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The Carpool · 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 right there on display, just waiting
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  Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: I'll admit it. I'm a sucker for those videos about
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  Speaker 1: animals forming unlikely friendships. I recently saw one where a
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  Speaker 1: German shepherd raised a bunch of tiny, fluffy ducklings, and
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  Speaker 1: the sheer amount of adorableness in that sixty second clip
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  Speaker 1: has sustained me for the last two weeks. But of course,
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  Speaker 1: dogs and ducks are not the only odd couples in
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  Speaker 1: the world. I did a little digging around and I
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  Speaker 1: found a story about one of history's most unlikely herrings,
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  Speaker 1: a bond between a giant of literature and a literal giant.
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  Speaker 1: The tale begins in nineteen fifty three in the small
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  Speaker 1: French village of Mollan, about forty miles outside of Paris.
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  Speaker 1: Samuel Beckett's, a famous Irish playwright, had just purchased some
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  Speaker 1: land there, and Beckett arrived in France with quite a reputation.
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  Speaker 1: You might recognize his name or the title of his
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  Speaker 1: most famous play, Waiting for Goodot Beckett was one of
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  Speaker 1: the biggest names in the absurdist theater, a genre that
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  Speaker 1: explored existentialism, meaninglessness, and illogical nature in our world. He
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  Speaker 1: went on to win the nineteen sixty nine Pulitzer Prize
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  Speaker 1: in Literature for his work. In nineteen fifty three, though
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  Speaker 1: he was just looking for a quiet place to write.
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  Speaker 1: Beckett was a native English speaker, but a big Francophile.
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  Speaker 1: He spent a lot of time in Paris and often
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  Speaker 1: wrote plays in French, so that's why he decided to
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  Speaker 1: buy land in the French countryside. Once he got there,
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  Speaker 1: he realized that he was going to need help building
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  Speaker 1: his cottage. He looked to hire some low craftsman, which
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  Speaker 1: is how he met a man who lived just down
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  Speaker 1: the street, a Belgian born handyman and farmer named Boris Russimov.
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  Speaker 1: Boris was happy to offer his services while he worked
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  Speaker 1: on building Beckett's new home. The men became close friends.
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  Speaker 1: Even after the playwright's cottage was finished. They kept in
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  Speaker 1: touch and Boris sometimes invited Beckett over to play cards.
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  Speaker 1: One evening, the playwright sat at the handyman's kitchen table,
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  Speaker 1: shuffling the deck. As Beckett dealt the cards, Boris confided
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  Speaker 1: in him about something he was struggling with. He said
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  Speaker 1: that his son, who was just twelve years old, wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: stop growing. He wasn't even a teenager yet, but he
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  Speaker 1: was already six feet two inches tall and weighed two
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  Speaker 1: hundred and forty pounds. He was so big that he
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  Speaker 1: didn't fit on the school bus, which meant that he
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  Speaker 1: had to walk over a mile to class and back
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  Speaker 1: every weekday, and Beckett's immediately offered to help. He said
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  Speaker 1: that he drove a convertible. If he rolled the top down,
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  Speaker 1: there would be plenty of room for Boris's son in
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  Speaker 1: the passenger seat. From that point forward, Beckett picked Boris
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  Speaker 1: his son up for school each morning and drove him
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  Speaker 1: home each afternoon. This went on for two years until
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  Speaker 1: the younger Rusimov quit school at the age of fourteen
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  Speaker 1: to work on his dad's farm. Over the next few years,
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  Speaker 1: Boris's son just kept growing. When he turned eighteen, he
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  Speaker 1: was seven feet four inches tall and weighed over five
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  Speaker 1: hundred pounds. As you might imagine, He was a huge
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  Speaker 1: help around the farm. They was said that he could
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  Speaker 1: do the work of three men all by himself. But
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  Speaker 1: after four years of manual labor, he wanted to move on,
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  Speaker 1: and it's hard to blame him. Boris's son knew that
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  Speaker 1: his size made him unique. He dreamt of doing something
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  Speaker 1: big no pun intended, like maybe working in showbiz. So
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  Speaker 1: around nineteen sixty he packed up and he moved to Paris.
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  Speaker 1: There he landed a job as a professional wrestler. After
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  Speaker 1: establishing himself in France, he moved to the United States,
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  Speaker 1: where he joined the Worldwide Wrestling Federation. He quickly became
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  Speaker 1: an international star, but his fame would be on the
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  Speaker 1: ring too. He also appeared in movies, most notably the
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  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven classic The Princess Bride. You see. Boris's
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  Speaker 1: Son's name was Andrey Russimov, better known as Andre the Giant.
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  Speaker 1: While on set for The Princess Bride, Andrea talked about
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  Speaker 1: Samuel Beckett driving him to school. It struck his co
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  Speaker 1: stars as a bizarre connection. They asked Andre what he
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  Speaker 1: and Beckett would talk about. I mean, you'd imagine the
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  Speaker 1: Pulitzer Prize winning playwrights and a future wrestling star would
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  Speaker 1: have plenty to discuss, right Well, Andre said that their
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  Speaker 1: conversations were curiously limited. They never mentioned theater, or wrestling,
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  Speaker 1: or existentialism. All they ever really talked about was the
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  Speaker 1: game of cricket. In the FBI's vast collection of records,
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  Speaker 1: there's a fifteen page file labeled with the name that
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  Speaker 1: might surprise you Colonel har Lynn Sanders, as in the
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  Speaker 1: man who turned his recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken into
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  Speaker 1: a multimillion dollar fast food empire. Now you might be asking,
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  Speaker 1: how did the founder of KFC end up in the
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  Speaker 1: FBI's radar. Well, the story is a curious one. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: well starts at the beginning. In eighteen ninety. Sanders was
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  Speaker 1: born on a farm in Indiana. His early years were
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  Speaker 1: marked by struggle. His father died when he was six,
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  Speaker 1: and his mother had to work multiple jobs to keep
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  Speaker 1: the family afloat. As the oldest of three children, Sanders
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  Speaker 1: was forced to step up. He started working on the
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  Speaker 1: farm and cooking meals for his siblings at just seven
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  Speaker 1: years old. I know this sounds like a setup for
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  Speaker 1: his future career as a fried chicken salesman, but the
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  Speaker 1: Colonel's path wasn't that simple. He had a long way
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  Speaker 1: to go before becoming the white haired chef we know today.
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  Speaker 1: When Sanders was twelve, his mom married another man. Apparently
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  Speaker 1: this guy wasn't too fond of his step children, and
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  Speaker 1: Sanders ended up leaving home. He found work on another
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  Speaker 1: farm in Indiana, but life was tough. He went to
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  Speaker 1: school in the mornings, then came home, fed the chickens,
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  Speaker 1: and shut corn until eight or nine at night. When
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  Speaker 1: he reached the seventh grade, thirteen year old Sanders decided
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  Speaker 1: that he had had enough of the classroom. He quit
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  Speaker 1: school and worked on the farm full time until he
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  Speaker 1: was fifteen years old. Then he started job hopping. He
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  Speaker 1: was a streetcar conductor, he joined the army. He worked
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  Speaker 1: as a fireman, an insurance agent, a secretary, a steamboat operator,
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  Speaker 1: a lighting manufacturer. If there was a job to be done,
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  Speaker 1: Colonel Harlan Sanders would do it. In the nineteen thirties,
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  Speaker 1: when Sanders was around forty years old, he started cooking
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  Speaker 1: as a side hustle. At the time, he was working
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  Speaker 1: at a vehicle service station on the edge of a
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  Speaker 1: busy highway in Kentucky. He would cook food in the
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  Speaker 1: back room and sell it to travelers who happened to
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  Speaker 1: stop by, and the words soon spread that the Colonel's
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  Speaker 1: fried chicken, okra and biscuits were worth pulling over for.
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  Speaker 1: Seeing this as his newest job opportunity, Sanders quit the
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  Speaker 1: service station and opened up his own restaurant, the first
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  Speaker 1: ever KFC. Despite his flighty job history, he took this
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  Speaker 1: new endeavor very seriously. A later profile in The New
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  Speaker 1: Yorker outlined his goals, saying that the Colonel wanted to
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  Speaker 1: create and I quote, fried chicken so golden and delicious
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  Speaker 1: that it will bring tears to the eyes of a
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  Speaker 1: grown man. Well, I don't know if the drumsticks moved
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  Speaker 1: anyone to tears. It was clear that Colonel Sanders had
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  Speaker 1: finally found his calling. Over the next few years, he
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  Speaker 1: perfected his famous recipe, the one with eleven different herbs
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  Speaker 1: and spices. Right then, for about two decades he focused
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  Speaker 1: on expanding his business and establishing franchise locations. Colonel Sanders
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  Speaker 1: had gone from an Indiana farmboy to a multi millionaire
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  Speaker 1: chicken connoisseur. Now well into his sixties, he put on
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  Speaker 1: that white suit, styled his white goatee and played the
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  Speaker 1: part of a fast food mogul. But in his heart,
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  Speaker 1: Sanders was still a simple countryman. He didn't love the
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  Speaker 1: pressure of running such a large business. In nineteen sixty four,
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  Speaker 1: he sold the company for a large one time payout
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  Speaker 1: plus a modest yearly salary. And with plenty of money
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  Speaker 1: and even more free time on his hands, the colonel
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  Speaker 1: soon developed a curious new obsession. Chicken no longer occupied
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  Speaker 1: his every waking thought. Instead, he spent an inordinate amount
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  Speaker 1: of time thinking about j Edgar Hoover. At the time,
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  Speaker 1: j Edgar Hoover was the director of the FBI. The
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  Speaker 1: colonel was a big fan of his policies and his actions.
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  Speaker 1: He took to writing what was essentially fan mail, sending
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  Speaker 1: Hoover multiple letters of praise once he requested an autographed picture.
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  Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy, he invited the FBI director to his
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  Speaker 1: eightieth birthday party. If you're curious, it appears that j
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  Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover did not attend the shindig. In fact, he
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  Speaker 1: didn't seem to reciprocate the colonel's affections at all. Hoover
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  Speaker 1: took every single one of those letters and just put
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  Speaker 1: them into an FBI file. But here's the really strange part.
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  Speaker 1: Although the file explicitly states that Colonel Sanders was never
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  Speaker 1: the subject of an FBI investigation, multiple paragraphs have been redacted,
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  Speaker 1: which leaves me wondering what's been covered up. Is it
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  Speaker 1: the Colonel's recipe for perfect fried chicken or something more curious.
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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: Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.