Welcome to Erin Mankie's Cabinet of Curiosity's, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm

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.

It's not often that art imitates life.

In his 1889 essay, The Decay of Line, Oscar Wilde penned the phrase,

Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

To Wilde, art had the power to alter our view of the world around us.

Even our choices and behavior can be informed intentionally or not by the art we consume.

For example, when a criminal is placed under house arrest and is forced to wear an ankle monitor,

they can thank Spider-Man.

A judge in New Mexico got the idea while reading a Spider-Man comic strip in 1977.

He noticed the wall crawler was wearing a tracking beacon on his arm thanks to one of his enemies.

The judge took the idea to an engineer who helped develop the first ankle monitor for law enforcement.

The British version of the show House of Cards, as well as the novel that inspired it,

took place in a world after Margaret Thatcher had resigned from office.

The novel was released in 1989 while Thatcher was still in power.

The television show came out a year later, and Thatcher herself resigned as Prime Minister only months after that.

Some think it struck a bit too close to home.

Alexander's story was different.

...