What happens
Lindsey McCarry introduces a series of short visits with listeners, presenting odd historical facts and anecdotes. The first scene is set in a General Hospital corridor in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1938, where nurses and an intern discover that Aunt Mary, aged 92, is growing a new tooth. The program then moves through several brief stories: a Korean naval commander who builds an iron-plated warship during a war with Japan, the origin of the phrase mumbo jumbo, and a clerk named Charlie Powers whose new suit is stolen on a steamer trip to San Francisco. The episode closes with a discussion of how the hymn In the Garden shares its opening melody with the popular song My Gal Sal.
Knoxville, Tennessee hospital in 1938; sixteenth-century Korea and the Japanese invasion; western Sudan; a steamer and San Francisco in 1912; a radio studio introducing the series
Characters: Lindsey McCarry, Aunt Mary, Doctor Holmes, Lester, Yi Sun-Sin, Charlie Powers, Paul Dresser, Louise Dresser
Listen for: The first scene in the Knoxville hospital, where a nurse is startled to find Aunt Mary sprouting a new tooth
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.