Radiolab - A Clockwork Miracle

Episode Date: December 27, 2018

As legend goes, in 1562, King Philip II needed a miracle. So he commissioned one from a highly-skilled clockmaker. In this short, a king's deal with God leads to an intricate mechanical creation, and Jad heads to the Smithsonian to investigate.  When the 17-year-old crown prince of Spain, Don Carlos, fell down a set of stairs in 1562, he threw his whole country into a state of uncertainty about the future. Especially his father, King Philip II, who despite being the most powerful man in the world, was helpless in the face of his heir's terrible head wound. When none of the leading remedies of the day--bleeding, blistering, purging, or drilling--helped, the king enlisted the help of a relic...the corpse of a local holy man who had died 100 years earlier. Then, Philip II promised that if God saved his son, he'd repay him with a miracle of his own. Elizabeth King, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, describes how--according to legend--Philip II held up his end of the bargain with the help of a renowned clockmaker and an intricate invention. Jad and Latif head to the Smithsonian to meet curator Carlene E. Stephens who shows them the inner workings of a nearly 450-year-old monkbot.  This episode was reported by Latif Nasser.  Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate. 

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W-N-Y-S. See? See?

Yeah. Hey, everybody, Chad here. This is Radio Lab. Happy holidays. This is the first of two releases we're going to drop this week. Both come from the same dude, the irrepressible Latif Nasser. Latov has been working with Radio Lab for about nine years. years first as a contributor and then we brought him on staff full time. And he has told you

stories about the racial barriers and professional ice skating badminton. We brought you the three-part border trilogy, a story about nuclear chain of command. It's working on something really cool for 2019, which we'll be bringing you soon. And yeah, we have two lottifs for you for you this week. A couple of days we're going to actually send you a conversation that Lathif had about how he finds the weird, peculiar stories that he seems to always find. He has a really interesting set of techniques that he goes through. He wrote this article about it. It went sort of viral. So we're going to bring you a conversation where he goes through some of that stuff.

But today, I thought I'd play the very first story that Lato did for us. This goes back ways. at the time he was a grad student at Harvard and he'd written us an email saying hey are you guys into old robots like robots that are a few hundred years old and then he had a whole list of them like for example picking up with the story

I've heard rumors whispered by Soren mostly about a pooping duck oh so the pooping duck is really famous actually the duck wasn't really eating and pooping but they had like a store of like pre-pooped duck poop. I don't know what it was. It looked like duck poop, maybe. And you would feed this robot

duck and then watch it actually poop? I mean, all you see is you see sort of this in and this out. And people believed it? People thought this was a pooping duck. So we talked about a bunch of these ancient robots and both of them were kind of funny. But then he told us about one in particular

that was... Actually, it was kind of haunting. Yeah, it's not poopy at all. So the year is 1562. This is 450 years ago. So long after Columbus. Ferdinand and Isabella are dead and there's a new king of Spain. Philip.

Philip, yeah. And he has a son. The 17-year-old crown prince, his name's Don Carlos. And one day, he's in the royal lodgings. He's walking down a flight of stairs. He trips, he falls, he bashes his head against a door near the bottom of the stairs. This is the crown prince, you say? The crown prince of Spain.

So this is a national calamity. It is a national calamity because he's the heir apparent. Right. So, so, so, well, at first, it doesn't look like it's such a bad injury. He's still conscious. But then his head starts to swell to this kind of crazy size. He becomes delirious and feverish. He's struck blind. And so at this point, the king comes, right? This is King Philip the second. So he is at this time. He is the most powerful man in the world, right? So he basically controls the all of the Americas. He controls much of Europe. The Philippines is named after him. He was tight with the Pope. At this time, the Pope and the King were kind of like, you know, BFF. So the whole Spanish court is going nuts. Across the country, people are seeing this, reading this as a kind of sign that God's very angry. Right.

And so they're fasting. They're doing these kinds of prayer processions, things like this. And according to Latif, the King calls all the best doctors in Europe to come to Spain to help his son. And these doctors are trying everything. They are drilling a hole in his skull. To relieve the pressure? To relieve the pressure. They are bleeding him and blistering him,

and they are purging him to the extent that he has, like, 20 bowel movements within just, like, a certain few hours. They're, like, smearing all over the wound. They're smearing, like, turpentine and honey. Poor darn Carlos. But even after all of this, they sort of look at each other. They look at him, and it's kind of like, this is, he's going to die.

So he's dying? Yeah, he's basically on his deathbed. So, at this point, according to Lata, if the king goes to his son, legend goes that he kneels beside his son at his son's deathbed, and he makes a pact with God. The pact is, if you help me,

if you heal my son, if you do this miracle for me, I'll do a miracle for you. Wow, that's quite hubristic of a, of a, human being to say to God. Well, let's also remember that he's the most powerful man in the world at this point. He's a god among men, really. Yeah, he bristing or not, this is what he says. Yeah, okay.

All of a sudden, his son just gets better. Really? Within a week, he can see again. Within a month, it's as if he didn't fall at all. He just pops right back up? Yeah. And King Philip must have thought, oh my God, this is... Exactly, my God.

It's probably exactly what he thought. And when his son can finally speak, he says to him, Dad, you know, the weirdest thing happened when I was out. I had this dream. Oh, that's a great story. This is Elizabeth King. I'm an artist and a professor in the sculpture department at Virginia Commonwealth University. She's actually the one that hooked Latif on the story.

Yep. In any case, the dream. There are documents of Don Carlo next morning saying that he had had a dream. This vision that a figure in a Franciscan habit, shaved head, sharp nose, this marvelous monk, entered his room and approached his deathbed, holding a cross, and basically told him, you're going to be fine. And that's quite well documented. Apparently there was a witness in the room.

In the sick room, with him that night. Who overheard the prince talking to a ghost, sort of mumbling things, in his delirium. So Don Carlos has this dream. Suddenly he's fine. And the natural question that people are asking is, who is this monk? Yeah. I mean, is it just a generic monk?

Or is it somebody specific? Some messenger from God. And from his description. Physical description. The shaved head, the point he knows, the monk's habit. Piercing eyes. Even the kind of cross he was using, everybody in town, the king, everyone was like, oh yeah.

Like we know exactly who this guy is. Can only really be one guy. Kind of local friar who died 100 years before named Diego de Alcala. Diego de Alcala. Who is he? He is a local holy figure whose corpse was associated with a number of documented miracles. In fact, this guy was so holy in this town. Actually, not just in the town.

You want to know something? There's a bit of trivia. Ever heard of San Diego? California, you mean? Yeah, as in the Padres. Is this the same guy? Same guy. He was the patron saint of the people who founded San Diego. He is holy.

There you go. So he was so holy in this town that people believed his corpse, his 100-year dead corpse, had healing powers. And some people, there are different stories, but some people say that even they, these. That unbeknownst to Don Carlos, that night that he had the dream. The priesthood and the king himself, according to some stories, went and they got this corpse out of the church, out of the crypt. They carried it through the streets. They brought it to the bedroom. They literally put it. They sort of snuck it in bed with Don Carlos, and that's how he healed.

They didn't stick him in bed with his bones, right? They brought him into the room. There's different reports, but there's a picture of it in this engraving. Oh. And you probably can't see it, but look at this picture right here. She had a copy of a 16th century woodcut, showing you this scene where you could kind of see

oh wait so there you're like dunking him over the bed he's in bed the two men in bed together one guy who's alive barely and another guy who's been dead 100 years well they could be

you know they could be just laying him down okay it was caught in the middle meanwhile back to our story you got Philip the second who has asked God for miracle God came through

through this monk and now Philip the second is like uh oh I got to deliver King Philip the second owes God a miracle. That miracle after the break. Hey, this is Brian in Red Bluff, California. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,

enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. I'm Chad I boomrod. This is Radio Lab. Let's return now to our story from Latif Nasser, where we left off. It is 1562-ish. King Philip is on the hook. He knows he owes God a miracle. And he is acutely aware of this. So basically what he does is he enlists this really renowned clockmaker. A clockmaker? Yep, named Juanello Turiana.

A huge man, a big ox of a man, described as always being filthy and blustery and not a lot of fun to be around. But a great, great clockmaker. Certainly among the best. In Spain. Maybe the entire Holy Roman Empire. So the king goes to this guy and he says, look, I want you to make a mechanical version of Diego de Alcala.

What? A mechanical version of this 100-year-dead holy priest. Yes. Like a mechanical monk. A robotic padre. Yeah. Which, and this I did not expect, still exists. Now the monk body is in the Smithsonian, perfect working order.

No way. I swear, I swear that it's since 1977. No. Yeah. The first time I saw this figure, I was drawn to it and then repelled. That's Carleen Stevens. She is a curator at the Smithsonian in D.C. About a week after a lot to Phiney spoke, we ended up in D.C.

meeting with her, and she showed us the monk, who lives in a little glass case. What we have here is an automaton over 400 years old. Is this the first robot that we knew of? No. No, no, no. No idiot. The ancient Greeks had things that could be considered robots. Okay, back to our story, 450 some odd years ago, our clockmaker, what's his name?

Toriano. Toriano. He goes into his shop and he does whatever he does. Connects one gear to another, to another. For hours, weeks. months. No idea how long it takes, and I don't think anybody does. But he merges one day into the bright sunshine with, what did you call it? A robotic padre. Yeah. It's a 15-inch high made of wooden iron has the sort of habit, has the sandals, has the rosary, has the cross. And poking out of the top of

the habit is a little bald, hairless head with that sharp nose like a, like a razor. And the rather ferocious eyes. Like intense or like doing business ferocious? Well, like, I'm focused. I'm focused. Like maybe I'm only 15 inches tall, but I am focused on something much bigger than you, you human. So did you like turn it on or push something?

Yeah. Why would I get on a train and go for three hours just look at it? Obvious question. Okay. Do you wind it? Sure. Yeah. Okay.

Do it. So Carling takes us out into the hall. We sit down on the floor. She gives Latif a little brass. key, he sticks it into the secret slot in the monk's side. And I think it goes counterclockwise. You would tend to want to do it this way. And Lattif winds up the monk.

And I'm turning it counterclockwise and it's surprisingly sort of taught. How much should I turn? And so if you sort of wind up this sort of secret spring. I think there's a stop and it'll... Okay. All right, I'm going. I'm going. Put it on the ground.

Let him go. Give them a push. It'll walk very slowly. One foot after the other coming out from under the cassock. In fact, there's actually little wheels under there. But yet you see the feet coming out. The head is turning from right to left. The eyes are rolling in the head.

The mouth is opening and closing. As if it's sort of muttering like a prayer. The arms are in motion. One arm is raising and lowering across. The other arm is beating the chest. Wow. A symbolic gesture to a Catholic. That is called the Maya Calpa.

After three or four steps, the arm holding the cross does something new. It moves two different new directions to bring the cross to the mouth, and the figure kisses the cross. It's oddly like mesmerizing. Yes. Yeah. The next thing it's doing is that it's turning and moving in a different direction. and then walking its paces and kissing the cross. As we watched it, it turned once, then twice, then three times, four times, and then it got back to where it started.

So if you imagine a table with a number of people sitting around it, probably it's going to sort of, at one point or another, head for you, and then turn away and head for someone else and then turn away. Why would the King of Spain, who could have, you know, I don't know, built a church or taken a crusade to Jerusalem or done something, you know, he could have done anything? Why did he decide to commemorate his son's revival by making a little automatic doll? Like, what was that for? Yeah, Latif, what was he thinking? Yeah, it's a good question. That's the $64,000 question. It's a great question.

It's a really good question. The truth is, there's really no way to know for sure. As a historian, I got to rely on the documentation. And there's not a whole lot of that in this case. But one interpretation certainly could be that, you know, the king had this amazing, miraculous thing happened to his son. And now he had a way of sharing that with his subjects. Because he's got this device where it's an illusion. Like the machinery of it is completely hidden.

There's no visible. Yeah, that's one of the craziest parts. That it's all sort of hidden underneath the robe. So when he put it down on a table or in a courtyard, people would have seen it move on its own. They would have been amazed, as we were. And he could have said, look, here is the miracle. Look what God did for our country. God like Spaniards.

Yeah, look at what God did for. for Spain, which would have been a useful thing for a king to be able to say, right? Yeah. So that's one possibility. The other is it just on a more utilitarian level, this was a machine that was built to pray. And this was a period when you could buy prayer repetitions. So if you had the money, you could get someone to pray for you while you go do something

else. Oh, so cool. So you're covered. You're covered. And if you think about it from Philip's perspective, he needed to say thank you to God. And here he had this thing that if he wound up was an Ottoman. made a thank you machine. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Yeah, it could be thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Or it could be, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. It could also be, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Or it could be please, please, please, please, please. Whatever you need. But if you think about it more expansively, says Latif, like what did it mean at that time to be a Catholic? Like, what did it really mean?

Well, then this robot was maybe the best Catholic you could ever hope to be. What counted as prayer was quite specific in the sense that if you say the right things and do the right actions in the right order, in the right time and in the right place, sort of that's prayer. That's when God notices. So it's about method. It's about method. And maybe this monkey says was like method embodied. That's a good one. I mean, why not?

It is in fact perfect. It repeats itself over and over. and over and over and it replicates the ideal. So it's basically what it is, is a little teaching object. Like this is what you're aiming for. Here's how you do it. Like this is it. This is the perfect prayer.

The perfect prayer. This is doing it the perfect way every time. And I, because I'm just this, you know, lowly imperfect human, I'm not, I can only aspire to this perfect piety. Are you making this up or do you think that this might, the monk might have actually been seen this way. It could be true. I don't think it's so crazy. Especially if you think about what was happening at that moment. This is counter-Reformation Spain, right? Not so long after Luther, you know, is nailing his thesis on the wall. And there's this big debate raging about how actually do you get

closer to God? You have the kind of protesters with Luther who are saying it's not about, you know, works. It's not about saying something this many times. It's about whether you feel it. And then you have the kind of Catholic argument, which is to say, you do these rituals because these are the rituals. And these this is the way you get close to God. This is the way you pray. You pray like this thing. Just like this thing. And if you're a Catholic king

and if God's a Catholic and you better hope he is. And if you're Philip II, you look at the sky and you say God, you and me are square. There it is, early Latif Nasser. Thanks to him and to you guys for listening

and for making 2018 a year that as tumultuous as It was. Still contains a lot to be grateful for. And listen, we're raising money to produce Radio Lab in 2019. This is going to be our most ambitious year. We have a ton of new things planned, new series that we're going to be bringing you. But we need help getting them funded.

So if you dig Radio Lab, if you want more of it, go to RadioLab. Or click that donate button or text the word Radio Lab, no space, to 70101. That's the word Radio Lab to 70101. Thank you. We can't do this without you. Just a couple days, we're going to be sending you another a lot of situation, conversation that he and producer Rachel Cusick had about how lot to find stories. A bunch of techniques that I think we could all use in our lives, even if you're not doing the thing that we're doing, but you just kind of want to have more newness, more interestingness in your life. That's coming up soon. Until then, I'm Chad Ibramrod. Thanks for listening. And for supporting the show.

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