A-Peeling

of work. Two of her sisters worked in the same factory, and as she looked around the room, she saw them sitting together at a workbench. Molly smiled and waved, excited to join them. A supervisor walked Molly through the long rows of work benches, where more than one hundred young women were hunched over with brushes in their hands. Their job was to paint the numbers onto the dials of

watchfaces with a special luminous paint called undark. Molly sat down at her seat and gazed into the small bowl of yellowish paint, which glimmered and glowed like a magical potion. Molly had never seen anything like it. Her supervisor showed her the proper technique lip dip paint. She was supposed to shape the brush into a fine point with her lips, dip it in the paint, and then paint the numbers

on the watch dial. Molly frowned and asked if the paint was safe to consume, and the supervisor said yes, it was all natural and completely harmless. During their lunch break, Molly sat with her sisters who were painting each other's nails with the undark paint to make them glow. Across the room, she saw other workers painting designs onto their faces and clothing. They were laughing and smiling and shimmering

like they were lit from within. Molly decided that the hesitation she had felt was unnecess A substance this beautiful and popular couldn't be dangerous. But after working at the factory for a few years, Molly woke up one morning with a terrible toothache. She called in sick to work and went to the dentist. He pulled out one of her teeth and sent her away, but the pain didn't go away. Over the next few months, Molly went back

to the dentist again and again. Her teeth were rotting and falling out one by one, and even more alarmingly, the empty sockets weren't healing after the teeth were removed. They were turning into painful, bleeding ulcers. And then one day, when the dentist lightly pried open Molly's jaw to get a better look at her teeth, her entire jawbone crumbled and broke off into his hand. The dentist was aghast. He had no idea what was wrong with Molly, and there was nothing he could do to help her pain.

Molly spent the next few months bedridden, barely able to eat or speak. Her sisters brought her word that other workers at the factory were falling in as well. Their jaws were rotting, their spines collapsed, their pregnancies ended in miscarriage. No one knew what was happening. The factory owners insisted that it was just a coincidence and that it had nothing to do with the undark paint, but the workers were starting to doubt the paint was really as safe

as they claimed. That fall Molly died of a hemorrhage at the age of twenty five. Over the coming years, dozens of other dial painters became sick, including Molly's sisters, who joined with other workers to file a lawsuits against the factory. As part of the lawsuit, Molly's body was exhumed for an autopsy, and what it revealed was that Molly's bones were radioactive. You see the undark paint glowed because it contained radium, a radioactive substance that's highly toxic

to human beings. The owners of the Dial factory had tried to cover up the harmful effects of radium, even as their healthy young workers dropped dead from it. Over time, the workers Bega came known as the Radium Girls, and although there was nothing that could be done to save them, their deaths led to the creation of several new health and safety regulations for workers, including the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration otherwise known to us today

as OSHA. You see them in every grocery store produce aisle today, the humble banana, the Cavendish banana, to be more precise. But if you were to get into a time machine and go back to the late nineteenth century, that is not the banana that you would find at the market, and the reason why is a curious tale. Back then, the banana that everyone bought was the gross Michelle. It had been introduced to the Americas in the late nineteenth century, and due to its flavor, thick skin, and

resilientllians when being shipped, it quickly became top banana. It fueled the growth of many Central American countries and grew the profits of the massive fruit corporations, including United Fruit Company, which led to the rise of the concept that we know today as the banana republic. It's a phrase that we often hear an unstable country whose economy rests on a single resource, which then gets exploited by powerful foreign agents. In this case, those foreign agents were United Fruit and

its competitors. You see, the gross Michelle needed land in the tropics, and lots of it, and not just for the massive banana plantations where the fruit would be grown, but also for railways and ports so that the perishable Gross Michelle could get to market as quickly as possible. United Fruit was able to secure land grants in exchange for building its own railways, but only those that would

serve its own interests. Locals were frequently left out in the cold, and as more and more of the country's resources were sucked up by the company, there would be, in turn more political unrest, and to protect United Fruits business, the United States government would help topple governments who pushed back, installing corrupt military dictatorships that were much more friendly to

American interests, all to sell a banana. Very quickly, the health of a nation's economy became entirely reliant on the health of the banana plantations, which left local populations vulnerable to markets that had little to do with themselves, and United Fruits focus on growing the grossmychelle above all other varieties would eventually lead to disaster. You see, in order to have consistent quality of seedless fruit, the bananas weren't

grown from seed, but instead cloned. And because every cloned plant was identical, every grossmychell had the exact same vulnerabilities. And so when a soil born fungus exploded onto the scene in the nineteen twenties and thirties, it tore through

the tropics, massacring the grosser mishell as it went. How well, this fungus caused Panama disease, which blocked the plant's ability to absorb and distribute water, and so entire plantations became rotting banana graveyards, and by the nineteen fifties, the grossmychell was unable to continue as the corporate crop that it had been for so long. After some search, the industry found a new champion, the cavendish, which had a natural resistance to the fungus, and so farmers pivoted quickly to

the new variety, which proved incredibly successful. Just like the grossbyshell before, it was a resilient breed and it could make that long journey from the farm to the grocer with minimal damage. But most importantly, it could grow in the same soil that had become toxic for its predecessor, and along the way it's become the banana that we all recognize today, and it accounts for ninety nine percent of the banana trade, which, as you can probably guess,

is a major problem. You see, the industry didn't solve its fungus problem by replacing one monoculture with another. It's only really putting off the inevitable because just like the

grossby shell, the cavendish is a clone. Every single one of the bananas on the market shelves today share the exact same genes and so all it would take is a single disease to wipe out the Cavendish, and that disease has already appeared in the form of tropical race four, which is a particularly nasty form of the same fungus that took down the grossmy shell. It's more aggressive and it can live in the soil far longer, lasting even decades.

And since it's appeared, it has spread like wildfire through Asia and Australia. In twenty nineteen, it finally made it to the Americas, the hearts of the banana export industry, and it's proving nearly impossible to contain naturally. The industry is trying to fight back using genetic engineering. It's attempting to take resistant genes from wild bananas and insert them

into the cavendish genome, offering a glimmer of hope. There's also the possibility of other varieties hitting store shelves, although many aren't as hardy or as flavorful as the Cavendish, And so the new fungus continues its relentless spread, leaving our familiar bananas fate hanging in the balance. Twice now we've been shown the dangers of monoculture. We can meet it in the moment through diversification or science, or face losing one of our everyday staples. And as far as

I'm concerned, only one of those options sounds appealing. I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim and Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the people who make it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in

bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at patreon dot com, slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious.