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: If you walked outside and spent a few minutes digging
Speaker 1: through the grass, chances are you would find a beetle.
Speaker 1: Beetles are defined as insects with hardened front wings which
Speaker 1: protect a second set of softer wings. They come in
Speaker 1: all kinds of shapes and sizes too. The biggest can
Speaker 1: be larger than a grown man's hand, while the tiniest
Speaker 1: can be as small as the tip of a ballpoint pen.
Speaker 1: And here's a fact that will really make your heads.
Speaker 1: If you counted up all the animal species on Earth,
Speaker 1: one fourth of them would be beetles, which seems impossible,
Speaker 1: I know, But the sheer amount of beetle biodiversity means
Speaker 1: there are well over three hundred and fifty thousand documented species.
Speaker 1: Some fly, some don't. Some are shaped like ladybugs, others
Speaker 1: like violins. Some live on land, some in water, a
Speaker 1: few make their homes inside mushrooms. Beetles can be bright blue,
Speaker 1: jet black, neon green, and nearly every other color in between. Really,
Speaker 1: when you get down to it, there's nothing that beatles
Speaker 1: can't do. So it probably wouldn't surprise you to learn
Speaker 1: that there's an entire branch of science dedicated to studying
Speaker 1: these curious creatures. It's called Coleepterology, which comes from the
Speaker 1: word colyeptera, the scientific name for beetles. There is even
Speaker 1: an international organization of beatle fanatics called the Coleopteris Society.
Speaker 1: It's made up of professionals and amateurs, brought together by
Speaker 1: their love of this hardshelled insect. Speaking of amateurs, one
Speaker 1: of them most important figures in the history of coleopterology
Speaker 1: wasn't a scientist at all. He was an investment banker,
Speaker 1: a philanthropist, and one of the wealthiest men who ever lived.
Speaker 1: Enter David Rockefeller, the youngest son of John D. Rockefeller Junior.
Speaker 1: David grew up fabulously wealthy. His childhood spanned the Roaring twenties,
Speaker 1: and his New York home was certainly the setting for
Speaker 1: many parties and negotiations, but At the time, David wasn't
Speaker 1: yet old enough to have a head for business. In
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty five, ten year old David was just beginning
Speaker 1: his education, taking lessons with a summer tutor. This teacher
Speaker 1: introduced him to a few different kinds of beatles, and
Speaker 1: I truly don't think that they could have imagined the
Speaker 1: kind of obsession that this lesson would spark. Young David
Speaker 1: began collecting beatles, and this was far more than a
Speaker 1: childhood hobby. He did lots of research to learn about
Speaker 1: the different species and kept his specimens carefully arranged in
Speaker 1: display cases. Over the next eight years, he amassed an
Speaker 1: impressive catalog. By this point, David was eighteen years old
Speaker 1: and with a last name like Rockefeller, he had some
Speaker 1: seriously big shoes to fill. He moved from New York
Speaker 1: to Massachusetts, where he studied economics at Harvard University. He
Speaker 1: went on to earn a PhD from the University of
Speaker 1: Chicago in nineteen forty. After a stint in the military
Speaker 1: during World War II, he started working as a member
Speaker 1: of the executive staff at Chase National Bank. It probably
Speaker 1: helped that his uncle was chairman of the board. David
Speaker 1: quickly rose through the ranks, becoming senior vice president in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two and taking over his uncle's position as
Speaker 1: chairman in nineteen sixty nine. He also served as CEO
Speaker 1: from sixty nine to nineteen eighty, making him one of
Speaker 1: the most influential bankers in the world. But outside of
Speaker 1: his day to day grind as a high powered executive,
Speaker 1: David had a secret passion his undying love for beatles.
Speaker 1: You see, David had never stopped collecting the little bugs.
Speaker 1: When he was a student at Harvard, he spent his
Speaker 1: free time combing Massachusetts for specimens. When he came home
Speaker 1: from serving in World War II, his bags were full
Speaker 1: of beatles. Even as the CEO of Chase National Bank,
Speaker 1: he planned his vacations around these little critters, traveling to
Speaker 1: locations where he knew he could find exotic species. When
Speaker 1: David passed away in twenty seventeen at the age of
Speaker 1: one hundred and one, he left behind thirty massive cabinets
Speaker 1: filled with over one hundred and fifty thousand beetle specimens.
Speaker 1: His relatives were understandably overwhelmed with this bounty, so they
Speaker 1: called up Harvard University, David's alma mater, and offered to
Speaker 1: make a donation. Today, David Rockefeller's beatle collection is on
Speaker 1: display at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. Brian Farrell, the
Speaker 1: museum's director of Entomology, has expressed admiration for David's extensive catalog.
Speaker 1: In Farrell's words, collecting is a result of quote passionate curiosity,
Speaker 1: something David always had in high supply. Every autumn, our
Speaker 1: doctors remind us to get our flu shots, and according
Speaker 1: to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention,
Speaker 1: at least half of the US population chooses not to.
Speaker 1: Nobody likes being stuck with a needle, but still, in
Speaker 1: an age when vaccines are readily available, it's easy to
Speaker 1: forget how much they change the world. Vaccines are one
Speaker 1: of the greatest marvels of modern medicine. Take the flu shot,
Speaker 1: for example. It first became available to the public in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five. Every year since then it has prevented
Speaker 1: thousands of debts and kept millions of people from getting sick.
Speaker 1: Other diseases like polio, have been completely eradicated through the
Speaker 1: use of vaccines. Throughout history, Countless doctors and researchers have
Speaker 1: worked to develop safe and effective shots. But there's one
Speaker 1: immunologist who stand out from the crowd, doctor Maurice Hilleman.
Speaker 1: Maurice was born in Montana in nineteen nineteen, but his
Speaker 1: early years were marked by tragedy. Just two days after
Speaker 1: he was born, his mother died, leaving his father alone
Speaker 1: to raise eight kids. With little money and less time
Speaker 1: to spare, Maurice's father sent him to live with one
Speaker 1: of his uncles. Marie spent his days at school and
Speaker 1: his evenings working on his uncle's farm. He was a
Speaker 1: promising student too, especially when it came to science, but
Speaker 1: he didn't have many prospects when he graduated high school.
Speaker 1: It was nineteen thirty seven, the middle of the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: and he didn't have the money to go to college.
Speaker 1: He worked odd jobs here and there until he heard
Speaker 1: about one that his older brothers was doing. Maurice's brother
Speaker 1: had enrolled in Divinity School on a scholarship. When he
Speaker 1: realized he might be able to go to college for free,
Speaker 1: Maurice applied to Montana State University. He ended up getting
Speaker 1: a full scholarship to study chemistry and microbiology. After he graduated,
Speaker 1: he received a fellowship to attend the UNI University of Chicago.
Speaker 1: As a PhD student. In Chicago, Maurice studied infectious diseases.
Speaker 1: He received his doctorates in microbiology in nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: when he was just twenty five years old. A long
Speaker 1: way from the farm boy he once was, Maurice had
Speaker 1: now officially become doctor Hilliman. He found a job at
Speaker 1: a vaccination manufacturing company, where he worked to create an
Speaker 1: immunization for a certain strain of encephalitis. A few years later,
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty eight, he joined the Army Medical Center
Speaker 1: as a respiratory disease expert. He worked with a team
Speaker 1: researching the flu and in nineteen fifty seven, when a
Speaker 1: novel influenza strain emerged in Japan, doctor Hilliman and his
Speaker 1: team quickly developed a vaccine, quite possibly stopping the strain
Speaker 1: from becoming an epidemic. Then, at thirty eight years old,
Speaker 1: doctor Hilliman left the Army and began working at a
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company called merk and this is where his research
Speaker 1: really expanded. He led a team developing vaccines for all
Speaker 1: sorts of diseases, including measles, chicken pox, hepatitis A and B,
Speaker 1: and strap, but the most interesting vaccine doctor Hilliman developed
Speaker 1: was for the mumps. At the time, in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, nearly every child caught the mumps at some point.
Speaker 1: While the disease itself wasn't usually fatal, it was a
Speaker 1: leading cause of meningitis and hearing loss. One night in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, while he was sleeping next to his wife,
Speaker 1: doctor Hilliman awoke to the sound of his five year
Speaker 1: old daughter toddling into their room. Her name was Jerre Lynn.
Speaker 1: Usually an energetic and happy child, she pulled on her
Speaker 1: dad's arm and told him that she didn't feel good.
Speaker 1: Maurice took stock of her symptoms fever, swollen throats, headache,
Speaker 1: and realized that his daughter had the mumps. Now, not
Speaker 1: every child grows up with a prolific microbiologist for a dad,
Speaker 1: but Jara Lynn did. Doctor Hilliman jumped out of bed,
Speaker 1: grabbed some cotton swabs, and took a saliva sample from
Speaker 1: his daughter. The next morning, he brought the swab to
Speaker 1: the Murk laboratory and got to work. It took some time,
Speaker 1: but four years later, in nineteen sixty seven, doctor Hilliman
Speaker 1: revealed his latest medical marvel. He had developed an effective
Speaker 1: mumps vaccine using a viral sample from his own daughter.
Speaker 1: It was the fastest a vaccine had ever been created
Speaker 1: and approved until in twenty twenty, the COVID nineteen vaccine
Speaker 1: shattered debt record. Doctor Hilliman continued his research for another
Speaker 1: four decades. By the time he passed away in two
Speaker 1: thousand and five at the age of eighty five, he
Speaker 1: had been instrumental in creating over forty different vaccines. It's
Speaker 1: estimated that even now his work saves approximately eight million
Speaker 1: lives every year. So while I know that nobody likes needles,
Speaker 1: I'm sure doctor Hilliman would say that you should shoot
Speaker 1: your shot, or you should get your shots, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
Speaker 1: of 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 Manke
Speaker 1: in 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.