APM Studios
July 10, 2024
The flower hunters: how tropical orchids fueled a craze
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Uh oh! Joy picked up a free plant from a Buy Nothing group that can speak sign language and perform tricks. The bad news? It’s creating a jungle inside the Forever Ago studio!
Join Joy and co-host Cora as they get to know their new “totally normal” plant friend and explore the history of another truly amazing plant: the orchid! Orchids are some of the most stunning flowering plants on the planet. Their blossoms come in almost every color of the rainbow and tons of different shapes, from little ballerinas to smiling monkey faces. And around 200 years ago, orchids caused a wild craze in England – full of danger, tough guys, and lots and lots of money. All that, plus a new First Things First that’s truly unbeLEAFable!
Audio Transcript
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JOY DOLO: Who's the cutest little baby in the whole world? You are. Yes, you are. Oh, tickle, tickle, tickle.
CORA: Hey, Joy. Do I even want to know why you're carrying a potted plant in a baby carrier strapped to your chest?
JOY DOLO: Oh, this? It's not just a potted plant, Cora. It's the world's cutest plant, aren't you.? Look at it's perfectly-shaped leaves, it's beautifully curving vines. It's adorable little stem.
CORA: Where did it come from?
JOY DOLO: I got it from this buy nothing group online. Someone posted it on there with the message, free, free, free. Please take this plant immediately. Get it out of my house. Help me. [SCREAMS]
CORA: OK. That seems really weird.
JOY DOLO: I know. Who would ever give a plant like this away for free?
CORA: Is it just me or is it getting bigger?
JOY DOLO: Oh, It's definitely getting bigger. When I got it this morning, it was the size of a hamster. And now it's bigger than a toaster. Oh, and check this out. It can do tricks. Let me set it down. OK, roll over. [RUSTLING] Sit. [RUSTLING] Give me leaf. [RUSTLING]
CORA: Joy, did that person say why they wanted to get rid of this plant?
JOY DOLO: They just said, it ruined my life. How could a plant this adorable and perfect and smart ruin someone's life? Oh, and did I mention it knows sign language?
CORA: Are you serious. This is getting really out of--
JOY DOLO: Shh! It's signing something. It says, I'm a very normal plant. Don't worry. Woof! Glad we cleared that up.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome to Forever Ago from APM studios. I'm Joy Dolo.
CORA: And I'm Cora.
JOY DOLO: And today we're talking about houseplants, specifically one kind of plant called the orchid.
CORA: And how that planned start a wild craze about 200 years ago in England.
JOY DOLO: It was the wildest of crazes complete with danger, rough and tumble characters, and lots and lots of money. Now, before [SNEEZES] my allergies are acting up today. I could really use a tissue. [RUSTLING] Oh, hey, thanks, plant friend. Ah, much better.
CORA: Am I the only one who thinks something strange is going on here?
JOY DOLO: You mean a plant that knows sign language can perform at least 32 different tricks and is attuned to my unique allergy-related needs. Cora, it's fate. We're talking about plants today. And this super intelligent yet totally normal plant just happens to show up. What are the chances?
CORA: Right, what are the chances?
JOY DOLO: So speaking of house plants, have you or your family ever grown them before?
CORA: We have a lot of plants out in our backyard, but I think the main ones that we have around the house are like little succulents.
JOY DOLO: Aww!
CORA: Because most of our family we just forget to water them sometimes.
[LAUGHS]
JOY DOLO: Yeah, so you've got to have the desert plants to just live on their own, do their own thing for a little bit.
CORA: Yeah.
JOY DOLO: What do they look like?
CORA: Some of them are spiky. And then there's these ones that have the little curved leaves that I really like.
JOY DOLO: What do you think is so hard about taking care of house plants?
CORA: I think some of them they have to get just the right amount of sunlight and the right amount of water and sometimes even the humidity in the air. And sometimes you just can't keep them alive.
JOY DOLO: Do you have a plant that you think you'd like to get in the future, like for yourself?
CORA: So my mom has one right now that she's trying to revive. She's trying to figure out how to take it back to life. And I think it's actually an orchid.
JOY DOLO: No way.
CORA: so I would love to take care of that in my near future.
JOY DOLO: Oh, I love that. Yeah, well, that's perfect because that's what we're talking about today. People have been growing houseplants for a very long time. In fact, ancient Chinese people started growing miniature trees in pots more than 2000 years ago.
CORA: But in Europe, people didn't start keeping houseplants until much, much later.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: It was the early 1800s. Beethoven was busy composing new symphonies, steam powered trains were brand new inventions, and a British naturalist named William Swainson was exploring the jungles of Brazil.
CORA: Naturalists are people who study living things out in the wild like plants and animals.
JOY DOLO: And in the 1800s, European naturalists traveled across the globe, drawing and observing nature.
CORA: Of course, there were already people living in these areas who knew all about the plants and animals there.
JOY DOLO: But when European naturalists showed up, they thought they discovered something new. Sometimes they collected specimens from the wild and brought them home to study.
CORA: That's exactly what William Swainson did. In 1818, he was exploring the jungles of Brazil and collecting tropical plants.
MAN: I'll take one of those, and one of these, and definitely this one.
JOY DOLO: When it came time to send these specimens back to England on a ship, Swainson boxed them up using another kind of plant as packing material. The plants didn't look like much, just a bunch of root-like stems. But when he got home, something surprising happened.
MAN: All righty, time to crack open these old shipping crates and-- hey, hold up. What are all these unbelievably gorgeous purple flowers doing in here?
CORA: Turns out those other plants Swainson used as packing material were something special. They were orchids that had bloomed on the long journey home.
JOY DOLO: Orchids are some of the most stunning flowering plants on the planet. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some have giant petals up to 3 feet long, and others have flowers smaller than the head of a pin. And the flowers can be all kinds of super interesting shapes.
CORA: Some look like ballerinas or flying ducks or even smiling monkey faces.
JOY DOLO: There are orchids in almost every color of the rainbow, from electric pink to canary yellow. And some have incredible patterns like orange and black stripes or polka dots. It's no wonder people fell in love with them.
CORA: These days, you can buy tropical orchids in lots of places, even the grocery store.
JOY DOLO: But back then, hardly anyone in England had ever seen flowers like these. So once people heard about these rare flowers that Swainson had collected, they wanted one of their own to decorate their homes.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
WOMAN: Did you hear, the hottest new trend is orchids.
WOMAN: Those tropical plants? [LAUGHS] You must be joking. I thought the hottest new trend was pantaloons and those blouses with big, frilly necks.
WOMAN: Nope. Pantaloons are out. The only way to look fantastically wealthy and exceptionally fancy is to get your hands on some of these tropical orchids.
CORA: Having an orchid as a houseplant became a status symbol, basically, a way for people to show off how much money they had like how people buy expensive cars or jewelry today.
JOY DOLO: One person paid $5,500 for one orchid. That's the same as-- hey, does anyone have a pen? [RUSTLING] Oh, thanks, plant friend. Let's see. Carry the 2. Hold the 10. Subtracting-- oh, is this algebra? Wait. Whoa, that's the same as $175,000 today.
CORA: Another person bought an orchid and divided it up to make lots of little orchid plants, selling them for a total of $10,000, which would be more than $300,000 now.
JOY DOLO: You might be wondering why people were so into these exotic houseplants. Sure, they were beautiful and unusual, but some historians think there was more to it than that. You see, around the time that orchids arrived in England, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing.
WOMAN: Industrial revolution.
CORA: The Industrial Revolution-- that was the period in history when people started making all different kinds of stuff in factories instead of by hand.
JOY DOLO: Yeah, and those factories were often powered by burning coal, which released a lot of soot and smog. Some cities in England were so polluted that it often looked like a gloomy, gray haze was hanging in the air.
CORA: Historians think that bringing orchids inside houses helped people feel more connected to nature, especially if they lived in one of those dirty, polluted cities.
JOY DOLO: The other reason why people wanted tropical orchids was because they were rare. Back then, if you wanted to collect an orchid, you had to travel thousands of miles, usually to a tropical place like South America. Airplanes hadn't been invented yet, so the only way to get there was by ship.
[RAIN PATTERING]
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
CORA: The journey could take months. And once you got there, you had to find your way through thick jungles with swarms of insects, poisonous plants, and dangerous wildlife.
[ROARING]
JOY DOLO: And if you found an orchid, you still had to carry it back through the jungle and figure out how to keep it alive on the journey all the way back to England. Being packed up in the cargo hold of a ship wasn't exactly the best environment for growing these fragile plants. And unfortunately, only a tiny fraction of the orchids survived the trip back to England.
CORA: So there weren't many orchids to go around back then. That helped fuel the orchid collecting craze among rich people in England.
JOY DOLO: The collecting craze was called Orchid delirium, orchid meaning the plant and delirium which means wild excitement or fever.
CORA: It went beyond just collecting these plants. People embroidered orchids on dresses and painted them on wallpaper.
JOY DOLO: Orchid shows offered huge prizes for the best specimens. But as more and more people wanted to get their hands on these plants, things were about to get ugly.
CORA: Joy, I hate to interrupt, but that totally normal houseplant that you got for free is taking over the studio. It's like a jungle in here.
JOY DOLO: What? No way. The studio's always looked like this.
CORA: It's always had giant, lush plants.
JOY DOLO: Yes.
CORA: And thick vines hanging from the ceiling.
JOY DOLO: Well--
CORA: And monkeys
JOY DOLO: The monkeys are new. And the Jaguar. Wait, Cora, have we been Jumanji'd? I knew it. We got sucked into a board game. No, not again.
CORA: Joy. Joy, It's OK. We haven't been Jumanjii'd. It's that plant. My sweet little innocent baby.
[RUSTLING]
JOY DOLO: Wait, hang on. The plant is signing something.
[RUSTLING]
It says, wasn't me. Well, if the plant says it didn't grow into a jungle in the studio, I think we should believe it.
CORA: Joey, there's a vine wrapping around your ankle.
[SCREAMS]
JOY DOLO: How'd that get there? How about we take a break and play
KIDS: First things first.
JOY DOLO: It's the game where we try to guess the order things came in history. Today, we've got three strange but very real American fads. phone booth stuffing-- that's when as many people as possible would cram into a single phone booth. The ice bucket challenge-- when people dumped buckets of ice water on their heads to boost awareness of a rare disease.
And flagpole sitting, which is just what it sounds like when someone would climb to the top of a flagpole and sit there. OK, Cora, which do you think came first, which came second, and which came most recently in history?
CORA: Well, I definitely think the phone booth stuffing was the most recent, because I know phone booths were popular around the 1900s.
JOY DOLO: OK.
CORA: And flagpole sitting was probably in the middle, I think. And the ice bucket challenge as the first one.
JOY DOLO: And so the ice bucket challenge is the first one. Why would you think that one was first?
CORA: Well, I think possibly buckets and ice were invented before flagpoles. So I'm just going off of the baseline of when things were created.
JOY DOLO: [LAUGHS] Yeah, that's pretty cool. And flagpole sitting, that makes sense to be right In the middle because we've had flags for like ever. And they had to be mounted on something on the poles. Would you do any of these, or have you done any of these?
CORA: I mean, probably once or twice on my birthday my friends have tried to pour ice on my head, but not to boost awareness of a rare disease.
JOY DOLO: [LAUGHS] It was just trying to show you a little bit of love. Dump a bucket on your friend today. [LAUGHS] Well, we'll hear the answers after the credits, so stick around.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, Forever Ago pals, we want to hear from you. What topic would you like to explore on the show? What invention or time period would you like to learn more about? Cora, what's something you're curious about?
CORA: Well, we were talking about the Industrial Revolution earlier, and I think the individual inventions from during the Industrial Revolution would be cool to hear about like assembly lines. I would love to hear how that got invented and some of the specific machines that they started using during the Industrial Revolution.
JOY DOLO: Yeah. Because so much was invented during that time frame, it's like, let's look at one specific-- that's a great idea. Listeners, send us your episode ideas at foreverago.org/contact. We can't wait to hear them. Branes on Universe is a family of podcasts for kids and their adults. Since you're a fan of Forever Ago, we know you'll love the other shows in our universe. Come on, let's explore.
AUTOMATED VOICE: Entering Brains On! Universe to find my favorite podcasts. Brains On! Smash boom Best. Forever Ago. Picking up signal.
MAN: Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. Brains On!
MAN: Brains On!, a science podcast for kids and families.
JOY DOLO: One wild fact about Antarctica is that if you dig about 100 feet underground, you can find traces of a tropical rainforest.
WOMAN: Wait, what?
ANNOUNCER: Yeah.
WOMAN: Zorp, where did the signal go? Must find Brains On! now.
ANNOUNCER: Listen to Brains On! Wherever you get your podcasts.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: You're listening to Forever Ago. I'm Joy.
CORA: And I'm Cora. Unfortunately, Joy's free plant has grown into a literal jungle.
JOY DOLO: But fortunately, now the studio has giant anaconda snakes and baboons. And I finally have a chance to wear these awesome khaki cargo pants and matching vest.
CORA: The cargo pants are rad. Wish I had a pair.
[RUSTLING]
Oh, thanks for the pants strangely intelligent plant. Hey, how'd you know my exact size?
[RUSTLING]
JOY DOLO: It says every plant can accurately gauge human pant sizes. Huh, who knew? Anyway, today we're talking all about an orchid collecting craze that swept across England in the mid 1800s. We just heard how a naturalist accidentally brought back tropical orchids to England.
CORA: And rich people started paying huge sums of money for them. They became the must-have houseplant.
JOY DOLO: Orchids were really hard to collect from the wild, but because they were so much money to be made, rich collectors started sending teams of orchid hunters out into the jungle to find these plants. And that's when things started to get really intense.
CORA: One of the most successful collectors was a guy named Friedrich Sander, also known as the orchid king.
JOY DOLO: Friedrich hired dozens of orchid hunters and sent them all over the world to find rare orchids. These hunters weren't like the naturalists we talked about earlier. Naturalists collected a few plants here and there to study, but orchid hunters weren't interested in science.
CORA: They wanted to collect as many rare orchids as possible because more orchids meant more money.
JOY DOLO: But it was dangerous work. Some orchid hunters got hurt or sick in the jungle. Others disappeared and were never seen again.
CORA: Orchid hunters were also super competitive with each other.
MAN: Excuse me, my good sir, but I believe that orchid is mine. In fact, I'm willing to stake my life on it.
MAN: I believe it is you who are mistaken, my good sir. I didn't spend two months sailing here, hiking deep into the jungle, and walking right into a nest of very bitey ants to just give you this orchid. No. So I would kindly suggest that you buzz off.
MAN: I said give it to me.
MAN: It's mine.
MAN: Stop it. Stop it.
MAN: Finders keepers, losers weepers. Be gone.
JOY DOLO: One orchid hunter and his rival almost had a shootout while sailing to Venezuela to collect orchids. The hunters boss a.k.a. the orchid king, Friedrich Sander, told him to follow his rival and pee on his orchids to destroy them.
[RUSTLING]
I know, plant friend, it was getting really out of hand.
CORA: Another orchid hunter, with a hook for a hand, scaled a volcano in Mexico while it was erupting. He survived and ended up collecting 100,000 plants.
JOY DOLO: But the ones who got really rich from the orchids were the wealthy people back in Europe who hired these hunters like Friedrich, the orchid King. He sold millions of orchids to the rich and powerful, including royalty and the Pope. And eventually, he became the royal orchid grower to Queen Victoria.
CORA: Which sounds really cool, but all this orchid collecting was terrible for the environment. When orchid hunters found a rare flower, they'd take every plant they could find.
JOY DOLO: Hunters also cut down thousands of trees to reach rare orchids. And sometimes they even set the forest on fire to keep their rivals from finding orchids. Not cool.
CORA: The good news is that today, the orchids you see at the grocery store or garden center are grown on big farms, not collected from the wild.
JOY DOLO: Right. We understand better now that taking wild plants and animals from nature isn't a good idea. It's important to protect them and the places they're from so future generations can enjoy them too.
[RUSTLING]
CORA: Joy, I think the plant is trying to tell us something.
[RUSTLING]
JOY DOLO: It says, Joy, Thank you for taking a chance on a totally normal plant from a buy nothing group. It's been a joy and honor being your plant, but it's time for me to move on. Wait, what? You can't leave.
CORA: Yeah, you're a plant. Where are you going?
[RUSTLING]
JOY DOLO: It says I've been accepted to a university to get my PhD. Wow. Plant, that's amazing. Oh, wait. [RUSTLING] My PhD, plant haberdashery degree. I hope to one day make human pants that fit better. You humans deserve better pants. Goodbye, Cora and Joy Dolo. No plant. Don't go. Best totally normal plant I've ever had.
CORA: I know. I actually think I'm going to miss that plant. I'm sure it'll learn to make beautiful human pants someday.
JOY DOLO: Well, what do you want to do now? Oh, want to play Jumanji? I'm sure it'll be fine. It's not like we could turn the studio into a jungle twice or something. [CHUCKLES] [CLATTERING] Not again. No,
CORA: Not again.
JOY DOLO: Jumanji, don't take us. About 200 years ago, lots of people in England became obsessed with collecting tropical orchids and keeping them in their homes.
CORA: Rich people paid huge sums of money for them, and some collectors made a lot of money selling orchids.
JOY DOLO: But the orchid hunters who took these plants from the wild destroyed a lot of jungle habitat.
CORA: Now we have better ways of growing orchids so we don't have to take them from the wild.
JOY DOLO: This episode was written by--
SHAHLA FARZAN: Shahla Farzan.
JOY DOLO: It was produced by--
NICO GONZALEZ WISLER: Nico Gonzalez Wisler.
JOY DOLO: And--
RUBY GUTHRIE: Ruby Guthrie.
JOY DOLO: It was edited by--
SANDEN TOTTEN: Sanden Totten.
JOY DOLO: Fact checking by--
ANNA GOLDFIELD: Anna Goldfield.
JOY DOLO: Engineering help from Alex Simpson and Dan Schafer with sound design by--
RACHEL BREES: Rachel Brees.
JOY DOLO: Original theme music by--
MARC SANCHEZ: Marc Sanchez.
JOY DOLO: We had additional production help from the rest of the Brains On! Universe team.
MOLLY BLOOM: Molly bloom,
ROSSIE DUPONT: Rosie DuPont.
LAUREN HUMBERT: Lauren Humbert.
JOSHUA RAY: Joshua Ray.
MARK SANCHEZ: Mark Sanchez.
CHARLOTTE TRAVER: Charlotte Traver.
ANNA WEGGEL: Anna Weggel.
JOY DOLO: And--
ARON WOLDESLASSIE: Aron Woldeslassie.
JOY DOLO: Beth Perlman is our executive producer. And the executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavati and Joanne Griffith. Special Thanks to Matt Dacier and Megan and Chris Stevenson.
CORA: And if you want access to ad-free episodes and special bonus content, subscribe to our Smarty Pass.
JOY DOLO: OK, Cora. Ready to hear the answers for First Things First?
CORA: Yes.
JOY DOLO: Oh, yeah. So just to recap, you said first up was the ice bucket challenge. Second was the flagpole sitting, and third was phone booth stuffing.
CORA: Yep.
JOY DOLO: OK, here we go. [VOCALIZING]
CORA: The suspense.
JOY DOLO: OK, so here are the answers. So first up was actually flagpole sitting.
CORA: Oh, no.
JOY DOLO: Yeah, that was the earliest. I did not see that coming. So it started in Hollywood in 1924 when a stuntman was hired to sit on top of a flagpole to drum up excitement for a new movie. Oh, that tracks. [LAUGHS] That sounds like a Hollywood thing to do.
CORA: That's later than I thought it would be.
JOY DOLO: Yeah.
CORA: I thought it would be like Hamilton times like the 1700s.
[LAUGHS]
JOY DOLO: Alexander flagpole sitting.
[LAUGHS]
So people heard about the publicity stunt, and the fad started spreading across the country. One man in Iowa sat on top of a flagpole for 51 days straight, and since then, people have gone much longer, including one guy who sat on a flagpole for 248 days.
CORA: I feel like that would just hurt your butt.
[LAUGHTER]
JOY DOLO: I know. I can't even sit on my bike for that long without having to get off. Well, that sounds pretty cool. So 1924 was the first one. And then second up was phone booth stuffing. And so that was the late 1950s. In 1959, a group of 25 college students in South Africa crammed into a single phone booth. 25 students in a phone booth, oh, my gosh.
CORA: Were they larger back then? Because I couldn't.
JOY DOLO: Maybe they were--
CORA: I can't fit with three other people in a phone booth.
JOY DOLO: Yeah, it must have been-- I mean, maybe 25 toddlers, but 25 college students that's got to be a pretty big phone booth.
CORA: Maybe it was really tall, and they got on each other's shoulders to get more vertical space.
JOY DOLO: Oh, that's smart. I think that's what you'd have to do because you've got to use like every inch of it, right. So you'd have to get some people on top or maybe like laying on top. Students across the US started trying to break the record, including a group of 30 people who fit into a phone booth in Missouri but with arms and legs sticking out. I feel like that's cheating.
CORA: I don't know. I feel like it would still count. I say as long as your brain is in there, then you are in there. As long as your brain and mouth.
JOY DOLO: Yeah, that's a good rule of thumb, your brain, your mouth, and your heart.
CORA: Yes.
JOY DOLO: Yes. So last but certainly not least was the ice bucket challenge, and that was in 2014. That's like a little over 10 years ago. So in 2014, three men with a muscle disease called ALS launched a challenge to help raise money for research into the disease. The challenge was to film yourself having bucket of ice water dumped on your head. And more than 17 million people took part, including celebrities like Taylor Swift and Oprah. And they ended up raising more than $200 million for ALS research. Oh, my goodness.
CORA: I didn't know it was filming because if it was included that they were filming themselves, then I definitely wouldn't have thought it was first.
JOY DOLO: Yeah. And that would bring us into a new era when you have phones and recordings and things like that. So that makes sense. What do you think was the most surprising fact out of there?
CORA: Honestly, probably the ice bucket one because I thought the disease they would have been raising awareness for was like, I don't know, the plague or something.
[LAUGHS]
JOY DOLO: Help stop the plague.
CORA: Yeah, like stand in the middle of town square. Everyone watch. I'm going to pour this bucket of ice on my head.
[LAUGHS]
JOY DOLO: Join us next week for new episode, all about the history of banjos.
CORA: Thanks for listening.
[THEME MUSIC]
CORA: Hey, Joy. Do I even want to know why you're carrying a potted plant in a baby carrier strapped to your chest?
JOY DOLO: Oh, this? It's not just a potted plant, Cora. It's the world's cutest plant, aren't you.? Look at it's perfectly-shaped leaves, it's beautifully curving vines. It's adorable little stem.
CORA: Where did it come from?
JOY DOLO: I got it from this buy nothing group online. Someone posted it on there with the message, free, free, free. Please take this plant immediately. Get it out of my house. Help me. [SCREAMS]
CORA: OK. That seems really weird.
JOY DOLO: I know. Who would ever give a plant like this away for free?
CORA: Is it just me or is it getting bigger?
JOY DOLO: Oh, It's definitely getting bigger. When I got it this morning, it was the size of a hamster. And now it's bigger than a toaster. Oh, and check this out. It can do tricks. Let me set it down. OK, roll over. [RUSTLING] Sit. [RUSTLING] Give me leaf. [RUSTLING]
CORA: Joy, did that person say why they wanted to get rid of this plant?
JOY DOLO: They just said, it ruined my life. How could a plant this adorable and perfect and smart ruin someone's life? Oh, and did I mention it knows sign language?
CORA: Are you serious. This is getting really out of--
JOY DOLO: Shh! It's signing something. It says, I'm a very normal plant. Don't worry. Woof! Glad we cleared that up.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome to Forever Ago from APM studios. I'm Joy Dolo.
CORA: And I'm Cora.
JOY DOLO: And today we're talking about houseplants, specifically one kind of plant called the orchid.
CORA: And how that planned start a wild craze about 200 years ago in England.
JOY DOLO: It was the wildest of crazes complete with danger, rough and tumble characters, and lots and lots of money. Now, before [SNEEZES] my allergies are acting up today. I could really use a tissue. [RUSTLING] Oh, hey, thanks, plant friend. Ah, much better.
CORA: Am I the only one who thinks something strange is going on here?
JOY DOLO: You mean a plant that knows sign language can perform at least 32 different tricks and is attuned to my unique allergy-related needs. Cora, it's fate. We're talking about plants today. And this super intelligent yet totally normal plant just happens to show up. What are the chances?
CORA: Right, what are the chances?
JOY DOLO: So speaking of house plants, have you or your family ever grown them before?
CORA: We have a lot of plants out in our backyard, but I think the main ones that we have around the house are like little succulents.
JOY DOLO: Aww!
CORA: Because most of our family we just forget to water them sometimes.
[LAUGHS]
JOY DOLO: Yeah, so you've got to have the desert plants to just live on their own, do their own thing for a little bit.
CORA: Yeah.
JOY DOLO: What do they look like?
CORA: Some of them are spiky. And then there's these ones that have the little curved leaves that I really like.
JOY DOLO: What do you think is so hard about taking care of house plants?
CORA: I think some of them they have to get just the right amount of sunlight and the right amount of water and sometimes even the humidity in the air. And sometimes you just can't keep them alive.
JOY DOLO: Do you have a plant that you think you'd like to get in the future, like for yourself?
CORA: So my mom has one right now that she's trying to revive. She's trying to figure out how to take it back to life. And I think it's actually an orchid.
JOY DOLO: No way.
CORA: so I would love to take care of that in my near future.
JOY DOLO: Oh, I love that. Yeah, well, that's perfect because that's what we're talking about today. People have been growing houseplants for a very long time. In fact, ancient Chinese people started growing miniature trees in pots more than 2000 years ago.
CORA: But in Europe, people didn't start keeping houseplants until much, much later.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: It was the early 1800s. Beethoven was busy composing new symphonies, steam powered trains were brand new inventions, and a British naturalist named William Swainson was exploring the jungles of Brazil.
CORA: Naturalists are people who study living things out in the wild like plants and animals.
JOY DOLO: And in the 1800s, European naturalists traveled across the globe, drawing and observing nature.
CORA: Of course, there were already people living in these areas who knew all about the plants and animals there.
JOY DOLO: But when European naturalists showed up, they thought they discovered something new. Sometimes they collected specimens from the wild and brought them home to study.
CORA: That's exactly what William Swainson did. In 1818, he was exploring the jungles of Brazil and collecting tropical plants.
MAN: I'll take one of those, and one of these, and definitely this one.
JOY DOLO: When it came time to send these specimens back to England on a ship, Swainson boxed them up using another kind of plant as packing material. The plants didn't look like much, just a bunch of root-like stems. But when he got home, something surprising happened.
MAN: All righty, time to crack open these old shipping crates and-- hey, hold up. What are all these unbelievably gorgeous purple flowers doing in here?
CORA: Turns out those other plants Swainson used as packing material were something special. They were orchids that had bloomed on the long journey home.
JOY DOLO: Orchids are some of the most stunning flowering plants on the planet. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some have giant petals up to 3 feet long, and others have flowers smaller than the head of a pin. And the flowers can be all kinds of super interesting shapes.
CORA: Some look like ballerinas or flying ducks or even smiling monkey faces.
JOY DOLO: There are orchids in almost every color of the rainbow, from electric pink to canary yellow. And some have incredible patterns like orange and black stripes or polka dots. It's no wonder people fell in love with them.
CORA: These days, you can buy tropical orchids in lots of places, even the grocery store.
JOY DOLO: But back then, hardly anyone in England had ever seen flowers like these. So once people heard about these rare flowers that Swainson had collected, they wanted one of their own to decorate their homes.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
WOMAN: Did you hear, the hottest new trend is orchids.
WOMAN: Those tropical plants? [LAUGHS] You must be joking. I thought the hottest new trend was pantaloons and those blouses with big, frilly necks.
WOMAN: Nope. Pantaloons are out. The only way to look fantastically wealthy and exceptionally fancy is to get your hands on some of these tropical orchids.
CORA: Having an orchid as a houseplant became a status symbol, basically, a way for people to show off how much money they had like how people buy expensive cars or jewelry today.
JOY DOLO: One person paid $5,500 for one orchid. That's the same as-- hey, does anyone have a pen? [RUSTLING] Oh, thanks, plant friend. Let's see. Carry the 2. Hold the 10. Subtracting-- oh, is this algebra? Wait. Whoa, that's the same as $175,000 today.
CORA: Another person bought an orchid and divided it up to make lots of little orchid plants, selling them for a total of $10,000, which would be more than $300,000 now.
JOY DOLO: You might be wondering why people were so into these exotic houseplants. Sure, they were beautiful and unusual, but some historians think there was more to it than that. You see, around the time that orchids arrived in England, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing.
WOMAN: Industrial revolution.
CORA: The Industrial Revolution-- that was the period in history when people started making all different kinds of stuff in factories instead of by hand.
JOY DOLO: Yeah, and those factories were often powered by burning coal, which released a lot of soot and smog. Some cities in England were so polluted that it often looked like a gloomy, gray haze was hanging in the air.
CORA: Historians think that bringing orchids inside houses helped people feel more connected to nature, especially if they lived in one of those dirty, polluted cities.
JOY DOLO: The other reason why people wanted tropical orchids was because they were rare. Back then, if you wanted to collect an orchid, you had to travel thousands of miles, usually to a tropical place like South America. Airplanes hadn't been invented yet, so the only way to get there was by ship.
[RAIN PATTERING]
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
CORA: The journey could take months. And once you got there, you had to find your way through thick jungles with swarms of insects, poisonous plants, and dangerous wildlife.
[ROARING]
JOY DOLO: And if you found an orchid, you still had to carry it back through the jungle and figure out how to keep it alive on the journey all the way back to England. Being packed up in the cargo hold of a ship wasn't exactly the best environment for growing these fragile plants. And unfortunately, only a tiny fraction of the orchids survived the trip back to England.
CORA: So there weren't many orchids to go around back then. That helped fuel the orchid collecting craze among rich people in England.
JOY DOLO: The collecting craze was called Orchid delirium, orchid meaning the plant and delirium which means wild excitement or fever.
CORA: It went beyond just collecting these plants. People embroidered orchids on dresses and painted them on wallpaper.
JOY DOLO: Orchid shows offered huge prizes for the best specimens. But as more and more people wanted to get their hands on these plants, things were about to get ugly.
CORA: Joy, I hate to interrupt, but that totally normal houseplant that you got for free is taking over the studio. It's like a jungle in here.
JOY DOLO: What? No way. The studio's always looked like this.
CORA: It's always had giant, lush plants.
JOY DOLO: Yes.
CORA: And thick vines hanging from the ceiling.
JOY DOLO: Well--
CORA: And monkeys
JOY DOLO: The monkeys are new. And the Jaguar. Wait, Cora, have we been Jumanji'd? I knew it. We got sucked into a board game. No, not again.
CORA: Joy. Joy, It's OK. We haven't been Jumanjii'd. It's that plant. My sweet little innocent baby.
[RUSTLING]
JOY DOLO: Wait, hang on. The plant is signing something.
[RUSTLING]
It says, wasn't me. Well, if the plant says it didn't grow into a jungle in the studio, I think we should believe it.
CORA: Joey, there's a vine wrapping around your ankle.
[SCREAMS]
JOY DOLO: How'd that get there? How about we take a break and play
KIDS: First things first.
JOY DOLO: It's the game where we try to guess the order things came in history. Today, we've got three strange but very real American fads. phone booth stuffing-- that's when as many people as possible would cram into a single phone booth. The ice bucket challenge-- when people dumped buckets of ice water on their heads to boost awareness of a rare disease.
And flagpole sitting, which is just what it sounds like when someone would climb to the top of a flagpole and sit there. OK, Cora, which do you think came first, which came second, and which came most recently in history?
CORA: Well, I definitely think the phone booth stuffing was the most recent, because I know phone booths were popular around the 1900s.
JOY DOLO: OK.
CORA: And flagpole sitting was probably in the middle, I think. And the ice bucket challenge as the first one.
JOY DOLO: And so the ice bucket challenge is the first one. Why would you think that one was first?
CORA: Well, I think possibly buckets and ice were invented before flagpoles. So I'm just going off of the baseline of when things were created.
JOY DOLO: [LAUGHS] Yeah, that's pretty cool. And flagpole sitting, that makes sense to be right In the middle because we've had flags for like ever. And they had to be mounted on something on the poles. Would you do any of these, or have you done any of these?
CORA: I mean, probably once or twice on my birthday my friends have tried to pour ice on my head, but not to boost awareness of a rare disease.
JOY DOLO: [LAUGHS] It was just trying to show you a little bit of love. Dump a bucket on your friend today. [LAUGHS] Well, we'll hear the answers after the credits, so stick around.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, Forever Ago pals, we want to hear from you. What topic would you like to explore on the show? What invention or time period would you like to learn more about? Cora, what's something you're curious about?
CORA: Well, we were talking about the Industrial Revolution earlier, and I think the individual inventions from during the Industrial Revolution would be cool to hear about like assembly lines. I would love to hear how that got invented and some of the specific machines that they started using during the Industrial Revolution.
JOY DOLO: Yeah. Because so much was invented during that time frame, it's like, let's look at one specific-- that's a great idea. Listeners, send us your episode ideas at foreverago.org/contact. We can't wait to hear them. Branes on Universe is a family of podcasts for kids and their adults. Since you're a fan of Forever Ago, we know you'll love the other shows in our universe. Come on, let's explore.
AUTOMATED VOICE: Entering Brains On! Universe to find my favorite podcasts. Brains On! Smash boom Best. Forever Ago. Picking up signal.
MAN: Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. Brains On!
MAN: Brains On!, a science podcast for kids and families.
JOY DOLO: One wild fact about Antarctica is that if you dig about 100 feet underground, you can find traces of a tropical rainforest.
WOMAN: Wait, what?
ANNOUNCER: Yeah.
WOMAN: Zorp, where did the signal go? Must find Brains On! now.
ANNOUNCER: Listen to Brains On! Wherever you get your podcasts.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: You're listening to Forever Ago. I'm Joy.
CORA: And I'm Cora. Unfortunately, Joy's free plant has grown into a literal jungle.
JOY DOLO: But fortunately, now the studio has giant anaconda snakes and baboons. And I finally have a chance to wear these awesome khaki cargo pants and matching vest.
CORA: The cargo pants are rad. Wish I had a pair.
[RUSTLING]
Oh, thanks for the pants strangely intelligent plant. Hey, how'd you know my exact size?
[RUSTLING]
JOY DOLO: It says every plant can accurately gauge human pant sizes. Huh, who knew? Anyway, today we're talking all about an orchid collecting craze that swept across England in the mid 1800s. We just heard how a naturalist accidentally brought back tropical orchids to England.
CORA: And rich people started paying huge sums of money for them. They became the must-have houseplant.
JOY DOLO: Orchids were really hard to collect from the wild, but because they were so much money to be made, rich collectors started sending teams of orchid hunters out into the jungle to find these plants. And that's when things started to get really intense.
CORA: One of the most successful collectors was a guy named Friedrich Sander, also known as the orchid king.
JOY DOLO: Friedrich hired dozens of orchid hunters and sent them all over the world to find rare orchids. These hunters weren't like the naturalists we talked about earlier. Naturalists collected a few plants here and there to study, but orchid hunters weren't interested in science.
CORA: They wanted to collect as many rare orchids as possible because more orchids meant more money.
JOY DOLO: But it was dangerous work. Some orchid hunters got hurt or sick in the jungle. Others disappeared and were never seen again.
CORA: Orchid hunters were also super competitive with each other.
MAN: Excuse me, my good sir, but I believe that orchid is mine. In fact, I'm willing to stake my life on it.
MAN: I believe it is you who are mistaken, my good sir. I didn't spend two months sailing here, hiking deep into the jungle, and walking right into a nest of very bitey ants to just give you this orchid. No. So I would kindly suggest that you buzz off.
MAN: I said give it to me.
MAN: It's mine.
MAN: Stop it. Stop it.
MAN: Finders keepers, losers weepers. Be gone.
JOY DOLO: One orchid hunter and his rival almost had a shootout while sailing to Venezuela to collect orchids. The hunters boss a.k.a. the orchid king, Friedrich Sander, told him to follow his rival and pee on his orchids to destroy them.
[RUSTLING]
I know, plant friend, it was getting really out of hand.
CORA: Another orchid hunter, with a hook for a hand, scaled a volcano in Mexico while it was erupting. He survived and ended up collecting 100,000 plants.
JOY DOLO: But the ones who got really rich from the orchids were the wealthy people back in Europe who hired these hunters like Friedrich, the orchid King. He sold millions of orchids to the rich and powerful, including royalty and the Pope. And eventually, he became the royal orchid grower to Queen Victoria.
CORA: Which sounds really cool, but all this orchid collecting was terrible for the environment. When orchid hunters found a rare flower, they'd take every plant they could find.
JOY DOLO: Hunters also cut down thousands of trees to reach rare orchids. And sometimes they even set the forest on fire to keep their rivals from finding orchids. Not cool.
CORA: The good news is that today, the orchids you see at the grocery store or garden center are grown on big farms, not collected from the wild.
JOY DOLO: Right. We understand better now that taking wild plants and animals from nature isn't a good idea. It's important to protect them and the places they're from so future generations can enjoy them too.
[RUSTLING]
CORA: Joy, I think the plant is trying to tell us something.
[RUSTLING]
JOY DOLO: It says, Joy, Thank you for taking a chance on a totally normal plant from a buy nothing group. It's been a joy and honor being your plant, but it's time for me to move on. Wait, what? You can't leave.
CORA: Yeah, you're a plant. Where are you going?
[RUSTLING]
JOY DOLO: It says I've been accepted to a university to get my PhD. Wow. Plant, that's amazing. Oh, wait. [RUSTLING] My PhD, plant haberdashery degree. I hope to one day make human pants that fit better. You humans deserve better pants. Goodbye, Cora and Joy Dolo. No plant. Don't go. Best totally normal plant I've ever had.
CORA: I know. I actually think I'm going to miss that plant. I'm sure it'll learn to make beautiful human pants someday.
JOY DOLO: Well, what do you want to do now? Oh, want to play Jumanji? I'm sure it'll be fine. It's not like we could turn the studio into a jungle twice or something. [CHUCKLES] [CLATTERING] Not again. No,
CORA: Not again.
JOY DOLO: Jumanji, don't take us. About 200 years ago, lots of people in England became obsessed with collecting tropical orchids and keeping them in their homes.
CORA: Rich people paid huge sums of money for them, and some collectors made a lot of money selling orchids.
JOY DOLO: But the orchid hunters who took these plants from the wild destroyed a lot of jungle habitat.
CORA: Now we have better ways of growing orchids so we don't have to take them from the wild.
JOY DOLO: This episode was written by--
SHAHLA FARZAN: Shahla Farzan.
JOY DOLO: It was produced by--
NICO GONZALEZ WISLER: Nico Gonzalez Wisler.
JOY DOLO: And--
RUBY GUTHRIE: Ruby Guthrie.
JOY DOLO: It was edited by--
SANDEN TOTTEN: Sanden Totten.
JOY DOLO: Fact checking by--
ANNA GOLDFIELD: Anna Goldfield.
JOY DOLO: Engineering help from Alex Simpson and Dan Schafer with sound design by--
RACHEL BREES: Rachel Brees.
JOY DOLO: Original theme music by--
MARC SANCHEZ: Marc Sanchez.
JOY DOLO: We had additional production help from the rest of the Brains On! Universe team.
MOLLY BLOOM: Molly bloom,
ROSSIE DUPONT: Rosie DuPont.
LAUREN HUMBERT: Lauren Humbert.
JOSHUA RAY: Joshua Ray.
MARK SANCHEZ: Mark Sanchez.
CHARLOTTE TRAVER: Charlotte Traver.
ANNA WEGGEL: Anna Weggel.
JOY DOLO: And--
ARON WOLDESLASSIE: Aron Woldeslassie.
JOY DOLO: Beth Perlman is our executive producer. And the executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavati and Joanne Griffith. Special Thanks to Matt Dacier and Megan and Chris Stevenson.
CORA: And if you want access to ad-free episodes and special bonus content, subscribe to our Smarty Pass.
JOY DOLO: OK, Cora. Ready to hear the answers for First Things First?
CORA: Yes.
JOY DOLO: Oh, yeah. So just to recap, you said first up was the ice bucket challenge. Second was the flagpole sitting, and third was phone booth stuffing.
CORA: Yep.
JOY DOLO: OK, here we go. [VOCALIZING]
CORA: The suspense.
JOY DOLO: OK, so here are the answers. So first up was actually flagpole sitting.
CORA: Oh, no.
JOY DOLO: Yeah, that was the earliest. I did not see that coming. So it started in Hollywood in 1924 when a stuntman was hired to sit on top of a flagpole to drum up excitement for a new movie. Oh, that tracks. [LAUGHS] That sounds like a Hollywood thing to do.
CORA: That's later than I thought it would be.
JOY DOLO: Yeah.
CORA: I thought it would be like Hamilton times like the 1700s.
[LAUGHS]
JOY DOLO: Alexander flagpole sitting.
[LAUGHS]
So people heard about the publicity stunt, and the fad started spreading across the country. One man in Iowa sat on top of a flagpole for 51 days straight, and since then, people have gone much longer, including one guy who sat on a flagpole for 248 days.
CORA: I feel like that would just hurt your butt.
[LAUGHTER]
JOY DOLO: I know. I can't even sit on my bike for that long without having to get off. Well, that sounds pretty cool. So 1924 was the first one. And then second up was phone booth stuffing. And so that was the late 1950s. In 1959, a group of 25 college students in South Africa crammed into a single phone booth. 25 students in a phone booth, oh, my gosh.
CORA: Were they larger back then? Because I couldn't.
JOY DOLO: Maybe they were--
CORA: I can't fit with three other people in a phone booth.
JOY DOLO: Yeah, it must have been-- I mean, maybe 25 toddlers, but 25 college students that's got to be a pretty big phone booth.
CORA: Maybe it was really tall, and they got on each other's shoulders to get more vertical space.
JOY DOLO: Oh, that's smart. I think that's what you'd have to do because you've got to use like every inch of it, right. So you'd have to get some people on top or maybe like laying on top. Students across the US started trying to break the record, including a group of 30 people who fit into a phone booth in Missouri but with arms and legs sticking out. I feel like that's cheating.
CORA: I don't know. I feel like it would still count. I say as long as your brain is in there, then you are in there. As long as your brain and mouth.
JOY DOLO: Yeah, that's a good rule of thumb, your brain, your mouth, and your heart.
CORA: Yes.
JOY DOLO: Yes. So last but certainly not least was the ice bucket challenge, and that was in 2014. That's like a little over 10 years ago. So in 2014, three men with a muscle disease called ALS launched a challenge to help raise money for research into the disease. The challenge was to film yourself having bucket of ice water dumped on your head. And more than 17 million people took part, including celebrities like Taylor Swift and Oprah. And they ended up raising more than $200 million for ALS research. Oh, my goodness.
CORA: I didn't know it was filming because if it was included that they were filming themselves, then I definitely wouldn't have thought it was first.
JOY DOLO: Yeah. And that would bring us into a new era when you have phones and recordings and things like that. So that makes sense. What do you think was the most surprising fact out of there?
CORA: Honestly, probably the ice bucket one because I thought the disease they would have been raising awareness for was like, I don't know, the plague or something.
[LAUGHS]
JOY DOLO: Help stop the plague.
CORA: Yeah, like stand in the middle of town square. Everyone watch. I'm going to pour this bucket of ice on my head.
[LAUGHS]
JOY DOLO: Join us next week for new episode, all about the history of banjos.
CORA: Thanks for listening.
[THEME MUSIC]
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