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Short Stuff: The Coconut Cult · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: There's other Josh who's basically fast becoming. He's gunning at
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Jerry's heels. I would say, Chuck. When't you agree? Well,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I think at the very least he's the new Frank
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: the chair. For sure. He may soon be the new bird,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the bobbing bird. Oh that's right. Yeah. At any rate,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: we're glad Josh is here, and we just almost two
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: inanimate objects. Exactly. We just ate up about a third
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: of our time. So let's we're gonna have to remove
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the ending from this one. Okay, Yeah, this one is
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: interesting because I read the original New York Times piece
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: from nineteen o five or whatever, la la very different
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: than the story we get here in a lot of ways.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: So I can't wait to who knows, Let's just I'll
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: just point out what the New York Times article said
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: compared to what we have in front of us. Do
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: it like a cranky I T guy when I say something,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: just be like wrong? Well, who knows? It is New
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: York Times, But I don't know what There's andreds were
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: like in nineteen five. I don't know either, right, Um,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: So there's this this article from How Stuff Works that
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: we found um does a really good job of of
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: of placing this in context in the world and saying
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: that in Sanskrit, the word for coconut is kalpa vershka,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: which means tree which gives all that is necessary for living,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: which is a mouthful. I mean, that says a lot
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: about what you're saying about the coconut. You're saying, you
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: don't need anything else but this one tree. That's how
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: great this tree is. Yeah, and that's also just a
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: slightly fancier way than saying Webster's defines a little blank
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: a little bit. It's it's definitely fancier, for sure. It's
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: it's got like cursive everywhere. But the whole point is it,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: coconuts m m are pretty fun and good to eat
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and offer a decent amount of nutrition. It is it
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: turns out that the sans Christs were saying is quite wrong,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: like it's not everything you need. You couldn't just subsist
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: on coconuts. And there was actually a guy who was
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: born in eighteen seventy five named August Engelhardt who who
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: basically proved that inadvertently it wasn't his intention to prove
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: that the Sanskrit term was wrong, but um, he actually
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: took it to heart, um and and tried to live
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: exclusively on coconuts because he believed that all you needed
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: was coconuts and sunlight. And uh ended up living on
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say deserted island, but certainly a
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: sparsely populated island. Um living and dying there to to
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: spoil the ending. Yeah, yeah, this is uh interesting mostly
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: to me because it was when it happened. He was
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: born in eighteen seventy Like, if this happened in the
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventies would be like, sure, of course this happens
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: all the time. But this guy was born in eighteen
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: seventy five in Germany, and then after college sort of
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: became uh well there's a lot of debate and whether
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: or not he was mentally ill, but regardless of that,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: he became very much into the Laban's Reform, which is
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: life reform movement. Basically what you would think of these
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: days is like a very sixties hippie American thing they
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: were doing, I guess in Germany in the you know,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: early twentieth century. Yeah, I took it to be kind
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: of like a prototype for Goop, for who for Goop,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Gwyneth Paltrow's site. Oh good lord, Yeah, that's that's kind
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: of I mean, like raw foods, alternative medicine. There was
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of crossover between what this guy believed and
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: what you could find on like some of the sites
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: that Coop endorses and coop itself, especially if you take
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: into account this book that he wrote, Um, it sounds
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: a lot like the advice that Goop offers these days.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: You got sand Coop Coop so in he wrote a book,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: uh called a care Free Future colon the New Gospel Semicolon.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: That's rare glimpse into the depth and distance for the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: selection of mankind, comma comma for the reflection of all
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: comma for consideration and stimulation. And he should have just
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: put an exclamation point at the end, just over all spaces.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: He missed that Oxford comma after consideration though. But it
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: was a kind of a cookie book. He talked about life,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: his lifestyle and what you know he believed his version
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: of the Laban's reform was. And then he also wrote
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: poems about coconuts. Yeah, like mother Coconut, The Coconut Spirit,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: How to Become a Coconut. Those were titles of some
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: of the poems and tracks that he included in this book.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: And like, it's really hard to overstate just how much
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: faith this guy placed in the coconut as the source
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: of not just life but health. And um it was based.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: It was based on some somewhat unfounded ideas. So it
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: tied in very much with an idea that he had
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: that the sun was the source of all life in
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the universe, and that coconuts grew on coconut palms um
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: toward the top, just like the brain in the human
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: head does. And since the brain is closest to the sun,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: coconuts are closest to the sun. Ergo the coconut can
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: care for the brain and everything else you need in life.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: And um, that was it. Yeah, that probably would have
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: been the end of his story had he not had
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: a substantial amount of money. Uh. I was about to
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: say donated, but I guess he inherited it from a relative,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: so he had some cash. All of a sudden, he
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: bought a hundred and eighty five acres of land on
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: a tiny little island called kabakan Um off of Papa
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: what is now known as Papua New Guinea, and he
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: took a long books, got rid of most of his
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: clothes and went out there and lived um by himself.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Well not by himself because there uh, there are indigenous
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: peoples in the area, but he was certainly the only
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: white German there right. And his whole jam was that
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: he he had either heard or figured out that that
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: humans had evolved in the subtropics, between Tropic of Cancer
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and Tropic of Capricorn. And that's what we were basically
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: evolved too, That's where we were evolved to be. So
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: the idea of living in like a house and driving
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: a car eventually, I don't know if cars were invented yet,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: but I'm sure this guy prefigured them. Um. The idea
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: of just basically living in a boxing, cubicalized, stuffy life.
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  Speaker 1: It was and athetical of how we were designed by
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: evolution or natural selection or even God if that's your bag, right,
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  Speaker 1: And so he moved to this island so that he
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: could wander around naked, walking under the sun, eating coconuts,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: living how This guy genuinely believed humans were meant to live.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: And from what I can tell, he fully expected to
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: basically be free of all disease and any kind of
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: terrible condition living this way. But that's not the way
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: that it ended up at all. No, because, first of all, coconuts,
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  Speaker 1: you cannot live on coconut alone. Um. They do have
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of good stuff in there. They have good
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  Speaker 1: carbs and fat and stuff like that, but they lack
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of vitamins, notably B twelve, B six A K,
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  Speaker 1: calcium um and protein. There's a little bit of protein,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: about three to three grams or so, uh, but that's
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: that's not very much protein. So if you're gonna eat
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: enough coconuts to supply your body, and he was about
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: five ft eight, didn't weigh a lot and weighed increasingly
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  Speaker 1: less as time went on, Obviously he would have had
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: to been eating, you know, between fourteen and eighteen coconuts
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: a day. That's a lot of coconuts. But I mean,
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  Speaker 1: if that's all you're doing, if you're wandering around naked
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  Speaker 1: on an island, reading some books, you got time to
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  Speaker 1: eat fourteen to eighteen coconuts a day. So he could have,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: but it's not clear that he knew he needed to
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: eat that amount. And it's also not clear that he
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: would have responded to that information. So he didn't and
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: he started to wither away, which, as you said, um,
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  Speaker 1: probably would have been the end of the story had
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: this guy actually not managed to convince other people through
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: his book and then through correspondence with them to come
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: join them. And so people started to show up on
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  Speaker 1: this island. And we'll talk about what happened after that
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: after this. Alright, So this this is where the New
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: York Times story has diverged already. Okay, they wrote an
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: article and everyone, if you don't know that The New
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: York Times has pretty much every article they've ever written,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: uh scanned online. It's kind of great. Yeah, it's uh.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: So there was an article failure of a womanless Eden
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: in the Pacific Dash, a strange story from the South seas.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: As the New York Times tells it, only two people
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  Speaker 1: joined the Sona Norton cult the Order of the Sun
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  Speaker 1: cult um. This article that we have says, and I'm
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: inclined to go with ours, because you know, investigative journalism
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: has gotten better since nineteen UM. But the New York
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Times set a boat showed up in the end that
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: he was thought was going to be full of like
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: twenty people and there was only two guys. Uh. The
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: rest of the people got worried that the island was
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: full of cannibals and decided not to show up. Which
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: if that's wrong, it sounds like it was completely made
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: up by the by the writer, because our thing says
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: that about fifteen people showed up, uh and took their
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  Speaker 1: clothes off, and we're basically like, let's do this. Um.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: They did agree on the two two dudes though one
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: one guy's name was Einrich Yukin's. He was four years old,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: he was a vegetarian, and he was away down with this, uh.
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  Speaker 1: And the other was very famous person actually um or
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: at least medium famous in Germany at the time. Um,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: that's a lot of qualifiers. His name was Max Lutzow
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  Speaker 1: and he was a concert pianist and eventually conductor of
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: the Lutzeu Orchestra in Berlin. Right. So, so Yukin's and
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: lets ou basically showed up, from what I understand, and said,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: we're here, Um, we're very enthusiastic for this. Let's see
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: some coconuts. They took their clothes off, they started to
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: live this way. Um. But there were two big problems
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: for for um Yukon's It was that he his body
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: did not take to this diet despite from what I understand,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: being a vegetarian, if not a vegan ahead of time. Right, Still,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: the coconuts got him. Maybe had an allergy, maybe he
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: got too much sign who knows, but he died. This
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: article from how Stuff Works puts that he dropped dead
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: within weeks of showing up and starting this this coconut subsistence.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: New York Times confirms that, okay, good, all right, so
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: we've got a fact. We've we've unearthed the fact here too.
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  Speaker 1: It's double double sourced, um unless our house stuff Works
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: article used that New York Times as a source. That's
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: how facts get generated. And then the other guy loots
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: out the conductor. He was doing fine and apparently he
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: got along with um August angel Heart, the leader of
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: this cult. But um he also they had they had
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: varying tastes in music, and that actually created a bit
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: of tension between the two. Yeah, apparently, let's out. I'm
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: sorry Inglehart hated but Set. I think let's love but Set.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: And it says that lets brought his music collection. The
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: only thing I can figure is that he brought over
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: he was a violinist as well. That he brought a violin,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know. He could have probably one of those
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: cranky gramophones maybe, you know, or maybe a bird with
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: a beak like Flintstone style, or maybe a person dressed
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: like a bird who could take direction really well. Yeah,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: maybe he did bring records. Uh, I mean, Augus Inglehart
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: brought books. He could certainly bring a crank up record player.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: So maybe that's what happened. But they they got the
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: way The New York Times described it as they started
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: getting into arguments about music. Uh. And because it was
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: just the two of them, according to that article, it
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: you know, it's gonna get a little crazy after a while.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: And looks I was like, I don't want to spend
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: the night hit next to you tonight. Um And he
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: applied for permission, supposedly with Inglehart, to go spend the
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: night on a missionary boat that was nearby. Um at
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: one of the other it was a bunch of islands around,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: and I guess Inglehart granted him this. He went on
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: board this boat, he spent the night. He would refuse
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: to eat any of the food that they had and
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: apparently there was a storm that prevented him from getting
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: back to his coconut paradise, and he died. Yes, he died.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: And if there were so, if two people showed up
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: of the visitors died, but even if there were more
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: in this house stuff works articles, right, because this guy
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: carried this guy, August Engelhardt, he carried on even after
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: these two deaths, um for more than a decade beyond
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: that that New York Times articles. So maybe more people
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: showed up afterward, and that accounts for the discrepancy. But
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: as this how stuff Works article tells it, um, more
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: people showed up, More people died from things like the hydration,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: heat stroke. Um. And then this one, this is tough
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: to swallow. If it is true, then there is a
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: creator God who does take pleasure in and and messing
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: with us. But somebody died from being hit by a coconut.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Somebody in the coconut worshiping cult died from being killed
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: or died from a coconut injury. Which happens, Sure it does,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: it does, But I mean imagine traveling from Germany in
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: the nineteenth century early twentieth century, showing up to eat
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: nothing but coconuts and then dying because of coconut hit
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: you on the head. Pretty ironic. It is pretty ironic.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: So um August Engelhardt himself died too, but he hung
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: on for a really long time, considering he had the
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: true grit of somebody who really would have just eating
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: eaten coconuts. From what I can tell, yeah, I mean,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: there are some pictures, some rare photos at the time
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: from people who, uh, I guess we're nearby, and he
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: he looked awful. He looked like he would expect someone
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: to look. They describe him as a bearded bag of bones.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: There were lesions on his body. It was clear that
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: he was suffering from severe malnutrition. As the New York
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Times tells it, he eventually was one of these missionary
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: boats came and got him and literally wrestled him onto
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: a boat, where he fought them physically as best he
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: could while they tried to care for him. It's probably
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: not not much now, until he jumped off the boat
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: to swim back to the island where he died. According
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: to our article and perhaps further you know, more accurate research,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: he he did go on that boat. He was kind
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: of nurse back to semi health and then left again,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: went back to the island. Um survived until nineteen fourteen,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: and then because of World War One, he was captured
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: as a prisoner of war. Released from camp when they
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: realized he was mentally ill, They're like, wait, what is
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: this about coconuts? You're saying uh? And he carried on
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: apparently until nineteen nineteen, when he died at the age
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: of forty four, weighing less than seventy pounds. So this
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: guy did this for like maybe years ish, Yeah, I
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: mean eighteen years. That's impressive. Man. Hats off to this
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: guy for that level of commitment. So that's the story
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: of August angle Heart. You can learn more about him
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: on How Stuff Works. They wrote this article. I also
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: want to just throw my two cents in and say
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: I would put pretty decent money on the idea that
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: angle Heart spent at least a significant amount of time
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: married to a coconut on the island probably, so uh.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Well with that, everyone, we bid you adieu from short Stuff.
• 16:15
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