Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and

Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book,

all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Ernst I'm Schmit was obsessed.

Ernst Johannes Schmidt was obsessed.

Now the subject of his obsession was not particularly well understood by his friends and family and

Ernst thought that they could afford to be more understanding after all he was hardly

the first person in history to form this particular interest. The topic on his mind had fascinated the

likes of Aristotle and Pliny the Elder. It stumped Freud and captured the

imaginations of the ancient Egyptians and yet most people he encountered outside of work,

they just viewed it as, well, a little strange.

You see, Ernst was interested in Eels,

specifically he wanted to know how, where, and when they reproduced.

This seemed innocuous as a question, but it had troubled scientists for centuries.

That's because from most of history no one had ever caught a young eel or witnessed eels mating,

the slippery creatures seem to lack genitalia altogether, making sexual reproduction impossible.

So then, where did all the eels come from? Did they spring fully formed from the

entrails of the earth as Aristotle suggested or was there something else going

on? Part of the mystery was solved in the

1870s when Ernst was just a teenager. Scientists discovered that Eels undergo

...