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Two curious items that once seemed like icons of their respective countries, with very different stories about how they came to be.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menke'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 right there on display, just waiting
for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

(00:36):
It was midnight when the smugglers entered the harbor, drifting
silently between the larger vessels anchored along the docks. Passing
beneath the bridge, they pulled up alongside a rickety pier
and got to work unloading their contraband within minutes the
wharf was groaning from the weight of large wooden crates.
The smugglers worked quickly and had almost completed the task

(00:58):
when pandemonium erupted. A shrill whistle blast pierced the night
that A small army of police constables poured onto the docks,
surrounding the smugglers. Those who tried to run at the
end of a cudgel, a stack of crates toppled, smashing
against the dock and spilling their contents over the wooden planks.
One of the constables knelt, reaching down to reverently touch

(01:19):
the snow white contraband. The crates were not full of
drugs or weapons or stolen jewelry. They contained something even
more valuable. This was pont de laisson, a type of
needle point lace crafted by carmelite nuns from southern France.
Dubbed the Queen of Lace for its beauty, it was
among the most desired fabrics in the world. It wasn't

(01:39):
the material involved that made the lace so valuable, but
the artistry, craftsmanship, and labor that went into every hand
stitched piece. A single square centimeter took seven hours to
create and involved the labor of eighteen craftswomen. The fact
that it was both beautiful and difficult to create made
it incredibly popular among European aristocracy, who had been adorning

(02:01):
themselves a needle point for years. They used lace in
all their clothing too, but especially their sleeves and oversized collars.
The incredible popularity of lace eventually caught the attention of
the French government. The Finance minister was startled by the
exorbitant sums their nobles were spending on foreign lace, and
became determined to keep that money within the country. He

(02:22):
started by heavily investing in the French lace making school,
then banning foreign lace so that nobles would be forced
to use homegrown stuff. At the same time, he made
it illegal to transport French lace out of the country
so that no one else could copy their designs. As expected,
the ban led to a massive boon in the French
lace industry, but it also created incentives for criminals to

(02:45):
enter the market. An arms race quickly developed between the
police and lace smugglers, who came with increasingly clever schemes
to get their textiles across the border. They smuggled lace
inside empty coffins and hollowed out loaves of bread. They
even wrapped it around large dogs before dressing the animals
in fake hides. The authorities responded with a series of

(03:06):
high profile busts. In one instance, a hangman burned hundreds
of thousands of crowns worth of foreign lace, treating the
textile itself as a criminal who deserved to die. The
situation continued until seventeen eighty nine, when the French Revolution
virtually wiped out the nobility. The demand for high quality
lace cratered, putting hundreds of thousands of craftswomen out of work.

(03:29):
Needle point lace did see a brief resurgence of popularity
during the Napoleonic era, but met its true end soon
after during the Industrial Revolution. You see, the textile machines
that were invented in the mid nineteenth century could easily
replicate the patterns that had taken human hands countless hours
to create. This made the lace far less expensive to produce,

(03:49):
but also less unique and desirable. With the human artistry removed,
lace became just like any other fabric, and it soon
fell out of fashion. Wealthy people turned their attention to
other luxurious fabrics like silk or velvet. Soon enough, hardly
anyone would remember a time when needle point lace was
one of the most sought after and most forbidden commodities

(04:10):
in the world, a time when French fashion police scoured
their harbors for illicit fabrics and smugglers risk their necks
to dress the necks of the elite. You've seen it

(04:34):
in every Thai restaurant from Bangkok to Berlin. Tender rice noodles,
fresh tamarind, juicy shrimp, squeeze of lime, and just a
hint of peanuts for some nutty crunch mention. Thai food
anywhere in the world, and most people's thoughts jumped to
one iconic dish, pad Thaie, a combination of salty, sweet, acid,
and spice. Seemed to represent the complexity of Thaie cuisine

(04:58):
all in one single dish. But pad Thai, which means
Thai stirfry, didn't have the same journey as other national dishes.
It didn't come from a grandmother's kitchen or a popular
roadside stand. Instead, pad Thai was cooked up by a
dictator obsessed with the flavor of Thai's identity. In the
late nineteen thirties, Thailand was getting nervous. It was still

(05:19):
an independent kingdom called Siam, but it seemed like all
of its neighbors were being colonized. Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and
Burma were ruled by the French and the English, and
now word was coming down the line that Japan had
invaded China and was looking further self. The Prime Minister
of Thailand at the time was and I have to
ask your forgiveness in advance for trying to pronounce this

(05:41):
man's name, a guy named Kleiak Fibun Songkrem, who most
westerners just called Fibun. Now Fibun had overthrown the monarchy
and was using the military to rule Siam. He believed
that colonists saw Siam as a backwards, primitive place in
need of their brand of civilizing. To keep his country free,
he thought he needed to do what leaders like Benito
Mussolini had done. He needed to create a strong national identity,

(06:04):
from music and art to close and even food. From
nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty two, Phibun issued twelve
cultural mandates to realize this vision. He changed the name
of the country from Siam to Thailand. He demanded specific
types of traditional dress, and he targeted ethnic minorities, including
banning the Chinese language and driving Chinese food vendors off

(06:26):
the street. Now amidst this campaign for identity, Fibun decided
the country needed a national dish, one that would showcase
the depth and complexity of Thai flavors, but would also
be a healthy and hearty one with lots of protein
and vegetables. So he unveiled his new national program called
Noodle Is Your Lunch. The Public Welfare Department gave out

(06:48):
noodle carts, ingredients and a new recipe. The national dish
of modern Thailand pad Thai. And yet, even as Fibun
claimed this dish encapsulated all of Thai cuisine, many Thai
people had never tasted did anything like it. Thai food
is highly dictated by locality, using the fresh ingredients that
are locally grown, raised, or fished. There it was a

(07:08):
country that ate rice rather than noodles, So people wondered
where pad thai had come from. Was it a regional dish,
something ancient with a long history, And the truth was
Fibun was just a guy who liked noodles. The meal
which became pad thai was based on a recipe from
his housekeeper, who made it often. In truth, it may
have even come from a Chinese recipe. Noodles were much

(07:30):
more popular in China than in Thailand, but through his
cultural programs, pad Thai became ubiquitous across the country. His
forced national identity still wasn't enough to stave off invasion.
In nineteen forty one, under thread of Japanese attack, Fibun
agreed to let Japanese soldiers move freely throughout Thailand, and
as the war ended, the Thai people, sick of his

(07:52):
harsh rules, ousted him from office, and yet even with
the Thai people rejecting Fibun's other mandates, pad Thai somehow serve.
In fact, pad Thai became the driving force behind a
second cultural identity movement, this time in two thousand and one.
That year, the Thai government launched a program called Thai
Kitchen to the World. They wanted to create a concept

(08:13):
of Thai cultural identity in other countries, to attract tourists
to Thailand and create a cultural calling card. Part of
this program was to train chefs and grant loans to
people who opened Thai restaurants in other countries. The governments
even came up with three cookie cutter restaurant concepts, from
cheap eats to fine dining, that restaurant owners could easily copy,

(08:34):
which is why some Thai restaurants have the same menu
from Hong Kong to Houston. But many Thai entrepreneurs also
struck out on their own, creating restaurants that would cater
to local populations, and many of them found that worldwide
people loved the sweet, sour, spicy flavors of pad Thai.
Even in Thailand, the dish has become a popular lunchtime staple. Still,

(08:56):
if you do venture to Thailand or your local Thai restaurant,
don't be afraid to try something else on the menu.
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.

(09:19):
This 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 learn all about it over at the
Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.