December 16, 2025 • 9 mins
Two glimpses into the past, both of which teach us a lot about the world around us by highlighting what is missing.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke'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):
Time moves differently for everything on the planet. It's all relative.
A whole lifetime for a fly is a moment for
a human, and a whole lifetime for a human is
a brief blink from the perspective of geologic time. These
are the sorts of facts that we learn in grade school,
but only gain weight the longer we live. And what
of the living beings that fall between human and geologic time.
(01:00):
Tortoises that live for hundreds of years, the greenland shark
quietly prowling the ocean for centuries, Towering trees deep within rainforests.
How do we measure ourselves next to them? To do
so is probably a feudal effort, but is one that
leads a person to some truly fascinating discoveries about how
in sync the natural world is and how various species
(01:22):
can fall out of sync throughout the millennia. For example,
we all understand the evolutionary advantage of fruits, right When
an animal eats of fruits, it inadvertently winds up spreading
the seeds of that tree that produce to the fruit.
But what does one do with the fruit that no
animals eat? Biologists have found many examples of these across
the globe, from the Kentucky coffee tree to the honeylocust
(01:46):
and certain strains of per simon. There are fruits that
are too large for most animal species to eat practically,
so why do they exist? A particularly extreme example exists
in the osage orange, a sturdy, softball sized fruit that
produces a strange latex when cut open. These fruit tend
to just drop to the forest floor and rot there
(02:07):
without any animal to come and eat them. So why
do they exist? The answer, according to many biologists, lies
in the distant past of this planet, the age of
the megafauna. Now, megafauna are exactly what they sound like,
huge animals, wooly mammoths, ground sloths, and many ancestors of
creatures that we can see in nature today. Creatures like
(02:29):
these would have been able to eat the osage orange
and spread its seeds, but the vast majority of megafauna
have gone extinct, leaving the trees they used to feed
on behind. Take away the mammoths or the giant sloths
that would have spread them wide. The only way for
the fruit to travel now is downriver and slopes, which
severely limits the spread of these trees throughout the Americas.
(02:50):
They survive, for sure, but they no longer travel like
they once did. The osage orange is an example of
what's known as an evolutionary anachronism. It's a relatively new concept,
with its earliest proposals coming in the nineteen seventies and eighties,
and the best examples happen to be plants with particularly
inedible fruits due to what we know about seed dispersal. However,
(03:11):
there have been several proposals to list certain animals on
the list too, animals that had to adapt their natural
ways of feeding in order to make up for a
missing evolutionary partner. Take, for example, the Helactoplurus giganteus, the
largest dung beetle in Matagascar. This creature seems to entirely
depend on human feces to survive, even though their existence
(03:33):
on the island of Madagascar predates animal arrival. It's been
proposed that maybe they once use giant lemur feces for
the same purpose. Also on Madagascar, some smaller lemur species
still display weariness toward birds of prey, training their young
to hide themselves from the sky, even though no currently
living bird in Madagascar is large enough to prey on
(03:55):
a lemur. None of these animal examples have been proved definitively.
After all, how do you measure the behavior of species
that no longer exist? The educated guesses of biologists, though,
continue to try and fill in the blanks of natural history. Nature,
in its complex web of relationships, can inadvertently preserve memory
of something, even if it's unclear what that something originally was.
(04:18):
It seems that we carry our evolutionary anachronisms with us,
and that's what allows us to study evolution, even though
its progress is measured in generations rather than moments. As
a famous scientist once said, life finds a way. Pompey
(04:47):
Mansfield surveyed the scene in front of him. Dozens of
men and women gathered on his North Boston property that
late spring afternoon in celebration of their most anticipated event
of the year, election Day. It was a time when
families and individuals, both enslaved and free, came together on
the official Massachusetts election day for their own referendum. The
(05:10):
group would vote for and crown a king who would
provide wisdom and insight to the black community during his reign.
Families and friends relaxed on blankets overlooking the sunlit river.
But despite the joyful scene, Pompey was anything but relaxed.
His chest swelled with pride and nerves. This year's picnic
was unlike any other. For its host, it was the
(05:32):
most important one yet. Pompey, like most of the people
gathered on his property that day, had been trafficked across
the Atlantic and brought to New England as an enslaved person.
Born in West Africa in the early eighteenth century, he
had been sold to a wealthy mill owner in Lynn,
Massachusetts as a young man. In seventeen forty five, he
married an enslaved woman named Phyllis from the nearby town
(05:55):
of Reading. In seventeen fifty eight, following the death of
that mill owner, Pompey began working as a clovier. No
surviving records document how long it took to purchase his
own freedom, but by seventeen sixty two he had earned
enough to purchase a small property ten miles outside of Boston.
There he built a stone house by hand for him
(06:16):
and his wife, and eventually Pompey and Phyllis joined a
group of black Americans who had begun celebrating an event
called Black Picnic approximately twenty years prior to seventeen forty one.
This act of unity was a rebellion against their circumstances
and an assertion of civil rights. More than two hundred
years before black Americans secured the right to vote in
(06:37):
general elections. Those gathered at Pompey's property knew that their
ideas and opinions mattered, even if the colonial government said otherwise.
For many, pompey story represented an ideal future, a free
man who worked hard to provide for himself and his family,
he owned property, supported nearby black communities by helping others
(06:57):
assert their personhood, and after years of attention the Black
Election Day celebrations in other parts of Massachusetts, he had
offered to host the event at his home. Just before sunset,
a hush fell over the crowd. It was time to
announce the new king. Pompey fought to keep his hands
at his side, his face impassive. His wife Phyllis, placed
(07:18):
a hand over her husband's pounding heart. Pompey squeezed his
eyes tight shut, and then they announced his name. After
decades of degradation, hard work, and dehumanization, he'd regained the
dignity and respect that were taken from him by slavery.
For years, Pompey had told people that he came from
a line of West African royalty. Now, in spite of
(07:41):
his trafficking and enslavement, his peers had recognized him as
a leader. Moreover, they chosen him to be theirs. Throughout
his year as king, Pompey continued his work empowering black
families and individuals. He settled disputes, lent an understanding ear,
and offered whiz to anyone who asked. By all accounts,
(08:02):
Pompey was an esteemed leader and venerated in the years
both before and after his reign. Today, Black Election Day
is still celebrated in Salem, Massachusetts, every year. Now held
on the third Saturday in July, the event still resembles
those first gatherings in many ways, with people from all
over Massachusetts coming together to assert their civil rights. Nowadays,
(08:25):
the picnic is much bigger and is accompanied by a parade.
Instead of electing a monarch, community awards are given for advocacy, wisdom,
and outstanding citizenship. We may never know for certain whether
Pompey came from African royalty, but in Massachusetts there is
no question that he was and always will be, a king.
(08:49):
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 org.
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,
(09:12):
and you can learn all about it over at Theworldoflore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Manke'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):
Time moves differently for everything on the planet. It's all relative.
A whole lifetime for a fly is a moment for
a human, and a whole lifetime for a human is
a brief blink from the perspective of geologic time. These
are the sorts of facts that we learn in grade school,
but only gain weight the longer we live. And what
of the living beings that fall between human and geologic time.
(01:00):
Tortoises that live for hundreds of years, the greenland shark
quietly prowling the ocean for centuries, Towering trees deep within rainforests.
How do we measure ourselves next to them? To do
so is probably a feudal effort, but is one that
leads a person to some truly fascinating discoveries about how
in sync the natural world is and how various species
(01:22):
can fall out of sync throughout the millennia. For example,
we all understand the evolutionary advantage of fruits, right When
an animal eats of fruits, it inadvertently winds up spreading
the seeds of that tree that produce to the fruit.
But what does one do with the fruit that no
animals eat? Biologists have found many examples of these across
the globe, from the Kentucky coffee tree to the honeylocust
(01:46):
and certain strains of per simon. There are fruits that
are too large for most animal species to eat practically,
so why do they exist? A particularly extreme example exists
in the osage orange, a sturdy, softball sized fruit that
produces a strange latex when cut open. These fruit tend
to just drop to the forest floor and rot there
(02:07):
without any animal to come and eat them. So why
do they exist? The answer, according to many biologists, lies
in the distant past of this planet, the age of
the megafauna. Now, megafauna are exactly what they sound like,
huge animals, wooly mammoths, ground sloths, and many ancestors of
creatures that we can see in nature today. Creatures like
(02:29):
these would have been able to eat the osage orange
and spread its seeds, but the vast majority of megafauna
have gone extinct, leaving the trees they used to feed
on behind. Take away the mammoths or the giant sloths
that would have spread them wide. The only way for
the fruit to travel now is downriver and slopes, which
severely limits the spread of these trees throughout the Americas.
(02:50):
They survive, for sure, but they no longer travel like
they once did. The osage orange is an example of
what's known as an evolutionary anachronism. It's a relatively new concept,
with its earliest proposals coming in the nineteen seventies and eighties,
and the best examples happen to be plants with particularly
inedible fruits due to what we know about seed dispersal. However,
(03:11):
there have been several proposals to list certain animals on
the list too, animals that had to adapt their natural
ways of feeding in order to make up for a
missing evolutionary partner. Take, for example, the Helactoplurus giganteus, the
largest dung beetle in Matagascar. This creature seems to entirely
depend on human feces to survive, even though their existence
(03:33):
on the island of Madagascar predates animal arrival. It's been
proposed that maybe they once use giant lemur feces for
the same purpose. Also on Madagascar, some smaller lemur species
still display weariness toward birds of prey, training their young
to hide themselves from the sky, even though no currently
living bird in Madagascar is large enough to prey on
(03:55):
a lemur. None of these animal examples have been proved definitively.
After all, how do you measure the behavior of species
that no longer exist? The educated guesses of biologists, though,
continue to try and fill in the blanks of natural history. Nature,
in its complex web of relationships, can inadvertently preserve memory
of something, even if it's unclear what that something originally was.
(04:18):
It seems that we carry our evolutionary anachronisms with us,
and that's what allows us to study evolution, even though
its progress is measured in generations rather than moments. As
a famous scientist once said, life finds a way. Pompey
(04:47):
Mansfield surveyed the scene in front of him. Dozens of
men and women gathered on his North Boston property that
late spring afternoon in celebration of their most anticipated event
of the year, election Day. It was a time when
families and individuals, both enslaved and free, came together on
the official Massachusetts election day for their own referendum. The
(05:10):
group would vote for and crown a king who would
provide wisdom and insight to the black community during his reign.
Families and friends relaxed on blankets overlooking the sunlit river.
But despite the joyful scene, Pompey was anything but relaxed.
His chest swelled with pride and nerves. This year's picnic
was unlike any other. For its host, it was the
(05:32):
most important one yet. Pompey, like most of the people
gathered on his property that day, had been trafficked across
the Atlantic and brought to New England as an enslaved person.
Born in West Africa in the early eighteenth century, he
had been sold to a wealthy mill owner in Lynn,
Massachusetts as a young man. In seventeen forty five, he
married an enslaved woman named Phyllis from the nearby town
(05:55):
of Reading. In seventeen fifty eight, following the death of
that mill owner, Pompey began working as a clovier. No
surviving records document how long it took to purchase his
own freedom, but by seventeen sixty two he had earned
enough to purchase a small property ten miles outside of Boston.
There he built a stone house by hand for him
(06:16):
and his wife, and eventually Pompey and Phyllis joined a
group of black Americans who had begun celebrating an event
called Black Picnic approximately twenty years prior to seventeen forty one.
This act of unity was a rebellion against their circumstances
and an assertion of civil rights. More than two hundred
years before black Americans secured the right to vote in
(06:37):
general elections. Those gathered at Pompey's property knew that their
ideas and opinions mattered, even if the colonial government said otherwise.
For many, pompey story represented an ideal future, a free
man who worked hard to provide for himself and his family,
he owned property, supported nearby black communities by helping others
(06:57):
assert their personhood, and after years of attention the Black
Election Day celebrations in other parts of Massachusetts, he had
offered to host the event at his home. Just before sunset,
a hush fell over the crowd. It was time to
announce the new king. Pompey fought to keep his hands
at his side, his face impassive. His wife Phyllis, placed
(07:18):
a hand over her husband's pounding heart. Pompey squeezed his
eyes tight shut, and then they announced his name. After
decades of degradation, hard work, and dehumanization, he'd regained the
dignity and respect that were taken from him by slavery.
For years, Pompey had told people that he came from
a line of West African royalty. Now, in spite of
(07:41):
his trafficking and enslavement, his peers had recognized him as
a leader. Moreover, they chosen him to be theirs. Throughout
his year as king, Pompey continued his work empowering black
families and individuals. He settled disputes, lent an understanding ear,
and offered whiz to anyone who asked. By all accounts,
(08:02):
Pompey was an esteemed leader and venerated in the years
both before and after his reign. Today, Black Election Day
is still celebrated in Salem, Massachusetts, every year. Now held
on the third Saturday in July, the event still resembles
those first gatherings in many ways, with people from all
over Massachusetts coming together to assert their civil rights. Nowadays,
(08:25):
the picnic is much bigger and is accompanied by a parade.
Instead of electing a monarch, community awards are given for advocacy, wisdom,
and outstanding citizenship. We may never know for certain whether
Pompey came from African royalty, but in Massachusetts there is
no question that he was and always will be, a king.
(08:49):
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 org.
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,
(09:12):
and you can 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
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