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. The Black Hand, the wise guys, the Kosa Nostra, the Italian mafia has gone by many names over the years.

Even though it's become a staple of American pop culture,

the real organization feels as hard to pin down as its ever-changing nicknames.

But one thing we know for sure is that the mafia got its start in Sicily, an island off the southern coast of Italy.

It grew from several small groups of criminals into a kind of shadow government controlling trade and finances

across the island.

But how did the mafia get that power in the first place?

Well, the answer is small, yellow, and surprisingly sour.

For hundreds of years, Palermo, the capital of Sicily, was called the Conkadoro, which means the

shell of gold.

Not because the region was very rich.

In fact, the people of Sicily were historically very poor.

And not because of any vacation-ready golden sands.

The people there were much too concerned with subsistence farming to go to the beach.

No, the shell of gold refers to the trees that surround the region, or more specifically,

the golden yellow fruits growing on those trees.

Palermo, as it turns out, is the perfect place to grow lemons.

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