September 16, 2025 • 10 mins
It's human nature to look for meaning in tragedy. Hopefully, you will find the slippery core of both stories on display in the Cabinet today.
Order the official Cabinet of Curiosities book by clicking here today, and get ready to enjoy some curious reading!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Nke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
On Christmas Eve of nineteen seventy one, seventeen year old
Juliana Kopka took her seat next to her mother on
Lansa flight five oh eight. She figured it would be
a routine flight once she had done a dozen times before,
But just a few hours later, she was free falling
through the sky, about to land in the middle of
the world's densest jungle, completely alone. If anyone was going
(00:59):
to survive through the Amazon, it was Juliana Kopka. Daughter
of two German zoologists, she had spent most of her
childhood seeing her parents' work at the Lima Museum of
Natural History. When she was just fourteen years old, she
accompanied her parents to establish a research station inside the Amazon.
Her parents made sure that she was well versed in biology, zoology, ecology,
(01:22):
and most importantly, the skills to survive the jungle. She'd
returned to Lima to finish school, and initially she and
her mother were planning to return to the research station
on December nineteenth or twentieth, but Juliana insisted she wanted
to attend her graduation ceremony on December twenty third, leaving
them scrambling to book a flight home on Christmas Eve.
(01:42):
The Peruvian airline Lanza had a reputation for old and
malfunctioning planes, and Juliana's father begged them to avoid flying
on it, but since it was the only flight left
on Christmas Eve, they booked their tickets for Lanza flight
five oh eight. Things began okay, but midway through the flight,
the plane flew into a thunderstorm. Lightning struck its right wing,
(02:03):
igniting a fuel tank. The plane exploded in midair, ripping
apart over the rainforest. In an instant, Juliana was falling
ten thousand feet to the ground, still strapped into a
row of seats. Somehow, though miraculously, she survived the fall.
Perhaps it was the updraft from the storm, or the
surface area of the seats slowing her descent. Maybe it
(02:26):
was even the dense jungle canopy that broke her fall
before she hit the ground. Either way, Juliana was still
alive after plummeting nearly two miles to the Earth's surface,
but now she had to stay that way. Juliana had
blacked out during the fall, but came to on the
forest floor. She had a broken collarbone, a swollen eye,
a deep gash on her arm, and a concussion. She
(02:49):
had lost one of her shoes and only wore a
thin cotton dress. She had no food except for a
bag of candy from the plane, but she knew that
if she wanted to make it out of this she
had to find help. Well. She remembered her father's advice
follow water. People always live near water, so when she
found a creek in the jungle, she began treking down it.
(03:09):
She kept walking for ten days. She was constantly worried
about animals, jaguars, scorpions, poisonous insects, all of which she
could barely see because she had lost her glasses. As well.
She was repeatedly soaked by the December rains and attacked
by mosquitoes. Botflies began to infest the open wound on
her arm. But despite all of this, she kept moving forward. Finally,
(03:34):
on January third of nineteen seventy two, she found a
small boat and a hut. A few hours later, local
lumberjacks arrived at the encampment. Shocked at her condition, they
cleaned her wounds and placed her in a canoe, and
then they paddled her eleven more hours down the river
to a settlement, where finally a helicopter was able to
airlift her to the hospital. Ninety two people were flying
(03:57):
on Lanza flight five oh eight. It's estimated that as
many as fourteen survived the crash but died from their
injuries in the jungle. Only one person survived, Juliana Kopka.
Juliana recovered and led authorities back to the crash site.
Just a few days later, she finished school and eventually
returned to the rainforest to study zoology, just like her parents,
(04:19):
specializing in bats. Her story would have been incredible enough
if it ended there, but there was one more twist
of fate that Flight five oweight had to offer. You see,
in the nineteen nineties, German director Werner Herzog reached out
to Juliana asking to make a documentary about her. In
the years since the crash. Dozens of journalists and filmmakers
(04:39):
had approached her with a similar request, and normally she
brushed off these messages, but in Werner's case, she listened
because Werner Herzog was supposed to be on flight five
oh eeight with her in nineteen seventy one. Werner had
been scouting locations in the Peruvian Amazon for his film
agire The Wrath of God. He was supposed to take
(05:00):
LANSA flight five oh eight that Christmas Eve, but a
conflict caused him to reschedule his flight. In the documentary
that he made, called Wings of Hope, Juliana told her
own story while leading Werner to the crash site. She
felt making the documentary was therapeutic, a way to put
to rest some of the trauma that had haunted her
for years. Juliana Kapka didn't just survive her ordeal. She thrived,
(05:24):
and even after falling nearly two miles through the air,
she somehow landed on her own two feet. Looking back
on the news of the past year, it seems that
(05:45):
a lot of people have subscribed to the unusual belief
that we can gauge the state of the economy based
on the price of eggs. It's difficult to say exactly
when this started, but it certainly sounds logical right. Eggs are,
after all, one of the most ubiquitous grocery propt the
bedrock of baking, breakfasts and batter the world over, and
when dairy prices rise, the average person can feel the
(06:07):
strain acutely, from the farmers who raised the chickens to
the individuals who were just trying to shop for their family.
So with that in mind, I'd like to tell you
a story of what happens when dairy products can turn
into their own form of natural disaster. It started with
an economic issue and became a local news crisis. It
was the spring of nineteen ninety one. For the previous
(06:29):
fifteen years, Since nineteen seventy four, the United States government
had been purchasing dairy products from farmers in an effort
to keep prices stable. This ensured that the US had
an enormous surplus of butter and cheese, all stored in
warehouses around the country. This was a little inconvenient, but
it was thoroughly ignorable as far as problems go. One
(06:50):
such complex was on Cottage Grove Road in Madison, Wisconsin.
It was half a million square feet, storing up to
fifteen million pounds of surplus butter, cheese, hams, and Oscar
Meyer sausages would also be stored at this facility in
significantly smaller quantities. At around three pm on May third,
there were about twenty five people working in this warehouse
(07:12):
when someone smelled smoke. The source was a forklift malfunction
whose battery sparked and ignited a fire inside the temperature
controlled building. The warehouse's insulation was extremely flammable, as was
the butter being stored within it. Under intense heat, butter
will melt and then burn and then catch fire, and
it doesn't burn like coal or wood. It burns more
(07:35):
like grease. So the entire building was a flame. Firefighters
were on the scene immediately. They poured thousands of gallons
of water on the fire, which would slow down the
flame slightly, but not put them out altogether. Water only
spread the melted butter around. After a few hours, the
walls of the warehouse began to give way. The fire
(07:56):
spread to a second building, and the first fully collapsed,
leashing a wave of butter, cream and melted cheese onto
the streets of Madison. The currents of dairy made it
impossible for fire trucks to maneuver, so in order to
fight the flames, firemen had to wade through a cholesterol
dense river that was almost five feet deep in places.
(08:16):
More frightening though, the fire was creeping closer to the
factories an hydrous ammonia tanks, and if these tanks burst,
it would release a toxic gas into the city. Residents
that lived within half a mile radius of the factory
were prompted to evacuate. Fortunately, though, the firefighters were able
to keep the flames away from the tanks. Within twenty hours,
the fire was contained, but the battle was far from over.
(08:40):
You see, the butter and cheese flood was ongoing, putting
the city's fresh water supplies at risk as well as
the surrounding natural environment. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
joined the fire Department's effort to stem the tide, erecting
levees and dams to keep the butter, cheese, and assorted
meats from running into nearby lakes and streams. Public Works
(09:01):
dug a pond for the runoff, and then quickly realized
they had to dig a second one before it completely
filled with butter. Heck, they had to bring in pumps
to help divert thirteen million gallons of melted butter mixed
with water and other runoff from the fire. In the end,
they had to use construction vehicles to dump sand on
the burning butter in order to fully put out the flames,
(09:21):
and the fire was officially declared out on May eleventh,
eight days after it had begun. Clearing the surrounding streets, however,
took an extra week. The event became known as the
Great Wisconsin Butter Fire. It was the most costly fire
in the state's history, causing seven point five million dollars
in property damage, destroyed seventy million dollars worth of food products,
(09:43):
and an extra one million dollars in clean up expenses,
which was ironic since it all started because the US
government wanted to avoid a financial crisis. It's a delicious
cautionary tail. When you keep way too much butter near
flammable materials, your city might become toast. I hope you've
(10:05):
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 Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show and you can
(10:28):
learn all about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And
until next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Nke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
On Christmas Eve of nineteen seventy one, seventeen year old
Juliana Kopka took her seat next to her mother on
Lansa flight five oh eight. She figured it would be
a routine flight once she had done a dozen times before,
But just a few hours later, she was free falling
through the sky, about to land in the middle of
the world's densest jungle, completely alone. If anyone was going
(00:59):
to survive through the Amazon, it was Juliana Kopka. Daughter
of two German zoologists, she had spent most of her
childhood seeing her parents' work at the Lima Museum of
Natural History. When she was just fourteen years old, she
accompanied her parents to establish a research station inside the Amazon.
Her parents made sure that she was well versed in biology, zoology, ecology,
(01:22):
and most importantly, the skills to survive the jungle. She'd
returned to Lima to finish school, and initially she and
her mother were planning to return to the research station
on December nineteenth or twentieth, but Juliana insisted she wanted
to attend her graduation ceremony on December twenty third, leaving
them scrambling to book a flight home on Christmas Eve.
(01:42):
The Peruvian airline Lanza had a reputation for old and
malfunctioning planes, and Juliana's father begged them to avoid flying
on it, but since it was the only flight left
on Christmas Eve, they booked their tickets for Lanza flight
five oh eight. Things began okay, but midway through the flight,
the plane flew into a thunderstorm. Lightning struck its right wing,
(02:03):
igniting a fuel tank. The plane exploded in midair, ripping
apart over the rainforest. In an instant, Juliana was falling
ten thousand feet to the ground, still strapped into a
row of seats. Somehow, though miraculously, she survived the fall.
Perhaps it was the updraft from the storm, or the
surface area of the seats slowing her descent. Maybe it
(02:26):
was even the dense jungle canopy that broke her fall
before she hit the ground. Either way, Juliana was still
alive after plummeting nearly two miles to the Earth's surface,
but now she had to stay that way. Juliana had
blacked out during the fall, but came to on the
forest floor. She had a broken collarbone, a swollen eye,
a deep gash on her arm, and a concussion. She
(02:49):
had lost one of her shoes and only wore a
thin cotton dress. She had no food except for a
bag of candy from the plane, but she knew that
if she wanted to make it out of this she
had to find help. Well. She remembered her father's advice
follow water. People always live near water, so when she
found a creek in the jungle, she began treking down it.
(03:09):
She kept walking for ten days. She was constantly worried
about animals, jaguars, scorpions, poisonous insects, all of which she
could barely see because she had lost her glasses. As well.
She was repeatedly soaked by the December rains and attacked
by mosquitoes. Botflies began to infest the open wound on
her arm. But despite all of this, she kept moving forward. Finally,
(03:34):
on January third of nineteen seventy two, she found a
small boat and a hut. A few hours later, local
lumberjacks arrived at the encampment. Shocked at her condition, they
cleaned her wounds and placed her in a canoe, and
then they paddled her eleven more hours down the river
to a settlement, where finally a helicopter was able to
airlift her to the hospital. Ninety two people were flying
(03:57):
on Lanza flight five oh eight. It's estimated that as
many as fourteen survived the crash but died from their
injuries in the jungle. Only one person survived, Juliana Kopka.
Juliana recovered and led authorities back to the crash site.
Just a few days later, she finished school and eventually
returned to the rainforest to study zoology, just like her parents,
(04:19):
specializing in bats. Her story would have been incredible enough
if it ended there, but there was one more twist
of fate that Flight five oweight had to offer. You see,
in the nineteen nineties, German director Werner Herzog reached out
to Juliana asking to make a documentary about her. In
the years since the crash. Dozens of journalists and filmmakers
(04:39):
had approached her with a similar request, and normally she
brushed off these messages, but in Werner's case, she listened
because Werner Herzog was supposed to be on flight five
oh eeight with her in nineteen seventy one. Werner had
been scouting locations in the Peruvian Amazon for his film
agire The Wrath of God. He was supposed to take
(05:00):
LANSA flight five oh eight that Christmas Eve, but a
conflict caused him to reschedule his flight. In the documentary
that he made, called Wings of Hope, Juliana told her
own story while leading Werner to the crash site. She
felt making the documentary was therapeutic, a way to put
to rest some of the trauma that had haunted her
for years. Juliana Kapka didn't just survive her ordeal. She thrived,
(05:24):
and even after falling nearly two miles through the air,
she somehow landed on her own two feet. Looking back
on the news of the past year, it seems that
(05:45):
a lot of people have subscribed to the unusual belief
that we can gauge the state of the economy based
on the price of eggs. It's difficult to say exactly
when this started, but it certainly sounds logical right. Eggs are,
after all, one of the most ubiquitous grocery propt the
bedrock of baking, breakfasts and batter the world over, and
when dairy prices rise, the average person can feel the
(06:07):
strain acutely, from the farmers who raised the chickens to
the individuals who were just trying to shop for their family.
So with that in mind, I'd like to tell you
a story of what happens when dairy products can turn
into their own form of natural disaster. It started with
an economic issue and became a local news crisis. It
was the spring of nineteen ninety one. For the previous
(06:29):
fifteen years, Since nineteen seventy four, the United States government
had been purchasing dairy products from farmers in an effort
to keep prices stable. This ensured that the US had
an enormous surplus of butter and cheese, all stored in
warehouses around the country. This was a little inconvenient, but
it was thoroughly ignorable as far as problems go. One
(06:50):
such complex was on Cottage Grove Road in Madison, Wisconsin.
It was half a million square feet, storing up to
fifteen million pounds of surplus butter, cheese, hams, and Oscar
Meyer sausages would also be stored at this facility in
significantly smaller quantities. At around three pm on May third,
there were about twenty five people working in this warehouse
(07:12):
when someone smelled smoke. The source was a forklift malfunction
whose battery sparked and ignited a fire inside the temperature
controlled building. The warehouse's insulation was extremely flammable, as was
the butter being stored within it. Under intense heat, butter
will melt and then burn and then catch fire, and
it doesn't burn like coal or wood. It burns more
(07:35):
like grease. So the entire building was a flame. Firefighters
were on the scene immediately. They poured thousands of gallons
of water on the fire, which would slow down the
flame slightly, but not put them out altogether. Water only
spread the melted butter around. After a few hours, the
walls of the warehouse began to give way. The fire
(07:56):
spread to a second building, and the first fully collapsed,
leashing a wave of butter, cream and melted cheese onto
the streets of Madison. The currents of dairy made it
impossible for fire trucks to maneuver, so in order to
fight the flames, firemen had to wade through a cholesterol
dense river that was almost five feet deep in places.
(08:16):
More frightening though, the fire was creeping closer to the
factories an hydrous ammonia tanks, and if these tanks burst,
it would release a toxic gas into the city. Residents
that lived within half a mile radius of the factory
were prompted to evacuate. Fortunately, though, the firefighters were able
to keep the flames away from the tanks. Within twenty hours,
the fire was contained, but the battle was far from over.
(08:40):
You see, the butter and cheese flood was ongoing, putting
the city's fresh water supplies at risk as well as
the surrounding natural environment. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
joined the fire Department's effort to stem the tide, erecting
levees and dams to keep the butter, cheese, and assorted
meats from running into nearby lakes and streams. Public Works
(09:01):
dug a pond for the runoff, and then quickly realized
they had to dig a second one before it completely
filled with butter. Heck, they had to bring in pumps
to help divert thirteen million gallons of melted butter mixed
with water and other runoff from the fire. In the end,
they had to use construction vehicles to dump sand on
the burning butter in order to fully put out the flames,
(09:21):
and the fire was officially declared out on May eleventh,
eight days after it had begun. Clearing the surrounding streets, however,
took an extra week. The event became known as the
Great Wisconsin Butter Fire. It was the most costly fire
in the state's history, causing seven point five million dollars
in property damage, destroyed seventy million dollars worth of food products,
(09:43):
and an extra one million dollars in clean up expenses,
which was ironic since it all started because the US
government wanted to avoid a financial crisis. It's a delicious
cautionary tail. When you keep way too much butter near
flammable materials, your city might become toast. I hope you've
(10:05):
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 Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show and you can
(10:28):
learn all about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And
until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.