Lore 298: Almost Alive

Lore

Aaron Mahnke

History, True Crime

4.6 • 46.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sometimes the more terrifying creatures we encounter are the ones we created ourselves. Don't let their antiquity fool you, though; artificial life isn't always pleasant.

Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson.

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For the curious, here are some links to the various contraptions mentioned in today's episode. Seeing them in action is truly powerful!

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Oscar was in love.
0:11.1	It was 1912 when the Austrian painter met Alma Mahler,
0:15.3	the widow of composer Gustav Mahler.
0:18.0	And from the moment they met,
0:19.3	their romance was a whirlwind of chaos and passion.
0:23.2	Later, Alma would say of those times, they were a battle of love, never before have I tasted
0:29.2	so much hell and so much paradise. But all battles end sometime, and after three tumultuous years,
0:36.8	Alma broke things off. Oscar was heartbroken,
0:40.3	but hey, at least he handled the breakup in a totally normal, reasonable way, by commissioning
0:45.7	a life-sized, anatomically correct doll of his girlfriend. Please, he wrote to a puppet maker in Munich,
0:53.1	make it possible that my sense of touch
0:55.4	"'will be able to take pleasure in those parts
0:57.6	"'where the layers of fat and muscles
0:59.5	"'sudently give way to a sinuous covering of skin.
1:03.2	"'The skin must be peach-like in its feel.
1:06.0	"'There mustn't be seams in any places
1:08.0	"'where you have reason to believe it will offend me,
1:12.1	"'reminding me that the fetish is nothing but a wretched ragbag. Yeah, uh, let's just say this isn't even the creepiest
1:18.8	soundbite from those letters. I will let you imagine the rest. And so Oscar waited eagerly
1:25.1	for his doll to arrive. But when it did, he was horrified.
1:29.5	Instead of peach-like skin, the doll maker had fashioned the woman out of swan pelts, complete
1:35.0	with feathers.
	...

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