June 9, 2026 • 11 mins
Often times, people are curious because of what we don't know about them--whether intentionally or not.
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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):
It's the most popular flavor in the world. It can
be found in ice cream, coffees, yogurts, and fruit dishes.
It's used in skincare, fragrances and household cleaners. I'm talking,
of course, about vanilla, but it wasn't always so. As
a matter of fact, for the first few hundreds of
years that we knew about this famous flavor, it was
(00:56):
considered an incredible luxury outside of its origin in Mexi,
unavailable to the common tongue, until one adolescent boy changed
all of that. The vanilla orchid or vanilla plantifolia if
you're into science, is a native of Mexico. It produces
a delicate pod that's after curing, gives us the aromatic
(01:16):
beans with that famous flavor. It was cultivated for centuries
in Mexico, first by the Teutonic people, and was later
exploited by the Spanish during the brutal days of the conquistadors,
and it quickly became a hit with European royalty. The
problem with that, at least so far as Europe was concerned,
was that while the orchid could be grown in any environment,
(01:37):
it would only produce the vanilla beans in its native habitat.
And this all came down to one factor, the melapana bee,
which could only be found in Mexico. Essentially, without the
bee to pollinate the blossom, the flower would wilt without
producing that prized sea pod, and so for three long
centuries after being brought to Europe it remained incredibly rare.
(01:59):
No matter where where they tried to grow it, the
flower would produce no fruit. That is until twelve year
old Edmund Albius. Albius was born into slavery in eighteen
twenty nine on the French island of Bourbon in the
Indian Ocean. He was the child of an enslaved woman
and a white father who would not claim him. He
was an intelligent young man who was deeply interested in
(02:21):
the natural world, and he worked in the plantation garden
where vanilla vines had been planted and struggled to thrive.
By the time he was twelve, he had set his
intelligence on the problem of the vanilla orchids. He noticed
that they withered before producing the same sort of seed
pods similar flowers would grow. Other flowers in the garden
(02:42):
did not seem to have that same problem, and so
Albius came up with a method both simple and revolutionary.
Using a small sliver of bamboo and his thumb, he
gently lifted the rostelium, which is a small barrier between
the flowers male and female organs or antler and stigma,
and pressed the two parts together, transferring the pollen between
(03:04):
the two. He was effectively mimicking the pollinator's method, in
particular that of a small Mexican bee who had kept
the vanilla orchid fruiting in Mexico, and because of the
pistol shape that his handmade while performing the delicate action,
he named the technique La pistolae. That very season, the
very first vanilla pods were harvested in Bourbon. Albius had
(03:26):
created an effect a technique of pollinating the orchid that
required no special tools beyond a sliver of wood and
a steady hand. Anyone could produce vanilla now, and they did.
Plantations all over the tropics began to use Young Edmund's technique,
and soon Madagascar was out producing Mexico in vanilla exports.
(03:47):
With all of the new vanilla on the market, prices
plummeted seemingly overnight. Vanilla went from being an exotic flavor
only sampled by the rich, to a popular flavor among
the masses. It could suddenly be found in desserts and
perfumes all around the world, and because of that, one
would think that young Edmund Albius would find worldwide acclaim
(04:08):
well in a just world at least, but it was
not a just world, and Albius's station in life afforded
him no recourse when the plantation owner, again named Charles Frapier,
took credit for the method. Later on, French botanist Joseph
Decane would also take credit, and Albius himself was considered
a footnote in the story of his own ingenuity. He
(04:30):
received no accolades, no royalties, nothing in the way of
compensation for the revolutionary scientific achievement. His work made vanilla
production a massive industry, but to the plantation owners and
importers went all the spoils. When slavery was abolished in
French colonies in eighteen forty eight, the then nineteen year
old Albius continued to work as a gardener, living in
(04:53):
obscurity until his death at the age of fifty one.
He would only receive the recognition that he deserved decades later. Today,
in Bourbon now Reunion, Edmund Albius is spoken of with
great reverence. There are streets and schools named after him,
and statues built in his honor. That Vanilla is nearly
universally beloved is a statement to his brilliant discovery. It
(05:16):
also serves as a reminder of the many minds and
talents that have been overlooked throughout the centuries due to
the racism and exploitation that is the hallmark of colonialism.
So the next time you sip a latte or take
that first delicious spoonful of ice cream, remember the name
Edmund Albius, the young genius that brought that taste to
(05:36):
the world. It's no exaggeration to say that ancient Egypt
was an incredible and mysterious place. Archaeology tells us that
(05:57):
ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for over three three thousand years,
which means it endured longer than everything that has happened since.
The ancient Egyptians were highly literate and left behind many records,
but the sands of time have worn those records down
to where we only have brief, curious snapshots into Egyptian history.
(06:17):
We know relatively little about some of its most significant rulers,
the pharaohs, but the snapshots that we do have for
one particular ruler paint him as the most curious pharaoh
of all. Peppi the Second was only six years old
when his older brother suddenly died. All he'd ever known
was living at the palace and having his every need
(06:37):
attendant to Now, in the year twenty two seventy eight BC,
he was crowned pharaoh, and the whole kingdom had to
do whatever he wanted. Since he was forced to stay
at the palace by his mother, He demanded that his
servants bring him interesting things from all over the kingdom.
He loved playing with chunks of turquoise and copper, or
(06:57):
looking at finely sculpted pottery in statuary, But his whole
world changed one day when he received word from an
expedition leader in the south, the explorer Harcouf had captured
a pigmy hunter. These were the short, mysterious people far
to the south, near where the nile flowed out from
the underworld. For a number of weeks, all Peppy could
(07:18):
think about was what it would be like to have
such a strange person in his court. So he wrote
back to Harcouf with special instructions. The pigmy was to
be treated with the utmost care. He was to be
surrounded on Harcouf's boat on both sides so that there
was no risk of him falling into the nile, and
he should also be surrounded by guards at night to
protect him in his sleep. When Harkuf finally arrived with
(07:41):
a captive, Peppy was overjoyed. The short dark man was
unlike anyone he had ever met before. He would keep
him as a dancer in his court for as long
as he lived. As Pepy got older, his tendency to
use people for his own comfort or amusement didn't get
any better. He saw himself as a guy, so that's
all he needed to justify his every whim and a
(08:04):
good example of this comes from the time when he
was finally out from his mother's thumb and ruling Egypt
on his own. His long days of seeing his subjects
in his throne room had started to wear on him.
He was always hot, and the endless flies that flew
in from the nile constantly pestered him. They say that
one day he noticed that the flies tended to congregate
around the jar of honey at his food table. He
(08:26):
looked from the jar of honey to his enslaved people
standing by, and he got a terrible idea. Peppi had
these enslaved people coated in honey from head to toe,
turning them into gooey, glistening golden monoliths by his side,
And now instead of pestering him, all of the flies
pestered his enslaved people, swarming around them and getting stuck
(08:47):
in the honey. We can only imagine what it was
like for those people when they went to clean up
after a long day of serving beside the pharaoh. One
final curious snapshot of Peppi comes from his adult years.
This story was actually written hundreds of years after his death,
so it may be more legend than fact, but it's
a historical interest to Egyptologists. None the less One of
(09:09):
Peppe's court officials, a man named Cheeti, noticed that Peppe
mysteriously left his chambers every night for four hours. Once
the pharaoh was believed to be an incarnation of the
sun god Ra, Cheety wondered if perhaps he was traveling
to the underworld each night, as the myths around Ra suggested,
driven by a healthy dose of curiosity, something we can
(09:31):
all relate to. Cheaty followed Peppe from the shadows, winding
through the columns of the palace. As the pharaoh journeyed
out into the moonlight, he crossed a courtyard next to
the palace and arrived at the home of one of
his general's sarsanet. Peppe threw a brick at the window,
and the general appeared, lowering a ladder for the pharaoh
to climb up. He disappeared inside, and Cheety waited four
(09:55):
hours until the pharaoh re emerged. Although the story never
says what Peppy was doing at the general's house, it
strongly implies that they may have been lovers. If so,
this mysterious affair is yet another unusual chapter in Peppi's legacy.
Given that this is all we know about the Pharaoh,
and that the sands of time have likely erased all
(10:16):
other records of his life. We will probably never have
the full picture, but that just makes us even more
curious about this ruler who lived longer ago than any
of us can imagine. I hope you enjoyed today's guided
tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created
(10:37):
by me Aaron Manke in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched
and written by the Grim and Mild team, and produced
by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the
people who make it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities.
You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of
Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well
(10:57):
as ebook and audiobook. And if you look looking for
an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all
the same stories, but without the interruption for a small
monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at patreon
dot com, slash Grimandmild, 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):
It's the most popular flavor in the world. It can
be found in ice cream, coffees, yogurts, and fruit dishes.
It's used in skincare, fragrances and household cleaners. I'm talking,
of course, about vanilla, but it wasn't always so. As
a matter of fact, for the first few hundreds of
years that we knew about this famous flavor, it was
(00:56):
considered an incredible luxury outside of its origin in Mexi,
unavailable to the common tongue, until one adolescent boy changed
all of that. The vanilla orchid or vanilla plantifolia if
you're into science, is a native of Mexico. It produces
a delicate pod that's after curing, gives us the aromatic
(01:16):
beans with that famous flavor. It was cultivated for centuries
in Mexico, first by the Teutonic people, and was later
exploited by the Spanish during the brutal days of the conquistadors,
and it quickly became a hit with European royalty. The
problem with that, at least so far as Europe was concerned,
was that while the orchid could be grown in any environment,
(01:37):
it would only produce the vanilla beans in its native habitat.
And this all came down to one factor, the melapana bee,
which could only be found in Mexico. Essentially, without the
bee to pollinate the blossom, the flower would wilt without
producing that prized sea pod, and so for three long
centuries after being brought to Europe it remained incredibly rare.
(01:59):
No matter where where they tried to grow it, the
flower would produce no fruit. That is until twelve year
old Edmund Albius. Albius was born into slavery in eighteen
twenty nine on the French island of Bourbon in the
Indian Ocean. He was the child of an enslaved woman
and a white father who would not claim him. He
was an intelligent young man who was deeply interested in
(02:21):
the natural world, and he worked in the plantation garden
where vanilla vines had been planted and struggled to thrive.
By the time he was twelve, he had set his
intelligence on the problem of the vanilla orchids. He noticed
that they withered before producing the same sort of seed
pods similar flowers would grow. Other flowers in the garden
(02:42):
did not seem to have that same problem, and so
Albius came up with a method both simple and revolutionary.
Using a small sliver of bamboo and his thumb, he
gently lifted the rostelium, which is a small barrier between
the flowers male and female organs or antler and stigma,
and pressed the two parts together, transferring the pollen between
(03:04):
the two. He was effectively mimicking the pollinator's method, in
particular that of a small Mexican bee who had kept
the vanilla orchid fruiting in Mexico, and because of the
pistol shape that his handmade while performing the delicate action,
he named the technique La pistolae. That very season, the
very first vanilla pods were harvested in Bourbon. Albius had
(03:26):
created an effect a technique of pollinating the orchid that
required no special tools beyond a sliver of wood and
a steady hand. Anyone could produce vanilla now, and they did.
Plantations all over the tropics began to use Young Edmund's technique,
and soon Madagascar was out producing Mexico in vanilla exports.
(03:47):
With all of the new vanilla on the market, prices
plummeted seemingly overnight. Vanilla went from being an exotic flavor
only sampled by the rich, to a popular flavor among
the masses. It could suddenly be found in desserts and
perfumes all around the world, and because of that, one
would think that young Edmund Albius would find worldwide acclaim
(04:08):
well in a just world at least, but it was
not a just world, and Albius's station in life afforded
him no recourse when the plantation owner, again named Charles Frapier,
took credit for the method. Later on, French botanist Joseph
Decane would also take credit, and Albius himself was considered
a footnote in the story of his own ingenuity. He
(04:30):
received no accolades, no royalties, nothing in the way of
compensation for the revolutionary scientific achievement. His work made vanilla
production a massive industry, but to the plantation owners and
importers went all the spoils. When slavery was abolished in
French colonies in eighteen forty eight, the then nineteen year
old Albius continued to work as a gardener, living in
(04:53):
obscurity until his death at the age of fifty one.
He would only receive the recognition that he deserved decades later. Today,
in Bourbon now Reunion, Edmund Albius is spoken of with
great reverence. There are streets and schools named after him,
and statues built in his honor. That Vanilla is nearly
universally beloved is a statement to his brilliant discovery. It
(05:16):
also serves as a reminder of the many minds and
talents that have been overlooked throughout the centuries due to
the racism and exploitation that is the hallmark of colonialism.
So the next time you sip a latte or take
that first delicious spoonful of ice cream, remember the name
Edmund Albius, the young genius that brought that taste to
(05:36):
the world. It's no exaggeration to say that ancient Egypt
was an incredible and mysterious place. Archaeology tells us that
(05:57):
ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for over three three thousand years,
which means it endured longer than everything that has happened since.
The ancient Egyptians were highly literate and left behind many records,
but the sands of time have worn those records down
to where we only have brief, curious snapshots into Egyptian history.
(06:17):
We know relatively little about some of its most significant rulers,
the pharaohs, but the snapshots that we do have for
one particular ruler paint him as the most curious pharaoh
of all. Peppi the Second was only six years old
when his older brother suddenly died. All he'd ever known
was living at the palace and having his every need
(06:37):
attendant to Now, in the year twenty two seventy eight BC,
he was crowned pharaoh, and the whole kingdom had to
do whatever he wanted. Since he was forced to stay
at the palace by his mother, He demanded that his
servants bring him interesting things from all over the kingdom.
He loved playing with chunks of turquoise and copper, or
(06:57):
looking at finely sculpted pottery in statuary, But his whole
world changed one day when he received word from an
expedition leader in the south, the explorer Harcouf had captured
a pigmy hunter. These were the short, mysterious people far
to the south, near where the nile flowed out from
the underworld. For a number of weeks, all Peppy could
(07:18):
think about was what it would be like to have
such a strange person in his court. So he wrote
back to Harcouf with special instructions. The pigmy was to
be treated with the utmost care. He was to be
surrounded on Harcouf's boat on both sides so that there
was no risk of him falling into the nile, and
he should also be surrounded by guards at night to
protect him in his sleep. When Harkuf finally arrived with
(07:41):
a captive, Peppy was overjoyed. The short dark man was
unlike anyone he had ever met before. He would keep
him as a dancer in his court for as long
as he lived. As Pepy got older, his tendency to
use people for his own comfort or amusement didn't get
any better. He saw himself as a guy, so that's
all he needed to justify his every whim and a
(08:04):
good example of this comes from the time when he
was finally out from his mother's thumb and ruling Egypt
on his own. His long days of seeing his subjects
in his throne room had started to wear on him.
He was always hot, and the endless flies that flew
in from the nile constantly pestered him. They say that
one day he noticed that the flies tended to congregate
around the jar of honey at his food table. He
(08:26):
looked from the jar of honey to his enslaved people
standing by, and he got a terrible idea. Peppi had
these enslaved people coated in honey from head to toe,
turning them into gooey, glistening golden monoliths by his side,
And now instead of pestering him, all of the flies
pestered his enslaved people, swarming around them and getting stuck
(08:47):
in the honey. We can only imagine what it was
like for those people when they went to clean up
after a long day of serving beside the pharaoh. One
final curious snapshot of Peppi comes from his adult years.
This story was actually written hundreds of years after his death,
so it may be more legend than fact, but it's
a historical interest to Egyptologists. None the less One of
(09:09):
Peppe's court officials, a man named Cheeti, noticed that Peppe
mysteriously left his chambers every night for four hours. Once
the pharaoh was believed to be an incarnation of the
sun god Ra, Cheety wondered if perhaps he was traveling
to the underworld each night, as the myths around Ra suggested,
driven by a healthy dose of curiosity, something we can
(09:31):
all relate to. Cheaty followed Peppe from the shadows, winding
through the columns of the palace. As the pharaoh journeyed
out into the moonlight, he crossed a courtyard next to
the palace and arrived at the home of one of
his general's sarsanet. Peppe threw a brick at the window,
and the general appeared, lowering a ladder for the pharaoh
to climb up. He disappeared inside, and Cheety waited four
(09:55):
hours until the pharaoh re emerged. Although the story never
says what Peppy was doing at the general's house, it
strongly implies that they may have been lovers. If so,
this mysterious affair is yet another unusual chapter in Peppi's legacy.
Given that this is all we know about the Pharaoh,
and that the sands of time have likely erased all
(10:16):
other records of his life. We will probably never have
the full picture, but that just makes us even more
curious about this ruler who lived longer ago than any
of us can imagine. I hope you enjoyed today's guided
tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created
(10:37):
by me Aaron Manke in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched
and written by the Grim and Mild team, and produced
by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the
people who make it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities.
You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of
Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well
(10:57):
as ebook and audiobook. And if you look looking for
an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all
the same stories, but without the interruption for a small
monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at patreon
dot com, slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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