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Seconded · 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: It's the most popular flavor in the world. It can
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  Speaker 1: be found in ice cream, coffees, yogurts, and fruit dishes.
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  Speaker 1: It's used in skincare, fragrances and household cleaners. I'm talking,
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  Speaker 1: of course, about vanilla, but it wasn't always so. As
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  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, for the first few hundreds of
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  Speaker 1: years that we knew about this famous flavor, it was
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  Speaker 1: considered an incredible luxury outside of its origin in Mexi,
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  Speaker 1: unavailable to the common tongue, until one adolescent boy changed
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  Speaker 1: all of that. The vanilla orchid or vanilla plantifolia if
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  Speaker 1: you're into science, is a native of Mexico. It produces
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  Speaker 1: a delicate pod that's after curing, gives us the aromatic
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  Speaker 1: beans with that famous flavor. It was cultivated for centuries
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  Speaker 1: in Mexico, first by the Teutonic people, and was later
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  Speaker 1: exploited by the Spanish during the brutal days of the conquistadors,
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  Speaker 1: and it quickly became a hit with European royalty. The
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  Speaker 1: problem with that, at least so far as Europe was concerned,
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  Speaker 1: was that while the orchid could be grown in any environment,
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  Speaker 1: it would only produce the vanilla beans in its native habitat.
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  Speaker 1: And this all came down to one factor, the melapana bee,
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  Speaker 1: which could only be found in Mexico. Essentially, without the
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  Speaker 1: bee to pollinate the blossom, the flower would wilt without
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  Speaker 1: producing that prized sea pod, and so for three long
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  Speaker 1: centuries after being brought to Europe it remained incredibly rare.
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  Speaker 1: No matter where where they tried to grow it, the
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  Speaker 1: flower would produce no fruit. That is until twelve year
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  Speaker 1: old Edmund Albius. Albius was born into slavery in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: twenty nine on the French island of Bourbon in the
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  Speaker 1: Indian Ocean. He was the child of an enslaved woman
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  Speaker 1: and a white father who would not claim him. He
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  Speaker 1: was an intelligent young man who was deeply interested in
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  Speaker 1: the natural world, and he worked in the plantation garden
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  Speaker 1: where vanilla vines had been planted and struggled to thrive.
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  Speaker 1: By the time he was twelve, he had set his
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  Speaker 1: intelligence on the problem of the vanilla orchids. He noticed
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  Speaker 1: that they withered before producing the same sort of seed
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  Speaker 1: pods similar flowers would grow. Other flowers in the garden
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  Speaker 1: did not seem to have that same problem, and so
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  Speaker 1: Albius came up with a method both simple and revolutionary.
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  Speaker 1: Using a small sliver of bamboo and his thumb, he
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  Speaker 1: gently lifted the rostelium, which is a small barrier between
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  Speaker 1: the flowers male and female organs or antler and stigma,
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  Speaker 1: and pressed the two parts together, transferring the pollen between
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  Speaker 1: the two. He was effectively mimicking the pollinator's method, in
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  Speaker 1: particular that of a small Mexican bee who had kept
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  Speaker 1: the vanilla orchid fruiting in Mexico, and because of the
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  Speaker 1: pistol shape that his handmade while performing the delicate action,
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  Speaker 1: he named the technique La pistolae. That very season, the
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  Speaker 1: very first vanilla pods were harvested in Bourbon. Albius had
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  Speaker 1: created an effect a technique of pollinating the orchid that
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  Speaker 1: required no special tools beyond a sliver of wood and
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  Speaker 1: a steady hand. Anyone could produce vanilla now, and they did.
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  Speaker 1: Plantations all over the tropics began to use Young Edmund's technique,
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  Speaker 1: and soon Madagascar was out producing Mexico in vanilla exports.
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  Speaker 1: With all of the new vanilla on the market, prices
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  Speaker 1: plummeted seemingly overnight. Vanilla went from being an exotic flavor
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  Speaker 1: only sampled by the rich, to a popular flavor among
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  Speaker 1: the masses. It could suddenly be found in desserts and
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  Speaker 1: perfumes all around the world, and because of that, one
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  Speaker 1: would think that young Edmund Albius would find worldwide acclaim
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  Speaker 1: well in a just world at least, but it was
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  Speaker 1: not a just world, and Albius's station in life afforded
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  Speaker 1: him no recourse when the plantation owner, again named Charles Frapier,
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  Speaker 1: took credit for the method. Later on, French botanist Joseph
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  Speaker 1: Decane would also take credit, and Albius himself was considered
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  Speaker 1: a footnote in the story of his own ingenuity. He
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  Speaker 1: received no accolades, no royalties, nothing in the way of
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  Speaker 1: compensation for the revolutionary scientific achievement. His work made vanilla
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  Speaker 1: production a massive industry, but to the plantation owners and
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  Speaker 1: importers went all the spoils. When slavery was abolished in
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  Speaker 1: French colonies in eighteen forty eight, the then nineteen year
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  Speaker 1: old Albius continued to work as a gardener, living in
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  Speaker 1: obscurity until his death at the age of fifty one.
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  Speaker 1: He would only receive the recognition that he deserved decades later. Today,
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  Speaker 1: in Bourbon now Reunion, Edmund Albius is spoken of with
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  Speaker 1: great reverence. There are streets and schools named after him,
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  Speaker 1: and statues built in his honor. That Vanilla is nearly
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  Speaker 1: universally beloved is a statement to his brilliant discovery. It
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  Speaker 1: also serves as a reminder of the many minds and
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  Speaker 1: talents that have been overlooked throughout the centuries due to
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  Speaker 1: the racism and exploitation that is the hallmark of colonialism.
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  Speaker 1: So the next time you sip a latte or take
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  Speaker 1: that first delicious spoonful of ice cream, remember the name
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  Speaker 1: Edmund Albius, the young genius that brought that taste to
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  Speaker 1: the world. It's no exaggeration to say that ancient Egypt
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  Speaker 1: was an incredible and mysterious place. Archaeology tells us that
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  Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for over three three thousand years,
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  Speaker 1: which means it endured longer than everything that has happened since.
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  Speaker 1: The ancient Egyptians were highly literate and left behind many records,
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  Speaker 1: but the sands of time have worn those records down
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  Speaker 1: to where we only have brief, curious snapshots into Egyptian history.
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  Speaker 1: We know relatively little about some of its most significant rulers,
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  Speaker 1: the pharaohs, but the snapshots that we do have for
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  Speaker 1: one particular ruler paint him as the most curious pharaoh
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  Speaker 1: of all. Peppi the Second was only six years old
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  Speaker 1: when his older brother suddenly died. All he'd ever known
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  Speaker 1: was living at the palace and having his every need
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  Speaker 1: attendant to Now, in the year twenty two seventy eight BC,
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  Speaker 1: he was crowned pharaoh, and the whole kingdom had to
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  Speaker 1: do whatever he wanted. Since he was forced to stay
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  Speaker 1: at the palace by his mother, He demanded that his
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  Speaker 1: servants bring him interesting things from all over the kingdom.
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  Speaker 1: He loved playing with chunks of turquoise and copper, or
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  Speaker 1: looking at finely sculpted pottery in statuary, But his whole
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  Speaker 1: world changed one day when he received word from an
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  Speaker 1: expedition leader in the south, the explorer Harcouf had captured
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  Speaker 1: a pigmy hunter. These were the short, mysterious people far
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  Speaker 1: to the south, near where the nile flowed out from
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  Speaker 1: the underworld. For a number of weeks, all Peppy could
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  Speaker 1: think about was what it would be like to have
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  Speaker 1: such a strange person in his court. So he wrote
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  Speaker 1: back to Harcouf with special instructions. The pigmy was to
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  Speaker 1: be treated with the utmost care. He was to be
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  Speaker 1: surrounded on Harcouf's boat on both sides so that there
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  Speaker 1: was no risk of him falling into the nile, and
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  Speaker 1: he should also be surrounded by guards at night to
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  Speaker 1: protect him in his sleep. When Harkuf finally arrived with
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  Speaker 1: a captive, Peppy was overjoyed. The short dark man was
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  Speaker 1: unlike anyone he had ever met before. He would keep
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  Speaker 1: him as a dancer in his court for as long
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  Speaker 1: as he lived. As Pepy got older, his tendency to
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  Speaker 1: use people for his own comfort or amusement didn't get
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  Speaker 1: any better. He saw himself as a guy, so that's
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  Speaker 1: all he needed to justify his every whim and a
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  Speaker 1: good example of this comes from the time when he
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  Speaker 1: was finally out from his mother's thumb and ruling Egypt
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  Speaker 1: on his own. His long days of seeing his subjects
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  Speaker 1: in his throne room had started to wear on him.
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  Speaker 1: He was always hot, and the endless flies that flew
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  Speaker 1: in from the nile constantly pestered him. They say that
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  Speaker 1: one day he noticed that the flies tended to congregate
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  Speaker 1: around the jar of honey at his food table. He
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  Speaker 1: looked from the jar of honey to his enslaved people
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  Speaker 1: standing by, and he got a terrible idea. Peppi had
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  Speaker 1: these enslaved people coated in honey from head to toe,
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  Speaker 1: turning them into gooey, glistening golden monoliths by his side,
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  Speaker 1: And now instead of pestering him, all of the flies
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  Speaker 1: pestered his enslaved people, swarming around them and getting stuck
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  Speaker 1: in the honey. We can only imagine what it was
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  Speaker 1: like for those people when they went to clean up
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  Speaker 1: after a long day of serving beside the pharaoh. One
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  Speaker 1: final curious snapshot of Peppi comes from his adult years.
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  Speaker 1: This story was actually written hundreds of years after his death,
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  Speaker 1: so it may be more legend than fact, but it's
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  Speaker 1: a historical interest to Egyptologists. None the less One of
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  Speaker 1: Peppe's court officials, a man named Cheeti, noticed that Peppe
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  Speaker 1: mysteriously left his chambers every night for four hours. Once
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  Speaker 1: the pharaoh was believed to be an incarnation of the
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  Speaker 1: sun god Ra, Cheety wondered if perhaps he was traveling
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  Speaker 1: to the underworld each night, as the myths around Ra suggested,
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  Speaker 1: driven by a healthy dose of curiosity, something we can
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  Speaker 1: all relate to. Cheaty followed Peppe from the shadows, winding
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  Speaker 1: through the columns of the palace. As the pharaoh journeyed
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  Speaker 1: out into the moonlight, he crossed a courtyard next to
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  Speaker 1: the palace and arrived at the home of one of
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  Speaker 1: his general's sarsanet. Peppe threw a brick at the window,
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  Speaker 1: and the general appeared, lowering a ladder for the pharaoh
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  Speaker 1: to climb up. He disappeared inside, and Cheety waited four
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  Speaker 1: hours until the pharaoh re emerged. Although the story never
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  Speaker 1: says what Peppy was doing at the general's house, it
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  Speaker 1: strongly implies that they may have been lovers. If so,
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  Speaker 1: this mysterious affair is yet another unusual chapter in Peppi's legacy.
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  Speaker 1: Given that this is all we know about the Pharaoh,
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  Speaker 1: and that the sands of time have likely erased all
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  Speaker 1: other records of his life. We will probably never have
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  Speaker 1: the full picture, but that just makes us even more
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  Speaker 1: curious about this ruler who lived longer ago than any
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  Speaker 1: of us can imagine. I hope you enjoyed today's guided
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  Speaker 1: tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created
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  Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manke in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched
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  Speaker 1: and written by the Grim and Mild team, and produced
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  Speaker 1: by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the
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  Speaker 1: people who make it over at Grimandmild dot 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: Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well
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  Speaker 1: as ebook and audiobook. And if you look looking for
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  Speaker 1: an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all
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  Speaker 1: the same stories, but without the interruption for a small
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  Speaker 1: monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at patreon
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  Speaker 1: dot com, slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious.