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Land Ho · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
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  Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Kids are resourceful, especially when it comes to
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  Speaker 1: having a good time. They can take any object like
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  Speaker 1: a ball, a stick, or even a can and turn
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  Speaker 1: it into a fun way to pass time. But back
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  Speaker 1: in the sixties, a new kind of pastime had developed
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  Speaker 1: into a full blown epidemic, one that put an entire
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  Speaker 1: country on watch and had everyone wondering are the kids
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  Speaker 1: all right? It was in Chicago in the fall all
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  Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty nine when the American Academy of Pediatrics
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  Speaker 1: held its annual conference. Ernest Caribia Jr. Was one of
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  Speaker 1: two government officials in attendance that day. He worked at
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  Speaker 1: the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, while Frank Gulich worked for
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  Speaker 1: the Chicago Narcotics Bureau. Ernest and Frank had come with
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  Speaker 1: a shocking warning for the medical community. There was something
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  Speaker 1: causing hundreds, maybe thousands of hospitalizations and deaths across the country.
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  Speaker 1: The two officials released their findings at a press conference
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  Speaker 1: where they explain how America's youth had discovered a dangerous
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  Speaker 1: new drug which they were injecting into their bodies at
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  Speaker 1: an alarming rate. That drug was called peanut butter. Now
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  Speaker 1: this wasn't a clever name for some new designer drug.
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  Speaker 1: Ernest and Frank claimed that the kids everywhere were actually
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  Speaker 1: injecting themselves with real peanut butter and in some cases
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  Speaker 1: mayonnaise too, just to get high. This sharp rise in
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  Speaker 1: food based drug use, they claimed, was due to the
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  Speaker 1: popularity of an underground recipe book making the rounds for
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  Speaker 1: dollar apiece. Now, obviously they were more than a little concerned.
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  Speaker 1: Injecting any kind of food product into one's veins would
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  Speaker 1: result in death anyway, not because of hallucinogetic side effects,
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  Speaker 1: but because they would literally block the flow of blood
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  Speaker 1: throughout the body. The Associated press ran with the story,
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  Speaker 1: which was then published in the San Francisco Chronicle in
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  Speaker 1: an article titled kids Shooting peanut butter in Chicago. It
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  Speaker 1: ran under the headline peanut butter mayonnaise used as drug substitutes.
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  Speaker 1: Each piece stated that the act of tripping out on
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  Speaker 1: such culinary items was new and that several deaths had
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  Speaker 1: occurred as a result of it, but none of the
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  Speaker 1: articles offered any evidence to actually support such effect. One
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  Speaker 1: narcotics expert who worked for the Ohio Attorney General was
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  Speaker 1: quoted in one article as having handled a case where
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  Speaker 1: a teenager had injected himself with peanut butter. As the
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  Speaker 1: story spread, information and anecdotes changed. Authorities in some states
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  Speaker 1: alleged to have known of cases where children had died
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  Speaker 1: from peanut butter and mayonnaise use, while others made it
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  Speaker 1: clear that even though the use was documented, no deaths
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  Speaker 1: had occurred. Still, the headlines caused quite a scare wherever
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  Speaker 1: they were published. Richard Nixon even noted the crisis in
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  Speaker 1: his public papers, published in October of nineteen sixty nine,
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  Speaker 1: But by nineteen seventy, the peanut butter and mayo panic
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  Speaker 1: had died out, which begs the question had there ever
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  Speaker 1: really been an epidemic of intravenous food highs to begin with?
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  Speaker 1: Years later, experts believe the whole thing stemmed from a
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  Speaker 1: combination of governmental paranoia and gross misunderstanding. You see as
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  Speaker 1: the sixties were coming to a close. Drugs like marijuana
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  Speaker 1: and L s D were becoming harder to find. In
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  Speaker 1: some places, anti drug groups were worried that young people
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  Speaker 1: would start looking inside and outside the home for legal replacements.
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  Speaker 1: These included industrial substances like glue and paint, as well
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  Speaker 1: as food products such as peanut butter. However, according to
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  Speaker 1: medical journals and other sources, no cases of inappropriate peanut
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  Speaker 1: butter use was ever documented. There had been only a
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  Speaker 1: small handful of recorded anecdotes in news and magazine articles.
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  Speaker 1: For example, the director of a school for troubled youths
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  Speaker 1: in Arizona spoke to a reporter in April of nineteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty nine about the rampant drug use in his school.
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  Speaker 1: The boys he watched over, he claimed, would do anything
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  Speaker 1: to get high. They'd sniff glue, drink cough syrup, and yes,
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  Speaker 1: even inject themselves with peanut butter. The other reason for
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  Speaker 1: the scare most likely came from mistaking slang terms for
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  Speaker 1: drugs as the actual products. On occasion, peanut butter was
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  Speaker 1: the name given to brown colored methamphetamine, while heroin and
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  Speaker 1: cocaine used to be referred to as mayonnaise. These misunderstandings,
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  Speaker 1: combined with the stories from exhausted educators, eventually spiraled into
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  Speaker 1: a full blown imaginary epidemic. It had grown so rampant
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  Speaker 1: that the federal government decided to step in and make
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  Speaker 1: a formal statement to the press, but clearly that only
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  Speaker 1: made things worse. In the end, there had been nothing
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  Speaker 1: to be afraid of. American kids weren't injecting themselves with
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  Speaker 1: peanut butter and mayonnaise to get high. Most, however, did
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  Speaker 1: have a condition that most parents today are highly aware
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  Speaker 1: of a very bad case of the munchies. Oftentimes, when
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  Speaker 1: we set out to look for a missing object, we
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  Speaker 1: wind up finding something entirely different. A hunt for a
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  Speaker 1: pair of lost eyeglasses might yield the discovery of a
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  Speaker 1: pair of headphones that had fallen behind the night stand
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  Speaker 1: weeks earlier. Or, if you're lucky, that glorious little green
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  Speaker 1: rectangle that turns out to be a folded twenty dollar bill.
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  Speaker 1: If you're explorer Robert Peery, though the search for the
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  Speaker 1: North Pole could drop a whole new island in your lap.
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  Speaker 1: Pierry had set out on an expedition to find the
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  Speaker 1: North Pole in nineteen oh six. He'd already made five
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  Speaker 1: trips to the Arctic Circle, but he'd always dreamt of
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  Speaker 1: being the first person to a step foot on the
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  Speaker 1: North Pole. His dream, however, hadn't been realized just yet.
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  Speaker 1: He returned home and wrote a book called Nearest the
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  Speaker 1: Pole about his almost successful trip. But it hadn't been
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  Speaker 1: a total loss. Peery might not have found the poll,
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  Speaker 1: he said, but he had located something else that no
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  Speaker 1: one had ever seen before, an entirely new land. He
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  Speaker 1: called it Crocker Land, which he named after a wealthy
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  Speaker 1: businessman named George Crocker in hopes that the man would
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  Speaker 1: fund his next attempt at the North Pole. And Crocker
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  Speaker 1: was on board, at least he would have been, had
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  Speaker 1: he not promised to allocate that money to another worthwhile project,
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  Speaker 1: rebuilding San Francisco after the devastating nineteen o six earthquake.
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  Speaker 1: No problem, thought Peery. He'd just find another benefactor, one
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  Speaker 1: with a passion for exploration, so he asked the National
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  Speaker 1: Geographic Society for help, which they happily provided. In nineteen
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  Speaker 1: o nine, the fully funded Peery and his team set
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  Speaker 1: out for Crocker Land and not only made it, but
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  Speaker 1: were then able to push onto in North Pole as well.
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  Speaker 1: Peary was elated, as you might imagine, after almost twenty
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  Speaker 1: five years of trying, he had finally done it. He
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  Speaker 1: had become the first man to reach the North Pole
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  Speaker 1: before anyone else. He returned home a hero, or so
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  Speaker 1: he thought. According to Frederick Cook, a man who had
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  Speaker 1: been a crew member on a previous, unrelated expedition, Peary
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  Speaker 1: was only the second person to have reached the pole. Cook,
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  Speaker 1: you see, claimed that he had done it a year earlier.
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  Speaker 1: Peery's new rival had also read the man's memoir and
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  Speaker 1: noted how the journeys had been eerily similar. Yet Cook
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  Speaker 1: had not seen any trace of crocker Land as he
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  Speaker 1: had made his way to the pole. Peary was incensed.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, crocker Land was real. Perhaps Cook just wasn't
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  Speaker 1: as skilled an explorer as he was. Along for the
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  Speaker 1: trip to the pole had been Peery's assistant, Donald McMillan,
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  Speaker 1: who stepped up in defense of his friend and mentor.
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  Speaker 1: He vowed to lead his own expedition to crocker Land
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  Speaker 1: and proved everyone, especially to Cook, that the land mass
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  Speaker 1: was real. The trip was doubly important because crocker Land
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  Speaker 1: represented the last bit of land on Earth that had
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  Speaker 1: not been touched by humanity. Three different organizations funded McMillan's trip,
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  Speaker 1: including the American Museum of Natural History in New York,
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  Speaker 1: the American Geographical Society, and the University of Illinois. If
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  Speaker 1: only McMillan had planned a little better, as captain had
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  Speaker 1: a nasty habit of drinking while sailing, which caused the ship,
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  Speaker 1: the Diana, to crash on the way to Greenland. The
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  Speaker 1: crew chartered a new ship called the Eric and continued on,
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  Speaker 1: but the weather was starting to turn cold, and pretty
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  Speaker 1: soon they wouldn't be able to make it through the
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  Speaker 1: icy waters to Crocker Land. For four years, the explorers
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  Speaker 1: searched for the island, yet no matter how many times
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  Speaker 1: they scanned the horizon, they came up empty. They began
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  Speaker 1: to wonder maybe Peery had been wrong all along. Whatever
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  Speaker 1: he had seen wasn't an untouched land mass, Perhaps it
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  Speaker 1: had all just been a mirage. But Peery swore that
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  Speaker 1: Crocker Land had been real. Numerous expeditions were conducted to
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  Speaker 1: verify its existence over the years, but none of them
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  Speaker 1: ever found it, and in night, a pilot flew his
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  Speaker 1: plane over the area where Peery Clain crocker Land was
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  Speaker 1: located and saw nothing. Either the island had disappeared or
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  Speaker 1: Peary had been wrong in what he'd seen. Of course,
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  Speaker 1: there could have always been a third reason for Pery's claims.
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  Speaker 1: He'd really just wanted the money, with no viable prospects
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  Speaker 1: to provide him with the funding for his next North
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  Speaker 1: Pole expedition. Peery had tried to scam George Crocker with
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  Speaker 1: an offer of immortality in exchange for fifty thou dollars,
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  Speaker 1: it wouldn't be out of the question. Peery is also
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  Speaker 1: the same explorer who visited Greenland in seven and, in
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  Speaker 1: true colonial fashion, stole three massive meteorites from the local Inuits,
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  Speaker 1: meteor RTEs that had been their only source of iron,
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  Speaker 1: and then he sailed his plunder to New York City
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  Speaker 1: along with six of the Inuit he enticed with promises
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  Speaker 1: of warm homes and good hunting. Instead, he put them
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  Speaker 1: on display and charged admission to the crowds. So yeah,
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  Speaker 1: shady dealings were well within the realm of possibility for
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  Speaker 1: Robert Pierry. There's no denying his endurance and toughness, as
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  Speaker 1: his truck to the North Pole demonstrated to the world,
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  Speaker 1: but it's easy to understand why some might doubt his
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  Speaker 1: more unusual claims. Had it been real, crocker Land would
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  Speaker 1: have been added to every map and textbook for eternity,
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  Speaker 1: a perfect gift for a man who, like George Crocker,
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  Speaker 1: had just about everything. Unfortunately, the whole thing turned out
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  Speaker 1: to be exactly what it sounded like, a croc. I
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  Speaker 1: Hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
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  Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,