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Wild at Heart · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: In October of nineteen twelve, the survivors of the British
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  Speaker 1: Antarctic Expedition set out to find their lost comrades, who
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  Speaker 1: had been missing for months after a journey to the
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  Speaker 1: South Pole. Winter was over and the terrain was crossable
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  Speaker 1: once more. They didn't have to search for long. They
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  Speaker 1: found the remains of their compatriots camp only eleven miles
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  Speaker 1: from their own base camp. There were logs detailing how
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  Speaker 1: they had become stuck in a blizzard and eventually all perished.
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  Speaker 1: But there were also samples, samples taken from glaciers never
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  Speaker 1: before visited by humans. No, these samples didn't contain alien
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  Speaker 1: life forms, but they did contain the remnants of ancient
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  Speaker 1: terrestrial life, and that life had a story to tell,
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  Speaker 1: the story of a breakup not between two people, though,
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  Speaker 1: but between two continents. Two hundred million years ago, in
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  Speaker 1: the early Jurassic period, there was a super continent in
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  Speaker 1: the southern Hemisphere the scientists referred to as Gondwana. If
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  Speaker 1: you stood in the exact center of it, you would
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  Speaker 1: be treated to quite a view too. Dense jungles dotted
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  Speaker 1: the valleys and mountains. Smoking volcanoes simmered quietly on the horizon.
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  Speaker 1: Massive dinosaurs of all kinds were abundant, making the land, sea,
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  Speaker 1: and air their home. Today, though we call this central
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  Speaker 1: part of Gondwana Antarctica. Even then it was a distinct area,
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  Speaker 1: but it was land locked amongst its fellow future continents
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  Speaker 1: like Australia, Africa, and South America. Of all of these, though,
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  Speaker 1: it was perhaps closest to South America, its true geological soulmate.
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  Speaker 1: But continents, just like people, change over time. Deep tectonic
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  Speaker 1: forces beneath each future continent would soon drive them apart
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  Speaker 1: as the plates in the Earth's crust began to shift.
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  Speaker 1: Africa departed first in the Crustaceous period, traveling quickly east
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  Speaker 1: to join strange distant continents. There. Tens of millions of
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  Speaker 1: more years passed by, and soon Australia decided that it
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  Speaker 1: would rather go things alone. In the Eocene period, it
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  Speaker 1: left Antarctica behind, and there you had it. Antarctica and
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  Speaker 1: South America were now alone, connected by a tiny land bridge,
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  Speaker 1: almost as if they were holding hands across a large gap.
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  Speaker 1: But even this small remaining connection was not meant to last.
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  Speaker 1: All of these tectonic changes led to consistent volcanic activity
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  Speaker 1: across the Earth. It filled the atmosphere with carbon dioxide,
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  Speaker 1: turning the world into a tropical paradise, but it also
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  Speaker 1: melted what few ice caps there were. The sea rows
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  Speaker 1: hundreds of feet above what it used to be. What
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  Speaker 1: had once been a vibrant, well trafficked passage between Antarctica
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  Speaker 1: and South America was soon enveloped by deep, dark ocean water.
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  Speaker 1: Antarctica was now well and truly alone, and it was
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  Speaker 1: almost as if it knew. Dark ocean currents began swirling
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  Speaker 1: around the lonely island, dropping its temperature rapidly. As the
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  Speaker 1: Eocene period continued on. At a few more million years
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  Speaker 1: passed by, the co two levels in the atmosphere returned
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  Speaker 1: to normal, Antarctica was abruptly frozen, killing most plant and
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  Speaker 1: animal life on its surface and leaving it alone as
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  Speaker 1: a frigid tombstone, marking the end of hundreds of millions
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  Speaker 1: of years of history. Thirty million years went by, and
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  Speaker 1: Antarctica stayed the same, while its former friends and soulmate
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  Speaker 1: developed new climates and gave birth to new life, including
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  Speaker 1: human beings. By the twentieth century of this modern era,
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  Speaker 1: humanity began mounting dangerous exit expeditions to Antarctica to discover
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  Speaker 1: its secrets. The British discoveries in nineteen twelve were only
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  Speaker 1: the beginning. Over the past twenty years, internationally funded drilling
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  Speaker 1: expeditions in Antarctica have revealed much of its history to us.
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  Speaker 1: Cross sections of sediment have taught us all about the
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  Speaker 1: many varied organisms that used to call Antarctica home. They've
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  Speaker 1: also shown us how for millions of years, Antarctica and
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  Speaker 1: South America shared a connection that allowed organisms from both
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  Speaker 1: to cross pollinate. But these discoveries also carried with them
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  Speaker 1: a dire warning. You see, the Eocene period was a
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  Speaker 1: time of intense global warming. All of that CO two
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  Speaker 1: that was released led to an atmospheric CO two content
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  Speaker 1: of one thousand parts per million, which was enough to
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  Speaker 1: melt the ice and flood huge swaths of the earth
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  Speaker 1: and wipe out many life forms. It shows us that
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  Speaker 1: CO two in the atmosphere does definitively have an impact
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  Speaker 1: on the climate. In fact, the only period since the
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  Speaker 1: Eocene where something even close to that dramatic of a
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  Speaker 1: change in in the atmosphere CO two levels occurred is
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  Speaker 1: the last two hundred and fifty years, or the Industrial Age.
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  Speaker 1: Human beings have managed to raise the CO two in
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  Speaker 1: the atmosphere from two hundred and eighty parts per million
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  Speaker 1: to three hundred and ninety parts per million, and that's
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  Speaker 1: not slowing down quickly enough. But of course, what are
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  Speaker 1: human beings if not infinitely flexible creatures. We have the
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  Speaker 1: power to change, the incentive to do so, and an
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  Speaker 1: understanding of the past that tells us what will happen
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  Speaker 1: if we don't. We might not be able to bring
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  Speaker 1: those two ancient soulmates back together, but we can certainly
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  Speaker 1: profess our devotion to our own significant other, our future.
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  Speaker 1: David's family moved too much for his comfort. He enjoyed
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  Speaker 1: the suburbs they grew up in the white picket fences
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  Speaker 1: and comfortable homes, but his parents would never truly settle down.
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  Speaker 1: His father worked for the United States Department of Agriculture,
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  Speaker 1: so they would have to move wherever the government dictated.
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  Speaker 1: As he grew up, David began to see the world
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  Speaker 1: as an ever changing place. As his family relocated from
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  Speaker 1: Missouri to Washington States, onto North Carolina and Idaho. He
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  Speaker 1: got to see all of Middle America in the nineteen
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  Speaker 1: forties and fifties through the wide eyed lens of childhood,
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  Speaker 1: and even life in so many different suburbs provided brief
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  Speaker 1: bursts of excitement. Once, during their time in Boise, Idaho,
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  Speaker 1: David watched a friend settle up a bottle rockets on
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  Speaker 1: his back porch. The friend stood before David, putting match
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  Speaker 1: heads into the small rocket with hopes of giving it lift.
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  Speaker 1: Towering above the two of them was David's friend's mother,
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  Speaker 1: who was pregnant at the time. The rocket went off,
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  Speaker 1: but it was too powerful. A small explosion propelled the
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  Speaker 1: rocket past the friend and he fell screaming to the porch.
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  Speaker 1: The rocket had struck his ankle and left the kid
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  Speaker 1: bleeding in the grass, his foot nearly severed. In the
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  Speaker 1: haze of smoke and blood, young David was entranced his
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  Speaker 1: friend would recover from that injury thanks to a visit
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  Speaker 1: to the emergency room. David, meanwhile, was left with an
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  Speaker 1: obsession with playing with fire. He and his other friends
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  Speaker 1: devised many different ways to create small explosions that would
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  Speaker 1: entertain them on evenings and weekends. Eventually they advanced from
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  Speaker 1: bottle rockets to pipe bombs, building devices of increasing power
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  Speaker 1: and danger. They did not intend to hurt anyone or
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  Speaker 1: destroy anything, but they explored this pastime with a sense
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  Speaker 1: of awe and excitement, and naturally they would have to
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  Speaker 1: test their inventions, right, But how do you do this
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  Speaker 1: without another horrible injury or getting the cops called on you? Well,
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  Speaker 1: Eventually they settled on a location, the South Lake Junior
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  Speaker 1: High swimming Pool. The water there would be able to
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  Speaker 1: muffle the blast but still give them the spectacle of
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  Speaker 1: watching their explosive work its action. So one Saturday morning,
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  Speaker 1: David and his friends snuck into the unused pool. They
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  Speaker 1: threw the pipe bomb into the water, and they waited.
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  Speaker 1: They expected only a geyser of water, but what happened
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  Speaker 1: felt more like an undersea mine. The pool irerupted from
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  Speaker 1: the force of the pipe bomb, and the very ground
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  Speaker 1: beneath them shook from the impact. Houses from blocks around
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  Speaker 1: were shaken by the bomb, and in spite of their
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  Speaker 1: best efforts, the police were called. Nobody was injured this time, thankfully,
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  Speaker 1: but David was arrested. All the same stories of the
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  Speaker 1: event would reappear in newspapers across Idaho and even as
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  Speaker 1: far as Salt Lake City. David would be let off
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  Speaker 1: with a stern warning and encouraged to pursue less destructive hobbies.
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  Speaker 1: At this point, you can imagine the life of the
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  Speaker 1: kid taking two different directions. He might follow his destructive
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  Speaker 1: tendencies to a life of crime or danger, or maybe engineering.
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  Speaker 1: Or on the other hand, he might forsake pipe bombs altogether.
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  Speaker 1: And fortunately it seemed like the latter path is what
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  Speaker 1: David wound up taking. Perhaps because of the notoriety brought
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  Speaker 1: to him by his experiment with pipe bombs, he turned
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  Speaker 1: to his more artistic pursuits, reading and drawing comics in
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  Speaker 1: his free time. The ultimate destiny of this kid was
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  Speaker 1: not a prison cell, but Hollywood. He moved to Los
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  Speaker 1: Angeles and wound up becoming one of the most acclaimed
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  Speaker 1: avant garde artists of all time, known for legendary classics
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  Speaker 1: like Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks. David was David Lynch.
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  Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
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  Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
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  Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
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  Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
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  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
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  Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
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  Speaker 1: worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.