Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The Black Hand, the
Speaker 2: Wise Guys, the Cosa Nostra. The Italian Mafia has gone
Speaker 2: by many names over the years. Even though it's become
Speaker 2: a staple of American pop culture, the real organization feels
Speaker 2: as hard to pin down as it's ever changing nicknames.
Speaker 2: But one thing we know for sure is that the
Speaker 2: mafia got its start in Sicily, an island off the
Speaker 2: southern coast of Italy. It grew from several small groups
Speaker 2: of criminals into a kind of shadow government, controlling trade
Speaker 2: and finances across the island. But how did the mafia
Speaker 2: get that power in the first place. Well, the answer
Speaker 2: is small, yellow and surprisingly sour. For hundreds of years, Palermo,
Speaker 2: the capital of Sicily, was called the Concadoro, which means
Speaker 2: the shell of gold, not because the region was very rich.
Speaker 2: In fact, the people of Sicily were historically very poor,
Speaker 2: and not because of any vacation ready golden sands. The
Speaker 2: people there were much too concern with subsistence farming to
Speaker 2: go to the beach. No, the shell of gold refers
Speaker 2: to the trees that surround the region, or more specifically,
Speaker 2: the golden yellow fruits growing on those trees. Palermo, as
Speaker 2: it turns out, is the perfect place to grow lemons.
Speaker 2: Until the late seventeen hundreds, Sicilian lemons had been treated
Speaker 2: as an exotic ingredient for cooking and not much more.
Speaker 2: All that changed, though, when one naval doctor had a
Speaker 2: medical breakthrough. The doctor, James lind had been looking for
Speaker 2: a way to prevent scurvy from killing his sailors. Scurvy
Speaker 2: would cause his patients to become weak, they would develop
Speaker 2: sores all over their body, and sometimes their teeth would
Speaker 2: even fall out. Today we know scurvy comes from a
Speaker 2: lack of vitamin C. Back then, James Lynde had no
Speaker 2: idea what was causing it. All he knew was that
Speaker 2: giving sailors citrus fruits seemed to help, especially limes, oranges,
Speaker 2: and lemons. By seventeen ninety five, James Lynn's idea had
Speaker 2: caught on and the Royal British Navy ordered gallons of
Speaker 2: lemon juice to be sent out with each ship. Suddenly,
Speaker 2: the golden shell didn't just refer to the trees. It
Speaker 2: also meant the money flowing into Sicilian lemon growers. But
Speaker 2: as you might expect, new cash couldn't fix old problems.
Speaker 2: Sicily in the eighteen hundreds was a hard place to
Speaker 2: live and even harder to govern. Bandits wandered the roads,
Speaker 2: and local magistrates couldn't be counted on to protect their citizens.
Speaker 2: With so many living in deep poverty, people would do
Speaker 2: any to feed their families, including stealing the lemons. Citrus
Speaker 2: growers needed someone to guard their crop, which is where
Speaker 2: local groups of unemployed men saw their opportunity. At first,
Speaker 2: they offered protection. It seems simple enough, right the grower
Speaker 2: would hire them and they would patrol the lemon groves
Speaker 2: at night, chasing off would be bandits. Pretty soon, this
Speaker 2: protection they offered seemed more like a threat. If growers
Speaker 2: didn't pay them, they might steal the lemons themselves, and
Speaker 2: in some cases the money still wasn't enough. Why work
Speaker 2: to protect the lemons for a pittance when they could
Speaker 2: make a fortune selling the fruit. Instead, the Protectors began
Speaker 2: working as middlemen between growers and exports, hiking up the
Speaker 2: prices and taking a big slice of the lemon pie
Speaker 2: for themselves, and the growers were stuck. Sicily had only
Speaker 2: just become part of the Kingdom of Italy, and many
Speaker 2: Sicilians saw the far away government in Rome as oppressive outsiders.
Speaker 2: At least with their protectors, you knew who you were
Speaker 2: dealing with, so the bandits of the so called Protectors
Speaker 2: ranged across the island. The local term for these organized
Speaker 2: groups of criminals were men of honor. Since they all
Speaker 2: had a certain bravado, people started calling them the Sicilian
Speaker 2: word for swagger, mafia. The mouth puckering roots of the
Speaker 2: mafia also helped its expansion over the next century. The
Speaker 2: mafia got its tentacles into industries all across Sicily, from
Speaker 2: growing wine, grapes and wheat, to manufacturing and even local government,
Speaker 2: but the big money maker was always lemons. In the
Speaker 2: early nineteen hundreds, Sicily got some new competition. It turned
Speaker 2: out that Florida also had the perfect conditions for citrus growing,
Speaker 2: and Florida oranges, lemons, and limes flooded the market, tanking
Speaker 2: Sicily's economy, thousands of Sicilians left the island looking for
Speaker 2: a new life in the United States. The mafia needed
Speaker 2: a new revenue stream, so they two headed to the
Speaker 2: land of opportunity, and if Martin Scorsese's movies are anything
Speaker 2: to go by, they found it in abundance. Today, the
Speaker 2: Sicilian Mafia is known and feared around the world. They're
Speaker 2: the stuff of silver screen legends and real life tabloids.
Speaker 2: But they got their starts in the humble citrus groves
Speaker 2: of Palermo. When a gangster gave a grower an offer
Speaker 2: he couldn't refuse. You know, some days you just need
Speaker 2: a little reward.
Speaker 1: To keep you going. I'm not talking about something big,
Speaker 1: more like life's little luxuries. For some people, that might
Speaker 1: mean a coffee from their favorite shop. For others, a
Speaker 1: new video game that they've been wanting to play. Many
Speaker 1: people find their little bit of luxury at the nail salon.
Speaker 1: It's an affordable way to relax and get a bit
Speaker 1: of pampering in and if they're in the US, there's
Speaker 1: a good chance the nail technicians sitting across from them
Speaker 1: is Vietnamese. In fact, nearly half of all American nail
Speaker 1: salons have Vietnamese owners. The reason why it might surprise you.
Speaker 1: It's one that goes back fifty years to an actress
Speaker 1: named Natalie. Natalie had never been one to stand by
Speaker 1: when someone needed help, so in nineteen seventy five, when
Speaker 1: she saw thousands of Vietnamese people fleeing their country after saigonfell,
Speaker 1: she knew she had to do something. True, she hadn't
Speaker 1: started out as a humanitarian. In fact, for most of
Speaker 1: her life she was a performer, first a model and
Speaker 1: then an actress in the nineteen sixties. After that, she
Speaker 1: was an animal rights activist, turning her home in California
Speaker 1: into a wildlife sanctuary for lions and tigers in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two. But by seventy five she was at a
Speaker 1: military base in northern California, voluntaring to help refugees start
Speaker 1: a new life in the United States. Her first task
Speaker 1: to help twenty newly arrive Vietnamese women find jobs. To
Speaker 1: say this group of women had been through the ringer
Speaker 1: would be an understatement. Back home, many of them were
Speaker 1: wives of military officers, others worked for US military intelligence.
Speaker 1: They'd gone from comfortably middle class to crammed into military barracks.
Speaker 1: They were in an unfamiliar country with an unfamiliar language, food,
Speaker 1: and culture. Many had been separated from their husbands and
Speaker 1: children in the chaos, and now, with Natalie's help, they
Speaker 1: had to start entirely from scratch. To help them, Natalie
Speaker 1: brought in seamstresses, typists and anyone she could think of
Speaker 1: to train these women in good paining jobs. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't the lessons that excited them. It was Natalie's nails.
Speaker 1: During the sessions, several women kept admiring how long and
Speaker 1: elegance her Beverly Hills style manicure was, which gave Natalie
Speaker 1: an idea. In the nineteen seventies, manicures and pedicures were
Speaker 1: inexpensive luxury, reserved for the wealthy women who could afford them.
Speaker 1: A good nail technician could make a lot of money,
Speaker 1: and they didn't need to be fluent in English to
Speaker 1: get started. Natalie flew her personal manicurist up from Beverly
Speaker 1: Hills and enlisted the help of a local beauty school.
Speaker 1: She made sure the trainers emphasize expensive beauty techniques that
Speaker 1: would attract clients with more money to spend, and just
Speaker 1: a few weeks later, twenty new licensed nail technicians joined
Speaker 1: the workforce. And those twenty women that Natalie helped move
Speaker 1: to Vietnamese neighborhoods all across the country. Seeing how well
Speaker 1: they were doing in the nail business, more and more
Speaker 1: of Vietnamese immigrants wanted to do the same. One couple,
Speaker 1: Dm and Ken Newin saw the perfect opportunity. Back in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: Dm had been a Navy commander while Kien was a hairdresser.
Speaker 1: Now living in Garden Grove, California, they were having trouble
Speaker 1: finding work. When Kien's friends returned from training with Natalie,
Speaker 1: they realized that for Vietnamese immigrants, the nail industry was
Speaker 1: the new frontier. Someone just needed to lead the charge.
Speaker 1: So they opened up the Advanced Beauty College in Garden Grove,
Speaker 1: offering manicure and cosmetology training in English and Vietnamese. Today,
Speaker 1: the Advanced Beauty College has trained thousands of nail technicians,
Speaker 1: most of which have been Vietnamese. And when you step
Speaker 1: back and look at it, these nail technicians didn't just
Speaker 1: make over their clients, they also made over an entire industry.
Speaker 1: You see back in the nineteen seventies, a manicure might
Speaker 1: run you fifty whole dollars, which is the same as
Speaker 1: nearly three hundred dollars today, which made it a relatively
Speaker 1: unattainable luxury. But Natalie's nail trainees saw a niche affordable
Speaker 1: manicures for working women. But by cutting prices and expanding
Speaker 1: to working class neighborhoods across the country, the nail industry exploded.
Speaker 1: For the first time, you didn't have to be a
Speaker 1: Hollywood actress to get your nails done, all thanks to
Speaker 1: Natalie Hedron, who admittedly was a Hollywood actress, as is
Speaker 1: by the way, her daughter and granddaughter Melanie Griffiths and
Speaker 1: Dakota Johnson. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
Speaker 1: and partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
Speaker 1: over at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious,