WEBVTT - Rock the Boat 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:07.440 Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:14.440 iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.440 the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:22.159 of these amazing tales are right there on display, just 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:28.840 waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:38.919 Off the coast of England, and to be exact, off 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:41.800 the coast of Frinton on Sea in Essex, a fairy 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:45.360 dropped anchor. Its pilot had taken special care to move 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:50.040 it into international waters. Its cruise intent was not strictly legal, 0:00:50.200 --> 0:00:53.000 and they didn't want to be hassled by the British authorities. 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:57.480 It was Easter Sunday, March twenty eighth of nineteen sixty four. 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:00.960 A signal went out from the decks, cutting into the 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:05.280 British radio static, a clarion call and a protest. It 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:08.600 was rock and roll, and in this way Radio Caroline 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:12.080 announced itself to a pop and rock star England. It 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:15.720 became a beacon for pop music and forced the establishment 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:19.120 to finally accept the changing tastes of a new generation. 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.480 And along the way it utterly changed the landscape of 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:26.920 British broadcasting. You see, before nineteen sixty four, broadcasting was 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:30.720 completely controlled by the BBC. What went on the airwaves 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:34.640 was regulated by the government, who only begrudgingly played popular 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:37.840 music and limited its time on the airwaves. But this 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:41.080 wasn't enough for the British youth, who desperately hungered for 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:44.319 music from the country's growing pop and rock scene. They 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:47.480 wanted the Beatles, they wanted the Rolling Stones, they wanted 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:51.600 rock and roll. But the BBC wasn't listening. So when 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:55.120 an Irish businessman named Ronan O'Reilly saw what was happening 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:57.640 and realized that there was a great opportunity in the 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:01.080 establishment's stubbornness, he had an idea of how to exploit 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:05.360 that opportunity. A station at sea beyond English maritime borders, 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:09.200 a mere three miles from shore. If he weren't broadcasting 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:13.519 from inside Britain, he wouldn't be constrained by their broadcasting laws, 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:17.480 with their censorship and their scheduling constraints. He'd be able 0:02:17.480 --> 0:02:20.600 to operate without a license. He could play anything that 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:24.560 he liked for as long as he liked. And mister o'rahi, well, 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:28.600 he really liked rock music, so he bought and converted 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:32.040 a ferry named the me Amigo to be his broadcast station, 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:35.640 and on March twenty eighth, Radio Caroline went live. It 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:39.600 was immediately a massive sensation. The music was exactly what 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:43.239 the younger generation had yearned for all day, every day, 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:47.680 and unlike the stodgy announcers of the BBC Radio Carolines, 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:52.639 DJs were like familiar friends, energetic and funny, and more importantly, 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:56.720 the same age as many of their listeners. This pirate 0:02:56.760 --> 0:02:59.680 station built an audience in the millions who tuned in 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.840 on transistor radios and listened late into the night. O'rahlei's 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.720 gambit had paid off generously. Not only had he filled 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:08.960 a gap in the market, but he'd proven that the 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:12.959 BBC's monopoly on radio fell woefully short in the face 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:16.880 of the cultural wave of rock and roll Revolution. Radio 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:21.280 Caroline stood alone, but only for a short time. Overnight, 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:25.239 new pirate stations popped up as well. The sea seemingly 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:30.320 full of illegal broadcasters. Stations like Radio London, Radio Scotland 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.800 and Radio Atlanta were pumping the sounds of the swinging 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.520 sixties into the nation. They became so prominent that they 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.080 were impossible for the government to ignore, and so in 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:46.040 nineteen sixty seven, Parliament passed the Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act, 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:48.760 which made it illegal for citizens of Britain to work 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:52.480 for the pirate stations and for businesses to advertise on 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:56.000 their stations. With their supply of money and labor drying up, 0:03:56.280 --> 0:04:00.720 the newest stations were decimated, but Radio Caroline kept rocking. 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:04.600 Miamigo was a symbol of resistance. The station began to 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:08.920 pull supplies from Dutch waters, worked with complex maritime laws, 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:12.760 and merged with Radio Atlanta to share resources and widen 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:16.480 their reach. They were adaptable, and they managed for years 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:21.440 to pardon the pun stay afloat. Finally, the British media 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:25.120 establishment had to concede that pirate radio had transformed the 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:28.560 media market forever, and as a response to the huge 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:31.800 cultural shift, in the autumn of nineteen sixty seven, the 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:35.920 BBC created Radio One, a station for pop and rock 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:39.159 music that not only tried to reproduce the success of 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:42.920 Pirate radio, but that also employed the very djays that 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:46.800 they had fought so hard against. Radio Caroline kept on 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:51.960 over the following decades, broadcasting, despite bankruptcies and shipwrecks, even 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:57.120 adapting as digital media overtook radio in popularity. It broadcasts 0:04:57.120 --> 0:05:00.360 now legally from a new ship and can be heard 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:02.680 not only in Great Britain but all over the world 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:05.680 from its Internet live stream. And through it all, it 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:09.240 still retains its place in broadcast history for its ability 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:13.360 to shape culture. The era of true pirate radio stations 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:17.039 may be decades in the past, but Radio Caroline has 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:20.680 made an impact on it through profound change from the margins. 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:24.039 And when the Miamigo dropped anchor on that Easter Sunday 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:26.920 in nineteen sixty four, they may have only set out 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:29.280 to play a little bit of rock and roll, but 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:46.640 that signal they broadcast, well, it started a revolution. He 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:49.839 was a West African king who came to power in 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:54.240 thirteen twelve AD. At first, Mansa Musa essentially was a 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:57.400 regent of the Kingdom of Mali, ruling in his brother's 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:01.200 stead while his brother went on an Atlantic expedition. But 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:04.960 when his brother never returned, he became king. We'll let 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:07.400 you decide if that's the truth or if that's just 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:10.040 the story that he told to explain how he deposed 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:14.400 his brother. Historians are a bit divided. What we do 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:17.760 know is that Musa was a devout Muslim, he likely 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:20.200 would have been introduced to the religion through the trade 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.720 routes that ran east to west from Saudi Arabia, and 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:26.560 this contact exposed him to the wisdom and riches of 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:30.640 the Mediterranean and inspired him to expand his empire. He 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:34.039 focused on the non Muslim nations that surrounded Mali. This 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:38.719 included places like Senegal, Nijer, and Mauritania. At its heights 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:42.160 as kingdom spanned two thousand miles. It was essentially the 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:45.880 entire middle portion of the hump of West Africa that 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.080 round protruding upper half of Africa that you see when 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:52.000 you look at a map. It's unknown how exactly he 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:55.520 was so effective at conquest, but clearly he was inspired 0:06:55.520 --> 0:06:58.560 by what he learned from the East. The most significant 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:01.280 part of his conquest was that many of these nations 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:05.800 were rich in the most important natural resource of the time, gold. 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:09.400 Musa's gold stores were so great that today he'd be 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:13.080 worth an estimated four hundred billion dollars, making him one 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:16.160 of the richest people to have ever lived. And with 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:18.600 all this wealth, he clearly wasn't just going to sit 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:22.440 back and do nothing with it. He attributed his success 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:25.160 to his faith in Islam, and as such he wanted 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:27.520 to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. But that was no 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:30.560 easy task in this time and place. It meant crossing 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:34.200 the Sahara desert by camel, but with four hundred billion 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:37.520 dollars in gold at his disposal, even this wasn't too 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:41.520 great of a challenge for Musa to overcome. He meticulously 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:46.680 planned the expedition, gathering sixty thousand enslaved people, soldiers and 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:50.520 advisers to travel with him. The caravan was really more 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:53.640 of a moving city, with a huge train of livestock 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:56.240 that could be used to sustain all of the people 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:59.040 on the journey, and of course Musa made sure that 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:02.000 they brought plenty of gold with them. There were as 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:05.680 many as one hundred camels loaded down with pure gold. 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:09.800 They made their way across the Sahara, enduring the ankle 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:13.960 twisting sands and intense heat. Sand particles got in their 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:18.360 eyes and mouths, a never ending irritation, but eventually they 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:21.800 arrived in Cairo, the largest city on the route to Mecca. 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:24.640 Musa wanted to show off his wealth, and so he 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:27.680 handed out gold to every major noble in the city. 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:30.200 In fact, he handed out so much gold that he 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:34.600 ruined the local economy. Gold basically became worthless, as there 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:38.080 was more of it than any other good. Undetereared, he 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:41.679 kept going somehow, loading his thousands of men and hundreds 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:45.200 of camels onto ships that crossed the Red Sea. Before 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:48.240 long they were in Mecca. Musa could finally show his 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:51.120 respects to the prophet and the religion that set him 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:54.480 on the path to being such a successful king. When 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:57.000 he returned to Mali, he brought back architects who would 0:08:57.000 --> 0:09:00.000 help him build the Jingeraber Mosque in Timbuktu in Mali. 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:03.920 The mosque became instantly iconic for its detailed wood, straw 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:07.000 and mud walls. It's also known for its two slim 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:10.959 towers called minarets. Wood spikes jut out from the walls 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:14.000 and towers, which are a kind of scaffolding that allows 0:09:14.040 --> 0:09:18.160 for regular maintenance. Musa also built a university in the city, 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:22.360 which attracted students from all over Africa. Timbuctoo became a 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:25.160 major trade hub for the region and remained that way 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:29.520 for centuries. Mansa Musa's curiosity about the world and his 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:32.679 desire to do more with his life than his predecessors, 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:36.800 led him to completely transforming the region. He died in 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:40.760 thirteen thirty seven, leaving his kingdom to his son. Musa's 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:43.400 descendants managed to hold on to the majority of the 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:47.200 empire throughout the fourteenth century, living up to his legacy 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:51.000 and maintaining their incredible wealth, but the two centuries after 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:54.400 that saw constant civil war among the various factions within 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:58.240 the kingdom. The ruling family in Timbuctoo seemed to lack 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:03.080 the military genius their legendary ancestor. The Kingdom of Mali 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.800 finally fell to the Moroccan Empire in fifteen ninety nine, 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:10.800 before eventually falling into the hands of colonizing French forces 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:14.520 in the early twentieth century. The people of Mali didn't 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:18.440 regain independence until nineteen sixty, and the nation has seen 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:21.960 a lots of conflict since then. It's a sad history, 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:24.120 but for those who are curious enough, we can look 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:26.920 back into history and find a time when Mali ruled 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:29.720 all of West Africa and one of the richest men 0:10:29.920 --> 0:10:37.880 of all time handed out gold like candy. I hope 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:41.320 you enjoyed today's guided tour through the cabinet of Curiosities. 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:44.960 This show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:48.000 with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim and 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:51.520 Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:53.760 the show and the people who make it over at 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:58.040 Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:01.560 to the official Cabinet of Curiosities hardcover book, available in 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:05.240 bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook. And 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:07.880 if you're looking for an ad free option, consider joining 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:10.880 our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without the 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:14.360 interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and sign 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:18.800 up over at patreon dot com slash Grimandmild, and until 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:20.920 next time, stay curious.