A Simple Kiss

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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio 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 Curiosities.

Smedley Butler was an American hero, one of the greatest military leaders in its history.

Born in 1881, he came from a high-class family in Philadelphia.

then joined the Marines at a young age.

From 1898 to 1931, he served with distinction.

Butler fought on multiple continents too, always furthering America's interests.

He installed new governments in Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras.

He was awarded multiple medals of honor, and the Marines even incorporated his name into a song.

By 1933, Butler had retired and consigned himself to furthering the interests of veterans in the United States.

He felt the Veterans Administration was poorly run and that the veterans deserved greater compensation for their service.

Well, one day, Butler was contacted by a member of the American Legion, a guy named Gerald McGuire.

The American Legion is an organization of veterans who advocate for themselves.

So Butler was happy to meet with McGuire.

But their meeting went differently than Butler expected.

Maguire offered him tens of thousands of dollars to recruit more members to the Legion and to give speeches speaking out against the presidency of FDR.

Butler was shocked at his proposal and turned it down right away.

He didn't believe in speaking out against the president like that.

He felt he owed him his loyalty.

Butler's goal was to try and work with the government to do right by veterans, not to cause animosity between them.

Maguire accepted that the speech wasn't going to happen, and then he spent the next few months traveling in Europe.

Butler was surprised to receive postcards from him.

It was strange that this man that he barely knew was so adamant about keeping in touch.

When Maguire returned from Europe, he reached out again again and asked for another meeting with Butler.

Butler was either trying to be nice or was genuinely curious why Maguire was so desperate to work with him, so he agreed to the meeting.

And this time Maguire laid out his cards on the table.

He revealed that he was being funded by an organization of powerful business interests, with members including executives from the likes of J.P.

Morgan, General Motors, Phillips Petroleum, and General Foods.

They had sent him to Europe to learn what he could about how the veterans organizations in those countries were able to influence their governments.

But this wasn't simply because these businessmen wanted to help veterans in America.

No, they wanted to use those veterans to overthrow President Roosevelt.

They didn't like Roosevelt's socialist New Deal policies.

They felt that he cared too much about the common man and not enough about big business.

They believed that the veterans were an untapped private militia who could be used to carry out their desires.

During his time in Europe, Maguire learned how veteran militias in France, Germany, and Italy had overthrown their presidents and helped to install right-wing and outright fascist leaders.

Maguire and his bosses wanted Butler to lead the American Legion in doing the same thing in the United States.

Maguire was sure that Butler, who had spent his whole life furthering the cause of a strong America, would help the businessmen in their coup.

He couldn't have been more wrong, though.

Butler, in fact, harbored immense guilt for what he had already done in the Marine Corps.

All those countries that he supposedly helped, he would later write that he actually destroyed their democracies and installed dictators.

He even enslaved some of their people to work on American building projects.

He said that the American government claimed to be furthering democracy in these countries, but it was actually destroying them so that American banks, oil companies, and food companies could profit.

Butler was not about to help those same companies instigate yet another fascist coup in the place that he had supposedly spent his life defending.

He went to the press first, then Congress, telling them everything.

But this time, he wasn't hailed as a hero.

The press was owned by many of the businessmen he was blowing the whistle on, and they all said that his story was ridiculous.

And while Congress investigated and agreed that there had been a plot, they refused to prosecute any of the prominent men involved.

Gerald Maguire, by the way, mysteriously died the following year.

It took decades before historians started to lend more credence to Butler's story.

But even today, the powers that be have an interest in keeping the story hidden.

The plotter's descendants remain powerful and influential.

Banks like JP Morgan are making more money than ever.

And one plotter raised a political dynasty with both his son and grandson becoming president of the United States.

That banker, Prescott Bush.

Coup or not, it's hard to disagree with Butler's ultimate goal: our soldiers are heroes deserving of honor and support, not pawns in a game of power, especially when that game is played at home.

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Once upon a time, there was a city split straight down the middle, literally sliced in two by a wall of concrete and barbed wire.

On one side, you had state surveillance, brutalist apartment blocks, and the relentless hum of authoritarian control.

On the other, a sprawling, chaotic urban jungle where rules and social norms were flaunted, where basic utilities rarely worked, and where anything was possible.

I'm talking, of course, about Berlin.

During the 1970s, the city was the epicenter of the Cold War.

It stood like a scar across the heart of Europe, divided between the democracy-loving West and the Soviet-controlled East.

When you walked in its streets, you could feel the tension of the whole world pressing in.

Armed soldiers manned the wall at all hours, prepared to shoot anyone who tried crossing from east to west.

Families that had called the city home for generations were split up, separated not by distance, but by ideology and steel.

But despite all of that, or maybe because of that, Berlin had a strange allure that you couldn't find anywhere else.

There was an honesty to its ugliness, almost like the conflict that normally existed beneath the surface had been made tangible.

It had a magnetic energy, and soon West Berlin became a haven for artists, punks, poets, and painters, all crammed into squat houses, chasing meaning and beauty against the backdrop of oppression and tragedy.

And that's the kind of place it was when Dave arrived.

Dave was a music-loving, 30-year-old, soft-spoken Englishman with sharp cheekbones and a quiet intensity.

He kept mostly to himself, renting a small apartment above a car repair shop and walking the cities for hours, by day or by night.

He looked like a tourist, but Dave wasn't just passing through.

Like so many creatives, he had come to Berlin looking for inspiration and a place to think.

He wound up finding more than he bargained for, though.

When he wasn't out walking, Dave spent his days writing music.

Sometimes alone in his apartment, sometimes in a grand, eerie recording studio that had once been a Nazi ballroom, now repurposed into a creative sanctuary.

The studio sat just 500 yards from the Berlin Wall, and when Dave looked out its window, he could see the soldiers on the other side.

Working there, walking the streets every day and seeing the impact of a Cold War filled Dave with a melancholy.

And that was a big problem because Dave was right in the middle of a new song and it was meant to be anything but brooding.

The music was already finished, and it was powerful, stirring, and uplifting in a way that would demand a triumphant story to match.

The chords rang rang like a declaration, but the words would not come.

He stared at the blank page for hours, but every time he tried to imagine something hopeful or inspirational, it just struck him as false.

Well, one afternoon in mid-1977, Dave just locked himself away in the studio, determined that for better or for worse, he was going to finish that song.

After crumbling up yet another sheet of paper, he happened to glance out the window.

The view was the same as it always had been, but this time something different caught his eye.

Across the street, just in front of the wall, he saw a man and a woman locked in a kiss.

The guards stood a short distance away, armed and watching, but the lovers didn't care.

And that's when it clicked.

Dave sat back down, picked up his pen, and started to write.

The lyrics that flowed out of him weren't about overthrowing governments or storming barricades.

Instead, he imagined two lovers, one from East Berlin and one from the West, meeting in secret and spending a single day together.

It was hardly a revolution, just the story of two ordinary people living their lives.

But after his time in Berlin, Dave thought that that kind of simple humanity carried its own kind of heroism.

Once he got started, the words came quickly.

The lyrics didn't quite match the triumphant music, but to Dave, that just made it better.

It felt honest, like the city he had come to love.

He finished his album and left Berlin soon after.

But a decade later in 1987, he came back to play a concert right next to the wall.

The Cold War was still very cold, but the city felt different.

Thousands gathered in West Berlin, dancing, shouting, and singing.

And just across the divide, people in East Berlin gathered to listen.

They huddled against fences and climbed on the rooftops, straining to hear the music.

And when Dave sang that song, the one born from a stolen kiss, it was like all the heartache the city had been feeling was let loose.

That night, riots broke out on the eastern half of the city.

East Berliners clashed with the police while chanting, the wall must fall.

The Soviets moved swiftly to crush the disobedience, arresting over 200 people, but the spark had been lit.

Over the two years that followed, the riots and protests continued to escalate until November of 1989, when the Berlin Wall was finally torn down.

The song, of course, did not bring it down on its own, but it did create a crack, one of many, that eventually broke through.

And in case you're wondering, that song was called Heroes.

And Dave, well, you know him better as David Bowie.

I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.com.

This show was created by me, Aaron Mankey, in partnership with How Stuff Works.

I make another award-winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show.

And you can learn learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com.

And until next time, stay curious.

This show is sponsored by American Public University.

Balancing work, family, and education isn't easy, but American Public University makes it possible.

With online courses, monthly start dates, and flexible schedules, APU is designed for busy professionals who need education that fits their lives.

And affordability matters too.

APU offers the Opportunity Grant, giving students 10% off undergraduate and master's level tuition, helping you reach your goals without breaking the bank.

Plus, they provide career services and 24-7 mental health support at no extra cost.

Visit apu.apus.edu to learn more.

That's apu.apus.edu.

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