In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll look at the strange phenomenon of poet doppelgängers — at least five notable poets have been seen by witnesses when their physical bodies were elsewhere.
We’ll also share our readers’ research on Cervino, the Matterhorn-climbing pussycat, and puzzle over why a man traveling internationally would not be asked for his passport.
Sources for our feature on poet doppelgängers:
John Oxenford, trans., The Autobiography of Wolfgang von Goethe, 1969.
G. Wilson Knight, Byron and Shakespeare, 2002.
Julian Marshall, The Life & Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1889.
Jon Stallworthy, Wilfred Owen, 2013.
W.E. Woodward, The Gift of Life, 1947.
The stories are recounted in the corresponding posts on Futility Closet: Goethe, Byron, Shelley, Owen, Powys.
Listener mail:
Little House of Cats has a photo of Cervino, the (purported) Matterhorn-scaling kitty cat of 1950.
The Daily Mail has photos of Millie, Utah mountaineer Craig Armstrong’s rock-climbing cat. More at Back Country.
Further data on cat rambles:
BBC News, “Secret Life of the Cat: What Do Our Feline Companions Get Up To?”, June 12, 2013 (accessed March 26, 2015).
National Geographic, “Watch: How Far Do Your Cats Roam?”, Aug. 8, 2014 (accessed March 26, 2015).
This week’s lateral thinking puzzles are from Kyle Hendrickson’s 1998 book Mental Fitness Puzzles.
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Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.
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