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: A group of young boys, a shipwreck, a deserted island.
Speaker 1: In William Golding's nineteen fifty four novel The Lord of
Speaker 1: the Flies, these are the ingredients for Disaster, A harrowing
Speaker 1: cautionary tale about what happens to our humanity when we
Speaker 1: are removed from society's rules. But, as six Tonguan schoolboys discovered,
Speaker 1: sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. On September eleven of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, Australian fisherman Peter Warner was sailing in
Speaker 1: the South Pacific when he spotted a tiny island in
Speaker 1: the distance. Now this wasn't unusual. This island called Atah
Speaker 1: was marked on his map. What was unusual was that
Speaker 1: the uninhabited island had large scorch marks in the green
Speaker 1: vegetation covering it. As he drew closer, he began to
Speaker 1: hear shouts coming from the island, and then one of
Speaker 1: his crew called out someone was swimming toward them. The
Speaker 1: young boy who arrived at their ship was covered in dirt,
Speaker 1: with long hair, stiff with salt. He looked like he'd
Speaker 1: been living alone in the wilderness for years, so it
Speaker 1: was surprising when he spoke in polite boarding school English.
Speaker 1: His name, he said, was Stephen, and he and his
Speaker 1: five friends had been stranded on Ata for fifteen months.
Speaker 1: A year earlier, in June of nineteen sixty five, Stephen
Speaker 1: and his friends had been students at a boarding school
Speaker 1: in Nukuwa Lofa, the capital on the island nation of Tonga.
Speaker 1: The sixteenage boys named Stephen, Luke, Sioni, David, Colo and
Speaker 1: Mano were all of their tiny island and yearned for adventure,
Speaker 1: so they came up with a plan. They would steal
Speaker 1: a fishing boat and sail for Fiji, five hundred miles
Speaker 1: away to finally see some of the world. Like most
Speaker 1: teenage plans, this one wasn't very well thought out. The
Speaker 1: six boys, armed with very few supplies and no compass
Speaker 1: or map, took the boat one night and set out
Speaker 1: on their adventure. Just as the lights of their town
Speaker 1: faded in the distance, a storm set in. The boys
Speaker 1: lost their anchor and the winds ripped through their sail,
Speaker 1: setting them adrift on the ocean. Finally, after eight days,
Speaker 1: they sighted a smudge on the horizon. They finally had
Speaker 1: found land, the deserted island of Ata. Mano was the
Speaker 1: first to set foot on land. He was so weak
Speaker 1: he could only crawl when he reached it, But as
Speaker 1: he realized that he'd found safety, he recalled that he
Speaker 1: felt more alive than he had ever before. One ordeal
Speaker 1: was over, but another had just begun. The first weeks
Speaker 1: on the island were all about survival. The boys, weakened
Speaker 1: by their journey in the boat, caught birds and found
Speaker 1: their eggs in a them raw. They also discovered that
Speaker 1: the island was small, perhaps a four hour walk from
Speaker 1: end to end, and they relocated to a grove of
Speaker 1: coconut palms. They collected rain water in leaves and gathered
Speaker 1: papaya and coconuts, slowly rebuilding their strength, but still they
Speaker 1: were unable to rub sticks together hard or fast enough
Speaker 1: to build a fire. It took them three months before
Speaker 1: they finally made a spark, but they celebrated with their
Speaker 1: first hot meal. Since their adventure began weak as they were,
Speaker 1: they still focused on finding a way home. They quickly
Speaker 1: found sailing was not an option. When they set a
Speaker 1: raft that they had built out into the water, they
Speaker 1: couldn't get past the reef, so the boys settled in
Speaker 1: for a long wait for rescue. Life on the island
Speaker 1: was surprisingly orderly too. The six castaways took turns keeping
Speaker 1: watch for ships, maintaining the fire, and building and repairing
Speaker 1: a woven palm frond shelter. The boys even found time
Speaker 1: for fun on the island. They built a rudimentary bench
Speaker 1: press and weights out of sticks and rocks, and one
Speaker 1: of them even salvage steel rings to make a ukulele.
Speaker 1: And to deal with disputes, the group implemented a cool
Speaker 1: down rule. Any people fighting would be separated during the day,
Speaker 1: then the whole group would talk over the problem together
Speaker 1: at nights before saying their prayers. And the boys lasted
Speaker 1: like this for fifteen whole months, making the best of
Speaker 1: island life and dreaming of home. And then one day,
Speaker 1: when a passing cruise ship seemed close enough to see them,
Speaker 1: they lifted a signal fire on top of the island.
Speaker 1: The ship sailed on, but the fire burned through the brush,
Speaker 1: leaving dark, ugly patches in the uniform green veiling the island.
Speaker 1: And this is what Peter Warner saw A week later
Speaker 1: when he finally found the boys. From aboard his boat,
Speaker 1: Peter radioed Nukua Lofa, telling them that he had found
Speaker 1: six teenage boys. Moments later, a breathless voice replied their
Speaker 1: families had given them up for dead. They'd even had
Speaker 1: funerals for them. If these were the six missing boys,
Speaker 1: then this was a miracle. Peter Warner sailed back with
Speaker 1: the six boys to Tonga, where they were finally able
Speaker 1: to see their families after more than a year away.
Speaker 1: After the boys had recovered, Peter hired them as crew
Speaker 1: on one of his fishing boats, and this way Peter
Speaker 1: made sure that the boys could still see the world
Speaker 1: without being left high and dry. His name was Satoshi Tajiri,
Speaker 1: and in the late nineteen sixties, he was a young
Speaker 1: kid growing up in the rural outskirts of Tokyo, A
Speaker 1: quiet misfit who struggled to fit in. He loves spending
Speaker 1: time alone outdoors, chopping through the woods, rice paddies, and
Speaker 1: streams that surrounded his home. He fell in love with
Speaker 1: the local wildlife and soon developed a passion that would
Speaker 1: change the course of his life and the world forever.
Speaker 1: That passion bug collecting. If it sounds like an unusual
Speaker 1: hobby for a young boy, then you're most likely coming
Speaker 1: from a Western perspective. Especially in the US, we tend
Speaker 1: to think of insects as creepy, gross, and sometimes even dangerous,
Speaker 1: But bugs and insects have long been revered in Japan.
Speaker 1: This may be due to the influence of Shinto, Japan's
Speaker 1: traditional religion. In Shintoism, all aspects of nature deserve respect.
Speaker 1: Even a single river, stone or insect may be inhabited
Speaker 1: by spirits called kami. We can see the reverence toward
Speaker 1: insects everywhere in Japanese culture, from art to literature. Beetle
Speaker 1: wrestling matches are frequently televised, and there's a massive bug
Speaker 1: catching supply industry catering to hobbyists. It's a time honored
Speaker 1: tradition for children to spend their summers searching for the
Speaker 1: most unique insect so they can take them home and
Speaker 1: raise them as pets. All of which is to say.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Shatoshi's hobby that was unusual, it was his
Speaker 1: passion for it. Everything about insects fascinated him, from their
Speaker 1: odd appearance and the funny way they moved, to the
Speaker 1: fact that there always seemed to be more species to discover.
Speaker 1: He loved plotting new ways to catch them. For instance,
Speaker 1: he observed that beatles like sleeping under stones during the day,
Speaker 1: so he left a stone under a tree overnight. When
Speaker 1: he came back the next morning, the beatles were waiting
Speaker 1: for him. Eventually, Satoshi's passion for insects earned him a
Speaker 1: bit of a reputation. The other kids started calling him
Speaker 1: doctor Bug. For a while, he thought that he would
Speaker 1: grow up to become an entomologist. But this isn't the
Speaker 1: story of a kid who followed his dreams and discovered
Speaker 1: a new species of caterpillar. Sadly, Satoshi's bug collecting days
Speaker 1: were numbered. During the nineteen seventies, Tokyo's urban sprawl continued
Speaker 1: to push outward, eventually swallowing Satoshi's neighborhood. As forrests were
Speaker 1: replaced with skyscrapers and arcades, Insects and other wildlife became
Speaker 1: more rare, sights, but Satoshi was still just a kid
Speaker 1: finding his way in the world, and like many Japanese children,
Speaker 1: he found his interest shifting to a new subject like
Speaker 1: manga and video games. He was still as passionate and
Speaker 1: obsessive as ever, though, and when he was just seventeen,
Speaker 1: he created game Freak, a strategy magazine for gamers that
Speaker 1: included cheat codes and other strategy tips. It was a
Speaker 1: very small operation. The magazine was handwritten and photo copied.
Speaker 1: The pages were staple together, and Satoshi distributed them by hand. Still,
Speaker 1: he found a hungry market, and for one issue he
Speaker 1: sold ten thousand copies. Pretty soon he was cutting classes
Speaker 1: to run his small business. His parents, though, were less impressed.
Speaker 1: They thought their son was a delinquent who had lost
Speaker 1: his mind to video games, but Satoshi stuck with it.
Speaker 1: At the time he was twenty five, he learned to
Speaker 1: code and was toying with turning Game Freak into a
Speaker 1: video game company. That year, inspiration struck when Satoshi encountered
Speaker 1: Nintendo's new game Boy. What made this handheld interesting was
Speaker 1: the fact that you could connect it to another system,
Speaker 1: allowing players to compete or swap data back and forth.
Speaker 1: As he held the game boy, Satoshi suddenly envisioned the
Speaker 1: data as insects scurrying from one player's game to another,
Speaker 1: and instantly an idea wormed its way into Satoshi's mind,
Speaker 1: and when he sat down to work on his new game,
Speaker 1: he found himself thinking back on those summer days before
Speaker 1: he set foot in an arcade. He realized that the
Speaker 1: world he'd grown up in was now gone, but maybe,
Speaker 1: just maybe he could still recapture the feeling that he
Speaker 1: had gotten chopping through the woods searching for insects. Drawing
Speaker 1: from his childhood hobby, Satoshi put together a pitch for
Speaker 1: a game called Capsule Monsters, which he managed to sell
Speaker 1: to Nintendo. It took six years to actually finish the game,
Speaker 1: and by the time it was released, the name had changed.
Speaker 1: You've probably heard of it too. Satoshi created the first
Speaker 1: Pokemon game. Today, the series is worth ninety two billion dollars,
Speaker 1: making it the highest grossing media franchise of all time.
Speaker 1: I didn't misspeak. Satoshi's creation isn't just the best selling
Speaker 1: video game series. It's the single most lucrative ip of
Speaker 1: any kind, Bigger than Star Wars or Harry Potter or
Speaker 1: the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Mickey Mouse, and all because
Speaker 1: of a boy who loved to catch bugs. I hope
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.