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Bird Brain · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the cabinet of curiosities. Livestock never fares well
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  Speaker 1: in a tornado. I think many of us remember that
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  Speaker 1: iconic scene in the movie Twister when a cow moves
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  Speaker 1: across the screen as it's carried away in a funnel
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  Speaker 1: of wind and debris. But tornadoes and the creature is
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  Speaker 1: caught up within them can teach us a few things
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  Speaker 1: about the wind and the way it moves. That was
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  Speaker 1: the thought mathematician Elias Loomis had in eighteen forty two,
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  Speaker 1: after hearing reports about naked chickens. Yeah you heard me right,
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  Speaker 1: naked chickens. Farmers in Ohio had noticed their poultry walking
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  Speaker 1: around without their feathers following a tornado that tore through
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  Speaker 1: their town, and it happened enough that folks didn't really
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  Speaker 1: think anything about it. Loomis saw the featherless foul as
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  Speaker 1: an opportunity to measure a tornado's wind speeds, a feat
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  Speaker 1: previously thought impossible. Keep in mind this was the forties,
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  Speaker 1: well before animal rights organizations monitored how scientists use living
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  Speaker 1: creatures in their studies. Elias Loomis had a hypothesis and
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  Speaker 1: almost no oversight. I'm sure you can see where this
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  Speaker 1: is going. Loomis killed a chicken and launched its body
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  Speaker 1: out of a small cannon, clocking in at a top
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  Speaker 1: speed of over three forty miles per hour. The bird
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  Speaker 1: flew high and far, leaving in its wake a cloud
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  Speaker 1: of feathers and enough meat to make a few chicken nuggets.
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  Speaker 1: Tornadoes must spin at a slower rate, he thought, and
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  Speaker 1: continued his research unfod Sinately, his test proved unsuccessful. The
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  Speaker 1: technology being what it was at the time, he was
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  Speaker 1: unable to gather enough data on just how quickly tornadoes turned,
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  Speaker 1: nor their effects on the local livestock. It wasn't until
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  Speaker 1: over a century later when Bernard, an atmospheric scientist at
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  Speaker 1: Suny Albany, took a closer look. Bernard had spent his
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  Speaker 1: early career at General Electric researching the atmosphere. He discovered
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  Speaker 1: the effects of what happened when silver iodide was injected
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  Speaker 1: into clouds. They formed ice crystals, and Bernard thought he
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  Speaker 1: might be able to use this to control precipitation. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: his work is still used today by cloud seeding companies
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  Speaker 1: that can produce rain on demand in drought stricken areas.
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  Speaker 1: After he left ge Bernard went on to work for
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  Speaker 1: Arthur D. Little, the company that helped create the word
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  Speaker 1: processor and the Nasdaq stock exchange, which eventually led him
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  Speaker 1: to the University of Albany. It was there where he
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  Speaker 1: learned about Elias Loomis's research on wind speed and naked chickens.
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  Speaker 1: Bernard wasn't sure Loomis had been on the right track,
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  Speaker 1: but technology had advanced to the point where new research
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't need to harm animals in the process, so he
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  Speaker 1: took a crack at it himself. He dropped some chickens
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  Speaker 1: into a wind tunnel, the kind they used to test aircraft,
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  Speaker 1: and then turned it on and it worked well, sort of.
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  Speaker 1: The chickens lost plenty of feathers, but inconsistently, and not
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  Speaker 1: enough to classify them as naked. They were honestly just
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  Speaker 1: sort of patchy and ran around clucking angrily. It didn't
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  Speaker 1: take long for Bernard to realize that chickens made terrible
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  Speaker 1: gauges of wind speed, but that didn't stop him from
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  Speaker 1: earning an ig Nobel Prize. In no not a Nobel Prize,
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  Speaker 1: an ig Nobel Prize ignoble get it. It's a satirical
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  Speaker 1: award given to ten bizarre or benign achievements in scientific research.
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  Speaker 1: Bernard one for his paper Chicken Plucking as measure of
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  Speaker 1: tornado windspeeds. Bernard's work also found its way into popular culture.
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  Speaker 1: His research of ice crystal formations and clouds became the
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  Speaker 1: basis for the substance ice nine in Kurt Vonnegut's nineteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty three novel Cat's Cradle. It turns out Vonnegut had
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  Speaker 1: worked as a publicist for General Electric in the late forties,
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  Speaker 1: so he knew all about Bernard's work. Even though he
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  Speaker 1: didn't have a college degree himself. Ge hired Kurt to
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  Speaker 1: help advertise the company's scientific breakthroughs. To be honest, any
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  Speaker 1: other applicant as unqualified as Kurt Vonnegut would have been
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  Speaker 1: turned away at the door. But he had two things
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  Speaker 1: working in his favor. First, he lied. He told Ge
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  Speaker 1: that he held a master's degree in anthropology from the
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  Speaker 1: University of Chicago, which he most certainly did not. His
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  Speaker 1: other advantage was that he had a little help from
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  Speaker 1: the inside. It turns out that his brother already worked
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  Speaker 1: for Ge where he worked as an atmosphere scientist. His
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  Speaker 1: brother Bernard Vonnegut. Before Atkins, before South Beach, before jazz Er,
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  Speaker 1: Size and Soul Cycle and Tibot, there was Battle Creek Sanitarium,
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  Speaker 1: founded in eighteen sixty six in Battle Creek, Michigan. The
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  Speaker 1: sanitarium wasn't a mental health facility like we're used to
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  Speaker 1: seeing today. Back then, the word sanitarium was a variation
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  Speaker 1: on the word sanatorium, which came to define a health
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  Speaker 1: resort for injured soldiers. It had been owned and operated
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  Speaker 1: by the Seventh day Adventists, the denomination of Protestants who
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  Speaker 1: believed in healthy living straight from the Good Book. No meat,
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  Speaker 1: no shellfish, and definitely no alcohol or tobacco were allowed.
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  Speaker 1: It was strict, but some people believed it was also beneficial.
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  Speaker 1: Strangely enough, not a whole lot of people went for
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  Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Battle Creek started small, with no
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  Speaker 1: more than a hundred patients in the beginning, but when
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  Speaker 1: Dr John Harvey arrived at the turn of the century,
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  Speaker 1: he wanted to change all of that. Under Dr John's leadership,
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  Speaker 1: he quickly grew the sanitarium's meager attendants from one hundred
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  Speaker 1: to over seven thousand patients, with a staff of over
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  Speaker 1: eight hundred assisting at any given time. He turned Battle
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  Speaker 1: Creek into a well oiled machine dedicated to making lives
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  Speaker 1: better for a nominal fee. Of course, John was himself
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  Speaker 1: a Seventh day Adventist, and as part of his theology,
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  Speaker 1: believed strongly in the churches, pushed towards vegetarianism and away
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  Speaker 1: from sin. In order to achieve the latter, he developed
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  Speaker 1: what was referred to as a bland diet, consisting mostly
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  Speaker 1: of yogurt's, nuts, peanut butter, and starches. A bland diet
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  Speaker 1: was the key to abstinence in his mind, brought on
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  Speaker 1: by the lack of stimulation of the taste buds. Patients
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  Speaker 1: at Battle Creek were also encouraged to take part in
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  Speaker 1: various activities to aid in their recoveries, in light therapy,
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  Speaker 1: afternoon marches around the premises to assist with digestion, and
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  Speaker 1: even regular enemus. John believed the root of all evil
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  Speaker 1: in the body was bacterial toxins, and his combination of
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  Speaker 1: a bland diet with rigorous exercise was meant to help
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  Speaker 1: clear all of that nastiness right out. While he ran
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  Speaker 1: Battle Creek, John filed patents for several inventions that would
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  Speaker 1: help those who stayed there, including a radiant heat bath,
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  Speaker 1: massage tools, and exercise equipment. He made numerous strides and
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  Speaker 1: medical devices under what he called physiotherapy, but there was
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  Speaker 1: something missing, something from the other side of the equation.
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  Speaker 1: He'd done all he could for the patients physically, but
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  Speaker 1: now he needed to revolutionize their diets. The idea had
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  Speaker 1: come to him in a dream one night. It was
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  Speaker 1: for a new kind of bread, one that would be
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  Speaker 1: easier to chew at breakfast when people had just woken up.
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  Speaker 1: The following day, John walked down to the kitchen and
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  Speaker 1: mixed a dough made of wheat, oats, and corn. What
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  Speaker 1: came out wasn't very appetizing, and he left it there
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  Speaker 1: for a few days while attending to sanitarium business. When
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  Speaker 1: he came back, the mixture had hardened and John almost
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  Speaker 1: threw it out, But then he had another idea. Rather
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  Speaker 1: than waste all of that food, he rolled it out
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  Speaker 1: and baked it, and what he ended up with were
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  Speaker 1: crispy little flakes. John had stumbled onto something big here.
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  Speaker 1: So big it would go on to spawn an entire
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  Speaker 1: new category of food, the breakfast cereal. It just so
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  Speaker 1: happened that John Harvey Kellogg had invented corn flakes. But
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  Speaker 1: the story doesn't end there. Just when Kellogg's corn flakes
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  Speaker 1: had hit the sanitarium's breakfast tables, a down on his
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  Speaker 1: luck businessman sought out Dr Kelly to help cure his
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  Speaker 1: chronic health problems. This businessman, inspired by the doctor's delicious
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  Speaker 1: new breakfast cereal, returned home with ambitions of his own.
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  Speaker 1: While his first product, a serial beverage called post Them,
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  Speaker 1: didn't do so well, his sophomore endeavor was a huge hit.
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  Speaker 1: It was called grape Nuts, named for the fruity aroma
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  Speaker 1: given off during the manufacturing process, and its creator C. W.
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  Speaker 1: Post had inadvertently kicked off what would be known for
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  Speaker 1: decades as the serial wars. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
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  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
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  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
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  Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the world of Lore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious. H