On the Job

This is an iHeart podcast.

Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Just ask the Capital One Bank guy.

It's pretty much all he talks about.

In a good way, he'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast, too.

Oh, really?

Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

What's in your wallet?

Terms apply.

See capital1.com slash bank.

Capital One NA member FDIC.

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.

If you know a writer, odds are that they've complained to you about how hard it is to find time to actually write.

Crafting stories requires concentration, discipline, and often a decent amount of peace and quiet.

This has remained true ever since the first scholar put pen to paper.

And it's always remarkable where, throughout history, people have found the time and space to record their thoughts.

One of the most common places is in prison.

In the 13th century, for example, a Venetian man was captured by the Republic of Genoa and thrown into a cell.

The man in question, who had allegedly fought on the side of their enemies, was an explorer who had spent 24 years traveling from Europe to Asia.

During the months of his imprisonment, he told stories of his travels to fellow inmates, one of whom was was Rusticello di Pisa, an Italian scholar and author who'd been responsible for the first Italian versions of several Arthurian legends.

And together, the two inmates began to produce the first record of all the sites the Venetian had seen, the people he'd met, cultural knowledge that he had gained.

The subsequent work became a bestseller, an extremely influential work of travel writing.

Although the authenticity of its stories are often dubious, the explorer himself is still a household name, Marco Polo.

Now, his co-author, Rusticello, was not the only writer of Arthurian myths who spent significant time behind bars.

In 15th century England, a largely unknown man worked quietly behind bars while writing the most famous version of the Tales of King Arthur, the one that collates all the disparate stories into one grand narrative.

It would be called Lemorte d'Arthur, and within its pages it would contain scant hints of the author's identity.

A handful of asides refer to the author, Sir Thomas Mallory, as a knight prisoner who was fluent in both English and French.

These asides contain pleas for his health and safe deliverance, presumably from the prison in which he was being held.

Curiously, most of the pleas are in the third person, implying that they were added by the publisher, William Caxton, prior to printing.

Scholars still debate who Sir Thomas Mallory actually was, what kind of knight would find himself in prison, yet still respected enough to publish a work while behind bars?

And whether he was ever able to leave this prison is something that no historian has ever been able to definitively prove.

It's because of this mysterious man that every King Arthur story involves Excalibur, a quest to find the Holy Grail, and the doomed fall of Camelot.

Chivalry, it seems, would be on the mind of many a man behind bars.

A hundred years later, in the late 16th century, in a prison in Algier, a Spaniard sat quietly waiting to be ransomed back home to his country.

He had served in the Christian Spanish Navy, participating in famous sea battles against the Ottomans.

He had lost all movement in his left arm due to a battle wound, earning him the nickname the one-handed man of Lepanto.

His Navy career had been cut short when he'd been captured by pirates.

And while in prison, He attempted to escape four times, and each time he was unsuccessful.

But while his body remained in prison, his mind wandered far back to Spain, where he envisioned a nobleman who had a break with reality and decided to become a knight-errant, defying reality and seeking to live a life of chivalry.

And upon his release, Miguel de Cervantes went on to transcribe these ideas with his one good hand.

The resulting book, Don Quixote, is often referred to as the first modern novel.

Now, with all of that said, not every book written behind bars has been as universally beloved as these three works that I've just described.

Prison is also where the Marquise de Sade wrote his controversial book about hedonism.

It's also where Adolf Hitler wrote the Bitter Manifesto Mein Kampf, the text that inspired the Nazi Party, and its atrocities.

But all this speaks to a strange paradox.

Prison is where we put people to isolate them from society.

Whether justly or injustly, the punishment is to be removed from community with your fellow people.

And yet culture happens behind bars as well.

Even if they don't attempt to physically escape, a human being will always attempt an emotional escape from the cruelty and dehumanization of a penal institution.

The pen, it seems, is not just mightier than the sword, it's also a lot more flexible.

Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet, with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Just ask the Capital One Bank guy.

It's pretty much all he talks about.

In a good way.

He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too.

Oh, really?

Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

What's in your wallet?

Terms apply.

See capital1.com slash bank.

Capital One NA member FDIC.

This show is sponsored by American Public University.

American Public University is the number one provider of education to our military and veterans in the country.

They offer something truly unique, special rates and grants for the entire family, making education affordable not just for those who serve, but also for their loved ones.

If you have a military or veteran family member and are looking for affordable, high-quality education, APU is the place for you.

Visit apu.apus.edu/slash military to learn more.

That's apu.apus.edu/slash military.

If you've applied for a job recently, you know that there can be a lot of hoops to jump through.

Several rounds of interviews, mock pitches, and proposals, sometimes waiting weeks at a time to hear back from a recruiter.

Willie was put to the test when he went looking for a job as well.

He needed work and was eager to find something that played to his skill set.

The problem was that he was an unusual candidate for his job at the time.

So, his hiring managers gave him a test, but it was a little more dangerous than you might expect.

If he passed, he would get the job.

But if he failed, he wouldn't just miss out on the job.

He would end up dead in the street.

It was 1874 in a small mining town called Yankee Hill, Colorado.

A man named Willie Kennard stood outside the local saloon, his hand wrapped around the gun in his holster.

He took a deep breath and swaggered through the double doors that led into the main parlor.

Inside, the tables were full of men playing cards and drinking whiskey.

Someone plunked out a melody on a piano in the corner, but as people noticed Willie, the entire room fell silent.

Willie was a stranger in town and a black man, two things that made him an oddity in Yankee Hill.

But he didn't care.

He had a job to do.

But first, let's back up.

Earlier that day, you see, Willie rode into town to ask about a posting that he had seen printed in an issue of the Rocky Mountain News.

He was pointed to the local restaurant, Fat Sarah Palmer's Cafe, where four city councilmen were having their morning coffee.

Willie told the men that he saw their ad, saying that Yankee Hill was in need of a new town marshal.

The men looked Willie up and down.

One smirked and said that he was surprised that Willie could read.

The others burst out laughing.

The message was clear, though.

This must be some kind of joke.

When they finally collected themselves, the councilmen realized that Willie was serious.

So they made him a deal.

He could have the job, but first he would need to arrest an outlaw named Barney Casewit.

Now, Willie was vaguely familiar with Casewit.

He'd been terrorizing Yankee Hill for the last two years, and just a few months before, he had sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl named Bertie.

Her father tried to avenge her, but Casewit shot first, killing the man.

After that, the town marshal tried to arrest Casewit, but Casewit killed him too.

So Yankee Hill got a new marshal.

It only took three months for him to lock horns with Casewit, and pretty soon, the new marshal was added to his growing list of victims.

Yankee Hill got assigned a third marshal who promptly turned in his badge and ran out of town.

So at this point, it was proving difficult for the councilmen to fill the open position.

What they needed was someone who could successfully wrangle Barney.

Willie narrowed his eyes on a scruffy card player at a back table.

He knew it was Barney, and he walked over to his table to announce that he was under arrest.

Barney and his table full of cronies just cackled at him.

Barney almost choked on his own spit as he asked, I'm just supposed to come with you.

Where are we going?

Willie had been laughed at enough for one day.

He told Barney that he could choose, either jail or hell.

Now those were fighting words.

Casewit jumped up to his feet and quick as lightning, he moved to grab his Colt 45.

But just before he could draw the gun, Willie Kennard made an impossible shot.

He fired a bullet into Casewitz's still unholstered gun.

The impact knocked the butt out of Barney's hand and rendered the weapon useless.

Two of Casewitz's cronies tried to reach for their guns, but they were too slow as well.

Willie fired two more shots and hit both of them right between the eyes.

After that, nobody else came to Casewitz's defense, and Willie made his arrest.

When he delivered the prisoner to the councilmen, They were shocked, to say the least.

And when word got around about his expert gunslinging, the whole whole town wanted to know Willie's story.

He told them that he had been a corporal in the Civil War and in a company made up entirely of black volunteers.

After the war, he served in the Army for another five years, and during that time, he was an arms instructor and built a reputation for being one of the best gunslingers in the West.

It was enough to convince the councilman that Willie deserved the job.

He became Colorado's first black marshal and by most accounts, was well respected by the people of Yankee Hill.

After all, Willie had ended a two-year reign of terror, and his new neighbors were forever grateful to the man who freed them from Barney Casewitz.

Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about 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.

Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet, with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Just ask the Capital One bank guy.

It's pretty much all he talks about.

In a good way.

He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast, too.

Oh, really?

Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

What's in your wallet?

Terms apply.

See capital One.com/slash bank.

Capital One NA member FDIC.

This is an iHeart podcast.