March 31, 2026 • 11 mins
Sometimes the most curious stories take place when people are prohibited from being themselves.
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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):
Stop me if this sounds familiar. You are sitting at school,
paying attention to, or struggling to pay attention to, your teacher,
not really taking notes. Your hands wander across your desk,
feeling its edges, and then without thinking, sliding underneath the drawers.
Almost immediately, you find a lump down there, hard as
(00:56):
a rock, stuck firmly to the lacquered wood, like a
barnacle on the hull of a ship. It's a piece
of chewing gum that some other student planted there after
it lost its flavor. Maybe as recently as earlier this week,
or as long ago as the start of the semester,
you aren't really sure, but whatever the case, you are disgusted.
(01:19):
Chewing gum is just one of those things. It's commonplace,
but if you see it outside of its wrapper, it
immediately goes from being a candy to a nuisance. It
sticks to the bottom of your shoes, gets caught in
the grooves of your cars tire.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
The fact that it inspired a.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Whole term of phrase, gumming up the works, says everything
we need to know about chewing gum's reputation. But if
chewing gum is an annoyance to us, it has been
a public menace to others. In nineteen eighty three, in Singapore,
the Minister of Foreign Affairs raised this problem before their
local government. It seemed that leftover gum was everywhere they
(01:55):
looked in the country, on mailboxes, street signs, public restroom,
to the point where it started to take a toll
on the very infrastructure of Singapore itself. The largest problem
occurred in Singapore's Mass Rapid Transit or MRT. Occasionally, chewing
gum stuck to the door sensors of MRT trains would
cause the doors to fail to close and the whole
(02:18):
train would be stuck at the station until someone removed it.
And even after it was removed, the residue would cause
problems of its own. Beyond that, chewing gum on elevator
buttons in public buildings also became a smaller version of
the same problem. It prevented people from going to their
destination unless they were willing to endure the indignity of
(02:39):
touching someone else's used gum.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Throughout the nineteen.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Eighties, the government of Singapore started to take measures to
control the literal and figurative spread of chewing gum. The
Singapore Broadcasting Corporation largely stopped showing advertisements for gum shops
near schools were instructed not to sell gum to students anymore.
But that was not enough, which is why on January
(03:04):
third of nineteen ninety two, almost a decade after the
Foreign Affairs Minister's proposal, chewing gum was officially banned in Singapore.
Anyone caught with it would be fine, and those who
manufactured or sold it could face jail time. Convenience store
owners had to get rid of all of their remaining stock.
And you probably don't need me to tell you that
(03:25):
this legislation provoked an immediate backlash. The public understandably felt
like this was an overreaction. Many people suggested that there
should just be harsher fines but no ban, but the
law remained on the books. In spite of the controversy,
though the law does seem to have worked.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
In a year, average reported.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Cases of chewing gum vandalism went down from five hundred
and twenty five each day to just two, and because
of this, the band held firm from nineteen ninety two
until two thousand and four, where it underwent a sudden revision.
As part of a new trade agreement with the United States,
the government of Singapore agreed to relax the chewing gum ban.
Now there were carve outs for gum that had medicinal benefits.
(04:07):
This included a wide range of gums, anything between sugar
free dental hygiene gum and nicotine gum, but any approved
gum had to be approved by a doctor or a dentist,
and the chewing gum law remains in place to this day.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
In its revised.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Form, Now it only really affects sellers of the product,
rather than those who just happened to be possessing chewing
gum or bubblegum. Tourists coming to the country with a
small amount of gum won't face any prosecution so long
as they dispose of it safely and not in a
public space. So if you're planning to go to Southeast
Asia anytime soon, Just keep this in mind. What you
(04:45):
may think of as a harmless candy might change legal
status on the plane over, transforming from a treat to
a public sanitation menace in waiting. Just a little something
for you to chew on. In February of twenty fourteen,
(05:13):
five finished divers were preparing to do the unthinkable. They
were standing on the ice at Pleura Lake in Norway,
cutting a hole in the surface and diving down below.
They weren't fishing or looking for treasure, though, they were
cave divers who wanted nothing more than to explore the
subterranean caverns connected to the lake. Now, before we move on,
(05:34):
there are a lot of difficult to pronounce finish names
in this story, and so to make it easier on
me and also on you to keep track of everyone,
I'm just going to refer to them by their first names, Patrick, Yari,
h Vesa, Yari, You and Kai. Now they were a
group of male friends with many diving hours under their belts.
In fact, Patrick and Kai had been the first to
(05:57):
discover the very caves that they were now about.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
To act floor.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
So they cut a hole in the ice with chainsaws,
checked their masks and oxygen canisters, and began the freezing plunge.
Patrick and Yari h went first. The others wouldn't follow
them for two whole hours, and this was to prevent
traffic jams in the caves and also allowed time for
any silt that was kicked up by the first two
(06:21):
to settle so that the following divers visibility wouldn't be reduced.
Patrick and Yari made their way through the two hundred
and fifty meter first passage of the cave.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
This was the easy part.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Eventually the water gave way to air pockets where magnificent
limestone caves rose above the divers. They took it all
in and then prepared for the worst part. You see
now they would have to dive deeper than ever, a
straight vertical drop of one hundred and thirty two meters
below where they had started on the lake surface. They
dove down, and down and down. Eventually they reached the bottom.
(06:55):
At this point, the cave turns and begins to rise
back up, but the diver's ascent had to be very controlled.
If they rose too quickly, they would risk decompression sickness.
The effect where nitrogen bubbles build in the bloodstream when
pressure drops too quickly. But at these low depths, the
body is also working harder to maintain equilibrium, so carbon
(07:16):
dioxide is building in the bloodstream as well. Divers have
to remain very calm so that they don't breathe too
fast and increase the build up. Patrick and yari H
rose slowly, but after a few minutes, Patrick turned around
to realize yari H was no longer behind him. He
swam back and found that some of his equipment had
gotten stuck on the cave wall. The two divers were
(07:39):
staring into each other's eyes, trying to communicate. Yarih was panicking,
breathing too fast and using up his oxygen. Patrick tried
to give him more, but as yuri H swapped his mouthpiece,
he took in big gulps of water. Patrick watched in
horror as his friend drowned. Even more disturbing. He now
(07:59):
had to remain calm, acting like nothing happened, or else
risk his own demise. He had to continue the slow
journey to the surface another cave on the opposite side
of the tunnel that opened back up onto dry land.
Patrick eventually reached safety and waited anxiously for the.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Other divers to surface. First was Vesa.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
He saw yari H's body and was able to squeeze past.
He didn't know what had happened to the others. Vesa
had risen too fast and was now suffering the effects
of decompression sickness. They had no choice but to head
back down to their camp. After waiting for what felt
like an eternity, they finally saw a headlamp emerge through
the dark and snow. It was Kai, diver number four,
(08:43):
but yari You wasn't with him. Yari U, diver number five,
had seen yari H dead in the tunnel, panicked himself
and also become stuck, and now both Yari's were dead.
Kai had turned around and come back up through the
cave entrance. Patrick was devastated. He refused to leave his
friend's bodies behind. The Norwegian authorities forbade him from going
(09:07):
back down, and in fact banned diving in the caves altogether.
But forty six days later Patrick arrived with a team
of dozens of support divers and his other expert diver
friend Sami. They set up camps on both sides of
the cave so that they could attempt the body rescue simultaneously.
They spent days before having support divers leave gas canisters
(09:29):
at different depths, and they also set up a decompression
chamber six meters down on one side. It was an
airtight chamber where they could rest and even eat underwater safely.
Patrick entered from the lakeside, diving down and finding Yarih,
the friend that he wished he could have saved. He
cut him loose and attached his body to a small
(09:49):
propulsion vehicle, and then continued the journey that Yarih would
have in life to the other side of the cave.
The next day, Sami entered from the other side, finding
yari You. He sent him to the surface as well
and retrieved any remaining diving equipment. It was a curious
case of friendship loyalty. In places like Mount Everest's bodies
(10:11):
are left behind all the time, but these Finnish friends
prove that amongst their countrymen, no one is left behind.
I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet
of Curiosities. This show was created by me Aaron Manke
in partnership with iHeart podcasts researched and written by the
(10:32):
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 as ebook and audiobook.
And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider
joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without
(10:55):
the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and
sign up over at patreon dot com slash Grim and Mild,
and until next time, Stay curious, m HM.
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):
Stop me if this sounds familiar. You are sitting at school,
paying attention to, or struggling to pay attention to, your teacher,
not really taking notes. Your hands wander across your desk,
feeling its edges, and then without thinking, sliding underneath the drawers.
Almost immediately, you find a lump down there, hard as
(00:56):
a rock, stuck firmly to the lacquered wood, like a
barnacle on the hull of a ship. It's a piece
of chewing gum that some other student planted there after
it lost its flavor. Maybe as recently as earlier this week,
or as long ago as the start of the semester,
you aren't really sure, but whatever the case, you are disgusted.
(01:19):
Chewing gum is just one of those things. It's commonplace,
but if you see it outside of its wrapper, it
immediately goes from being a candy to a nuisance. It
sticks to the bottom of your shoes, gets caught in
the grooves of your cars tire.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
The fact that it inspired a.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Whole term of phrase, gumming up the works, says everything
we need to know about chewing gum's reputation. But if
chewing gum is an annoyance to us, it has been
a public menace to others. In nineteen eighty three, in Singapore,
the Minister of Foreign Affairs raised this problem before their
local government. It seemed that leftover gum was everywhere they
(01:55):
looked in the country, on mailboxes, street signs, public restroom,
to the point where it started to take a toll
on the very infrastructure of Singapore itself. The largest problem
occurred in Singapore's Mass Rapid Transit or MRT. Occasionally, chewing
gum stuck to the door sensors of MRT trains would
cause the doors to fail to close and the whole
(02:18):
train would be stuck at the station until someone removed it.
And even after it was removed, the residue would cause
problems of its own. Beyond that, chewing gum on elevator
buttons in public buildings also became a smaller version of
the same problem. It prevented people from going to their
destination unless they were willing to endure the indignity of
(02:39):
touching someone else's used gum.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Throughout the nineteen.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Eighties, the government of Singapore started to take measures to
control the literal and figurative spread of chewing gum. The
Singapore Broadcasting Corporation largely stopped showing advertisements for gum shops
near schools were instructed not to sell gum to students anymore.
But that was not enough, which is why on January
(03:04):
third of nineteen ninety two, almost a decade after the
Foreign Affairs Minister's proposal, chewing gum was officially banned in Singapore.
Anyone caught with it would be fine, and those who
manufactured or sold it could face jail time. Convenience store
owners had to get rid of all of their remaining stock.
And you probably don't need me to tell you that
(03:25):
this legislation provoked an immediate backlash. The public understandably felt
like this was an overreaction. Many people suggested that there
should just be harsher fines but no ban, but the
law remained on the books. In spite of the controversy,
though the law does seem to have worked.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
In a year, average reported.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Cases of chewing gum vandalism went down from five hundred
and twenty five each day to just two, and because
of this, the band held firm from nineteen ninety two
until two thousand and four, where it underwent a sudden revision.
As part of a new trade agreement with the United States,
the government of Singapore agreed to relax the chewing gum ban.
Now there were carve outs for gum that had medicinal benefits.
(04:07):
This included a wide range of gums, anything between sugar
free dental hygiene gum and nicotine gum, but any approved
gum had to be approved by a doctor or a dentist,
and the chewing gum law remains in place to this day.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
In its revised.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Form, Now it only really affects sellers of the product,
rather than those who just happened to be possessing chewing
gum or bubblegum. Tourists coming to the country with a
small amount of gum won't face any prosecution so long
as they dispose of it safely and not in a
public space. So if you're planning to go to Southeast
Asia anytime soon, Just keep this in mind. What you
(04:45):
may think of as a harmless candy might change legal
status on the plane over, transforming from a treat to
a public sanitation menace in waiting. Just a little something
for you to chew on. In February of twenty fourteen,
(05:13):
five finished divers were preparing to do the unthinkable. They
were standing on the ice at Pleura Lake in Norway,
cutting a hole in the surface and diving down below.
They weren't fishing or looking for treasure, though, they were
cave divers who wanted nothing more than to explore the
subterranean caverns connected to the lake. Now, before we move on,
(05:34):
there are a lot of difficult to pronounce finish names
in this story, and so to make it easier on
me and also on you to keep track of everyone,
I'm just going to refer to them by their first names, Patrick, Yari,
h Vesa, Yari, You and Kai. Now they were a
group of male friends with many diving hours under their belts.
In fact, Patrick and Kai had been the first to
(05:57):
discover the very caves that they were now about.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
To act floor.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
So they cut a hole in the ice with chainsaws,
checked their masks and oxygen canisters, and began the freezing plunge.
Patrick and Yari h went first. The others wouldn't follow
them for two whole hours, and this was to prevent
traffic jams in the caves and also allowed time for
any silt that was kicked up by the first two
(06:21):
to settle so that the following divers visibility wouldn't be reduced.
Patrick and Yari made their way through the two hundred
and fifty meter first passage of the cave.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
This was the easy part.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Eventually the water gave way to air pockets where magnificent
limestone caves rose above the divers. They took it all
in and then prepared for the worst part. You see
now they would have to dive deeper than ever, a
straight vertical drop of one hundred and thirty two meters
below where they had started on the lake surface. They
dove down, and down and down. Eventually they reached the bottom.
(06:55):
At this point, the cave turns and begins to rise
back up, but the diver's ascent had to be very controlled.
If they rose too quickly, they would risk decompression sickness.
The effect where nitrogen bubbles build in the bloodstream when
pressure drops too quickly. But at these low depths, the
body is also working harder to maintain equilibrium, so carbon
(07:16):
dioxide is building in the bloodstream as well. Divers have
to remain very calm so that they don't breathe too
fast and increase the build up. Patrick and yari H
rose slowly, but after a few minutes, Patrick turned around
to realize yari H was no longer behind him. He
swam back and found that some of his equipment had
gotten stuck on the cave wall. The two divers were
(07:39):
staring into each other's eyes, trying to communicate. Yarih was panicking,
breathing too fast and using up his oxygen. Patrick tried
to give him more, but as yuri H swapped his mouthpiece,
he took in big gulps of water. Patrick watched in
horror as his friend drowned. Even more disturbing. He now
(07:59):
had to remain calm, acting like nothing happened, or else
risk his own demise. He had to continue the slow
journey to the surface another cave on the opposite side
of the tunnel that opened back up onto dry land.
Patrick eventually reached safety and waited anxiously for the.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Other divers to surface. First was Vesa.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
He saw yari H's body and was able to squeeze past.
He didn't know what had happened to the others. Vesa
had risen too fast and was now suffering the effects
of decompression sickness. They had no choice but to head
back down to their camp. After waiting for what felt
like an eternity, they finally saw a headlamp emerge through
the dark and snow. It was Kai, diver number four,
(08:43):
but yari You wasn't with him. Yari U, diver number five,
had seen yari H dead in the tunnel, panicked himself
and also become stuck, and now both Yari's were dead.
Kai had turned around and come back up through the
cave entrance. Patrick was devastated. He refused to leave his
friend's bodies behind. The Norwegian authorities forbade him from going
(09:07):
back down, and in fact banned diving in the caves altogether.
But forty six days later Patrick arrived with a team
of dozens of support divers and his other expert diver
friend Sami. They set up camps on both sides of
the cave so that they could attempt the body rescue simultaneously.
They spent days before having support divers leave gas canisters
(09:29):
at different depths, and they also set up a decompression
chamber six meters down on one side. It was an
airtight chamber where they could rest and even eat underwater safely.
Patrick entered from the lakeside, diving down and finding Yarih,
the friend that he wished he could have saved. He
cut him loose and attached his body to a small
(09:49):
propulsion vehicle, and then continued the journey that Yarih would
have in life to the other side of the cave.
The next day, Sami entered from the other side, finding
yari You. He sent him to the surface as well
and retrieved any remaining diving equipment. It was a curious
case of friendship loyalty. In places like Mount Everest's bodies
(10:11):
are left behind all the time, but these Finnish friends
prove that amongst their countrymen, no one is left behind.
I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet
of Curiosities. This show was created by me Aaron Manke
in partnership with iHeart podcasts researched and written by the
(10:32):
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 as ebook and audiobook.
And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider
joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without
(10:55):
the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and
sign up over at patreon dot com slash Grim and Mild,
and until next time, Stay curious, m HM.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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