Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventeen, a young woman named Molly Maggia strolled
Speaker 1: into a factory in New Jersey for her first day
Speaker 1: of work. Two of her sisters worked in the same factory,
Speaker 1: and as she looked around the room, she saw them
Speaker 1: sitting together at a workbench. Molly smiled and waved, excited
Speaker 1: to join them. A supervisor walked Molly through the long
Speaker 1: rows of work benches, where more than one hundred young
Speaker 1: women were hunched over with brushes in their hands. Their
Speaker 1: job was to paint the numbers onto the dials of
Speaker 1: watchfaces with a special luminous paint called undark. Molly sat
Speaker 1: down at her seat and gazed into the small bowl
Speaker 1: of yellowish paint, which glimmered and glowed like a magical potion.
Speaker 1: Molly had never seen anything like it. Her supervisor showed
Speaker 1: her the proper technique lip dip paint. She was supposed
Speaker 1: to shape the brush into a fine point with her lips,
Speaker 1: dip it in the paint, and then paint the numbers
Speaker 1: on the watch dial. Molly frowned and asked if the
Speaker 1: paint was safe to consume, and the supervisor said yes,
Speaker 1: it was all natural and completely harmless. During their lunch break,
Speaker 1: Molly sat with her sisters who were painting each other's
Speaker 1: nails with the undark paint to make them glow. Across
Speaker 1: the room, she saw other workers painting designs onto their
Speaker 1: faces and clothing. They were laughing and smiling and shimmering
Speaker 1: like they were lit from within. Molly decided that the
Speaker 1: hesitation she had felt was unnecess A substance this beautiful
Speaker 1: and popular couldn't be dangerous. But after working at the
Speaker 1: factory for a few years, Molly woke up one morning
Speaker 1: with a terrible toothache. She called in sick to work
Speaker 1: and went to the dentist. He pulled out one of
Speaker 1: her teeth and sent her away, but the pain didn't
Speaker 1: go away. Over the next few months, Molly went back
Speaker 1: to the dentist again and again. Her teeth were rotting
Speaker 1: and falling out one by one, and even more alarmingly,
Speaker 1: the empty sockets weren't healing after the teeth were removed.
Speaker 1: They were turning into painful, bleeding ulcers. And then one day,
Speaker 1: when the dentist lightly pried open Molly's jaw to get
Speaker 1: a better look at her teeth, her entire jawbone crumbled
Speaker 1: and broke off into his hand. The dentist was aghast.
Speaker 1: He had no idea what was wrong with Molly, and
Speaker 1: there was nothing he could do to help her pain.
Speaker 1: Molly spent the next few months bedridden, barely able to
Speaker 1: eat or speak. Her sisters brought her word that other
Speaker 1: workers at the factory were falling in as well. Their
Speaker 1: jaws were rotting, their spines collapsed, their pregnancies ended in miscarriage.
Speaker 1: No one knew what was happening. The factory owners insisted
Speaker 1: that it was just a coincidence and that it had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the undark paint, but the workers
Speaker 1: were starting to doubt the paint was really as safe
Speaker 1: as they claimed. That fall Molly died of a hemorrhage
Speaker 1: at the age of twenty five. Over the coming years,
Speaker 1: dozens of other dial painters became sick, including Molly's sisters,
Speaker 1: who joined with other workers to file a lawsuits against
Speaker 1: the factory. As part of the lawsuit, Molly's body was
Speaker 1: exhumed for an autopsy, and what it revealed was that
Speaker 1: Molly's bones were radioactive. You see the undark paint glowed
Speaker 1: because it contained radium, a radioactive substance that's highly toxic
Speaker 1: to human beings. The owners of the Dial factory had
Speaker 1: tried to cover up the harmful effects of radium, even
Speaker 1: as their healthy young workers dropped dead from it. Over time,
Speaker 1: the workers Bega came known as the Radium Girls, and
Speaker 1: although there was nothing that could be done to save them,
Speaker 1: their deaths led to the creation of several new health
Speaker 1: and safety regulations for workers, including the creation of the
Speaker 1: Occupational Safety and Health Administration otherwise known to us today
Speaker 1: as OSHA. You see them in every grocery store produce
Speaker 1: aisle today, the humble banana, the Cavendish banana, to be
Speaker 1: more precise. But if you were to get into a
Speaker 1: time machine and go back to the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: that is not the banana that you would find at
Speaker 1: the market, and the reason why is a curious tale.
Speaker 1: Back then, the banana that everyone bought was the gross Michelle.
Speaker 1: It had been introduced to the Americas in the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, and due to its flavor, thick skin, and
Speaker 1: resilientllians when being shipped, it quickly became top banana. It
Speaker 1: fueled the growth of many Central American countries and grew
Speaker 1: the profits of the massive fruit corporations, including United Fruit Company,
Speaker 1: which led to the rise of the concept that we
Speaker 1: know today as the banana republic. It's a phrase that
Speaker 1: we often hear an unstable country whose economy rests on
Speaker 1: a single resource, which then gets exploited by powerful foreign agents.
Speaker 1: In this case, those foreign agents were United Fruit and
Speaker 1: its competitors. You see, the gross Michelle needed land in
Speaker 1: the tropics, and lots of it, and not just for
Speaker 1: the massive banana plantations where the fruit would be grown,
Speaker 1: but also for railways and ports so that the perishable
Speaker 1: Gross Michelle could get to market as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: United Fruit was able to secure land grants in exchange
Speaker 1: for building its own railways, but only those that would
Speaker 1: serve its own interests. Locals were frequently left out in
Speaker 1: the cold, and as more and more of the country's
Speaker 1: resources were sucked up by the company, there would be,
Speaker 1: in turn more political unrest, and to protect United Fruits business,
Speaker 1: the United States government would help topple governments who pushed back,
Speaker 1: installing corrupt military dictatorships that were much more friendly to
Speaker 1: American interests, all to sell a banana. Very quickly, the
Speaker 1: health of a nation's economy became entirely reliant on the
Speaker 1: health of the banana plantations, which left local populations vulnerable
Speaker 1: to markets that had little to do with themselves, and
Speaker 1: United Fruits focus on growing the grossmychelle above all other
Speaker 1: varieties would eventually lead to disaster. You see, in order
Speaker 1: to have consistent quality of seedless fruit, the bananas weren't
Speaker 1: grown from seed, but instead cloned. And because every cloned
Speaker 1: plant was identical, every grossmychell had the exact same vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1: And so when a soil born fungus exploded onto the
Speaker 1: scene in the nineteen twenties and thirties, it tore through
Speaker 1: the tropics, massacring the grosser mishell as it went. How well,
Speaker 1: this fungus caused Panama disease, which blocked the plant's ability
Speaker 1: to absorb and distribute water, and so entire plantations became
Speaker 1: rotting banana graveyards, and by the nineteen fifties, the grossmychell
Speaker 1: was unable to continue as the corporate crop that it
Speaker 1: had been for so long. After some search, the industry
Speaker 1: found a new champion, the cavendish, which had a natural
Speaker 1: resistance to the fungus, and so farmers pivoted quickly to
Speaker 1: the new variety, which proved incredibly successful. Just like the
Speaker 1: grossbyshell before, it was a resilient breed and it could
Speaker 1: make that long journey from the farm to the grocer
Speaker 1: with minimal damage. But most importantly, it could grow in
Speaker 1: the same soil that had become toxic for its predecessor,
Speaker 1: and along the way it's become the banana that we
Speaker 1: all recognize today, and it accounts for ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of the banana trade, which, as you can probably guess,
Speaker 1: is a major problem. You see, the industry didn't solve
Speaker 1: its fungus problem by replacing one monoculture with another. It's
Speaker 1: only really putting off the inevitable because just like the
Speaker 1: grossby shell, the cavendish is a clone. Every single one
Speaker 1: of the bananas on the market shelves today share the
Speaker 1: exact same genes and so all it would take is
Speaker 1: a single disease to wipe out the Cavendish, and that
Speaker 1: disease has already appeared in the form of tropical race four,
Speaker 1: which is a particularly nasty form of the same fungus
Speaker 1: that took down the grossmy shell. It's more aggressive and
Speaker 1: it can live in the soil far longer, lasting even decades.
Speaker 1: And since it's appeared, it has spread like wildfire through
Speaker 1: Asia and Australia. In twenty nineteen, it finally made it
Speaker 1: to the Americas, the hearts of the banana export industry,
Speaker 1: and it's proving nearly impossible to contain naturally. The industry
Speaker 1: is trying to fight back using genetic engineering. It's attempting
Speaker 1: to take resistant genes from wild bananas and insert them
Speaker 1: into the cavendish genome, offering a glimmer of hope. There's
Speaker 1: also the possibility of other varieties hitting store shelves, although
Speaker 1: many aren't as hardy or as flavorful as the Cavendish,
Speaker 1: And so the new fungus continues its relentless spread, leaving
Speaker 1: our familiar bananas fate hanging in the balance. Twice now
Speaker 1: we've been shown the dangers of monoculture. We can meet
Speaker 1: it in the moment through diversification or science, or face
Speaker 1: losing one of our everyday staples. And as far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned, only one of those options sounds appealing. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: This show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
Speaker 1: with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim and
Speaker 1: Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about
Speaker 1: the show and the people who make it over at
Speaker 1: Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link
Speaker 1: to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in
Speaker 1: bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook. And
Speaker 1: if you're looking for an ad free option, consider joining
Speaker 1: our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without the
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Speaker 1: up over at patreon dot com, slash Grimandmild, and until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.