Welcome to AirNManky'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.

Giovanni Casselli wanted nothing more than to talk to people.

His only problem is that the people he wanted to talk to lived very far away.

Perhaps that was why he became a Catholic priest, so he could have a direct line to someone

else very far away.

Born in Sietta, Italy in 1815, Casselli may have arrived a few hundred years too late

for the Renaissance, but he certainly grew into quite the Renaissance man.

In addition to getting ordained in 1836, he also studied history, science, and literature.

Casselli eventually transitioned from being a student to being a teacher.

He tutored Italian aristocrats in parma for several years before his exile to Florence

for political activism.

He soon took a job as a physics professor at the University there.

Casselli soon became entranced by the sciences.

His own teacher, Leopoldo Nobili, taught him about subjects like electromagnetism and

electrochemistry.

Casselli took it upon himself to adapt those lessons into a journal he called The Recreation,

which was meant to distill such complicated science into a more accessible form.

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