Episode 122: Professor Quaalude

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.7 • 38.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John Buettner-Janusch was one of the first Americans to study lemurs. He held prestigious faculty positions at Yale, Duke and NYU, before surprising everyone with a series of increasingly bizarre crimes. Peter Kobel's Book is The Strange Case of the Mad Professor. You can learn more about lemurs at The Duke Lemur Center, which Peter Klopfer and John Buettner-Janusch founded together. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There really wasn't any place for his lemurs at Yale.
0:06.0	In 1959, an anthropologist named John Butner-Yanish started making trips from New Haven to
0:14.4	Madagascar to collect lemurs.
0:17.4	And there are all these very funny stories, local stories, and the New Haven register
0:24.6	about the lemurs getting out of their cages or the labs and climbing up to the top of
0:32.0	some of those beautiful buildings and crying out.
0:36.9	So people were getting very impatient with all of his lemurs.
0:42.1	We're hearing about John Butner-Yanish, everyone called him BJ, and his lemurs from author
0:48.0	Peter Kobel.
0:49.9	According to one story in the New Haven register, a pregnant lemur once escaped and crawled
0:55.6	out the window.
0:57.2	She climbed up a drain pipe to a fourth-story ledge.
1:00.8	BJ tried to lure her down.
1:03.6	He was terrified.
1:05.1	Eventually, the fire department was called, and she was rescued.
1:10.8	Lemurs are only found in the wild in Madagascar.
1:15.4	Many lemur species have become extinct, and in 2012 they were named the most endangered
1:21.9	mammals in the world.
1:25.1	There are more than 100 species of lemur.
1:28.4	They can be as little as one ounce or as big as 20 pounds.
1:33.8	Some have long black and white-straped tails.
1:37.8	Some are kind of bald.
	...

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