WEBVTT - Drama Island 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 --> 0:00:22.119 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 --> 0:00:38.640 What does it mean for a piece of writing to 0:00:38.720 --> 0:00:42.640 be dangerous? Writers love to say that ideas are powerful things. 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:45.839 But does an idea itself have power? Or does the 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:49.279 power come from the context in which the idea exists. 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:52.600 Of course, that's an impossible question to answer, an even 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:56.240 more abstract version of which came first the chicken or 0:00:56.280 --> 0:01:00.520 the egg? But for an idea to be truly danmed Injurius, 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:02.960 it first has to be treated like a threat to 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:07.199 the status quo, even within something as seemingly trivial as 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:12.080 escapist fiction. In the early nineteen tens, China was undergoing 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:15.520 a massive upheaval. The imperial rule of the country came 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.080 to an end after two thousand years, with the Republic 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:21.920 of China taking its place. The end of the Qing 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:25.440 dynasty was in some ways a culmination of China's growth 0:01:25.480 --> 0:01:29.600 into a world of global collaboration. Foreign relations had taken 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:32.959 off in the late nineteenth century, and cultural imports like 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:37.080 cinema began to reshape how the people of China expressed 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:40.600 and entertained themselves. In the process, some relics of the 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:44.200 old world fell away, and others found themselves reborn. In 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:48.200 the twentieth century. Now, this Republican period saw a boom 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:50.840 in what would later be called the Mandarin, Duck and 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:55.440 Butterfly genre of fiction. These were lurid romance, stories of 0:01:55.560 --> 0:02:00.360 forbidden love and high drama, a uniquely Chinese equivalent to puliction. 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:03.200 But of course the popularity of this sort of low 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:06.400 art did not go unnoticed by those in power. The 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:09.600 new government soon deemed that they needed to conduct an 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:12.480 audit of the sorts of popular writing that was read 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:16.639 by the common people. On July eighteenth of nineteen fifteen, 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:20.480 they established a council for conducting such a review under 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:25.160 the Ministry of Education. The Fiction Committee would rank publications 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:29.440 into three categories. Upper rank fiction we should try to promote, 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:32.920 middle rank work that can be allowed, and lower rank 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:36.240 works that we should try to restrict or ban. Of 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:39.519 the sixteen literary magazines that they reviewed. Two made the 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:43.160 upper rank, eleven were deemed middle rank, and three were 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:46.360 unfortunate enough to get the label of lower rank. And 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:50.280 of the bottom three, only one received a recommendation for banning. 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:55.160 It was titled may You or Eyebrown Talk, a relatively 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.720 new magazine. May You was edited by a woman named 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:02.840 Gao Gianhua and her husband. Its first edition had hit 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:06.639 shelves on November seventeenth of nineteen fourteen, and it ran 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:09.799 for almost a year without incident. The material within its 0:03:09.800 --> 0:03:15.040 pages was provocative but popular. It featured stories from women authors, 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:19.720 often romances, interspersed with artwork and photographs. Some of these 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:22.800 were related to the stories, others were included purely for 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:26.440 marketing purposes to sell more copies, and it was these 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:29.520 images that drew the government's eye, as many of them 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:33.800 were nudes or otherwise suggestive. Realizing that her magazine was 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:37.520 gaining negative attention from the government, Gou decided to cease 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.560 publication of Mayu after eighteen issues. The final issue of 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:45.880 Mayu was published on April sixteenth of nineteen sixteen. It 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:50.560 was officially banned that September. The committee's decision reads in 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:55.000 part this association, in examining a magazine called May You, 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:59.080 has found that its language and topics seemed specifically aimed 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:03.920 at destroying moral barriers and harming social standards. Among all 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:07.720 fiction magazines, its errors are the gravest. If this sort 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:10.920 of fashion were to spread, it would do considerable harm 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.440 to social morality. Now you have to understand that in 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:18.080 nineteen sixteen China there was no contesting such a ban. 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:22.120 Life had to move on. Gao did not revive May You, 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:25.000 but she and her husband continued to edit and publish 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:28.400 other magazines for decades to come. None of these, though, 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:31.680 were as enduring as the eighteen months they'd spent publishing 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:35.760 May You. In the many decades since the magazine's censorship, 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:39.159 the content of the magazine was obscured by controversy, with 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:42.840 many critics dismissing the content of the magazine itself. It's 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:46.960 no coincidence that the term Mandarin duck and butterfly was 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:51.440 itself a pejorative term, an implicit critique of the stories 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:55.400 that it described. History, however, has a funny way of 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:59.240 applying hindsight to stories like these. Although a minor blip 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:03.840 in the history Chinese literature, May You struck an important milestone. 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:07.600 It was the first fiction magazine published in the country 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:11.280 that was primarily edited and written by women, with stories 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:15.599 marketed toward female readers. Rather than do considerable harm to 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:19.440 social morality, as they said, what the magazine actually did 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:22.920 was provide a brief but crucial outlet for authors who 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:26.520 had no other avenue for being published. They practiced their craft, 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:30.240 and one hundred years later, their work is still being studied. 0:05:30.880 --> 0:05:34.200 We could only hope that our own words will last 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:49.760 half that long. Many of us wish that we could 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:53.760 escape the confines of civilization and go live in paradise. 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:57.120 But in nineteen twenty nine, doctor Friedrich Ritter and his 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:01.320 former patient and lover Dore Strauch did just that. They 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:05.279 left their native Germany to live alone together on Floriana Island. 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:09.320 This island is a small speck of land in the Galopagos, 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.440 a cluster of islands west of Ecuador in the Pacific. 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:18.240 It's a beautiful place with incredibly diverse wildlife. There are seals, iguanas, tortoises, 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:22.760 wild pigs, and exotic birds like herons and flamingos. But 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:26.880 living outside of civilization is hard, regardless of the scenery. 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:31.120 Dore and Friedrich had no running water, plumbing, or electricity. 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:35.880 Food was scarce. Friedrich was a strict vegetarian and expected 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:38.599 Dora to live the same way, and this made things 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:42.080 even more difficult. And it should go without saying that 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:45.920 paradise is a relative term, especially depending on who you're 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:49.960 sharing it with. Right. Friedrich was a strange, controlling man 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:52.599 who believed in a very strict way of life. He 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:56.000 had a lot of bizarre ideas about the body. For example, 0:06:56.040 --> 0:06:58.679 he had all of his teeth removed because he wanted 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:02.000 to make his gums strung. It didn't work, and so 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:04.560 he had to use a pair of steel dentures while 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:08.600 living in the galopagus. He also thought that Dora's sclerosis 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:11.800 could be cured with willpower alone, and he chastened her 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:14.440 when she used a cane. In reality, he was a 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:18.080 cult leader of a cult of two. Doray was trapped 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:22.760 under his influence. So imagine Friedrich's fury when his isolated 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:26.880 fiefdom was abruptly invaded by Heinz and Margaret Whitmer and 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:30.240 their thirteen year old son. Margaret was pregnant with their 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:32.800 second child and they wanted to have a child there 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:36.880 in paradise, living like Friedrich and Dore, Friedrich didn't see 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:40.520 them as potential new accolytes, though they were rivals. They 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.960 were more working class than Friedrich and Dora, who came 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:47.680 from sophisticated backgrounds. They were also quickly proved to be 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:51.120 more hard working and adept at living in nature than 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:54.640 Friedrich and Dora had. The Whitmers quickly found a cave 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:58.280 and used it for shelter while tending to a successful garden, 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:02.120 hunting for food, and holding a stone house. Friedrich and 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:05.520 Dore lived in a mostly wooden, open air home that 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:08.920 was shabby by comparison. Oh And when it came time 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:11.760 for Margaret to give birth to her new baby, Friedrich 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:15.560 begrudgingly helped her deliver, and while he was already near 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:21.280 his limit, another new neighbor arrived, Eloise Bosque de Wagner Verhorn, 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:24.480 a wealthy Austrian woman who wanted to build a hotel 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:29.120 for rich travelers on the island. She arrived with two assistants, 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:31.960 both of whom were her lovers, Alfred and Robert, and 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:34.440 they helped her set up camp on the island, and 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:37.600 Aloise quickly proved to be the most irritating neighbor of 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:41.040 all for Friedrich. She constantly fought with her lovers and 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:43.720 their arguments could be heard all over the small island. 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:47.880 They randomly fired off pistols just because Eloise liked to 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:50.520 shoot animals and then nurse them back to health, and 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:53.240 she also shot at passing sailors if they got too 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:56.000 close to her patch of the land. And to top 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:58.560 it all off, she began to steal food from the 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.440 other two groups when her so applies ran low. She 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:05.000 was no farmer or hunter. She mostly relied on deliveries 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:08.559 from Ecuador. When one of her lovers, Alfred, fell out 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:11.400 of her favor, he started showing up at the other camps, 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:14.480 telling his neighbors about his troubled love life and how 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:17.880 difficult Eloise was. And then one day in March of 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:22.319 nineteen thirty four, Eloise and her other lover, Robert, disappeared 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:25.360 from the island. Alfred claimed that they had left on 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:28.440 a passing yacht, but no one saw any ships that day. 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:31.680 Dora thought that she remembered hearing a gunshot and a 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:34.440 scream during the night, and when she went to visit 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:36.960 the Whitmers, she found that their house had a new 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:41.480 tin roof, one that used to belong to Eloise. She 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:44.679 began to wonder if they had helped Alfred kill Eloise 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:47.640 and Robert and then cover it up. But of course, 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:50.720 Friedrich had just as much reason to want Eloise gone 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:54.080 as anyone else. She was the most obnoxious intruder to 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:59.120 his personal island kingdom, and Doray had become increasingly disillusioned 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:02.600 with the island and with Friedrich, and perhaps he thought 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:07.640 that Eloise's wilful personality was a bad influence. Curiously, just 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.560 a few months later, in November of nineteen thirty four, 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:14.000 Friedrich came down with a terrible case of food poisoning. 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:16.719 Dora's story was that he ran out of fruits and 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:19.880 vegetables and had to resort to eating some dead chickens 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:23.920 despite their vegetarianism. On the other hand, Margaret Whitmer found 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.680 it suspicious that Dora was perfectly fine. Then again, she 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:31.040 had just as much motive to poison Friedrich herself and 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:34.840 framed Dora. By this point, the two groups absolutely hated 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:39.120 each other. Friedrich died from his illness. Dora left the 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:43.640 island after that, returning to Germany. Alfred Eloise's remaining lover 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:46.000 died after the boat he took to get off the 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:49.319 island crashed and stranded him on a smaller piece of land. 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:53.440 Only the Whitmers remained. Their descendants still live on the 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:57.480 island today. It was they and not Eloise, who eventually 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.920 built a hotel there on the island. And looking back, 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:03.960 perhaps it's not too strange that the one group to 0:11:04.040 --> 0:11:07.960 survive were also the hardest workers with the best survival skills. 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:10.520 But as to whether or not they murdered any of 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:13.840 their neighbors along the way, well, we'll just have to 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:21.520 remain a bit curious. I hope you enjoyed today's guided 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:25.080 tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:29.439 by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:31.880 and written by the Grim and Mild team, and produced 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:34.600 by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:39.080 people who make it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:41.680 You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:45.839 Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:48.600 as ebook and audiobook, and if you're looking for an 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:51.880 ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all the 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:55.680 same stories, but without the interruption, for a small monthly fee. 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:58.679 Learn more and sign up over at patreon dot com. 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:03.400 Slash Grimandmile, and until next time, stay curious.