1
00:00:04,120 --> 00:00:07,480
Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of

2
00:00:07,520 --> 00:00:09,360
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.

3
00:00:12,880 --> 00:00:16,919
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history

4
00:00:17,079 --> 00:00:20,279
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are

5
00:00:20,360 --> 00:00:23,760
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

6
00:00:25,280 --> 00:00:38,120
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The Black Hand, the

7
00:00:38,120 --> 00:00:42,520
Speaker 2: Wise Guys, the Cosa Nostra. The Italian Mafia has gone

8
00:00:42,560 --> 00:00:45,480
Speaker 2: by many names over the years. Even though it's become

9
00:00:45,520 --> 00:00:49,600
Speaker 2: a staple of American pop culture, the real organization feels

10
00:00:49,600 --> 00:00:52,640
Speaker 2: as hard to pin down as it's ever changing nicknames.

11
00:00:53,080 --> 00:00:54,920
Speaker 2: But one thing we know for sure is that the

12
00:00:54,960 --> 00:00:57,960
Speaker 2: mafia got its start in Sicily, an island off the

13
00:00:58,000 --> 00:01:01,400
Speaker 2: southern coast of Italy. It grew from several small groups

14
00:01:01,400 --> 00:01:05,000
Speaker 2: of criminals into a kind of shadow government, controlling trade

15
00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:08,920
Speaker 2: and finances across the island. But how did the mafia

16
00:01:08,959 --> 00:01:11,679
Speaker 2: get that power in the first place. Well, the answer

17
00:01:11,800 --> 00:01:17,120
Speaker 2: is small, yellow and surprisingly sour. For hundreds of years, Palermo,

18
00:01:17,280 --> 00:01:21,120
Speaker 2: the capital of Sicily, was called the Concadoro, which means

19
00:01:21,160 --> 00:01:24,399
Speaker 2: the shell of gold, not because the region was very rich.

20
00:01:24,560 --> 00:01:27,560
Speaker 2: In fact, the people of Sicily were historically very poor,

21
00:01:28,040 --> 00:01:31,560
Speaker 2: and not because of any vacation ready golden sands. The

22
00:01:31,600 --> 00:01:34,679
Speaker 2: people there were much too concern with subsistence farming to

23
00:01:34,720 --> 00:01:37,559
Speaker 2: go to the beach. No, the shell of gold refers

24
00:01:37,600 --> 00:01:40,960
Speaker 2: to the trees that surround the region, or more specifically,

25
00:01:41,280 --> 00:01:45,320
Speaker 2: the golden yellow fruits growing on those trees. Palermo, as

26
00:01:45,360 --> 00:01:48,400
Speaker 2: it turns out, is the perfect place to grow lemons.

27
00:01:49,240 --> 00:01:52,800
Speaker 2: Until the late seventeen hundreds, Sicilian lemons had been treated

28
00:01:52,840 --> 00:01:56,440
Speaker 2: as an exotic ingredient for cooking and not much more.

29
00:01:57,000 --> 00:01:59,800
Speaker 2: All that changed, though, when one naval doctor had a

30
00:01:59,840 --> 00:02:03,840
Speaker 2: medical breakthrough. The doctor, James lind had been looking for

31
00:02:03,880 --> 00:02:07,440
Speaker 2: a way to prevent scurvy from killing his sailors. Scurvy

32
00:02:07,480 --> 00:02:10,240
Speaker 2: would cause his patients to become weak, they would develop

33
00:02:10,320 --> 00:02:13,240
Speaker 2: sores all over their body, and sometimes their teeth would

34
00:02:13,240 --> 00:02:15,800
Speaker 2: even fall out. Today we know scurvy comes from a

35
00:02:15,880 --> 00:02:19,240
Speaker 2: lack of vitamin C. Back then, James Lynde had no

36
00:02:19,360 --> 00:02:22,080
Speaker 2: idea what was causing it. All he knew was that

37
00:02:22,160 --> 00:02:26,520
Speaker 2: giving sailors citrus fruits seemed to help, especially limes, oranges,

38
00:02:26,720 --> 00:02:30,560
Speaker 2: and lemons. By seventeen ninety five, James Lynn's idea had

39
00:02:30,600 --> 00:02:33,639
Speaker 2: caught on and the Royal British Navy ordered gallons of

40
00:02:33,720 --> 00:02:36,560
Speaker 2: lemon juice to be sent out with each ship. Suddenly,

41
00:02:36,600 --> 00:02:39,560
Speaker 2: the golden shell didn't just refer to the trees. It

42
00:02:39,600 --> 00:02:43,320
Speaker 2: also meant the money flowing into Sicilian lemon growers. But

43
00:02:43,400 --> 00:02:46,560
Speaker 2: as you might expect, new cash couldn't fix old problems.

44
00:02:46,720 --> 00:02:49,240
Speaker 2: Sicily in the eighteen hundreds was a hard place to

45
00:02:49,280 --> 00:02:52,840
Speaker 2: live and even harder to govern. Bandits wandered the roads,

46
00:02:53,080 --> 00:02:56,600
Speaker 2: and local magistrates couldn't be counted on to protect their citizens.

47
00:02:56,919 --> 00:02:59,600
Speaker 2: With so many living in deep poverty, people would do

48
00:02:59,720 --> 00:03:04,480
Speaker 2: any to feed their families, including stealing the lemons. Citrus

49
00:03:04,480 --> 00:03:07,240
Speaker 2: growers needed someone to guard their crop, which is where

50
00:03:07,280 --> 00:03:11,240
Speaker 2: local groups of unemployed men saw their opportunity. At first,

51
00:03:11,240 --> 00:03:14,639
Speaker 2: they offered protection. It seems simple enough, right the grower

52
00:03:14,680 --> 00:03:17,239
Speaker 2: would hire them and they would patrol the lemon groves

53
00:03:17,280 --> 00:03:20,640
Speaker 2: at night, chasing off would be bandits. Pretty soon, this

54
00:03:20,840 --> 00:03:24,000
Speaker 2: protection they offered seemed more like a threat. If growers

55
00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:27,720
Speaker 2: didn't pay them, they might steal the lemons themselves, and

56
00:03:27,880 --> 00:03:31,560
Speaker 2: in some cases the money still wasn't enough. Why work

57
00:03:31,680 --> 00:03:34,079
Speaker 2: to protect the lemons for a pittance when they could

58
00:03:34,080 --> 00:03:37,680
Speaker 2: make a fortune selling the fruit. Instead, the Protectors began

59
00:03:37,760 --> 00:03:41,720
Speaker 2: working as middlemen between growers and exports, hiking up the

60
00:03:41,720 --> 00:03:44,840
Speaker 2: prices and taking a big slice of the lemon pie

61
00:03:44,840 --> 00:03:49,480
Speaker 2: for themselves, and the growers were stuck. Sicily had only

62
00:03:49,640 --> 00:03:52,000
Speaker 2: just become part of the Kingdom of Italy, and many

63
00:03:52,040 --> 00:03:56,120
Speaker 2: Sicilians saw the far away government in Rome as oppressive outsiders.

64
00:03:56,320 --> 00:03:58,560
Speaker 2: At least with their protectors, you knew who you were

65
00:03:58,560 --> 00:04:02,000
Speaker 2: dealing with, so the bandits of the so called Protectors

66
00:04:02,160 --> 00:04:05,320
Speaker 2: ranged across the island. The local term for these organized

67
00:04:05,320 --> 00:04:08,400
Speaker 2: groups of criminals were men of honor. Since they all

68
00:04:08,440 --> 00:04:11,640
Speaker 2: had a certain bravado, people started calling them the Sicilian

69
00:04:11,640 --> 00:04:16,240
Speaker 2: word for swagger, mafia. The mouth puckering roots of the

70
00:04:16,279 --> 00:04:19,719
Speaker 2: mafia also helped its expansion over the next century. The

71
00:04:19,720 --> 00:04:23,040
Speaker 2: mafia got its tentacles into industries all across Sicily, from

72
00:04:23,279 --> 00:04:27,640
Speaker 2: growing wine, grapes and wheat, to manufacturing and even local government,

73
00:04:28,080 --> 00:04:31,479
Speaker 2: but the big money maker was always lemons. In the

74
00:04:31,480 --> 00:04:34,920
Speaker 2: early nineteen hundreds, Sicily got some new competition. It turned

75
00:04:34,960 --> 00:04:38,560
Speaker 2: out that Florida also had the perfect conditions for citrus growing,

76
00:04:38,839 --> 00:04:42,919
Speaker 2: and Florida oranges, lemons, and limes flooded the market, tanking

77
00:04:43,040 --> 00:04:47,560
Speaker 2: Sicily's economy, thousands of Sicilians left the island looking for

78
00:04:47,600 --> 00:04:50,719
Speaker 2: a new life in the United States. The mafia needed

79
00:04:50,760 --> 00:04:53,479
Speaker 2: a new revenue stream, so they two headed to the

80
00:04:53,560 --> 00:04:57,520
Speaker 2: land of opportunity, and if Martin Scorsese's movies are anything

81
00:04:57,560 --> 00:05:01,400
Speaker 2: to go by, they found it in abundance. Today, the

82
00:05:01,440 --> 00:05:05,159
Speaker 2: Sicilian Mafia is known and feared around the world. They're

83
00:05:05,200 --> 00:05:08,840
Speaker 2: the stuff of silver screen legends and real life tabloids.

84
00:05:09,200 --> 00:05:11,720
Speaker 2: But they got their starts in the humble citrus groves

85
00:05:11,720 --> 00:05:14,760
Speaker 2: of Palermo. When a gangster gave a grower an offer

86
00:05:15,480 --> 00:05:32,200
Speaker 2: he couldn't refuse. You know, some days you just need

87
00:05:32,240 --> 00:05:33,480
Speaker 2: a little reward.

88
00:05:33,120 --> 00:05:35,600
Speaker 1: To keep you going. I'm not talking about something big,

89
00:05:35,720 --> 00:05:38,640
Speaker 1: more like life's little luxuries. For some people, that might

90
00:05:38,680 --> 00:05:41,480
Speaker 1: mean a coffee from their favorite shop. For others, a

91
00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:44,359
Speaker 1: new video game that they've been wanting to play. Many

92
00:05:44,400 --> 00:05:47,520
Speaker 1: people find their little bit of luxury at the nail salon.

93
00:05:47,839 --> 00:05:50,200
Speaker 1: It's an affordable way to relax and get a bit

94
00:05:50,200 --> 00:05:52,920
Speaker 1: of pampering in and if they're in the US, there's

95
00:05:52,960 --> 00:05:55,799
Speaker 1: a good chance the nail technicians sitting across from them

96
00:05:55,960 --> 00:05:59,520
Speaker 1: is Vietnamese. In fact, nearly half of all American nail

97
00:05:59,560 --> 00:06:03,560
Speaker 1: salons have Vietnamese owners. The reason why it might surprise you.

98
00:06:03,880 --> 00:06:06,880
Speaker 1: It's one that goes back fifty years to an actress

99
00:06:07,200 --> 00:06:10,680
Speaker 1: named Natalie. Natalie had never been one to stand by

100
00:06:10,800 --> 00:06:14,360
Speaker 1: when someone needed help, so in nineteen seventy five, when

101
00:06:14,360 --> 00:06:18,440
Speaker 1: she saw thousands of Vietnamese people fleeing their country after saigonfell,

102
00:06:18,800 --> 00:06:21,800
Speaker 1: she knew she had to do something. True, she hadn't

103
00:06:21,800 --> 00:06:24,919
Speaker 1: started out as a humanitarian. In fact, for most of

104
00:06:24,960 --> 00:06:28,039
Speaker 1: her life she was a performer, first a model and

105
00:06:28,080 --> 00:06:31,080
Speaker 1: then an actress in the nineteen sixties. After that, she

106
00:06:31,200 --> 00:06:34,680
Speaker 1: was an animal rights activist, turning her home in California

107
00:06:34,760 --> 00:06:38,320
Speaker 1: into a wildlife sanctuary for lions and tigers in nineteen

108
00:06:38,360 --> 00:06:41,400
Speaker 1: seventy two. But by seventy five she was at a

109
00:06:41,400 --> 00:06:45,480
Speaker 1: military base in northern California, voluntaring to help refugees start

110
00:06:45,480 --> 00:06:48,360
Speaker 1: a new life in the United States. Her first task

111
00:06:48,680 --> 00:06:53,080
Speaker 1: to help twenty newly arrive Vietnamese women find jobs. To

112
00:06:53,120 --> 00:06:55,159
Speaker 1: say this group of women had been through the ringer

113
00:06:55,200 --> 00:06:58,240
Speaker 1: would be an understatement. Back home, many of them were

114
00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:02,599
Speaker 1: wives of military officers, others worked for US military intelligence.

115
00:07:02,920 --> 00:07:07,160
Speaker 1: They'd gone from comfortably middle class to crammed into military barracks.

116
00:07:07,440 --> 00:07:11,160
Speaker 1: They were in an unfamiliar country with an unfamiliar language, food,

117
00:07:11,240 --> 00:07:14,480
Speaker 1: and culture. Many had been separated from their husbands and

118
00:07:14,560 --> 00:07:17,680
Speaker 1: children in the chaos, and now, with Natalie's help, they

119
00:07:17,720 --> 00:07:21,480
Speaker 1: had to start entirely from scratch. To help them, Natalie

120
00:07:21,520 --> 00:07:24,760
Speaker 1: brought in seamstresses, typists and anyone she could think of

121
00:07:24,840 --> 00:07:27,600
Speaker 1: to train these women in good paining jobs. But it

122
00:07:27,680 --> 00:07:30,880
Speaker 1: wasn't the lessons that excited them. It was Natalie's nails.

123
00:07:31,200 --> 00:07:34,280
Speaker 1: During the sessions, several women kept admiring how long and

124
00:07:34,320 --> 00:07:38,280
Speaker 1: elegance her Beverly Hills style manicure was, which gave Natalie

125
00:07:38,320 --> 00:07:42,320
Speaker 1: an idea. In the nineteen seventies, manicures and pedicures were

126
00:07:42,360 --> 00:07:46,120
Speaker 1: inexpensive luxury, reserved for the wealthy women who could afford them.

127
00:07:46,160 --> 00:07:48,720
Speaker 1: A good nail technician could make a lot of money,

128
00:07:48,960 --> 00:07:51,040
Speaker 1: and they didn't need to be fluent in English to

129
00:07:51,080 --> 00:07:55,040
Speaker 1: get started. Natalie flew her personal manicurist up from Beverly

130
00:07:55,120 --> 00:07:57,960
Speaker 1: Hills and enlisted the help of a local beauty school.

131
00:07:58,320 --> 00:08:01,680
Speaker 1: She made sure the trainers emphasize expensive beauty techniques that

132
00:08:01,680 --> 00:08:04,480
Speaker 1: would attract clients with more money to spend, and just

133
00:08:04,520 --> 00:08:08,000
Speaker 1: a few weeks later, twenty new licensed nail technicians joined

134
00:08:08,040 --> 00:08:11,320
Speaker 1: the workforce. And those twenty women that Natalie helped move

135
00:08:11,400 --> 00:08:14,720
Speaker 1: to Vietnamese neighborhoods all across the country. Seeing how well

136
00:08:14,720 --> 00:08:16,880
Speaker 1: they were doing in the nail business, more and more

137
00:08:16,880 --> 00:08:20,240
Speaker 1: of Vietnamese immigrants wanted to do the same. One couple,

138
00:08:20,480 --> 00:08:24,560
Speaker 1: Dm and Ken Newin saw the perfect opportunity. Back in Vietnam,

139
00:08:24,720 --> 00:08:28,480
Speaker 1: Dm had been a Navy commander while Kien was a hairdresser.

140
00:08:28,840 --> 00:08:31,720
Speaker 1: Now living in Garden Grove, California, they were having trouble

141
00:08:31,760 --> 00:08:35,840
Speaker 1: finding work. When Kien's friends returned from training with Natalie,

142
00:08:35,880 --> 00:08:39,040
Speaker 1: they realized that for Vietnamese immigrants, the nail industry was

143
00:08:39,120 --> 00:08:42,400
Speaker 1: the new frontier. Someone just needed to lead the charge.

144
00:08:42,840 --> 00:08:46,400
Speaker 1: So they opened up the Advanced Beauty College in Garden Grove,

145
00:08:46,559 --> 00:08:51,280
Speaker 1: offering manicure and cosmetology training in English and Vietnamese. Today,

146
00:08:51,280 --> 00:08:54,520
Speaker 1: the Advanced Beauty College has trained thousands of nail technicians,

147
00:08:54,800 --> 00:08:58,079
Speaker 1: most of which have been Vietnamese. And when you step

148
00:08:58,120 --> 00:09:00,720
Speaker 1: back and look at it, these nail technicians didn't just

149
00:09:00,880 --> 00:09:04,520
Speaker 1: make over their clients, they also made over an entire industry.

150
00:09:04,920 --> 00:09:07,480
Speaker 1: You see back in the nineteen seventies, a manicure might

151
00:09:07,559 --> 00:09:09,959
Speaker 1: run you fifty whole dollars, which is the same as

152
00:09:10,040 --> 00:09:13,240
Speaker 1: nearly three hundred dollars today, which made it a relatively

153
00:09:13,360 --> 00:09:18,280
Speaker 1: unattainable luxury. But Natalie's nail trainees saw a niche affordable

154
00:09:18,320 --> 00:09:22,520
Speaker 1: manicures for working women. But by cutting prices and expanding

155
00:09:22,520 --> 00:09:26,840
Speaker 1: to working class neighborhoods across the country, the nail industry exploded.

156
00:09:27,160 --> 00:09:29,480
Speaker 1: For the first time, you didn't have to be a

157
00:09:29,559 --> 00:09:32,719
Speaker 1: Hollywood actress to get your nails done, all thanks to

158
00:09:32,800 --> 00:09:36,520
Speaker 1: Natalie Hedron, who admittedly was a Hollywood actress, as is

159
00:09:36,600 --> 00:09:40,400
Speaker 1: by the way, her daughter and granddaughter Melanie Griffiths and

160
00:09:40,440 --> 00:09:47,839
Speaker 1: Dakota Johnson. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of

161
00:09:47,920 --> 00:09:51,880
Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,

162
00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:55,479
Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast

163
00:09:55,720 --> 00:09:59,520
Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky

164
00:09:59,800 --> 00:10:03,320
Speaker 1: and partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award

165
00:10:03,320 --> 00:10:06,920
Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,

166
00:10:06,960 --> 00:10:09,520
Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it

167
00:10:09,600 --> 00:10:15,120
Speaker 1: over at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious,