Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. The young man had come far, but he
Speaker 1: had one more challenge to overcome before he could claim
Speaker 1: his prize. The stakes were high. He had bet one
Speaker 1: hundred of his finest horses. He turned to face his
Speaker 1: opponent on the mat, ready to wrestle for an exquisite prize,
Speaker 1: the hand of a beautiful woman. But she wouldn't be
Speaker 1: watching from the sidelines. Oh no. She stepped into the
Speaker 1: ring to face him, and she was undefeat. The suitor
Speaker 1: knew the deal when he stepped up to wrestle Kutuyan.
Speaker 1: He had wagered one hundred horses, and if he won,
Speaker 1: she would marry him. If not, she would keep his horses.
Speaker 1: Kutuyan was born around twelve sixty, and her extended family
Speaker 1: controlled one of the mightiest empires the world had ever known.
Speaker 1: It had been founded nearly sixty years earlier by her
Speaker 1: great grandfather, tem O Jin, the son of a mongol chieftain.
Speaker 1: Temo Jin grew to be a strong, powerful warrior and
Speaker 1: would unite the Mongolian tribes, leading them to a conquest
Speaker 1: that stretched across the Eurasian continent. He managed to capture
Speaker 1: territory from China to Poland all the way down to
Speaker 1: Gaza in an unprecedented sweep of brutality and power. Many
Speaker 1: will know him by his chosen name, Genghis Khan, meaning
Speaker 1: Universal Ruler. Genghis Khan created an era of prosperity for
Speaker 1: the Mongolian people. He stabilized taxes and created a new
Speaker 1: military style feudal government under which trade flourished, religious tolerance
Speaker 1: was practiced, and technology in the arts advanced. Gunpowder, stirrups,
Speaker 1: and leather armor were all created under his reign. When
Speaker 1: Genghis died in twelve twenty seven, his children and later
Speaker 1: grandchildren took control over different sections of the empire, but
Speaker 1: by the time Kutu Young was born, the family was
Speaker 1: at each other's throats. Kaido Kuto Young's father certainly had
Speaker 1: great ambitions for his section of the empire, and he
Speaker 1: relied heavily on his children in military conflict. Kuto Young
Speaker 1: was raised alongside her fourteen brothers and learned to ride horses,
Speaker 1: shoot a bow and arrow, raid, and wrestle with the
Speaker 1: best of them. She was tall and strong, and there
Speaker 1: were very few who could match her. The wrestling of
Speaker 1: that time and place was very different from how it
Speaker 1: is today. The match could get incredibly violent and often
Speaker 1: involved direct hits like punches and kicks toward an opponent.
Speaker 1: There were no weight classes or experienced levels. Anyone could
Speaker 1: wrestle anyone, and they didn't stop until the opponent was
Speaker 1: on the ground. Although she never backed down from an insult,
Speaker 1: she was incredibly disciplined and was a fierce warrior in
Speaker 1: her father's military campaigns. Much of the information about kuto
Speaker 1: Young comes from one of history's greatest tourists, Marco Polo.
Speaker 1: He wrote that in battle, kuto Young was quick, fearless,
Speaker 1: and willing to take risks. Sometimes she would quit her
Speaker 1: father's side, he wrote, and make a dash at the
Speaker 1: host of the enemy, and sees some man thereabouts, as
Speaker 1: deftly as a hawk pounces on a bird and carry
Speaker 1: him to her father. And this she did many a time.
Speaker 1: Genghis Khan's descendants were a dynasty, and like any other dynasty,
Speaker 1: they needed airs. Given Kuto Young was her father's favorites,
Speaker 1: any of her children would likely succeed him, so he
Speaker 1: was eager for her to marry. But she had a condition.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't marry anyone who couldn't defeat her in a
Speaker 1: wrestling match. Kaido had agreed, although he might not have
Speaker 1: known what he was getting into. So the news spread
Speaker 1: that if a suitor was willing to wage your horses,
Speaker 1: which were and are extremely valuable to the Mongolian people,
Speaker 1: they could enter a match to marry Kutu Young. The
Speaker 1: number of horses wagered varies from source to source, but
Speaker 1: Kuto Young always won and her herd grew to a
Speaker 1: staggering size. Despite the track record, suitors still came to
Speaker 1: challenge her, confident that they would be different from the
Speaker 1: previous ones. One story tells of a young suitor who
Speaker 1: was cockier than most and bet one thousand horses that
Speaker 1: he would be able to best Kutu Young. Kaido and
Speaker 1: his wife liked this candidate and privately asked Kuta Young
Speaker 1: if she would swallow her pride and lose on purpose
Speaker 1: so that they could add the young man to the family.
Speaker 1: Kutu Young smiled and wiped the floor with him. She
Speaker 1: did marry, though, but the records are a bit sketchy
Speaker 1: on who. Some claim that it was a loyal lieutenant
Speaker 1: of her father's. Others say that she fell in love
Speaker 1: with Ghazene, the Khan of Persia. There's even a wilder
Speaker 1: story about her falling in love with an assassin sent
Speaker 1: by Kublai Khan of the Yuan dynasty in China to
Speaker 1: kill her father. There's no record of whether any of
Speaker 1: them beat her in a wrestling match, though Kaido meant
Speaker 1: for his daughter and her children to succeed him, but
Speaker 1: her many brothers weren't thrilled with that notion. From here,
Speaker 1: Kuto Young's story starts to disappear from history. Her brothers
Speaker 1: challenged her position as heir when their father died. She
Speaker 1: may have clung to power for a time, but one
Speaker 1: of her brothers was appointed to be the Great Khan instead.
Speaker 1: Kutu Young died just five years after her father, and
Speaker 1: from there largely disappeared from history in the West. But
Speaker 1: although she lost her position, no one remembers Kutu Young
Speaker 1: as a loser. Enthralled crowds had watched as she stepped
Speaker 1: into the ring with one hopeful suitor after another and
Speaker 1: trounced each and every one of them. Her sorry opponents
Speaker 1: would join the ranks of the many men that she
Speaker 1: had bested and walk away without a bride and fewer horses. Today,
Speaker 1: Kutu Young is considered one of the great figures in
Speaker 1: Mongolian history, and the traditional regalia and victory dances of
Speaker 1: Mongolian wrestlers are all designed to honor her. Jeffrey was
Speaker 1: having an excellent day. School had gone well, He'd gotten
Speaker 1: to spend time with his friends, and it was shaping
Speaker 1: up to be a beautiful afternoon. What more could a
Speaker 1: little boy in nineteen sixty two possibly want. His father, Robert,
Speaker 1: was not having a good day. His boss hadn't liked
Speaker 1: a couple of the pitches he'd been working on for
Speaker 1: a big project and had rejected them, which sent Robert
Speaker 1: and his brother, Richard, also a business partner, into a panic.
Speaker 1: Roberts and Richard needed to come up with new ideas quickly,
Speaker 1: or else they risked displeasing their boss and potentially losing
Speaker 1: out on the project. When Jeffrey got home from school,
Speaker 1: he found his dad in a bad mood. He later
Speaker 1: recalled the house being dark when he got home, as
Speaker 1: his father had closed all of the shades to better
Speaker 1: concentrates and hopefully beat his writer's block, or maybe just
Speaker 1: to wallow still. Robert rallied when little Jeffrey got home
Speaker 1: and asked him how school had been. Like most five
Speaker 1: year old's, Jeffrey launched into an explanation of every little
Speaker 1: detail of his day before getting to his really big story.
Speaker 1: It was vaccination day at school and he had lined
Speaker 1: up with all of his classmates to get the polio vaccine.
Speaker 1: Schools were instrumental in the distribution of crucial vaccines to children,
Speaker 1: and the polio vaccine is one of the most well
Speaker 1: known rollouts. To most parents, it was a minor miracle
Speaker 1: polio had plagued children for generations. This disease attacks the
Speaker 1: nerve cells and even the central nervous system. It causes
Speaker 1: muscles to deteriorates, which can result in paralysis, it's most
Speaker 1: well known symptom, as well as trouble regulating breathing and
Speaker 1: even death. It largely affected children, though adults weren't immune.
Speaker 1: If they hadn't already caught the disease. Pictures of children
Speaker 1: in iron lungs or trying to relearn to walk with
Speaker 1: the help of canes and crutches were a common sight.
Speaker 1: Polio seemed to come and go like clockwork. Every summer,
Speaker 1: there would inevitably be an outbreak when kids went to
Speaker 1: the public pool or other communal activities. These outbreaks never
Speaker 1: reached catastrophic levels that we might immediately jump to, though
Speaker 1: they peaked in the United States in nineteen fifty two
Speaker 1: with nearly sixty thousand cases. Certainly, bubonic plague, the Spanish flu,
Speaker 1: and more recently COVID nineteen had higher impacts on the population,
Speaker 1: but that didn't mean news of a polio outbreak wasn't
Speaker 1: met with alarm. America's most famous polio victim, President Franklin
Speaker 1: Delano Roosevelt, helped found an organization called the March of Dimes,
Speaker 1: which would dedicate time and funds to researching polio in
Speaker 1: hopes of finding a vaccine. In nineteen thirty eight, he
Speaker 1: appealed to the public as the polio epidemic during the
Speaker 1: Great Depression worsened, and he asked for donations. Popular singer
Speaker 1: Eddie Cantor joked that the public should send in dimes
Speaker 1: to the President's organization, and it worked. Roughly two point
Speaker 1: seven million dimes made their way to the White House
Speaker 1: and further donations followed. This campaign is what landed FDR's
Speaker 1: face on the dime to memorialize his contributions to medical history.
Speaker 1: Like the ice bucket Challenge for a LS, the March
Speaker 1: of Dimes, as it came to be called, had a
Speaker 1: huge effect on polio research. The organization appointed Jonas Salk
Speaker 1: to lead the vaccine research efforts in nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: four years after President Roosevelt died. Salk struck gold in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, and his vaccine was given for the
Speaker 1: first time on February twenty three of nineteen fifty four
Speaker 1: to some children at Arsenal Elementary in Pittsburgh. This was
Speaker 1: just the beginning. Soon schools nationwide line their children up
Speaker 1: to receive this crucial vaccine, and parents breathed a sigh
Speaker 1: of relief as their kids walked out into the world
Speaker 1: with a bit more protection. Salk's vaccine and later Albert Sabins,
Speaker 1: became an expected part of the school year for first,
Speaker 1: second or third graders. Admittedly, these safety benefits were the
Speaker 1: last thing on kids minds as they lined up to
Speaker 1: get the jab, and even the promise of a piece
Speaker 1: of candy afterwards couldn't keep some of them from freaking out.
Speaker 1: Like many of us, Jeffrey hadn't been a fan of needles.
Speaker 1: Robert knew his son hadn't done well with shots in
Speaker 1: the past. In fact, Jeffrey had tried to run away
Speaker 1: from nurses who were trying to give him them. Robert
Speaker 1: was surprised his son had let anyone give him a
Speaker 1: shot with no fuss and asked it if it had hurt.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey grinned and said no, that the nurse had given
Speaker 1: him a little cup with a sugar cube in it,
Speaker 1: and that the shot was inside the cube. Robert stared
Speaker 1: at his son for a moment and then went to
Speaker 1: call his brother. Jeffrey had no other way of knowing
Speaker 1: that he had just helped make musical history. Richard and
Speaker 1: Robert Sherman had been hard up for a song idea
Speaker 1: for days, and the team had been going round and
Speaker 1: round with author P. L. Travers for years trying to
Speaker 1: make a movie about her beloved characters. The Sherman Brothers
Speaker 1: song through the eyes of love had just been rejected,
Speaker 1: and they needed to come up with something to replace
Speaker 1: it fast. Hence the writer's block. After all, no one
Speaker 1: wanted to disappoint the Great Walt Disney. Jeffrey's conversation with
Speaker 1: his father about an ordinary day at school had sparked
Speaker 1: an extraordinary idea that would resonate with generations of children
Speaker 1: who didn't want to take their medicine, and they would
Speaker 1: learn that lesson in the film Mary Poppins, because sometimes
Speaker 1: all you do need is a spoonful of sugar to
Speaker 1: help the medicine go down. I hope you've enjoyed today's
Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
Speaker 1: me Aaron Manky in partnership with How Stuff Works. I
Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.