Failure To Launch

Sometimes failure is exactly what you're looking for, and other times, you have to deal with the unexpected. Either way, it makes for an entertaining tale.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Truman Capode once said that

(00:29):
failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. Well
known failures include inventors like Thomas Edison, who claimed that no,
he hadn't failed, he just found ten thousand ways that
didn't work while developing the first practical incandescent lightbulb. Colonel
Harlan Sanders had a long history of failed businesses throughout
his life. After working on railroads in his younger days,

(00:51):
he set out on his own, starting a ferryboat company, cafe,
and a motel, all of which failed. Then, in nine
with only his savings, a one five dollar Social Security check,
and a secret chicken recipe to his name, he franchised
his fried Chicken restaurant at the age of sixty five.

(01:11):
But there are those who never get past their failure.
Not only do they embrace their aversion to success, they
celebrate it. Author Stephen Pyle wrote an entire book about
humanity's inability to get out of its own way. In
his nineteen seventy nine compendium The Book of Heroic Failures,
one entry discussed a museum exhibit in northern England where

(01:33):
an ancient Roman coin had been on display. The plaque
beside the coin stated that it had been minted between
a D one and a D one, and a big
letter R had been stamped onto it. It would have
been an impressive peace, but only if you worked for
the Robinson's Soft drink company. The coin hadn't come from
ancient Rome. It had been a plastic giveaway from a

(01:54):
soda company to anyone who had collected enough bottle labels
to earn one. Another ent re told the story of
Desert Island Discs, a popular radio show in Britain during
the nineteen seventies. The concept was simple and I bet
you can guess what it was. The host would ask
us celebrity guests about the eight albums that they would
take with them if they somehow found themselves trapped on

(02:15):
a deserted island. Roy Plomley, the show's host, had been
trying to get the novelist Alistair McLean to be a
guest on the show. McLean had been the author of
the bestselling novels, The Guns of the Navarone and Where
the Eagles Dare, both of which had been turned into
hit films. McLean wasn't one to do interviews, though, but
in this case he agreed and met Plomley for lunch

(02:38):
at the Civil Club, a private member's club in London.
Their conversation started off with small talk and the two
seemed to be having a good time. Then Plumly asked
McLean about his writing process. McLean had no idea what
he was talking about. Palmley then asked about one of
his most famous novels, The Guns of the Navarone, but
McLean had nothing to say. It's turns out that the

(03:00):
man Plumbly had been talking to wasn't Alister McLean, the author.
He was Alister McLean, the head of the Ontario Tourist Bureau.
But Plomily, undeterred and unwilling to admit his mistake, invited
Mr McLean back to the studio to record the interview anyway,
which was never aired, of course, But perhaps the most
egregious failure in the book came from the form of

(03:22):
a special club started by the author himself. It was
called the not Terribly Good Club. Of Great Britain and
its members were some of the worst the country had
to offer. According to his book, the club had been
formed three years prior to publication, and its membership had
skyrocketed from twenty to two hundred in that short time.
In fact, the book itself arose out of the stories

(03:43):
he heard during those early meetings. Their mission was simple
to honor and celebrate people who had never found success
and who demonstrated rank incompetence in their lives, and they
were committed to this too. During an early meeting, one
clumsy member knocked over a bowl of soup, but club
president and author of the book, Stephen Pile, managed to

(04:04):
catch the bowl as it toppled off the table, saving
the soup and the meal. For his success, they forced
him to resign as per the by laws that he
himself helped. Right after his book was published, interest in
the group grew and Pyle was forced to disband it
for good. You see, he had included an application for
membership in the not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain

(04:27):
in the back of the book. Despite tossing it in
as a joke, many who purchased the Book of Heroic
Failures actually did fill it out and mail it in
twenty thousand readers in fact, and by that measure, the
club itself had become a success, and the book's rapid
rise to the best seller status meant that Pyle had
become successful as well. He wrote all about that in

(04:47):
his second book, The Return of Heroic Failures. Even though
he'd been unsuccessful at remaining unsuccessful, he'd succeeded in finding
more stories of unsuccessful folks who had failed to succeed.
And if you diagram all that out, connect the dots
and be sure to carry the one. I think it
means this plan was a big success or a failure.

(05:10):
I'm not entirely sure. The Earth is essentially a living organism.
Not only does it team with life on and below
its surface, but the planet itself is constantly changing to

(05:32):
either accommodate or to eradicate that which it needs to survive.
As pressure builds up inside it, the Earth uses roughly
nineteen active vents on its surface to relieve that pressure
into the atmosphere. We know these events better as volcanoes,
and they could be quite destructive. When a volcano erupts,
it spews molten lava and ash, which can decimate the

(05:55):
environment around it for miles. For example, there's a seven
crack near yellow Stone National Park that was discovered in
two thousand fifteen. It could indicate that a supervolcano is
located beneath the park. Should it's erupt, it could devastate
most of the United States. And that's the problem with
many volcanoes. There are hundreds beneath the surface of the

(06:15):
Earth that we can't see, yet we continue to build
right on top of them, unaware of the danger that
lurks below. Mexican farmer Dionysio Polido didn't know that there
were any volcanoes in his village of part of Coutine, Mexico.
Back in he'd begun his day by clearing out his
corn fields on the morning of February. Spring was only

(06:36):
a few months away, and it would soon be time
to sow the next round of crops. During the previous week,
he and others in the village had been experiencing mild
underground tremors. The tiny earthquakes startled them at first, but
people quickly grew used to them. He kept working hauleen
shrubs from his corn fields to a safe location where
they could be burned and disposed of. As the sun

(06:58):
moved across the sky and the more learning faded into
the afternoon. Polido also moved from one field to another,
clearing brush and preparing the soil for spring. Then he
noticed something that he hadn't before. A hill, small but
definitely out of place, like something had whacked the earth
on the head and caused a lump to form. Polido

(07:19):
climbed to the top of the hill and looked down.
A crack roughly one fifty feet long and six ft wide,
ran along its top. The crack wasn't too deep, and
Polido figured it was the result of the small quakes
that had been happening in the area. Unfazed, he returned
to his field. Later, he felt a loud rumble suddenly
churned underneath him. Polido thought it was thunder, but there

(07:42):
wasn't a cloud in the sky. Unbeknownst to him, a
river of magma flowed beneath his feet, kicking up sulfur
smell like rotten eggs. The fisher hissed and smoke arose
from the gap. Polido finally ran to find his family,
but found his farm empty. He jumped on his horse
and out into town, where everyone had been waiting for him.

(08:02):
Hours later, the small hill on Dionysio Polido's farm had
grown even larger. In fact, one witness described flames that
shot twenty six hundred feet into the air before raining
down like fireworks from above. The next day, his farm
had been taken over by a volcano over one hundred
sixty feet tall. After a week, the cone was over

(08:23):
three hundred feet tall. Ash clouded the sky and lava
flowed from its opening. Over the course of eight months,
the crack and Polido's farm had become a towering volcano
twelve hundred feet tall, with a lava flow that threatened
to engulf the entire village. But that wasn't all. The
ash killed crops for miles around and resulted in dunes

(08:43):
that spread with the wind. The village was evacuated as
the lava took over and eventually swallowed the town of
San Juan. All that remained was the church bell tower
among the jagged landscape of volcanic rock. After about a year,
the volcano seemed to calm down, though it it occasionally
erupt every now and then. Scientists took its formation as

(09:04):
an opportunity to study how Scoria cone volcanoes came into
the world, which might say future towns and citizens from
losing their homes or their lives. As for the poor
farmer who lost his fields, well, he did manage to
find the silver lining. He returned to the area that
had once been his farmland, and he planted a sign
in the rocky ground. It read this volcano is owned

(09:28):
and operated by Dionysio Polido. I hope you've enjoyed today's
guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I

(09:51):
make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
book series, and television show, and you can learn all
about it over at the World of Lor dot Come
and until next time, stay curious. H