Daily Curio – College of Curiosity

2-08. Bitter Bierce

2-07. The Mystery of Thomas James

2-06. The Unlikely Birth of a Religion

2-05. The Fate of Watership Down

2-04. Good Existence

2-03. Farmer’s Folly?

2-02. Wings on Things

2-01. The Somerton Man

2-00. Season Two

100. Blue Man Group

Oh No! GMO! No, we're not talking about the widely misunderstood technology of genetically modified organisms by way of gene splicing. We're talking about vegetables that you can find in the produce section right now that never existed in nature. Much like poodle packs never roamed the plains of Africa and bubbly-eyed goldfish never swam the seas, nearly all the produce you buy has been altered by human hands. Selective breeding is the technique by which plants are altered through time by choosing those with the characteristics that most match what you're trying to produce. Want whiter potatoes? Spend twenty or a hundred years breeding only the whitest of your crop, and you'll end up with a vastly different tuber. Sometimes we get what we want, sometimes we don't. Some of these new plants are even poisonous, but very few of those make it to market. Humans have been modifying the genetics of our food sources for thousands of years. Here are six vegetables that have been significantly altered from their original form through plant breeding. 1: Corn Corn is the poster child for highly modified foods. It's an ancient cultivar of a grass known as teosinte. While teosinte is edible, you can see from the picture that it has only a few kernels. Though much trial and error, our modern varieties of corn emerged. Popcorn, feed corn, and sweet corn are all the same species, but with different genetics chosen to enhance the traits needed for their specific uses. Corn is not technically a vegetable, but for food purposes, it's often categorized as such. 2: Carrots Think carrots are orange? Not in nature. It wasn't until the 1600s that the Dutch bred orange carrots to match the color of their flag. Before that, they were white or purple. The original plant probably came from Iran and was bitter and woody. Carrots were originally used for their leaves rather than the roots. If you thought they were good for your eyes, you'd be right—but not all that good. Carrots being good for the eyes was a myth started by British forces during World War II to explain how the British were easily spotting German planes. The real reason was RADAR, which was secret at the time.  3: Broccoli Broccoli may be common today, but it's a relatively recent addition to our diet. It was developed in Italy from several varieties of cabbage. Broccoli is one of the few flowers we eat: the green bunches are actually clusters of unopened blooms. When they do blossom, they give off an unpleasant sulphur odor. Broccoli is a good example of how selective breeding can produce a vegetable that's quite different from the original plant. Albert Broccoli of James Bond movie fame wasn't named for the plant, but for the region of Italy where broccoli is grown. 4: Cauliflower Broccoli and cauliflower are closely related forms of cabbage. Cauliflower is older, but is even more modified than broccoli. Arab muslim scientists from the 12th and 13th centuries are credited with its invention. The head is called a "curd." Though we typically only see white cauliflower in the U.S., it's also available in purple, orange and green. Romanesco broccoli, which is actually a cauliflower, grows in a distinctive fractal pattern.  5: Tomatoes Tomatoes are actually berries, so not vegetables. Since they're not typically sweet, we include them in the vegetable category. Like corn, it's from the New World, and today's varieties are a vast departure from the original. The native variety had small fruit like cherry tomatoes, and they were probably yellow. Though hybridization and selection, the large red fruit we're familiar with were developed. Tomatoes were widely assumed to be poisonous until fairly recently. The leaves are poisonous, and they're in the same family as deadly nightshade. 6: Brussels Sprouts Another cabbage cultivar, Brussels sprouts are actually deformed leaves that grow from a stalk.

Killing the Cat - A Cautionary Tale This is our first Thursday Story episode of the Daily Curio. If you have a story you'd like to tell, please let us know. We can use your recording, or read it for you. With a European history dating back to at least 1625 and an indigenous one hundreds of years older, Salem, MA is a place of endless stories. This is one of them. I owe much of my curiosity to my mother, who was always eager to expose me to museums, historic sites, and nature walks. One day when I was about 10, she took me to a shore side talk with a local naturalist. We met on that summer's morning on a very small public beach near the Salem Willows trolley park. Our naturalist was friendly and informative and she encouraged us to explore as she talked about tide pools and migratory birds. I grew up wandering the tideline very chance I could get, and I thought I'd seen everything.  I could identify a skate egg case, rock weed, and all manners of flotsam and jetsam. So I was surprised when one of the other kids found something I'd never seen before. It was a jawbone filled with sharp, horrific teeth. She took it over to the naturalist who immediately identified it as a goosefish, a type of anglerfish that was common here. Anglerfish are those odd-looking fish that have a little rod and lure that dances about in front of their mouths tricking prey to their doom. I'd been fascinated with them since I first heard about them at the New England Aquarium. Surely if there was one set of horrific jaws in the rocks, there must be more. I left the group in search of treasure. It was low tide, and I wandered into that place where I was stepping on rocks to keep my shoes from getting wet. Every kid does this... there's something in us that must push the limits to see how far we can go before out feet get wet. When I was at the point that I was standing on rocks covered by an inch of water and counting on barnacles to provide enough traction to stay balanced, I lost footing and plunged my right sneaker into a foot of water. I had found the limit. Soggily making my way back to the sand, I noticed something manmade in the rocks. It looked like a toy gun, so I stopped and picked it up. I realized immediately that it wasn't a toy gun; it was a real one. A .38 revolver to be exact—I had a plastic version at home. It's easy to tell a real gun from a toy. I don't think many kids would every mistake one for the other. Real guns are heavy, much heavier than even realistic toy guns could be. And in revolvers, you can see the bullets. In most toy guns, they're the same color as the plastic or metal. In real guns, they're brass one one side and copper or dull lead on the other. I saw that this gun was loaded. Though I grew up in a household with no guns, and knew of no one who owned an actual gun, I knew what to do. I should leave it alone and get an adult to deal with it. I should never under any circumstances touch it. And I shouldn't even think of pulling the trigger. The moment I realized it was a real gun, I pointed it at the water and pull the trigger as hard as I could. You see, it takes time to remember what you're supposed to do. I had been told what to do, but my entire experience with guns was with toys, and with toy guys, you pull the trigger. A lot. Indiscriminately. It's almost a reflex. And as I held this actual weapon, my reflex was to pull the trigger, even while thinking "I'm going to get in trouble for this, but it's my only chance." As the trigger pressed into my finger, I was disappointed to find that it was frozen, and wouldn't move. Barnacles and periwinkles covered the barrel in places, and it had clearly be in the water some time. I don't know if the safety was on or if it was just corroded, but it didn't fire. For a moment I considered keeping it. And then the right thoughts came: "No, you won't keep this. You'll give it to your mother immediately. You'll carry it by the butt,