March 8, 2022 • 41 mins
Back in the days of the British Raj, colonial leaders had a problem: Delhi was overrun with snakes. And not just any snakes -- cobras. These dangerous death noodles slithered through every nook and cranny in town. The solution? Put a bounty on cobras, and allow any citizen to receive payment for every cobra skin they bring in. While this seemed like a good idea at first, it quickly led to even more snakes pouring into town. So what happened? In part one of this week's two-part episode, Ben and Noel explore the strange series of missteps so ridiculous that it inspired a new, powerful concept: The Cobra Effect.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. I hope you're not afraid
of sneaks, folks, though it is an understandable, almost primal
fear common to so many people today and throughout the past.
That's our one and only snake tamer slash super producer,
(00:47):
Mr Max Williams. They called me Ben snake bite Boland. No,
what do you have a snake nickname? Yeah? Yeah, definitely.
I'm gonna keep that one in my back pocket though
for a for a future time in case I need
to go on the Lamb and I need like a
(01:09):
you know, a really cool badass nickname from my new
criminal life. So I'm gonna sit on this one. Hopefully
go get bitten there we go, watch out for that part. Yeah.
My mom has terrified of snakes, like even like images
of snakes. And I think I've made no secret about
my phobia's bird related. But like I can watch people
(01:31):
always like, oh God, have you seen the movie The Birds?
I'm like, I can watch a movie about birds, It's fine.
I just don't want actual physical birds coming at me.
Which they will do because they are untrustworthy and they're
basically little winged dinosaurs with no you know, emotion. They
they look at them, there's nothing there. But my mom
can't even look at a picture of a snake, or
(01:52):
see a nature documentary about a snake, or even have
like a rubber snake in her presence, she will lose
her mind, so that the primal urge you speak of
Ben is strong with her. M What about you, Max?
Where are you at real snakes? Yeah? I don't know.
I don't really have much opinion about him, Like I
don't love them too much, don't really hate them too much.
What if what if someone were to ask you to
(02:13):
place a you know, the venomless, harmless quote unquote boa
constrictor around your neck for a cute photo op. Would
you do it? Would you do it? I mean they're
literally constrictors. I don't know that. What if it was
like what if it was like a real sexy Siegfried
and Roy slash stage magician in Vegas thing, you know
(02:35):
what I mean, and you were like you were like
the magical Max or something like that, and you had,
you know, a boa constrictor. Yeah, I mean the find
I would probably do it. I mean, I'm downe to
like yes and that shows and stuff. I'll go along
with it all. Like you know, if you do an
improv with a snake, I mean, which was like Fred
(02:57):
behind an alley, He's like, hey, hold my magical stay,
I'm absolutely not. But if it's like a professional production.
If if a random dude in an alley asked you
to hold his magical sea, I think he'd probably be
talking about something a little language bearer. Thing might be euphemism.
I like snakes, you know, I'm a huge fan in
the natural world in general. Um, but there is this
(03:22):
there is this innate ability that people appear to have
that allows them to detect snakes and spiders and an
aptitude for learning to fear them very quickly. There was
some research from the University of Virginia that found this.
But people have lived with snakes for a long long time.
(03:42):
A good friend of the show, actually several several of
our colleagues, several of my friends are long time snake owners.
Armchair herpetologist. I guess you could call them as an
etymology nerd, as someone obsessed with it. I do need
to check out to see, I do need to figure
out why herpes and herpetology sounds so similar. One is
(04:04):
an STD One is the study of like snakes and reptiles. Anyhow,
what we're saying is people have lived with snakes for
such a long time, and today's episode takes us you
can actually lead a very normal life. Well, actually, depending
on which simplex you're talking about, I think by a
certain age, the vast majority of human beings actually have that.
(04:25):
Uh So we're not here to vilify people or snakes,
but we are here to talk about something that happened
in India back in the day, something that now is
called the cobra effect. So yeah, so India, especially Delhi,
had an abundance of cobras, and cobras are dangerous, you
(04:52):
know what I mean. They're They're not like a garden snake.
They can kill you. So the British governor, this is
under colonial India, by the way, the British governor of
Delhi said, you know, like rom from from something must
be done, and he put out a bounty on cobras.
Seems normal, Yeah, you may. You know, this may conjure
(05:13):
images of like cross legged dudes in open air marketplaces,
coaxing cobras out of elaborately woven baskets um with a
flute or something. Well, that may be a very stereotypical image,
it exists for a reason because these things were literally
just coming out of baskets. They were they were just
plopped falling out of the ceiling. They were just everywhere.
(05:33):
The place was lousy with them, and the bounty was
pretty generous, um to the point where it kind of
had people making this like a secondary revenue stream and
going cobra hunting, which at first worked right because the
cobra population dropped. But that's when the whole idea of
(05:54):
the cobra effect comes into play. And what this episode
is about, truly is unintended consequences. When when when good
intentions go awry because of people's like bad intentions and
just you know, general greediness and the fact that, you know,
when there's money to be had, people will usually go
to whatever means necessary to acquire said money. Yes, yes, classic,
(06:20):
classic example of the old monkeys paw conundrum. I wish
there were fewer cobras monkeys. First finger curls. Can we
get a creek on that? You guys know what I'm
talking about, right, the short stand of the monkeys Paw.
There's a great reddit for this too, called there's a
great subreddit called the monkeys Paw. Check it out. Uh,
it's it's a fun thought experiment. You're absolutely right. This
(06:42):
is about unintended consequences. People started trying to rig the
game in the days of what was called the British Raj,
the colonial powers that be in India. We're increasingly miffed,
let's say, about the number of venomous cobras infesting Delhi
(07:03):
in particular. So they said, here's how we'll tackle the problem.
Will put out off for this bounty, and then to
verify that someone's killed the cobra, they're gonna bring us
the skin of the snake. And they realized all of
a sudden their storage rooms were full of cobra skins,
(07:24):
and if first, it didn't seem to have a noticeable
effect on the population in Cobra and Delhi. And that's
where city officials figured out local farmers being incredibly intelligent,
people said, why do I need to go out in
the streets hunting for snakes when I can just catch
(07:46):
a couple and then keep them and basically farm them,
raise them. I can grow cobras at home, kill them,
and then get some cash. Yeah, and the cost benefit
analysis was in their favor because they would enough profit
by you know, investing in raising the snake. Let's do
it to sell on a one snake basis, and then
(08:06):
they'd get that bounty and they would have, you know,
turned to profit per snake. And they could do this, however,
many times because there probably wasn't really a cap on it.
I mean, we don't know the exact specifics of the deal,
but it sounds to me like it was pretty loosey goosey,
you know, or snaky um. And the thing that's so
interesting is like this is, uh, this seems in general
(08:29):
like a pretty good idea, you know. I mean, nobody
wants the streets just teeming with venomous snakes that will,
you know, from one bite from which could could put
you down. Literally. This seems like humans working against their
own self interest in the name of of the almighty dollar.
But I guess maybe these farmers lived more like out
in the sticks or something like that, and they weren't
(08:50):
as concerned about city life. I'm not sure. It's a
little unclear but this is not a problem that just
existed in Delhi. This is an India. This is like
they call it the cobra effect because it's named after
the situation, but it was something that extended, you know,
all across the world. Yes, yeah, and let's walk through
the next step of the cobra effect before we go global.
(09:14):
This is where things get even worse. So the people
empower the British colonial forces realize what's going on. They say, Okay,
these guys are gaming the system and we're not going
to permit that. Because the colonial British authorities in general
(09:34):
hated whenever anything good happened to the actual population of India,
they were not particularly good rulers, so they canceled this
cobra hunting plan. They stopped paying out bounties for cobra skins.
And without the bounties, these cobra farmers said, oh, these
(09:57):
skins are worthless. All these captive cobra we have they're
now pointless. So you know, we're snake meat. I don't
know if you guys know this. I haven't eaten an
actual cobra yet, but snake meat in general doesn't taste
particularly great. I mean it's edible, it's not my bag.
So they said, you know, we're not gonna eat these things.
(10:17):
I guess we'll just let him go. And so let
all these cobras back on the street in Delhi. We
need a new scheme. We gotta revert back to our
old ways of farming. So what are we gonna do
with all these cobras. Let's just let them run rampant
back in the streets. So consequently, there were more cobras
at the end of the whole thing than there were
(10:37):
at the beginning. So snakes flooded the streets. Uh, this
story got a lot of press, and like you said,
Noel Deli's snake problem was worse than it was in
the beginning. That's what we call it the cobra effect,
which some of us fellow eighties babies may remember from
the show g I Joe got that also. I gotta say,
(11:05):
I think the Cobra effect would be a great name
for either an eighties hair metal type band or maybe
like an early Adds kind of like emo dance punk
type band. I don't know, Cobra Effect. I like that.
I'm still sad that it didn't become an eighties new
wave band with people dressed as Cobra Commander. I was
(11:27):
so fascinated a cobra commander as a kid. Anyway, Um,
Cobra Commander was one guy. He was just the cobra
commander of all of all the cobras. Yeah, you have
to leave it was the guy with a silverhead. Silverhead.
It's costume is so awesome. He also had a hood sometimes. Um,
and then you always wonder what his face was, which is,
(11:48):
by the way, revealed in the g I. Joe animated
series or no g I Joe animated film, which gets
deep in the weird otherworldly cobra lore. No spoilers, is
a supernatural or anyway, we're not doing the show about
cobraate commander. Unfortunately they had supernatural powers. Well, man, you're
just gonna have to not all, you're not all, but
(12:11):
you gotta watch I'll watch it with you. A double
feature with that and the g I and the Transformers
movie that has the the amazing eighties kind of soundtrack. Yeah, deal,
you got the touch, you got the power. Damn sorry,
I love that. No, it's perfect. I like this idea
(12:33):
because if we're gonna segue, it's called the Cobra effect,
because people do tend to have an enormous touch on
their local on their local environment, and they have a
lot of power, but it's not always good. If you
(12:54):
travel to Annoy during the time that French powers were
ruling it, you see the same thing again old but
instead of the Cobra effect, this is like what would
you call it, the rat consequence? Yeah, exactly. I always
think too, it's interesting. This is it's a little aside.
You know how obviously England ruled over India under the
(13:15):
what was it called the English Raj British Raj, and
you know kind of developed some light they really like
developed a taste for Indian food where certain versions of
it kind of were developed that were like to suit
the English palette and kind of became really really popular
in you know, London and in the UK. But it's
something you would never have seen in you know, actual
(13:37):
ectual Delhi, like things like chicken tika massala and all that.
Same with French rule over Vietnam. It's what gives you
things like the bond Me sandwich, which is essentially a
you know, a French baguette with all of this amazing
you know, barbecued Vietnamese meats and and uh seasonings and
you know, vegetables and stuff. So I do appreciate that
(13:59):
consequence of empire building. But the rest of it's a
little sketch culinary colonialism, I like to call it. Yeah,
And it leads to an amazing uh syncretism, just like
with religion, right, and you could look at I was,
honestly because I get in weird rabbit holes. I was
(14:19):
reading earlier this weekend the amazing story of Chinese food
throughout the diaspora. You know, in an American Chinese food,
as we've talked about before, is a cuisine all its own.
But yes, I love it. Also lucky for the United
Kingdom that they they learned from the Indian subcontinent about
(14:41):
you know, I'll say it how to cook. Oh, I
would say, curry is the national is pretty much like
the national dish of the UK exactly. Yeah. But but
but it's like there's a name for it. There's like
there's a name for the style of cooking, uh, that
type of Indian cuisine that's it's called like fast British
style or something like that. Or there are these like
(15:02):
little curry shops that like have a very specific order
of operations. It's very different from traditional cooking, and they
acknowledge that there's another name for that. I'm spacing on.
But last day, Uh, the dough Boys podcast brought up
this question, and I want to put it to you guys.
Is a bond Me a sub sandwich? Yeah? I guess
I don't. I've never thought about it, but I guess.
So it's really whether you emphasize the bread or the ingredients.
(15:25):
I gotta tell you, man, I've gone through I'm like
Doctor Strange with the timestone. I've gone through every iteration
of what is a sandwich? Or what is what kind
of sandwich? Question? I think I might have a problem.
But yes, well, but it's like, you know, a meat
ball sub is in the name, you've got like an
Italian sub, you've got like a veggie sub or like
(15:46):
you know whatever, a turkey sub sub is usually in
the name. Bond Me has all the makings of a sub,
but you never call it that. So I just uh.
One of the one of the dough Boys was was
vehemently anti bond Me being a sub and then resent
today when everybody else on the show just rolled forward
with that as though well he can he can call me.
We can talk a sub as a sub, as a sub.
(16:07):
To paraphrase the old literature quote, a sub by any right,
a sub by any other name, and a cobra effect
by any other name. Hannoy is annoyed with all the rats.
It's guy named Paul Dumer goes to Vietnam. He's still
(16:27):
in the younger part of his middle age. He's he's
forty something and he is a government worker for France.
But he just had a big swing and a mist
in his career. He had a scheme for a new
kind of income tax and it failed, and so he
resigned from his job as Minister of Finance and decided
(16:48):
to you know, to hit the rails, or to hit
the high seas, to ghost in other words, and try
to find a new life abroad. He'd been appointed Governor
General of French Indo, kind of a group of colonies
in Southeast Asia, and that includes what is now present
day Vietnam. So he was like, I'm gonna make everything modern.
(17:12):
I'm gonna put into all this modern infrastructure in Hannoi.
I want you to feel like you're walking in France
when you walk in Hannoi and it kind of worked
for a while. You know, they built things in a
lot of European styles. Uh. He was very, very proud
in particular of bringing what he saw as the modern
(17:33):
European toilet to Hannoi. Yeah, you know the French and
their their bi days and all of that. They're really
big on on toilet training. It's it's it's it's it's
a it's a huge part of the culture. So they
wanted to distinguish French Hannoi from the rest of the country.
And there was already a massive network of sewers that
ran under the French section of the city, and there
(17:56):
was a smaller network of these tunnels that served specifically
the neighborhoods where Vietnamese people actually lived. It was seen
in the eyes of the French overlords is kind of
a sign of of this I'm not joking this you know,
culture of kind of cleanliness and civility. So it wasn't
(18:17):
a great look or feeling or or vibe in general
when massive sewer rats started literally popping out of toilets
that were connected to them. Yeah, they didn't have a
they didn't have the little s shape. Probably that's in most, uh,
most commodes that people are familiar with, rats literally began
(18:38):
emerging for the drains. And I mentioned this off air,
but it's pretty common fear. A lot of people have
both snakes and rats emerging from commodes. Uh, you don't
have personal experience with this, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
thankfully the freaking lid was down, but I just heard
something rustling about in there, and I'm like, it was
(18:59):
like a movie moment, you know, where I'm like slowly
lifting up there and there's this big honking, nasty wet
sewer rat in there. I had to do it. I
had to kind of take a beat. I don't remember exactly.
I think I had called a braver friend than me
who kind of helped me with the situation. But yeah,
he helped me bag it and tag it and toss it.
(19:20):
It was really gross and really scary, and thankfully I
wasn't sitting on the thing at the time. Well you
probably would have heard something, so uh, yes, yes, I'm
glad as well. I've had rats emerged from drains in kitchens,
not like the kitchen sink, but like a back access
area where piping goes outside during floods. Things like that,
(19:44):
and you know, when New York floods, for instance, you'll
see a proliferation of rats. Rats are incredibly intelligent creatures.
If you're looking for a fun nonfiction book to read
and the phobia is not too much for you, there's
a great book out there named Just Rats, and it's
about all their amazing abilities. I think that one focuses
(20:05):
on rats in New York, but both Robert Lamb, friend
of the show, and myself were big fans of that book. Anyway,
here's what happens. Paul her buddy Paul d His vision
was pretty ambitious and he did follow through on it.
Under his direction, the French colonial government laid out almost
(20:27):
ten miles more than nine miles of sewer pipe beneath Hannoy.
But when it did that, it accidentally created a really
cool new suburb for rodents. The temperature wasn't crazy, it
was nice and dark. Predators get didn't go down there.
So the first like Rat, Adam and Eve, of these
(20:50):
miles of sewer pipe are able to reproduce like never before.
And if they get hungry, then they've pretty much got
a road system underground that takes them to the most
expensive part of town which I'll have the nicest food,
which I'll have the nicest trash, and then they can
(21:12):
go back and they can reproduce again. They multiplied exponentially
until they overran their nifty new subterranean suburb, and then
they skittered to the surface. That's enough alliteration for me today.
I accidentally improved myself into a corner with that one.
But it's a good corner, Ben. It was a very
(21:35):
classy corner that you find, thinks man, Well, you know
what happens historically, there are some stereotypes about rats, and
unfortunately some of them are a little bit you know,
based in fact. As if being overrun with rodents didn't
disrupt this illusion of old world Europe already, the bubonic
(21:58):
plague started started popping. All the bubbles are coming. Yeah,
that's the that's the thing. Rats were carrying that that
that particular bug and spreading it around, you know, through
far and wide, through through this network of sewage pipes.
(22:18):
It was a pretty pretty bad scene. We had cases
starting to present themselves. This is when it became much
less an issue of decorum and civility and much more
of like a public health disaster. That needed to be
dealt with. So enter Vietnamese rat hunters. Very similar situation
(22:39):
to what we had in Delhi, only I believe these
were sanctioned or hired. Right. This wasn't like a kind
of mercenary system with a bounty. This is like these
were hired by the colonial government. Um they would go
down into the sewers to hunt down the rat and
then get paid per rat. But still when you're when
(23:03):
you're paying per rat, though, similar kind of situation is
going to present itself where it's like, gosh, it sure
is a pain hunting these rats down on the sewer. Um.
Maybe there's a workaround. There's got to be a better way,
says says the main character of every made for TV commercial. Uh, yes, yeah,
(23:26):
that's the idea. They began what is called the Great
Annoy Rat Massacre. It's April two, the last week of
the month. In that last week alone, almost eight thousand
rats are murderized, uh, seven thousand nine to be exact.
(23:46):
That's just the beginning. Because the rate of the rate
of murders of rat assassinations, we'll get there one day.
These continued as time went on. The death toll in
May got to be around four thousand rats per day
(24:07):
by May. Just that day alone, just that twenty four
hour period, the rat hunters and rat catchers killed fifteen
thousand plus rats. Yeah, I mean it started off in earnest.
It was an absolute, you know, rat apocalypse, a rat apocalypse.
(24:28):
I'll take that one, um, you know, and yeah, what
was it like twenty twelve rats in a single day.
We don't know exactly what methods were used for killing
the rats, presumably the government didn't care. But we do
know about this period is from a Storian named Michael
Van who was in France doing some research on French colonialism,
and he came upon a file that was called Destruction
(24:50):
of Animals Rats uh, inside of which he found some
kind of esoteric, not particularly well organized paperwork listing numbers
of rats that were exterminated in Hanoi around that time
throughout the century. He this begged the question to Van,
like what would happen to these rats? How were they destroyed? Um?
(25:13):
And it really wasn't clear. But he wrote a paper
on the rat masker and he kind of described the
nasty business of of rat hunting leslie uh quote. One
had to enter the dark and cramped sewer system, make
one's way through human waste in various forms of decay,
and hunt down a relatively fierce wild animal which could
(25:34):
be carrying fleas with the bubonic plague or other contagious diseases.
This is not even to mention the probable existence of
numerous other dangerous animals such as snakes, spiders, and other
creatures that make this author's skin crawl with anxiety. Yeah. Yeah,
they realized that. They realized that this was a dangerous
(25:57):
job for these rat hunters, these government sanctioned rat hunters.
But perhaps more importantly, they realized even as these rat
hunters were working full time, they weren't doing much to
stem the growth of the rat population. So the colonial
powers do what colonial powers from Britain did in India.
(26:21):
They opened the gates. They said, look, if you live here,
you don't have to be a government sanctioned rat hunter.
You give us a rat tail at any municipal office
and we will give you one cent. So you're on
a one cent per rat tail commission. And they wanted
rat tails so that the government would not be flooded
(26:41):
with a bunch of full rat carcasses, which prompted Dr Van,
who sounds like a fun guy to hang out with,
actually brought the doctor Van to say, who's this poor
guy who has to sit around and count all the
rat tails? And factions of the French colonial government were
pretty happy with this because they have been encouraging like
(27:04):
entrepreneurship in Vietnam, and they thought it was working. Tails
were pouring in. Then there was something else they saw.
It was all around town there were rats that were
alive and for the most part healthy, They just didn't
have their tails turned out. The hunters would rather take
(27:32):
the tail, then take a healthy rat which is capable
of breeding and creating a bunch of rats. Then take
a rat with those tales out of commission. So you
would kill the animal and you let it go to
breed to make more rats who would have more tails,
and you would cut those tails and then you would
sell those for a cent and you would let those
rats go and they would reproduce. And additionally, Noel Max
(27:56):
some people were smuggling rats into the city and then
all the cobra effects. This is the effect at large. Yes,
so they felt that they were pop up farming operations
(28:17):
that were breeding rats out in the outskirts of hannoy,
and of course don't cut the rat's tail off. It
sucks for the animal, of course, it sucks for the Yeah,
I mean it's it's cruel. All of this is horribly cruel.
I mean, it is a situation that's that's very difficult
because you know, you can't have rats just shooting out
of toilet's willy nilly. That's no good for anybody, not
(28:39):
just because it's gross, but again they're they're plague carriers,
so you do have to do something about it. But
this is a great example of that human ingenuity. And
I'm using that word as a stand in for greed
and laziness. Um, essentially in this situation, Uh, it's it's
it's really rearing its ugly head. Um. Ben. Are you
familiar with the myth of the idea of a rat king? Yes, yes,
(29:02):
the bundle of it again. I literally read a book
just called rats. Yeah yeah, but it's not true, right, Like,
there's really no real evidence that this is a thing,
but it's the idea. Fair listener of like this, like
cluster of rats that have entangled themselves together with their
tails kind of becoming this giant knotted thing. And essentially
(29:23):
they've like become this single organism or something like, was
there more to it than that been? Or is that
essentially it's the urban legend of it. It's the urban legend. There.
There's a great the earliest report goes back to like
the fifteen hundreds, I think. But there's a great, great
podcast on this. Uh stuff to blow your mind. The
second time I'm shouting out Robert Lamb today, I believe
(29:45):
that they have a podcast episode entirely on the rat King.
I think some have been found because it can happen
when they're in crowded conditions. I believe there was one
that was filmed in twenty twenty one and the rats,
you'll be happy to know, we're saved. Their tails were untangled.
(30:06):
This was in Russia. But I think the part, I
think you're right that the the big mythical part is
that it moves as one organism. It's just a bunch
of separate organisms that unfortunately got the tails tangled. Um yeah,
so still don't cut off the tails the rat king. God,
it's fascinating, fascinating lore. But you know, the French didn't
(30:30):
care at this point. They just wanted the rats gone
and they had failed. They have failed at least in
regards to pest eradication. But they have one out because
they did make a bunch of entrepreneurs and everybody living
in the city, from the wealthiest to the most impoverished,
(30:53):
just said, I guess we all have rats as roommates.
Now that's where we're at. But it turns out, Noel,
the French forces were right about at least one thing.
The rats really were carrying bubonic plague. The bubos were
coming in nineteen o six because the rats have been
(31:15):
able to multiply without without predators of any sort or
without human interference there in the sewer. There was an
outbreak of bubonic plague in Hanoi, tragically. That's right, and
the backtrack really quickly. There are several images of rat
kings that you can find on the internet. One was
discovered in Estonia. Uh not that long ago. This article
(31:40):
on the Guardia was from one um and the thirteen
rats entangled together, several of which are already dead. Uh
it's really pretty gnarly and um it's considered to be
an omen of plague. Uh so yeah, that's right. There
was an outbreak and again you could really blame this
on these these rat hunters not doing what they were
(32:03):
supposed to be doing. But also, I mean, of course
it's the government's job to oversee this program that they've created.
Their dollar is essentially feeding this, you know, um, this
workaround that they have not yet become wise to, right,
so you can get it's sort of a twofold problem
where it's like, you know, irresponsibility of people just not
(32:23):
thinking about the big picture and just wanting to get
that that that money, and also the government administering a
program that is just inherently ineffective. Would you guys save
roaches if the city you lived in gave you a bounty? Not? Yeah,
I'm not, I'm not. It's one of the few animals
I'm not a friend of. I respect them, and they
(32:46):
may well last beyond humanity, But I don't know. If
I want to keep a jar, it have to be
a high bounty, you know what I mean. You have
to be like that's insane. You could make you could
make a living doing that. You would breed roaches cobra effect.
I don't know, man, as someone who's lived in a
house with a cockroach infestation, I mean, hey, you don't
(33:08):
need to breathe them. They just do that on their
own and be absolutely not early experienced enough of that
that he's just scarred, all right. Man, So I'm hearing
that for Halloween, you're gonna be you wanna like become
the enemy? Do you want to become the cockroach? We
can get you one of those cool costumes with the arms.
(33:31):
How did you make that leap from what I said?
I don't know, man, It's just it's a cool costume idea.
Tell you what, Tell you what. We'll put a pin
in it. We'll wait till we get closer to October.
See how you feel. Can we do with the horse
thing where like on the head of the cockroach and
you're you're like the feet of it. We're dodem but
we could. We'll work on something and will be able
(33:51):
to do so because we do not have bubonic plague.
At least two hundred and sixty three people died as
it was all too this nights, you know, six outbreak,
which is a relatively small number considering the types of
plagues that we've been you know, reading about and living
through of late. But still that's that's that's a lot.
(34:13):
That's a lot of human lives that could have been
saved if only this had been monitored a little more closely. Yeah,
and most of the people who died, at least that
we know of, were themselves actually actual Vietnamese people. Despite
this tragedy, Paul Domeo's reputation is repaired. He has returned
(34:40):
home to France and he becomes celebrated as quote the
most effective governor general evendo China date he went on
to become president. And Van has this wonderful observation, I
think we should you're reading full and also hat tipped
to our pals Atlas obscure for the US because they
(35:01):
pulled this excerpt, and I quite like it. It's sort
of a morality tale for the arrogance of modernity that
we put so much faith into science and reason and
using industry to solve every problem. This is the same
kind of mindset that lead to World War One, the
idea that the machine gun, because it kills so efficiently,
(35:21):
is going to lead to a quick war, and what
that actually led to is a long war where many
many people lost their lives. And he goes on to
talk about how the Great Hannoi Rat massacre is often
cited as an example of the Cobra effect, and the
Cobra effect as we've established an economic theory about how
incentives in a complex system can lead to unintended consequences.
(35:46):
And this sometimes gets inspires people to say, well, you
know what's bad. You know what's bad, right, any government
intervention of any kind. But he says that misses the point.
He says, you have to make sure that you have
to make sure that people are taking honest looks at
(36:06):
the evidence around them instead of ignoring it. Uh. And
then he adds, this is one beautiful moment where let's
see noise said Dr Van was doing this research in
the nineties when you found that folder. This was as
he was searching through this file. Uh, this file cabinet
(36:30):
or excuse me, a card catalog a rat and real
quick over his hand while it was in the in
the drawer, which to him meant the French forces had
tried to kill all the rats. They tried to rule Vietnam.
They failed in both regards, but you know it's still
(36:52):
around the rats. The Bottomy sandwich. The Bottoy sandwich came
about as a result. Yeah, it's a good sandwich. There's
a great place called someone saying it perseveres to me.
That is the lasting legacy of this relationship, even if
the rest of it was an abject failure. You can
get like six for five a great place here called
Lee's Bakery. If you're if you're ever ever in Atlanta,
(37:14):
do visit Buford Highway. It is a tremendous gift to
the city. It's got some of the truly it's some
of the most amazing food. Man, So we have cobras
with rats, but we're not at the end of the story.
The Cobra Effect continues. In fact, this is the first
of a two part episode that we are going to do.
(37:37):
And you know, there's some stuff we could have maybe
glossed over. There's some stuff we didn't have to talk
about in as much depth, but we we off Mike
agree that there's stuff we don't want to skip. So
please please tune in later this week for part two
of the Cobra Effect, which takes us to the Great
(37:58):
Leap Forward under Mouse Dong in China. It's a which
I know is a particular area of fascination and expertise
in your wheelhouse, Ben, So I figured it made sense
to to keep this as its own episode. Plus it's
four pests, right, We're talking about four pests here, and
we haven't even talked about the organ Man. Do you
(38:19):
guys remember those commercials where he's like a weird tune, like, yeah,
he was a cyborg. That was cool. That was like
some very high production value in those uh in those ads.
Oh yeah, yeah, I was impressed. So we'll get to
a wait, No, I was just doing Trojan man. I
was doing Trojans the same organ Man had had a
(38:42):
theme to he sure did. I'll have to figure that
out for next time. But yeah, so again we've got
mouse state tongues, four pests, disaster looming on the horizon,
which is just like even further escalation of the Cobra effect.
In the meantime, find us online can do that thing. Um.
We are Ridiculous History on Instagram and Facebook. You can
(39:04):
join the Ridiculous Historians group on Facebook if you wish.
You can find each of us, each of the three
of us, as individual human people um on the internet.
I am on Instagram exclusively at how now Noel Brown?
How about you, fellas If you would like a behind
the scenes peak at the things I am reading the
things I am researching my future secret projects that I
(39:26):
can't talk about just yet on air. Visit me on Twitter.
I'm at Ben bulland hs W shout out to the
listeners who participated in my riff on sanctions jokes. Stuff
like sanctions are getting crazier and crazier. It's only a
matter of time before Blockbuster Video releases a statement about
(39:47):
the status of membership cards in Russia. You can also
find me on Instagram, where I am at Ben bullan
bo w l I N Mr Max Williams. Hey k
A the cobra No mongoose, right, Ricky Ticky taving all
that they hunt the moose, hunt the snake and the mongoose.
(40:08):
How come they didn't deploy any mongooses in that whole
O G cobra effects story. Are you gonna have the
whole deal? The mongoose is the natural enemy of the
of the cobra, Yeah, according to popularized by Richard Kipling,
for sure, but also the I think the British colonials
just really didn't know what they were doing in a
lot of general, lot of senses because they didn't imagine,
they didn't listen to the people who lived their thousands
(40:31):
thousands of years anyway, speaking of authorities, Mr Max Williams,
go on Twitter. I am on Twitter. You can find
me on Twitter at at l Underscore Max Williams. You
can I'll see some of my other work that I'm
doing on my other show Ephemeral. You do that by
searching at ephemeral dot show. And thanks as always to
super producer Max Williams, Thanks to Casey Pegram who must
(40:55):
must must return soon, and thanks of course to our
favorite snake in the grass, the cobras, who are mongoose
Jonathan Strickland a k a. The Quist confirmed by the
way the Internet says. Mongooses are known for their ability
to fight and kill venomous snakes, especially cobras. They're specialized
Achille colleen receptors render them immune to venom there like
(41:19):
the honey badger, while they're thick coats and quick speed,
also coming handy during conflicts. You think someone would have
told the Brits about this. We'll see you next time.
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(41:42):
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. I hope you're not afraid
of sneaks, folks, though it is an understandable, almost primal
fear common to so many people today and throughout the past.
That's our one and only snake tamer slash super producer,
(00:47):
Mr Max Williams. They called me Ben snake bite Boland. No,
what do you have a snake nickname? Yeah? Yeah, definitely.
I'm gonna keep that one in my back pocket though
for a for a future time in case I need
to go on the Lamb and I need like a
(01:09):
you know, a really cool badass nickname from my new
criminal life. So I'm gonna sit on this one. Hopefully
go get bitten there we go, watch out for that part. Yeah.
My mom has terrified of snakes, like even like images
of snakes. And I think I've made no secret about
my phobia's bird related. But like I can watch people
(01:31):
always like, oh God, have you seen the movie The Birds?
I'm like, I can watch a movie about birds, It's fine.
I just don't want actual physical birds coming at me.
Which they will do because they are untrustworthy and they're
basically little winged dinosaurs with no you know, emotion. They
they look at them, there's nothing there. But my mom
can't even look at a picture of a snake, or
(01:52):
see a nature documentary about a snake, or even have
like a rubber snake in her presence, she will lose
her mind, so that the primal urge you speak of
Ben is strong with her. M What about you, Max?
Where are you at real snakes? Yeah? I don't know.
I don't really have much opinion about him, Like I
don't love them too much, don't really hate them too much.
What if what if someone were to ask you to
(02:13):
place a you know, the venomless, harmless quote unquote boa
constrictor around your neck for a cute photo op. Would
you do it? Would you do it? I mean they're
literally constrictors. I don't know that. What if it was
like what if it was like a real sexy Siegfried
and Roy slash stage magician in Vegas thing, you know
(02:35):
what I mean, and you were like you were like
the magical Max or something like that, and you had,
you know, a boa constrictor. Yeah, I mean the find
I would probably do it. I mean, I'm downe to
like yes and that shows and stuff. I'll go along
with it all. Like you know, if you do an
improv with a snake, I mean, which was like Fred
(02:57):
behind an alley, He's like, hey, hold my magical stay,
I'm absolutely not. But if it's like a professional production.
If if a random dude in an alley asked you
to hold his magical sea, I think he'd probably be
talking about something a little language bearer. Thing might be euphemism.
I like snakes, you know, I'm a huge fan in
the natural world in general. Um, but there is this
(03:22):
there is this innate ability that people appear to have
that allows them to detect snakes and spiders and an
aptitude for learning to fear them very quickly. There was
some research from the University of Virginia that found this.
But people have lived with snakes for a long long time.
(03:42):
A good friend of the show, actually several several of
our colleagues, several of my friends are long time snake owners.
Armchair herpetologist. I guess you could call them as an
etymology nerd, as someone obsessed with it. I do need
to check out to see, I do need to figure
out why herpes and herpetology sounds so similar. One is
(04:04):
an STD One is the study of like snakes and reptiles. Anyhow,
what we're saying is people have lived with snakes for
such a long time, and today's episode takes us you
can actually lead a very normal life. Well, actually, depending
on which simplex you're talking about, I think by a
certain age, the vast majority of human beings actually have that.
(04:25):
Uh So we're not here to vilify people or snakes,
but we are here to talk about something that happened
in India back in the day, something that now is
called the cobra effect. So yeah, so India, especially Delhi,
had an abundance of cobras, and cobras are dangerous, you
(04:52):
know what I mean. They're They're not like a garden snake.
They can kill you. So the British governor, this is
under colonial India, by the way, the British governor of
Delhi said, you know, like rom from from something must
be done, and he put out a bounty on cobras.
Seems normal, Yeah, you may. You know, this may conjure
(05:13):
images of like cross legged dudes in open air marketplaces,
coaxing cobras out of elaborately woven baskets um with a
flute or something. Well, that may be a very stereotypical image,
it exists for a reason because these things were literally
just coming out of baskets. They were they were just
plopped falling out of the ceiling. They were just everywhere.
(05:33):
The place was lousy with them, and the bounty was
pretty generous, um to the point where it kind of
had people making this like a secondary revenue stream and
going cobra hunting, which at first worked right because the
cobra population dropped. But that's when the whole idea of
(05:54):
the cobra effect comes into play. And what this episode
is about, truly is unintended consequences. When when when good
intentions go awry because of people's like bad intentions and
just you know, general greediness and the fact that, you know,
when there's money to be had, people will usually go
to whatever means necessary to acquire said money. Yes, yes, classic,
(06:20):
classic example of the old monkeys paw conundrum. I wish
there were fewer cobras monkeys. First finger curls. Can we
get a creek on that? You guys know what I'm
talking about, right, the short stand of the monkeys Paw.
There's a great reddit for this too, called there's a
great subreddit called the monkeys Paw. Check it out. Uh,
it's it's a fun thought experiment. You're absolutely right. This
(06:42):
is about unintended consequences. People started trying to rig the
game in the days of what was called the British Raj,
the colonial powers that be in India. We're increasingly miffed,
let's say, about the number of venomous cobras infesting Delhi
(07:03):
in particular. So they said, here's how we'll tackle the problem.
Will put out off for this bounty, and then to
verify that someone's killed the cobra, they're gonna bring us
the skin of the snake. And they realized all of
a sudden their storage rooms were full of cobra skins,
(07:24):
and if first, it didn't seem to have a noticeable
effect on the population in Cobra and Delhi. And that's
where city officials figured out local farmers being incredibly intelligent,
people said, why do I need to go out in
the streets hunting for snakes when I can just catch
(07:46):
a couple and then keep them and basically farm them,
raise them. I can grow cobras at home, kill them,
and then get some cash. Yeah, and the cost benefit
analysis was in their favor because they would enough profit
by you know, investing in raising the snake. Let's do
it to sell on a one snake basis, and then
(08:06):
they'd get that bounty and they would have, you know,
turned to profit per snake. And they could do this, however,
many times because there probably wasn't really a cap on it.
I mean, we don't know the exact specifics of the deal,
but it sounds to me like it was pretty loosey goosey,
you know, or snaky um. And the thing that's so
interesting is like this is, uh, this seems in general
(08:29):
like a pretty good idea, you know. I mean, nobody
wants the streets just teeming with venomous snakes that will,
you know, from one bite from which could could put
you down. Literally. This seems like humans working against their
own self interest in the name of of the almighty dollar.
But I guess maybe these farmers lived more like out
in the sticks or something like that, and they weren't
(08:50):
as concerned about city life. I'm not sure. It's a
little unclear but this is not a problem that just
existed in Delhi. This is an India. This is like
they call it the cobra effect because it's named after
the situation, but it was something that extended, you know,
all across the world. Yes, yeah, and let's walk through
the next step of the cobra effect before we go global.
(09:14):
This is where things get even worse. So the people
empower the British colonial forces realize what's going on. They say, Okay,
these guys are gaming the system and we're not going
to permit that. Because the colonial British authorities in general
(09:34):
hated whenever anything good happened to the actual population of India,
they were not particularly good rulers, so they canceled this
cobra hunting plan. They stopped paying out bounties for cobra skins.
And without the bounties, these cobra farmers said, oh, these
(09:57):
skins are worthless. All these captive cobra we have they're
now pointless. So you know, we're snake meat. I don't
know if you guys know this. I haven't eaten an
actual cobra yet, but snake meat in general doesn't taste
particularly great. I mean it's edible, it's not my bag.
So they said, you know, we're not gonna eat these things.
(10:17):
I guess we'll just let him go. And so let
all these cobras back on the street in Delhi. We
need a new scheme. We gotta revert back to our
old ways of farming. So what are we gonna do
with all these cobras. Let's just let them run rampant
back in the streets. So consequently, there were more cobras
at the end of the whole thing than there were
(10:37):
at the beginning. So snakes flooded the streets. Uh, this
story got a lot of press, and like you said,
Noel Deli's snake problem was worse than it was in
the beginning. That's what we call it the cobra effect,
which some of us fellow eighties babies may remember from
the show g I Joe got that also. I gotta say,
(11:05):
I think the Cobra effect would be a great name
for either an eighties hair metal type band or maybe
like an early Adds kind of like emo dance punk
type band. I don't know, Cobra Effect. I like that.
I'm still sad that it didn't become an eighties new
wave band with people dressed as Cobra Commander. I was
(11:27):
so fascinated a cobra commander as a kid. Anyway, Um,
Cobra Commander was one guy. He was just the cobra
commander of all of all the cobras. Yeah, you have
to leave it was the guy with a silverhead. Silverhead.
It's costume is so awesome. He also had a hood sometimes. Um,
and then you always wonder what his face was, which is,
(11:48):
by the way, revealed in the g I. Joe animated
series or no g I Joe animated film, which gets
deep in the weird otherworldly cobra lore. No spoilers, is
a supernatural or anyway, we're not doing the show about
cobraate commander. Unfortunately they had supernatural powers. Well, man, you're
just gonna have to not all, you're not all, but
(12:11):
you gotta watch I'll watch it with you. A double
feature with that and the g I and the Transformers
movie that has the the amazing eighties kind of soundtrack. Yeah, deal,
you got the touch, you got the power. Damn sorry,
I love that. No, it's perfect. I like this idea
(12:33):
because if we're gonna segue, it's called the Cobra effect,
because people do tend to have an enormous touch on
their local on their local environment, and they have a
lot of power, but it's not always good. If you
(12:54):
travel to Annoy during the time that French powers were
ruling it, you see the same thing again old but
instead of the Cobra effect, this is like what would
you call it, the rat consequence? Yeah, exactly. I always
think too, it's interesting. This is it's a little aside.
You know how obviously England ruled over India under the
(13:15):
what was it called the English Raj British Raj, and
you know kind of developed some light they really like
developed a taste for Indian food where certain versions of
it kind of were developed that were like to suit
the English palette and kind of became really really popular
in you know, London and in the UK. But it's
something you would never have seen in you know, actual
(13:37):
ectual Delhi, like things like chicken tika massala and all that.
Same with French rule over Vietnam. It's what gives you
things like the bond Me sandwich, which is essentially a
you know, a French baguette with all of this amazing
you know, barbecued Vietnamese meats and and uh seasonings and
you know, vegetables and stuff. So I do appreciate that
(13:59):
consequence of empire building. But the rest of it's a
little sketch culinary colonialism, I like to call it. Yeah,
And it leads to an amazing uh syncretism, just like
with religion, right, and you could look at I was,
honestly because I get in weird rabbit holes. I was
(14:19):
reading earlier this weekend the amazing story of Chinese food
throughout the diaspora. You know, in an American Chinese food,
as we've talked about before, is a cuisine all its own.
But yes, I love it. Also lucky for the United
Kingdom that they they learned from the Indian subcontinent about
(14:41):
you know, I'll say it how to cook. Oh, I
would say, curry is the national is pretty much like
the national dish of the UK exactly. Yeah. But but
but it's like there's a name for it. There's like
there's a name for the style of cooking, uh, that
type of Indian cuisine that's it's called like fast British
style or something like that. Or there are these like
(15:02):
little curry shops that like have a very specific order
of operations. It's very different from traditional cooking, and they
acknowledge that there's another name for that. I'm spacing on.
But last day, Uh, the dough Boys podcast brought up
this question, and I want to put it to you guys.
Is a bond Me a sub sandwich? Yeah? I guess
I don't. I've never thought about it, but I guess.
So it's really whether you emphasize the bread or the ingredients.
(15:25):
I gotta tell you, man, I've gone through I'm like
Doctor Strange with the timestone. I've gone through every iteration
of what is a sandwich? Or what is what kind
of sandwich? Question? I think I might have a problem.
But yes, well, but it's like, you know, a meat
ball sub is in the name, you've got like an
Italian sub, you've got like a veggie sub or like
(15:46):
you know whatever, a turkey sub sub is usually in
the name. Bond Me has all the makings of a sub,
but you never call it that. So I just uh.
One of the one of the dough Boys was was
vehemently anti bond Me being a sub and then resent
today when everybody else on the show just rolled forward
with that as though well he can he can call me.
We can talk a sub as a sub, as a sub.
(16:07):
To paraphrase the old literature quote, a sub by any right,
a sub by any other name, and a cobra effect
by any other name. Hannoy is annoyed with all the rats.
It's guy named Paul Dumer goes to Vietnam. He's still
(16:27):
in the younger part of his middle age. He's he's
forty something and he is a government worker for France.
But he just had a big swing and a mist
in his career. He had a scheme for a new
kind of income tax and it failed, and so he
resigned from his job as Minister of Finance and decided
(16:48):
to you know, to hit the rails, or to hit
the high seas, to ghost in other words, and try
to find a new life abroad. He'd been appointed Governor
General of French Indo, kind of a group of colonies
in Southeast Asia, and that includes what is now present
day Vietnam. So he was like, I'm gonna make everything modern.
(17:12):
I'm gonna put into all this modern infrastructure in Hannoi.
I want you to feel like you're walking in France
when you walk in Hannoi and it kind of worked
for a while. You know, they built things in a
lot of European styles. Uh. He was very, very proud
in particular of bringing what he saw as the modern
(17:33):
European toilet to Hannoi. Yeah, you know the French and
their their bi days and all of that. They're really
big on on toilet training. It's it's it's it's it's
a it's a huge part of the culture. So they
wanted to distinguish French Hannoi from the rest of the country.
And there was already a massive network of sewers that
ran under the French section of the city, and there
(17:56):
was a smaller network of these tunnels that served specifically
the neighborhoods where Vietnamese people actually lived. It was seen
in the eyes of the French overlords is kind of
a sign of of this I'm not joking this you know,
culture of kind of cleanliness and civility. So it wasn't
(18:17):
a great look or feeling or or vibe in general
when massive sewer rats started literally popping out of toilets
that were connected to them. Yeah, they didn't have a
they didn't have the little s shape. Probably that's in most, uh,
most commodes that people are familiar with, rats literally began
(18:38):
emerging for the drains. And I mentioned this off air,
but it's pretty common fear. A lot of people have
both snakes and rats emerging from commodes. Uh, you don't
have personal experience with this, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
thankfully the freaking lid was down, but I just heard
something rustling about in there, and I'm like, it was
(18:59):
like a movie moment, you know, where I'm like slowly
lifting up there and there's this big honking, nasty wet
sewer rat in there. I had to do it. I
had to kind of take a beat. I don't remember exactly.
I think I had called a braver friend than me
who kind of helped me with the situation. But yeah,
he helped me bag it and tag it and toss it.
(19:20):
It was really gross and really scary, and thankfully I
wasn't sitting on the thing at the time. Well you
probably would have heard something, so uh, yes, yes, I'm
glad as well. I've had rats emerged from drains in kitchens,
not like the kitchen sink, but like a back access
area where piping goes outside during floods. Things like that,
(19:44):
and you know, when New York floods, for instance, you'll
see a proliferation of rats. Rats are incredibly intelligent creatures.
If you're looking for a fun nonfiction book to read
and the phobia is not too much for you, there's
a great book out there named Just Rats, and it's
about all their amazing abilities. I think that one focuses
(20:05):
on rats in New York, but both Robert Lamb, friend
of the show, and myself were big fans of that book. Anyway,
here's what happens. Paul her buddy Paul d His vision
was pretty ambitious and he did follow through on it.
Under his direction, the French colonial government laid out almost
(20:27):
ten miles more than nine miles of sewer pipe beneath Hannoy.
But when it did that, it accidentally created a really
cool new suburb for rodents. The temperature wasn't crazy, it
was nice and dark. Predators get didn't go down there.
So the first like Rat, Adam and Eve, of these
(20:50):
miles of sewer pipe are able to reproduce like never before.
And if they get hungry, then they've pretty much got
a road system underground that takes them to the most
expensive part of town which I'll have the nicest food,
which I'll have the nicest trash, and then they can
(21:12):
go back and they can reproduce again. They multiplied exponentially
until they overran their nifty new subterranean suburb, and then
they skittered to the surface. That's enough alliteration for me today.
I accidentally improved myself into a corner with that one.
But it's a good corner, Ben. It was a very
(21:35):
classy corner that you find, thinks man, Well, you know
what happens historically, there are some stereotypes about rats, and
unfortunately some of them are a little bit you know,
based in fact. As if being overrun with rodents didn't
disrupt this illusion of old world Europe already, the bubonic
(21:58):
plague started started popping. All the bubbles are coming. Yeah,
that's the that's the thing. Rats were carrying that that
that particular bug and spreading it around, you know, through
far and wide, through through this network of sewage pipes.
(22:18):
It was a pretty pretty bad scene. We had cases
starting to present themselves. This is when it became much
less an issue of decorum and civility and much more
of like a public health disaster. That needed to be
dealt with. So enter Vietnamese rat hunters. Very similar situation
(22:39):
to what we had in Delhi, only I believe these
were sanctioned or hired. Right. This wasn't like a kind
of mercenary system with a bounty. This is like these
were hired by the colonial government. Um they would go
down into the sewers to hunt down the rat and
then get paid per rat. But still when you're when
(23:03):
you're paying per rat, though, similar kind of situation is
going to present itself where it's like, gosh, it sure
is a pain hunting these rats down on the sewer. Um.
Maybe there's a workaround. There's got to be a better way,
says says the main character of every made for TV commercial. Uh, yes, yeah,
(23:26):
that's the idea. They began what is called the Great
Annoy Rat Massacre. It's April two, the last week of
the month. In that last week alone, almost eight thousand
rats are murderized, uh, seven thousand nine to be exact.
(23:46):
That's just the beginning. Because the rate of the rate
of murders of rat assassinations, we'll get there one day.
These continued as time went on. The death toll in
May got to be around four thousand rats per day
(24:07):
by May. Just that day alone, just that twenty four
hour period, the rat hunters and rat catchers killed fifteen
thousand plus rats. Yeah, I mean it started off in earnest.
It was an absolute, you know, rat apocalypse, a rat apocalypse.
(24:28):
I'll take that one, um, you know, and yeah, what
was it like twenty twelve rats in a single day.
We don't know exactly what methods were used for killing
the rats, presumably the government didn't care. But we do
know about this period is from a Storian named Michael
Van who was in France doing some research on French colonialism,
and he came upon a file that was called Destruction
(24:50):
of Animals Rats uh, inside of which he found some
kind of esoteric, not particularly well organized paperwork listing numbers
of rats that were exterminated in Hanoi around that time
throughout the century. He this begged the question to Van,
like what would happen to these rats? How were they destroyed? Um?
(25:13):
And it really wasn't clear. But he wrote a paper
on the rat masker and he kind of described the
nasty business of of rat hunting leslie uh quote. One
had to enter the dark and cramped sewer system, make
one's way through human waste in various forms of decay,
and hunt down a relatively fierce wild animal which could
(25:34):
be carrying fleas with the bubonic plague or other contagious diseases.
This is not even to mention the probable existence of
numerous other dangerous animals such as snakes, spiders, and other
creatures that make this author's skin crawl with anxiety. Yeah. Yeah,
they realized that. They realized that this was a dangerous
(25:57):
job for these rat hunters, these government sanctioned rat hunters.
But perhaps more importantly, they realized even as these rat
hunters were working full time, they weren't doing much to
stem the growth of the rat population. So the colonial
powers do what colonial powers from Britain did in India.
(26:21):
They opened the gates. They said, look, if you live here,
you don't have to be a government sanctioned rat hunter.
You give us a rat tail at any municipal office
and we will give you one cent. So you're on
a one cent per rat tail commission. And they wanted
rat tails so that the government would not be flooded
(26:41):
with a bunch of full rat carcasses, which prompted Dr Van,
who sounds like a fun guy to hang out with,
actually brought the doctor Van to say, who's this poor
guy who has to sit around and count all the
rat tails? And factions of the French colonial government were
pretty happy with this because they have been encouraging like
(27:04):
entrepreneurship in Vietnam, and they thought it was working. Tails
were pouring in. Then there was something else they saw.
It was all around town there were rats that were
alive and for the most part healthy, They just didn't
have their tails turned out. The hunters would rather take
(27:32):
the tail, then take a healthy rat which is capable
of breeding and creating a bunch of rats. Then take
a rat with those tales out of commission. So you
would kill the animal and you let it go to
breed to make more rats who would have more tails,
and you would cut those tails and then you would
sell those for a cent and you would let those
rats go and they would reproduce. And additionally, Noel Max
(27:56):
some people were smuggling rats into the city and then
all the cobra effects. This is the effect at large. Yes,
so they felt that they were pop up farming operations
(28:17):
that were breeding rats out in the outskirts of hannoy,
and of course don't cut the rat's tail off. It
sucks for the animal, of course, it sucks for the Yeah,
I mean it's it's cruel. All of this is horribly cruel.
I mean, it is a situation that's that's very difficult
because you know, you can't have rats just shooting out
of toilet's willy nilly. That's no good for anybody, not
(28:39):
just because it's gross, but again they're they're plague carriers,
so you do have to do something about it. But
this is a great example of that human ingenuity. And
I'm using that word as a stand in for greed
and laziness. Um, essentially in this situation, Uh, it's it's
it's really rearing its ugly head. Um. Ben. Are you
familiar with the myth of the idea of a rat king? Yes, yes,
(29:02):
the bundle of it again. I literally read a book
just called rats. Yeah yeah, but it's not true, right, Like,
there's really no real evidence that this is a thing,
but it's the idea. Fair listener of like this, like
cluster of rats that have entangled themselves together with their
tails kind of becoming this giant knotted thing. And essentially
(29:23):
they've like become this single organism or something like, was
there more to it than that been? Or is that
essentially it's the urban legend of it. It's the urban legend. There.
There's a great the earliest report goes back to like
the fifteen hundreds, I think. But there's a great, great
podcast on this. Uh stuff to blow your mind. The
second time I'm shouting out Robert Lamb today, I believe
(29:45):
that they have a podcast episode entirely on the rat King.
I think some have been found because it can happen
when they're in crowded conditions. I believe there was one
that was filmed in twenty twenty one and the rats,
you'll be happy to know, we're saved. Their tails were untangled.
(30:06):
This was in Russia. But I think the part, I
think you're right that the the big mythical part is
that it moves as one organism. It's just a bunch
of separate organisms that unfortunately got the tails tangled. Um yeah,
so still don't cut off the tails the rat king. God,
it's fascinating, fascinating lore. But you know, the French didn't
(30:30):
care at this point. They just wanted the rats gone
and they had failed. They have failed at least in
regards to pest eradication. But they have one out because
they did make a bunch of entrepreneurs and everybody living
in the city, from the wealthiest to the most impoverished,
(30:53):
just said, I guess we all have rats as roommates.
Now that's where we're at. But it turns out, Noel,
the French forces were right about at least one thing.
The rats really were carrying bubonic plague. The bubos were
coming in nineteen o six because the rats have been
(31:15):
able to multiply without without predators of any sort or
without human interference there in the sewer. There was an
outbreak of bubonic plague in Hanoi, tragically. That's right, and
the backtrack really quickly. There are several images of rat
kings that you can find on the internet. One was
discovered in Estonia. Uh not that long ago. This article
(31:40):
on the Guardia was from one um and the thirteen
rats entangled together, several of which are already dead. Uh
it's really pretty gnarly and um it's considered to be
an omen of plague. Uh so yeah, that's right. There
was an outbreak and again you could really blame this
on these these rat hunters not doing what they were
(32:03):
supposed to be doing. But also, I mean, of course
it's the government's job to oversee this program that they've created.
Their dollar is essentially feeding this, you know, um, this
workaround that they have not yet become wise to, right,
so you can get it's sort of a twofold problem
where it's like, you know, irresponsibility of people just not
(32:23):
thinking about the big picture and just wanting to get
that that that money, and also the government administering a
program that is just inherently ineffective. Would you guys save
roaches if the city you lived in gave you a bounty? Not? Yeah,
I'm not, I'm not. It's one of the few animals
I'm not a friend of. I respect them, and they
(32:46):
may well last beyond humanity, But I don't know. If
I want to keep a jar, it have to be
a high bounty, you know what I mean. You have
to be like that's insane. You could make you could
make a living doing that. You would breed roaches cobra effect.
I don't know, man, as someone who's lived in a
house with a cockroach infestation, I mean, hey, you don't
(33:08):
need to breathe them. They just do that on their
own and be absolutely not early experienced enough of that
that he's just scarred, all right. Man, So I'm hearing
that for Halloween, you're gonna be you wanna like become
the enemy? Do you want to become the cockroach? We
can get you one of those cool costumes with the arms.
(33:31):
How did you make that leap from what I said?
I don't know, man, It's just it's a cool costume idea.
Tell you what, Tell you what. We'll put a pin
in it. We'll wait till we get closer to October.
See how you feel. Can we do with the horse
thing where like on the head of the cockroach and
you're you're like the feet of it. We're dodem but
we could. We'll work on something and will be able
(33:51):
to do so because we do not have bubonic plague.
At least two hundred and sixty three people died as
it was all too this nights, you know, six outbreak,
which is a relatively small number considering the types of
plagues that we've been you know, reading about and living
through of late. But still that's that's that's a lot.
(34:13):
That's a lot of human lives that could have been
saved if only this had been monitored a little more closely. Yeah,
and most of the people who died, at least that
we know of, were themselves actually actual Vietnamese people. Despite
this tragedy, Paul Domeo's reputation is repaired. He has returned
(34:40):
home to France and he becomes celebrated as quote the
most effective governor general evendo China date he went on
to become president. And Van has this wonderful observation, I
think we should you're reading full and also hat tipped
to our pals Atlas obscure for the US because they
(35:01):
pulled this excerpt, and I quite like it. It's sort
of a morality tale for the arrogance of modernity that
we put so much faith into science and reason and
using industry to solve every problem. This is the same
kind of mindset that lead to World War One, the
idea that the machine gun, because it kills so efficiently,
(35:21):
is going to lead to a quick war, and what
that actually led to is a long war where many
many people lost their lives. And he goes on to
talk about how the Great Hannoi Rat massacre is often
cited as an example of the Cobra effect, and the
Cobra effect as we've established an economic theory about how
incentives in a complex system can lead to unintended consequences.
(35:46):
And this sometimes gets inspires people to say, well, you
know what's bad. You know what's bad, right, any government
intervention of any kind. But he says that misses the point.
He says, you have to make sure that you have
to make sure that people are taking honest looks at
(36:06):
the evidence around them instead of ignoring it. Uh. And
then he adds, this is one beautiful moment where let's
see noise said Dr Van was doing this research in
the nineties when you found that folder. This was as
he was searching through this file. Uh, this file cabinet
(36:30):
or excuse me, a card catalog a rat and real
quick over his hand while it was in the in
the drawer, which to him meant the French forces had
tried to kill all the rats. They tried to rule Vietnam.
They failed in both regards, but you know it's still
(36:52):
around the rats. The Bottomy sandwich. The Bottoy sandwich came
about as a result. Yeah, it's a good sandwich. There's
a great place called someone saying it perseveres to me.
That is the lasting legacy of this relationship, even if
the rest of it was an abject failure. You can
get like six for five a great place here called
Lee's Bakery. If you're if you're ever ever in Atlanta,
(37:14):
do visit Buford Highway. It is a tremendous gift to
the city. It's got some of the truly it's some
of the most amazing food. Man, So we have cobras
with rats, but we're not at the end of the story.
The Cobra Effect continues. In fact, this is the first
of a two part episode that we are going to do.
(37:37):
And you know, there's some stuff we could have maybe
glossed over. There's some stuff we didn't have to talk
about in as much depth, but we we off Mike
agree that there's stuff we don't want to skip. So
please please tune in later this week for part two
of the Cobra Effect, which takes us to the Great
(37:58):
Leap Forward under Mouse Dong in China. It's a which
I know is a particular area of fascination and expertise
in your wheelhouse, Ben, So I figured it made sense
to to keep this as its own episode. Plus it's
four pests, right, We're talking about four pests here, and
we haven't even talked about the organ Man. Do you
(38:19):
guys remember those commercials where he's like a weird tune, like, yeah,
he was a cyborg. That was cool. That was like
some very high production value in those uh in those ads.
Oh yeah, yeah, I was impressed. So we'll get to
a wait, No, I was just doing Trojan man. I
was doing Trojans the same organ Man had had a
(38:42):
theme to he sure did. I'll have to figure that
out for next time. But yeah, so again we've got
mouse state tongues, four pests, disaster looming on the horizon,
which is just like even further escalation of the Cobra effect.
In the meantime, find us online can do that thing. Um.
We are Ridiculous History on Instagram and Facebook. You can
(39:04):
join the Ridiculous Historians group on Facebook if you wish.
You can find each of us, each of the three
of us, as individual human people um on the internet.
I am on Instagram exclusively at how now Noel Brown?
How about you, fellas If you would like a behind
the scenes peak at the things I am reading the
things I am researching my future secret projects that I
(39:26):
can't talk about just yet on air. Visit me on Twitter.
I'm at Ben bulland hs W shout out to the
listeners who participated in my riff on sanctions jokes. Stuff
like sanctions are getting crazier and crazier. It's only a
matter of time before Blockbuster Video releases a statement about
(39:47):
the status of membership cards in Russia. You can also
find me on Instagram, where I am at Ben bullan
bo w l I N Mr Max Williams. Hey k
A the cobra No mongoose, right, Ricky Ticky taving all
that they hunt the moose, hunt the snake and the mongoose.
(40:08):
How come they didn't deploy any mongooses in that whole
O G cobra effects story. Are you gonna have the
whole deal? The mongoose is the natural enemy of the
of the cobra, Yeah, according to popularized by Richard Kipling,
for sure, but also the I think the British colonials
just really didn't know what they were doing in a
lot of general, lot of senses because they didn't imagine,
they didn't listen to the people who lived their thousands
(40:31):
thousands of years anyway, speaking of authorities, Mr Max Williams,
go on Twitter. I am on Twitter. You can find
me on Twitter at at l Underscore Max Williams. You
can I'll see some of my other work that I'm
doing on my other show Ephemeral. You do that by
searching at ephemeral dot show. And thanks as always to
super producer Max Williams, Thanks to Casey Pegram who must
(40:55):
must must return soon, and thanks of course to our
favorite snake in the grass, the cobras, who are mongoose
Jonathan Strickland a k a. The Quist confirmed by the
way the Internet says. Mongooses are known for their ability
to fight and kill venomous snakes, especially cobras. They're specialized
Achille colleen receptors render them immune to venom there like
(41:19):
the honey badger, while they're thick coats and quick speed,
also coming handy during conflicts. You think someone would have
told the Brits about this. We'll see you next time.
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(41:42):
your favorite shows.
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Noel Brown
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