Mural High Ground

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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.

I have this idea.

Art is a lot like Isaac Newton's third law of motion.

Just hear me out for a second.

As the law states, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The forces of motion push and pull at each other, and in the same way, artistic movements exist in tension with themselves.

You cannot have modernism without postmodernism as an essential counterbalancing force.

And in that regard, consider the historical significance of art in relation to totalitarianism.

Every time a state uses art as a means of control, oppression, or propaganda, they cannot fully contain how that will reverberate in the greater artistic world.

Oppressive art can birth art that is in its very form an expression of rebellion.

In 1934, Maxim Gorky proposed an artistic artistic philosophy that would become known as socialist realism, as an artistic expression of the new Soviet Union.

The works in this field would celebrate the state and the party for the people.

It was supposed to be a movement, but it would become a doctrine.

The form of the work became the way in which the art was supposed to look in Soviet Russia.

And naturally, it provoked a response.

The generation that came later birthed the so-called 60ers, artists, writers, and thinkers who came to prominence in the 1960s.

Their work actively defied socialist realism in form and content.

Many of these artists were socialist politically, but had become disillusioned with life in the USSR.

Their interpretation of left-wing values was not strict adherence to the Communist Party line.

It was an artistic expression.

Enter Alehorska.

She was the Ukrainian daughter of a Soviet film executive, and she would grow to resent the repressive politics of Stalin's Russia.

She started painting when she was young, earning praise and recognition for realistic works.

But ultimately, she grew away from the style, growing increasingly fond of traditional Ukrainian art.

Her later works favored bold colors and abstract fantastical designs, work that was in direct defiance of Soviet realism.

In Kiev, she freely experimented with mediums, paints, murals, stained glass windows, you name it.

Her apartment became a popular meeting place for 60-year gatherings.

By the mid-1960s, the KGB was keeping tabs on all of these artists.

Their work was defiant in spirit as well as in form.

One of Allah Horska's early stained glass windows was destroyed before it could be exhibited for the way that it depicted Mother Ukraine as a sorrowful presence under the yoke of Russia.

Her phone would be tapped and many of her friends arrested or killed.

Horska's work for the Ukrainian underground had only just begun.

She provided shelter to enemies of the USSR, attended anti-government protests, supported her colleagues who had been sent to labor camps, and all of this while continuing to produce bold artwork that celebrated the unique culture of Ukraine.

Horska, however, didn't escape persecution for long.

In 1970, she vanished without a trace.

Her body was later found in her father-in-law's cellar.

Her father-in-law, meanwhile, had been found dead on some nearby railroad tracks.

It was supposed to look like a suicide after he had killed her, but everyone knew the truth.

This was the KGB attempting to silence a public opponent.

But if the intent was to silence her, it was ineffective.

Her funeral later that December turned into a massive protest against the communist regime, and her name joined the ranks of martyrs for the cause of Ukrainian liberty.

And then there's her artwork, those murals, paintings, and portraits.

They outlived the USSR and many still remain in treasured museum collections all across Ukraine.

Their value comes from the indomitable voice she represented, someone who fought for persecuted people with every tool she had available to her.

Art is a curious thing.

It is inherently political.

No matter how escapist it aspires to be, art exists as an expression of culture, and culture is a cumulative thing, something that can't be forced onto a nation against the will of its people.

And Russia today clearly realizes this, as during the war in Ukraine, several of Alahorska's pieces have been destroyed by invading forces.

But it's 2025, and artistic practice exists farther than just one physical space.

Destroying Horska's murals does not erase them from cultural memory or the digital copies taken by people who have seen them.

Art is as ephemeral as an emotion, and both are indestructible.

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The winds were lighter than usual as Tommy Tumberlin climbed skyward over the island.

The 26-year-old part-time flight instructor kept his hands off the controls, letting his student in the front seat, 24-year-old Jimmy Duncan, get used to piloting the small two-seat airplane.

It was a clear morning with only light clouds and great visibility.

You couldn't ask for a better day to fly, and Tommy was enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face through the glass cockpit window.

Glancing down, he saw another plane parked on a small runway.

It had botched its landing, rolled off the gravel into the grass, where it had gotten stuck.

The two pilots, a young man and a woman, were struggling to push it back onto the runway.

The woman looked up, saw Tommy's plane, and waved.

That had to be Marguerite, another young flight instructor who worked with Tommy.

She wouldn't be happy about the delay, which would put her behind schedule for her next student.

Tommy did not envy her.

He'd hate to be grounded on a morning like this.

He waved back and then instructed Jimmy to bank right and follow the island's northeastern shore.

A few minutes later, they were soaring over rocky cliffs when a flash caught Tommy's attention.

He turned to see two bright red lines streaked toward him.

The plane shuddered as something punched through the rear fuselage.

Jimmy shouted in surprise and Tommy whirled around searching the skies in a panic.

He saw another flash and heard the sharp burst of machine gun fire.

Someone was shooting at them.

Tommy didn't think.

He grabbed the stick, taking control of the plane back from Jimmy, and he dove.

Now, Tommy wasn't a military pilot in a warplane.

He was a 26-year-old civilian in a slow, cheap, hobby aircraft made of wood and canvas, but he knew that he'd have a better chance of evading an attack by flying low.

As long as he stayed close to the waves and the cliffs, anyone dive-bombing him from above would be forced to pull up to avoid a crash.

When he was just 50 feet above the water, Tommy leveled out.

He glanced back to see two sleek metal fighters close on his tail.

They fired again, and Tommy rolled, turning into the island.

They had to get out of the sky as soon as possible, and that meant cutting across the island to the civilian airport on the southwestern harbor.

But as he banked in that direction, he let out a groan of despair.

Dark clouds blocked his path.

A rain squall had appeared over the mountains, cutting off the quickest path back to the airport, and that left only one option.

With the fighters still close on his tail, Tommy plunged toward a canyon, cutting through the jungle.

It was a risky play.

The pass was notorious for powerful gusts that could throw his injured plane into a tailspin.

But Tommy gritted his teeth and pushed ahead, skimming just eight feet above the trees.

His knuckles turned white as he fought with the controls.

The plane trembled with every dip and turn, but the tailwind was in his favor today, rocketing him through the pass at breakneck speed.

The fighters finally peeled away, unwilling to follow so close to the jagged cliffs.

Tommy barely noticed, though, his focus locked on the narrow strip of sky ahead.

Then the trees fell away and the sky opened up and he was through.

Tommy let out a breath that he'd been holding on to, but his relief was short-lived.

As he emerged from the pass, the whole island unfolded before him.

The sky was filled with hundreds of planes, all bearing the red circle of the rising sun.

They swarmed over the island's many military buildings, strafing runways and bombing aircraft carriers.

Fires burned along the shores as dark smoke billowed up from the naval base at Pearl Harbor.

You see, Tommy's plane was one of six civilian aircraft in the sky when the Japanese Naval Air Force descended on Hawaii that Sunday.

Tommy and his student passenger made it to the airport in one piece, although the plane was riddled riddled with bullets.

Not all the other civilian pilots were so lucky.

The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt told the world what had happened on December 7th, 1941, a day that would live in infamy.

And one that, as Tommy Tomberlin learned firsthand, was a very curious day to fly.

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 the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.com.

The 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 all about it over at theworldoflore.com.

And until next time, stay curious.

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