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Dairy Air · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grim & Mild.
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  Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history
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  Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: William was fascinated by lying. As a Harvard Law student
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  Speaker 1: in the mid-1910s, he wondered if it would be possible
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  Speaker 1: to invent a machine that could discern whether someone was
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  Speaker 1: telling the truth with 100% accuracy. That would make the
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  Speaker 1: whole need for criminal lawyers and lengthy trials obsolete. This
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  Speaker 1: search for truth would lead him down a road with
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  Speaker 1: a completely unpredictable destination. He invented a machine known as
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  Speaker 1: a systolic blood pressure deception test, which recorded changes in
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  Speaker 1: the user's blood pressure which he believed showed if they
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  Speaker 1: were lying or not. He began to promote the machine
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  Speaker 1: in the halls of justice, while also gaining a doctorate
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  Speaker 1: in psychology. While at school, he met his wife, Elizabeth,
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  Speaker 1: who got her own law degree in an era when
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  Speaker 1: that was very difficult for women. Both William and Elizabeth
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  Speaker 1: were strongly influenced by the feminist movement of the 1910s,
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  Speaker 1: which advocated for a new woman who could do anything
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  Speaker 1: that a man could do. In 1922, Williams sought to
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  Speaker 1: prove the accuracy of his machine by using it on
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  Speaker 1: an accused murderer then on trial. He believed the accused
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  Speaker 1: was innocent based on the machine's results, but lack of
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  Speaker 1: acceptance of the machine in the scientific community led the
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  Speaker 1: judge to throw out this testimony. It was a huge embarrassment,
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  Speaker 1: and adding insult to injury, he was also fired from
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  Speaker 1: his professorship shortly after. He eventually got a new job
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  Speaker 1: as a professor at Tufts University in Boston, where he
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  Speaker 1: met a young woman named Olive Byrne. He was immediately
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  Speaker 1: taken by her heights and her good looks, and the
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  Speaker 1: two began an affair. And he still tried promoting his
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  Speaker 1: lie detector machine wherever he could, including at Olive's sorority parties,
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  Speaker 1: where girls would put each other through strange initiation rituals,
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  Speaker 1: including tying each other up, wrestling, and submitting to William's
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  Speaker 1: lie detector test. And look, there's a lot that wasn't
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  Speaker 1: good about William. Obviously, he wasn't faithful, that much is clear.
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  Speaker 1: But he was also bold. And so when he came
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  Speaker 1: clean to his wife Elizabeth about the affair, he told
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  Speaker 1: her that Olive could either move in with them, or
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  Speaker 1: he could just leave and start a new life with her.
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  Speaker 1: And Elizabeth, ever the new woman, agreed to the arrangement. Now,
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  Speaker 1: from that point on, the three lived together. William even
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  Speaker 1: had two children with Elizabeth and two with Olive. They
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  Speaker 1: just told the public that Olive was their live-in nanny
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  Speaker 1: and William and Olive couldn't legally marry, but he did
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  Speaker 1: give her some gold bracelets as a sign of his love.
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  Speaker 1: But while this unconventional home life had settled down, his
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  Speaker 1: career was still full of ups and downs. He sold
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  Speaker 1: his services to various motion picture companies, claiming he could
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  Speaker 1: use his machine to gauge whether audiences were entertained by
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  Speaker 1: a movie or not. But ultimately, the studios preferred other,
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  Speaker 1: more reliable machines. His career remained a mess, but a
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  Speaker 1: huge break was about to come his way, one that
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  Speaker 1: would change his life and American culture forever. Maxwell Gaines
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  Speaker 1: was the boss at All American Publications, one of the
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  Speaker 1: companies that would eventually become DC Comics. Its affiliated publishing
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  Speaker 1: line was already dominated by male heroes like Superman and Batman,
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  Speaker 1: but the company was coming under fire, as was the
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  Speaker 1: entire comics medium. Concerned parents thought that comics full of murder, kidnapping,
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  Speaker 1: and torture weren't suitable for their children. Gaines insisted that
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  Speaker 1: the stories were about good triumphing over evil, and that
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  Speaker 1: his characters set a moral example. But he needed a
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  Speaker 1: professional to help him sell that angle. And so he
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  Speaker 1: hired William to act as a psychological consultant, using his
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  Speaker 1: expertise to make sure the comics had a positive impact.
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  Speaker 1: He just never expected what form William's consulting would take.
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  Speaker 1: William's advice was that the company should publish a comic
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  Speaker 1: with a female character, one who could soften their image
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  Speaker 1: and distract from the blood-curdling masculinity of other comics. Gaines
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  Speaker 1: thought that this was as good an idea as any,
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  Speaker 1: but he wanted William to write the comic. Not once
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  Speaker 1: who ever turned on a job, William got to it,
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  Speaker 1: crafting a character who he thought would actually serve as
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  Speaker 1: propaganda to make American citizens more comfortable with the new
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  Speaker 1: type of new woman that he was married to. His
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  Speaker 1: character had Elizabeth's curves, but Olive's heights and gold bracelets.
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  Speaker 1: She hailed from Paradise Island, which was inhabited only by women.
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  Speaker 1: She used a lasso of truth, which, unlike William's test,
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  Speaker 1: always worked. And she sometimes used the lasso to tie
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  Speaker 1: up her enemies, just like those sorority girls that Williams
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  Speaker 1: had met. Oh, and that character's name? Suprema, the Wonder Woman. Ultimately,
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  Speaker 1: his editor suggested that he just shorten it to something
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  Speaker 1: more familiar and easy to say. Wonder Woman. And of course,
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  Speaker 1: the rest is history. William Moulton Marston contracted polio in 1945.
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  Speaker 1: Cancer soon followed, and he died in 1947. Curiously, Elizabeth
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  Speaker 1: and Olive continued sharing a home until Olive's death in 1990,
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  Speaker 1: having raised their four children together. They were the real-life
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  Speaker 1: women who helped inspire an icon. Deep underground in Missouri,
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  Speaker 1: nestled inside cold, dark limestone caves, lies a treasure trove
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  Speaker 1: of some of the most precious resources owned by the U.S. government.
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  Speaker 1: These caves are lined with shelves and shelves of solid
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  Speaker 1: golden blocks of American cheese. Yes, actual cheese. More than
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  Speaker 1: a billion pounds of it, kept reasonably fresh by industrial refrigeration.
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  Speaker 1: The question of why the government has so much cheese
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  Speaker 1: stockpiled in underground caves is has a very complicated answer,
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  Speaker 1: and it goes all the way back to the 1970s
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  Speaker 1: when the government had to clean up some of its
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  Speaker 1: own spilled milk. In 1977, the dairy industry was struggling,
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  Speaker 1: and there were shortages of milk products all across the nation.
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  Speaker 1: To address this problem, President Jimmy Carter poured $ 2 billion
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  Speaker 1: into helping dairy farmers increase their production. And it worked.
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  Speaker 1: A little too well. Suddenly, dairy farmers were producing far
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  Speaker 1: more milk than the American public knew what to do with.
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  Speaker 1: If the farmers couldn't sell all this milk to someone,
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  Speaker 1: their revenue would tank and the industry would be in
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  Speaker 1: even deeper trouble. So the U.S. government had no choice
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  Speaker 1: but to buy up the extra dairy themselves. What exactly
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  Speaker 1: does a national government do with hundreds of millions of
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  Speaker 1: pounds of milk? Well, no one was quite sure. To
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  Speaker 1: buy themselves some time to figure it out, they processed
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  Speaker 1: the milk into cheese— so that it would have a
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  Speaker 1: longer shelf life, and then tucked it away in warehouses
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  Speaker 1: all over the country. But soon, there was also too
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  Speaker 1: much cheese. The government had no idea where to put it,
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  Speaker 1: much less what to do with it. It was produced
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  Speaker 1: for efficiency, not taste, and its slimy texture and questionable
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  Speaker 1: flavor made it too unpalatable for any consumers to actually
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  Speaker 1: want to buy. And so the government began giving it
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  Speaker 1: away to the elderly and low-income families in the country.
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  Speaker 1: who literally couldn't afford to turn it down. Government cheese
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  Speaker 1: quickly became a staple in urban housing projects and struggling
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  Speaker 1: small towns alike. A whole generation of working-class children grew
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  Speaker 1: up on the five-pound orange blocks that materialized, as if
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  Speaker 1: by magic, at their local food banks. But no matter
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  Speaker 1: how fast the government gave it away, the stockpiles were
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  Speaker 1: barely going down. They needed a storage solution before it
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  Speaker 1: all went moldy, and they found it in an unlikely place.
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  Speaker 1: You see, there are more than 7,000 underground limestone caves
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  Speaker 1: in the Midwest, primarily in Missouri. As an Illinois boy,
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  Speaker 1: I distinctly remember going on a family trip to Merrimack
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  Speaker 1: Caverns in Missouri. Many of them had been formerly used
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  Speaker 1: as mines, but were now sitting vacant with plenty of
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  Speaker 1: space to store the metric tons of cheese that had accumulated.
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  Speaker 1: And these caves were easily converted into massive refrigerated warehouses.
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  Speaker 1: And even after the initial cheese surplus waned in the 1990s,
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  Speaker 1: The caves continued to be used to store the government's
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  Speaker 1: excess dairy, as well as food products for a variety
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  Speaker 1: of commercial companies. Today, the U.S. has 1.4 billion pounds
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  Speaker 1: of cheese stockpiled, although there is no public data on
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  Speaker 1: exactly how much of it is currently stored in underground caves.
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  Speaker 1: If a national dairy shortage were ever to occur again,
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  Speaker 1: you can rest assured we've got milk. I hope you
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This
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  Speaker 1: show was created by me, Aaron Manke, in partnership with
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  Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim & Mild team,
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  Speaker 1: and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show
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  Speaker 1: and the people who make it over at grimandmild.com slash curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of
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  Speaker 1: Curiosities hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well
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  Speaker 1: as ebook and audiobooks. And if you're looking for an
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  Speaker 1: ad-free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories,
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  Speaker 1: but without the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn
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  Speaker 1: more and sign up over at patreon.com slash grim and mild.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.