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Failure To Launch · 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 right
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  Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Truman Capode once said that
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  Speaker 1: failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. Well
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  Speaker 1: known failures include inventors like Thomas Edison, who claimed that no,
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  Speaker 1: he hadn't failed, he just found ten thousand ways that
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  Speaker 1: didn't work while developing the first practical incandescent lightbulb. Colonel
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  Speaker 1: Harlan Sanders had a long history of failed businesses throughout
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  Speaker 1: his life. After working on railroads in his younger days,
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  Speaker 1: he set out on his own, starting a ferryboat company, cafe,
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  Speaker 1: and a motel, all of which failed. Then, in nine
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  Speaker 1: with only his savings, a one five dollar Social Security check,
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  Speaker 1: and a secret chicken recipe to his name, he franchised
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  Speaker 1: his fried Chicken restaurant at the age of sixty five.
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  Speaker 1: But there are those who never get past their failure.
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  Speaker 1: Not only do they embrace their aversion to success, they
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  Speaker 1: celebrate it. Author Stephen Pyle wrote an entire book about
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  Speaker 1: humanity's inability to get out of its own way. In
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  Speaker 1: his nineteen seventy nine compendium The Book of Heroic Failures,
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  Speaker 1: one entry discussed a museum exhibit in northern England where
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  Speaker 1: an ancient Roman coin had been on display. The plaque
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  Speaker 1: beside the coin stated that it had been minted between
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  Speaker 1: a D one and a D one, and a big
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  Speaker 1: letter R had been stamped onto it. It would have
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  Speaker 1: been an impressive peace, but only if you worked for
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  Speaker 1: the Robinson's Soft drink company. The coin hadn't come from
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  Speaker 1: ancient Rome. It had been a plastic giveaway from a
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  Speaker 1: soda company to anyone who had collected enough bottle labels
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  Speaker 1: to earn one. Another ent re told the story of
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  Speaker 1: Desert Island Discs, a popular radio show in Britain during
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  Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. The concept was simple and I bet
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  Speaker 1: you can guess what it was. The host would ask
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  Speaker 1: us celebrity guests about the eight albums that they would
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  Speaker 1: take with them if they somehow found themselves trapped on
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  Speaker 1: a deserted island. Roy Plomley, the show's host, had been
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  Speaker 1: trying to get the novelist Alistair McLean to be a
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  Speaker 1: guest on the show. McLean had been the author of
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  Speaker 1: the bestselling novels, The Guns of the Navarone and Where
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  Speaker 1: the Eagles Dare, both of which had been turned into
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  Speaker 1: hit films. McLean wasn't one to do interviews, though, but
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  Speaker 1: in this case he agreed and met Plomley for lunch
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  Speaker 1: at the Civil Club, a private member's club in London.
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  Speaker 1: Their conversation started off with small talk and the two
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  Speaker 1: seemed to be having a good time. Then Plumly asked
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  Speaker 1: McLean about his writing process. McLean had no idea what
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  Speaker 1: he was talking about. Palmley then asked about one of
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  Speaker 1: his most famous novels, The Guns of the Navarone, but
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  Speaker 1: McLean had nothing to say. It's turns out that the
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  Speaker 1: man Plumbly had been talking to wasn't Alister McLean, the author.
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  Speaker 1: He was Alister McLean, the head of the Ontario Tourist Bureau.
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  Speaker 1: But Plomily, undeterred and unwilling to admit his mistake, invited
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  Speaker 1: Mr McLean back to the studio to record the interview anyway,
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  Speaker 1: which was never aired, of course, But perhaps the most
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  Speaker 1: egregious failure in the book came from the form of
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  Speaker 1: a special club started by the author himself. It was
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  Speaker 1: called the not Terribly Good Club. Of Great Britain and
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  Speaker 1: its members were some of the worst the country had
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  Speaker 1: to offer. According to his book, the club had been
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  Speaker 1: formed three years prior to publication, and its membership had
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  Speaker 1: skyrocketed from twenty to two hundred in that short time.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, the book itself arose out of the stories
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  Speaker 1: he heard during those early meetings. Their mission was simple
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  Speaker 1: to honor and celebrate people who had never found success
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  Speaker 1: and who demonstrated rank incompetence in their lives, and they
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  Speaker 1: were committed to this too. During an early meeting, one
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  Speaker 1: clumsy member knocked over a bowl of soup, but club
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  Speaker 1: president and author of the book, Stephen Pile, managed to
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  Speaker 1: catch the bowl as it toppled off the table, saving
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  Speaker 1: the soup and the meal. For his success, they forced
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  Speaker 1: him to resign as per the by laws that he
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  Speaker 1: himself helped. Right after his book was published, interest in
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  Speaker 1: the group grew and Pyle was forced to disband it
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  Speaker 1: for good. You see, he had included an application for
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  Speaker 1: membership in the not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain
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  Speaker 1: in the back of the book. Despite tossing it in
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  Speaker 1: as a joke, many who purchased the Book of Heroic
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  Speaker 1: Failures actually did fill it out and mail it in
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  Speaker 1: twenty thousand readers in fact, and by that measure, the
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  Speaker 1: club itself had become a success, and the book's rapid
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  Speaker 1: rise to the best seller status meant that Pyle had
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  Speaker 1: become successful as well. He wrote all about that in
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  Speaker 1: his second book, The Return of Heroic Failures. Even though
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  Speaker 1: he'd been unsuccessful at remaining unsuccessful, he'd succeeded in finding
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  Speaker 1: more stories of unsuccessful folks who had failed to succeed.
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  Speaker 1: And if you diagram all that out, connect the dots
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  Speaker 1: and be sure to carry the one. I think it
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  Speaker 1: means this plan was a big success or a failure.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not entirely sure. The Earth is essentially a living organism.
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  Speaker 1: Not only does it team with life on and below
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  Speaker 1: its surface, but the planet itself is constantly changing to
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  Speaker 1: either accommodate or to eradicate that which it needs to survive.
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  Speaker 1: As pressure builds up inside it, the Earth uses roughly
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  Speaker 1: nineteen active vents on its surface to relieve that pressure
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  Speaker 1: into the atmosphere. We know these events better as volcanoes,
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  Speaker 1: and they could be quite destructive. When a volcano erupts,
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  Speaker 1: it spews molten lava and ash, which can decimate the
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  Speaker 1: environment around it for miles. For example, there's a seven
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  Speaker 1: crack near yellow Stone National Park that was discovered in
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  Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen. It could indicate that a supervolcano is
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  Speaker 1: located beneath the park. Should it's erupt, it could devastate
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  Speaker 1: most of the United States. And that's the problem with
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  Speaker 1: many volcanoes. There are hundreds beneath the surface of the
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  Speaker 1: Earth that we can't see, yet we continue to build
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  Speaker 1: right on top of them, unaware of the danger that
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  Speaker 1: lurks below. Mexican farmer Dionysio Polido didn't know that there
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  Speaker 1: were any volcanoes in his village of part of Coutine, Mexico.
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  Speaker 1: Back in he'd begun his day by clearing out his
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  Speaker 1: corn fields on the morning of February. Spring was only
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  Speaker 1: a few months away, and it would soon be time
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  Speaker 1: to sow the next round of crops. During the previous week,
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  Speaker 1: he and others in the village had been experiencing mild
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  Speaker 1: underground tremors. The tiny earthquakes startled them at first, but
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  Speaker 1: people quickly grew used to them. He kept working hauleen
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  Speaker 1: shrubs from his corn fields to a safe location where
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  Speaker 1: they could be burned and disposed of. As the sun
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  Speaker 1: moved across the sky and the more learning faded into
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  Speaker 1: the afternoon. Polido also moved from one field to another,
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  Speaker 1: clearing brush and preparing the soil for spring. Then he
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  Speaker 1: noticed something that he hadn't before. A hill, small but
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  Speaker 1: definitely out of place, like something had whacked the earth
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  Speaker 1: on the head and caused a lump to form. Polido
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  Speaker 1: climbed to the top of the hill and looked down.
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  Speaker 1: A crack roughly one fifty feet long and six ft wide,
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  Speaker 1: ran along its top. The crack wasn't too deep, and
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  Speaker 1: Polido figured it was the result of the small quakes
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  Speaker 1: that had been happening in the area. Unfazed, he returned
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  Speaker 1: to his field. Later, he felt a loud rumble suddenly
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  Speaker 1: churned underneath him. Polido thought it was thunder, but there
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  Speaker 1: wasn't a cloud in the sky. Unbeknownst to him, a
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  Speaker 1: river of magma flowed beneath his feet, kicking up sulfur
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  Speaker 1: smell like rotten eggs. The fisher hissed and smoke arose
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  Speaker 1: from the gap. Polido finally ran to find his family,
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  Speaker 1: but found his farm empty. He jumped on his horse
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  Speaker 1: and out into town, where everyone had been waiting for him.
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  Speaker 1: Hours later, the small hill on Dionysio Polido's farm had
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  Speaker 1: grown even larger. In fact, one witness described flames that
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  Speaker 1: shot twenty six hundred feet into the air before raining
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  Speaker 1: down like fireworks from above. The next day, his farm
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  Speaker 1: had been taken over by a volcano over one hundred
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  Speaker 1: sixty feet tall. After a week, the cone was over
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  Speaker 1: three hundred feet tall. Ash clouded the sky and lava
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  Speaker 1: flowed from its opening. Over the course of eight months,
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  Speaker 1: the crack and Polido's farm had become a towering volcano
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  Speaker 1: twelve hundred feet tall, with a lava flow that threatened
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  Speaker 1: to engulf the entire village. But that wasn't all. The
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  Speaker 1: ash killed crops for miles around and resulted in dunes
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  Speaker 1: that spread with the wind. The village was evacuated as
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  Speaker 1: the lava took over and eventually swallowed the town of
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  Speaker 1: San Juan. All that remained was the church bell tower
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  Speaker 1: among the jagged landscape of volcanic rock. After about a year,
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  Speaker 1: the volcano seemed to calm down, though it it occasionally
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  Speaker 1: erupt every now and then. Scientists took its formation as
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  Speaker 1: an opportunity to study how Scoria cone volcanoes came into
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  Speaker 1: the world, which might say future towns and citizens from
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  Speaker 1: losing their homes or their lives. As for the poor
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  Speaker 1: farmer who lost his fields, well, he did manage to
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  Speaker 1: find the silver lining. He returned to the area that
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  Speaker 1: had once been his farmland, and he planted a sign
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  Speaker 1: in the rocky ground. It read this volcano is owned
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  Speaker 1: and operated by Dionysio Polido. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
• 9:42
  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 Lor dot Come
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  Speaker 1: and until next time, stay curious. H