Luis Ribeiro was dumped on the side of a road, his body filled with bullets. John Tillman’s high-flying, globe-trotting adventure ended with him dying alone after years in a prison cell. Leonardo Notarbartolo barely had a moment to celebrate his success before his diamond district apartment was traded for a cold, dark cage.

Their heists practically stand as works of art in themselves – the product of intense discipline, creative thinking, and strokes of brilliance; they show a sort of daring that captivates, even inspires.

But there’s always the aftermath. The paranoia. The punishment. The violence of the world you wanted to escape coming to claim you. It seems like the money is never the reward.



 The full show notes can be found at https://www.mydarkpath.com/season1episode8

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John Glenn. Alan Shepard. Scott Carpenter. Gordon Cooper. Gus Grissom. Deke Slayton. Wally Schirra. These are the names of the members of the Mercury Seven— America’s first astronauts, charged with the task of being the human faces of a massive collective effort to beat the Soviet Union in a race to space. And, of course, charged with the task of actually manning the rockets that could take them higher than man had ever flown before.  

The Soviets Union had their own astronauts, or more accurately, cosmonauts.  Their story, especially the most famous among them, Yuri Gargarin, is fascinating, in part, because their story has many parallels to our own American astronaut program, but also because of the differences.  Some subtle, some glaring.  The differences make their story poignant, something to be understood and appreciated, if only to understand what is true about the human condition. Listen to learn more about

• Early space projects in the United States and the Soviet Union, including Sputnik, Mercury, and Vostok and key leaders like Sergei Korolev.
• The life of Yuri Gargarin, including his childhood in Klushino, his education, interest in flight, recruitment and training as a cosmonaut.
• The first non-humans in space, including Albert I, Albert II from the United States plus the Soviet space dogs, Tsygan, Dezik and the most famous Laika.
• The launch of Vostok 1 and Yuri Gargarin’s mission.  Insights about his instant global celebrity, his fall from Soviet grace and his controversial death in a flying accident.

The full show notes can be found at https://www.mydarkpath.com/season1episode7

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Amid the astonishing destruction of World War II in Europe and Asia, the mainland of the United States had been spared from the ravages of this global conflict.  While several isolated attacks took place on the coasts, the dictators in Berlin & Tokyo sought super weapons to use against the US. 

For Japan, one of these super weapons came in the form of the Fu-go balloon project that involved launching 9,000 explosive laden balloons from Japan to the US. Listen to learn more about

• The earliest scientific discovery of the jet stream.
• The anxiety of the American population in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Niihau Incident, and the I-17 submarine attack on Santa Barbara.
• The Battle of Los Angeles.
• The origins of the camps where the US government interned Japanese-Americans.
• The Japanese Fu-go strategy and why the US government kept this audacious attack secret at the end of the war.
• The origins of the U.S. Army 555th Parachute Battalion, the Triple Nickles.
• The Firefly Project, where the Triple Nickles became the first smoke jumpers, suppressing the fires caused by the Fu-go balloons.

The full show notes can be found at https://www.mydarkpath.com/season1episode6

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