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. Newcomers to a community are often intriguing, especially
Speaker 1: when that community is small and everyone knows one another.
Speaker 1: For example, new neighbors can either be a blessing or
Speaker 1: a curse, depending on how loud they play their music
Speaker 1: or how rambunctious their children are. Change is difficult to accept,
Speaker 1: and what is new is often mistaken for bad. But
Speaker 1: sometimes a fresh face is just what a sleepy town
Speaker 1: needs to jolt it wake, and that's exactly what one
Speaker 1: small English town got in eighteen seventeen when Almondsbury welcomed
Speaker 1: a certain royal figure. It began when a local cobbler
Speaker 1: found a strange young woman on his doorstep. Her clothes
Speaker 1: made it clear she was not from around town. She
Speaker 1: wore what people at the time had described as exotic,
Speaker 1: including a turban which had been wrapped around her head.
Speaker 1: The cobbler asked if there was anything he could do
Speaker 1: to help the struggling young woman. She replied in a
Speaker 1: language he had never heard before, but through hand gestures,
Speaker 1: she was able to convey that she was in need
Speaker 1: of food and shelter, which was also evident by her condition.
Speaker 1: She was dirty and disoriented, as though she had been
Speaker 1: out on her own for quite a long time. Since
Speaker 1: he could not communicate with her in any meaningful way,
Speaker 1: the cobbler took the woman to see Samuel Warrel, the
Speaker 1: town's overseer of the poor. Now, the overseers job was
Speaker 1: to help those in need on behalf of the government.
Speaker 1: People in this role often provided financial assistance, food, and
Speaker 1: clothing to individuals without the means. Woman was able to
Speaker 1: tell Worrel and his wife two things. First, she pointed
Speaker 1: at a picture of a pineapple and said ananas, a
Speaker 1: word that translated to pineapple in multiple languages, including Indonesian.
Speaker 1: She also used the word Caribou, which they determined to
Speaker 1: be her name. It was believed that she had come
Speaker 1: to Almondsbury from China. Caribou showed that she enjoyed drinking
Speaker 1: tea and ate only vegetables as well, but that was
Speaker 1: all they knew about her, and without anything else to
Speaker 1: go on, Mr Warrell brought her to the police, believing
Speaker 1: she was a beggar only out for money. Then she
Speaker 1: was held for several days until she met a Portuguese
Speaker 1: sailor named Manuel Anesso. He claimed he could speak the
Speaker 1: woman's native tongue and even translated for the authorities. Anesso
Speaker 1: listened to her story, a roller coaster tale about how
Speaker 1: she found her way to England. She was Princess Caribou
Speaker 1: of Javasu, a tiny island somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
Speaker 1: Her father had come from China and was quite wealthy,
Speaker 1: while her mother had been killed when she was a
Speaker 1: little girl. The woman had been walking in her garden
Speaker 1: by herself when she was taken by pirates. They stayed
Speaker 1: on their ship until it reached Bristol Channel, when she
Speaker 1: jumped overboard and swam to the shore. Her story was
Speaker 1: published in the local newspapers and she became quite the celebrity.
Speaker 1: Her prison cell was replaced with a warm bed. She danced,
Speaker 1: prayed to a god named a La Tala, swam in
Speaker 1: lakes in the nude, all of which was observed by
Speaker 1: her new hosts as unique behaviors from a culture they'd
Speaker 1: never seen before. She also demonstrated her skills and archery
Speaker 1: and fencing. Cariboos fame led her to receiving the royal
Speaker 1: treatment as well. Not only was a ball held in
Speaker 1: her honor, but she also had a portrait of herself painted,
Speaker 1: which was then published by the press, so the rest
Speaker 1: of England could know the mysterious Princess Caribou a little better. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: her portrait made her even more of a celebrity, and
Speaker 1: not in the way she had hoped. A woman who
Speaker 1: ran a boarding house in Bristol wreck ignized Caribou. The
Speaker 1: landlady had given her a place to stay months earlier
Speaker 1: and called her out on her ruse. Suddenly the princess
Speaker 1: knew how to speak perfect English. It turned out that
Speaker 1: Princess Cariboo hadn't come from an island in the Indian
Speaker 1: Ocean after all, nor was her father a member of
Speaker 1: Chinese high society. Her name was Mary Baker and she
Speaker 1: had been a servant. She had invented the persona of
Speaker 1: Princess Cariboo as a way to break out of her
Speaker 1: working class life, which she certainly did. Mary left England
Speaker 1: for America, a trip furnished by Mrs Warrell. She lived
Speaker 1: there for seven years until she finally returned home to England,
Speaker 1: where she lived out the rest of her life, selling
Speaker 1: of all things leeches. Leeches were often used for medical purposes,
Speaker 1: such as the removal of toxins through the blood. Mary
Speaker 1: Baker manufactured and identity to seem interesting to the people
Speaker 1: who had shunned her before. Sadly, despite her notoriety, she
Speaker 1: died in relative obscurity in eighteen sixty four, and she
Speaker 1: was aried in a small cemetery in an unmarked grave.
Speaker 1: Our lives are a collection of events and memories, the
Speaker 1: things that shape us into who we become. Opening a
Speaker 1: coveted toy on Christmas, a first kiss, turning the key
Speaker 1: on a first home. These are the occasions we treasure
Speaker 1: and look back on through the years. But what happens
Speaker 1: when you lose those memories? What happens when the people
Speaker 1: you know become strangers to you and you no longer
Speaker 1: recognize the places you go every day? For one English musician,
Speaker 1: he learns the answers to those questions every thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: Clive Wearing was born in the UK in nineteen. Much
Speaker 1: of his career was dedicated to studying and teaching the
Speaker 1: music of the Sight and twenty centuries. During his active years,
Speaker 1: he formed large ensembles sung in quis and perform all
Speaker 1: over Europe. However, in Wearing contracted a virus that affected
Speaker 1: his central nervous system and, perhaps more importantly, his brain,
Speaker 1: the hippocampus to be exact, the part of the brain
Speaker 1: that dealt with memory. Wearing recovered from the illness, but
Speaker 1: it left him with a terrible side effect. He was
Speaker 1: no longer able to make new memories. He was diagnosed
Speaker 1: with a condition known as entarograde amnesia, and in short,
Speaker 1: it means that every thirty seconds his mental slate was
Speaker 1: wiped clean. To this day, he holds no recollection of
Speaker 1: what transpired only half a minute ago. As his wife
Speaker 1: once described it, he did not seem to be able
Speaker 1: to retain any impression of anything for more than a blink. Indeed,
Speaker 1: if he did blink, his eyelids parted to reveal a
Speaker 1: new scene. When the symptoms first presented, Wearing believed that
Speaker 1: he had woken up from a coma, or that he'd
Speaker 1: been dead and resurrected. If someone handed him an object.
Speaker 1: Seconds later, he'd looked down at it, amazed that it
Speaker 1: had miraculously appeared in his palm out of nowhere. People
Speaker 1: he met became strangers in an instant, and he often
Speaker 1: found himself stopping in the middle of conversations, only to
Speaker 1: restart them again from the beginning. He would even reintroduce
Speaker 1: himself to the people he was speaking too. Sadly, Wearing
Speaker 1: was also diagnosed with another condition called retrograde amnesia. Unlike
Speaker 1: the terrograde variety, which prevented him from forming new memories,
Speaker 1: retrograde amnesia affected his past memories as well. Vast portions
Speaker 1: of his upbringing, his career, even memories of his children
Speaker 1: were erased. For example, he knows he has children from
Speaker 1: his first wife, but he is unable to remember their names,
Speaker 1: and each time his mind resets, he is filled with
Speaker 1: a rush of love for his second wife, whom he
Speaker 1: married a year before the illness set in. He knows
Speaker 1: that she is important to him, but her name escapes him.
Speaker 1: Yet every few seconds he meets her for the first
Speaker 1: time all over again, and his love is renewed. But
Speaker 1: not all of his past life is lost. He is
Speaker 1: aware of his past as a musician, and that he
Speaker 1: had a musical edge. Cation In fact, sit him at
Speaker 1: a piano and he can play it perfectly, even long
Speaker 1: and difficult compositions from years back. His muscle memory is
Speaker 1: still very much intact. He also knows the names of
Speaker 1: foods he likes, but he can no longer associate their tastes,
Speaker 1: meaning when he eats chicken, he knows he's eating chicken,
Speaker 1: but not what chicken is supposed to taste like until
Speaker 1: it touches his tongue and wearing. Has the ability to
Speaker 1: learn new things despite his lack of short and long
Speaker 1: term memory, but despite watching a video every day, he
Speaker 1: can anticipate certain things happening on subsequent viewings, though he
Speaker 1: doesn't know why, and he's able to learn certain new
Speaker 1: skills by performing the same action over and over again.
Speaker 1: He is aware of the layout of his home as
Speaker 1: he moves through it, but don't try asking him to
Speaker 1: describe it. He lives his life as a series of
Speaker 1: patterns and routines, like getting ready in the morning and
Speaker 1: dressing himself. His brain just knows how to do certain things,
Speaker 1: despite his inability to explain them in words or why
Speaker 1: he has that knowledge. It sounds difficult, to say the least,
Speaker 1: especially for those around him. Living with a condition that
Speaker 1: reboots one's brain after thirty seconds can be exhausting, But
Speaker 1: for Clive Wearing, there is a silver lining. Every minute
Speaker 1: is a fresh start. Every minute is the first day
Speaker 1: of the rest of his life. I hope you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Ye