Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Brussels sprouts, lima beans, liver, and onions. Mentioned
Speaker 1: any of these to a child and they'd run the
Speaker 1: other way. Heck, some adults might too. Certain foods, no
Speaker 1: matter how you prepared them, just aren't appealing. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we stopped trying, though. Whether we eat them fried, baked,
Speaker 1: or freak a seed, we never ceased to make the
Speaker 1: seemingly inedible edible. Now, imagine a world where we never
Speaker 1: had French fry, or mashed potatoes or potato chips. A
Speaker 1: world where the potato wasn't just ignored, it was rejected
Speaker 1: and even feared. Strangely enough, that world wasn't so long ago.
Speaker 1: It all started during the early sixteenth century, when the
Speaker 1: potato was first introduced to Europe by Spaniards who had
Speaker 1: brought it from South America. The French had no use
Speaker 1: for it beyond feeding their pigs. They even believed ingesting
Speaker 1: it would cause leprosy. Europeans as a whole kept their
Speaker 1: distance from potatoes for two hundred years until a man
Speaker 1: named Antoine Augustine Parmentier entered the picture. Antoine was a
Speaker 1: French pharmacist who had served during the Seven Years War.
Speaker 1: In that time, he was captured by the Prussians as
Speaker 1: a prisoner of war and forced to eat potatoes lest
Speaker 1: he rather starved. Potatoes were a major crop in Prussia,
Speaker 1: with King Frederick the Second having ordered his peasants to
Speaker 1: grow them. Antoine, unlike his fellow Frenchman, didn't mind the
Speaker 1: taste of potatoes. In fact, he quite enjoyed them. He
Speaker 1: didn't develop leprosy, nor did he in tract any other
Speaker 1: maladies associated with them. Upon his release at the end
Speaker 1: of the war, he returned to France on a mission
Speaker 1: to change people's minds about the misunderstood vegetable. He started
Speaker 1: by looking into the health benefits of the potato and
Speaker 1: discovered it provided help to those afflicted with dysentery. Antoine's
Speaker 1: research won him a scientific award in seventeen seventy three
Speaker 1: and was a small step in convincing the public that
Speaker 1: the potato was something to be enjoyed. Thanks to his help,
Speaker 1: France also removed a law forbidding the cultivation of potatoes,
Speaker 1: which had been upheld since seventeen forty eight. It seems
Speaker 1: the tubers tides were turning except where the public was concerned.
Speaker 1: While potatoes were approved in certain medical practices, the average
Speaker 1: French person still saw them as harbingers of disease and death.
Speaker 1: Even the hospital where Antoine worked wouldn't let him practice
Speaker 1: his new brand of medicine on patients. The pharmacist had
Speaker 1: to find a way to change people's minds, and he
Speaker 1: started at the top. He hosted dinner parties with special guests,
Speaker 1: including founding father Benjamin Franklin, where he served all kinds
Speaker 1: of potato based dishes to great success. He also gifted
Speaker 1: King Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette a bouquet of
Speaker 1: potato blossom flowers. Though these weren't potatoes themselves, he knew
Speaker 1: such a gesture would endear the royal family to his cause,
Speaker 1: and it did. Upon receiving the purple flowers, the queen
Speaker 1: tucked one into her hair while the King threaded another
Speaker 1: into a button hole on his coat. King Louis asked
Speaker 1: for more information about the flowers and the fruit they bore.
Speaker 1: Antoine obliged by describing his plan, which intrigued the king
Speaker 1: enough to grant the pharmacist a plot of land on
Speaker 1: which to grow his crops. But simply growing them wasn't
Speaker 1: going to help if the average French citizens still saw
Speaker 1: them as inedible. So the resourceful Antoine hashed a scheme
Speaker 1: to trick everyone into eating potatoes. He hired armed guards
Speaker 1: to stand watch outside his plot during the day. After all,
Speaker 1: anything protected so well must be worth stealing. Right at night,
Speaker 1: peasants would sneak in and steal the crops, bringing them
Speaker 1: home to feed their families and neighbors. Antoine told the
Speaker 1: guards to let them go even if they were caught.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to stop anyone from stealing his potatoes.
Speaker 1: Getting them into people's hands and mouths had been the
Speaker 1: plan all along. It still took many years for the
Speaker 1: potato to gain in popularity, even during times of famine.
Speaker 1: People were still reluctant to grow and consume them. That is, however,
Speaker 1: until Parmentier wrote a brochure expounding on the versatility of
Speaker 1: the common potato. The Commission on Subsistence and Provisions published
Speaker 1: the pamphlets inviting people to not only grow and cultivate potatoes,
Speaker 1: but to submit recipes for inclusion in a forthcoming cookbook.
Speaker 1: Even Napoleon Bonaparte got on board the tater train, and
Speaker 1: with his encouragement, the potato, once a source of disgust
Speaker 1: for many, became a staple of their cuisine and culture.
Speaker 1: It also gave the republic away to become self sufficient. However,
Speaker 1: it was one man's tire crusade for a misunderstood root
Speaker 1: vegetable that made him a French food icon. They even
Speaker 1: erected a statue of him in his hometown. Antoine Augustine Parmentier,
Speaker 1: the man who gave the potato to France, a large,
Speaker 1: seemingly unstoppable force, one lone person raging against the machine.
Speaker 1: There's a reason we root for David and not Goliath.
Speaker 1: The latter is bent on destruction against the solitary crusaders
Speaker 1: standing up for what's right. Unfortunately, David and Goliath stories
Speaker 1: don't always end the way we hope. Oftentimes it takes
Speaker 1: a lot more than one person to affect the necessary change.
Speaker 1: Then again, there's Wang Ilnin. Wang had been a farmer
Speaker 1: in a small Chinese village for most of his life.
Speaker 1: He left school at the age of ten to help
Speaker 1: his family, who also tended to the lay, and yet
Speaker 1: his desire to learn never waned. He read often, teaching
Speaker 1: himself knew things to improve his quality of life. By
Speaker 1: the time he reached his sixties. However, it wasn't the
Speaker 1: quality of his life he was worried about. It was
Speaker 1: the quality of his farm. It all started in the
Speaker 1: year two thousand one. Wang noticed a strange smell in
Speaker 1: his home. He'd been celebrating the lunar New Year with
Speaker 1: his neighbor, preparing food and playing cards when a small
Speaker 1: flood of toxic water entered the house. He rushed outside
Speaker 1: to see where it was coming from, only to witness
Speaker 1: his land under siege by the same sludge. His crops
Speaker 1: were destroyed, as was his ability to make a living.
Speaker 1: After doing some investigating, Wang discovered the cause of his problems.
Speaker 1: A local chemical company had been polluting his land. The
Speaker 1: water had been waste runoff from one of its facilities,
Speaker 1: and Wang wasn't the only victim either. Other farms in
Speaker 1: the village had also seen their land submerged under toxic waste,
Speaker 1: rendering it unusable for years to come. A village committee
Speaker 1: had previously agreed to lease almost seventy acres to Chihua
Speaker 1: Chemical Group, a subsidiary of the largest chemical company in China.
Speaker 1: The villagers had no say in the matter, and Chihua
Speaker 1: Chemicals took no precautions in controlling their waste outputs. With
Speaker 1: their livelihoods in ruin, none of the farmers had the
Speaker 1: money to hire a lawyer. The chemical company was a
Speaker 1: formidable opponent, bringing in several hundred million dollars a year
Speaker 1: with an army of attorneys at its disposal. But Wang
Speaker 1: had to do something for himself, for his community and
Speaker 1: for anyone else affected by the company's careless actions. Since
Speaker 1: he couldn't hire a lawyer of his own to take
Speaker 1: the company to court, Wang did the next best thing.
Speaker 1: He started studying the law himself. But the books he
Speaker 1: needed were expensive, and without a steady income, he had
Speaker 1: to find another way to get his hands on them. Luckily,
Speaker 1: the local bookstores had everything he needed to begin his
Speaker 1: d i y legal education. The bookshop wouldn't barter, but
Speaker 1: they did allow him to come in and copy information
Speaker 1: into a notebook by hand, which he repaid by giving
Speaker 1: them sacks of corn. After five years of studying on
Speaker 1: his own, Wang sought out a Chinese environmental law firm
Speaker 1: to help him with his case. They were sympathetic to
Speaker 1: his cause and offered him free legal advice, even helping
Speaker 1: him file a petition with the court to begin the
Speaker 1: lawsuit process, and he continued to study and fight for
Speaker 1: another eight years while Cheehua Chemicals kept pumping toxic waste
Speaker 1: into the land. Finally, in two thousand fifteen, the court
Speaker 1: system kicked into gear, and two years later the case
Speaker 1: was over. Through his sixteen years of self teaching and
Speaker 1: legal maneuvering, Wang and his neighbors put together a mountain
Speaker 1: of evidence proving that Chiehua Chemicals was responsible for dumping
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty thousand tons of toxic waste a year
Speaker 1: onto their farmland. The district courts agreed where the company
Speaker 1: had done was reckless, destructive, and unconscionable, and it was
Speaker 1: on them to make it right. Wang and his village
Speaker 1: were awarded the American equivalent of roughly one dollars in damages.
Speaker 1: The victory was short lived, though Cheehua Chemicals appealed and
Speaker 1: the ruling was overturned, but that hasn't stopped Weighing from
Speaker 1: continuing his one man crusade against a goliath of a corporation.
Speaker 1: Though he may not live to see how it all
Speaker 1: plays out in the end, his will to fight is
Speaker 1: an inspiration for anyone who thinks they can't make a
Speaker 1: difference as just one person, Well, one person did. I
Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious
Speaker 1: one