Welcome to AirNManky's Cabinet of Curiosity's, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm

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 Curiosity's.

Our planet is lush with life of all kinds.

From the smallest single-celled organism to the massive blue whale gliding beneath the

waves, Earth is a rich tapestry.

Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the varieties of cultures across all seven continents,

where the people in one part of the world might live in a technological paradise of constant

digital connection, there might exist an isolated island tribe who have never seen electricity

before.

In the mid-1950s, though, anthropologist Horace Minor had been studying a strange group

of people living in a massive territory below Lake Superior and above the state of Serona

in Mexico.

He wrote about them in a paper titled, Body Ritual Among the Nacarema.

The Nacarema prioritized economic pursuits and their appearance above all else, spending

their days performing bizarre body rituals in front of shrines in their homes.

While every home had at least one shrine, those who had elevated themselves above poorer

tribe members often had two or more, in fact the value of one's living quarters hinged

on how many shrines they could fit inside.

...