This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

Every country has its heroes, people who, for better or worse, embody a sense of national pride and spirit.

These sorts of figures, whether they're heads of state or just powerful public speakers,

are put on pedestals by history books, almost mythologized while they're still alive.

It becomes easy to believe that if they succeed, their country will as well, and if they

fail, so will their country.

And of course, it becomes difficult to contend with the fact that these people, like every other

politician, are just as human as you or I, prone to the same flaws,

the same failures, and the same mundane vulnerabilities. Despite the pedestal we've put

them on, they aren't figures out of Greek myth. And for a particularly beloved head of state,

an immense amount of public effort would be put toward making sure that his eventual death

was properly commemorated.

This was the case with Sir Winston Churchill, who came out of the Second World War with a

reputation as a war hero, someone who had led his country to victory against the evil of the Nazis,

and had prioritized protecting the pride of England even during the worst of the Blitz.

No prime minister before or since

has held the same stature and culture. However, Churchill was not a healthy man. He drank

like a fish, smoked like a chimney, and battled illnesses regularly over the course of his career.

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