On the Job

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Speaker 9 If you're a fan of reality TV, then you might have seen the British television show World's Most Dangerous Roads.

Speaker 9 The host travels some of the most treacherous roads the world over, taking viewers through hairpin turns and dizzying heights.

Speaker 9 Or maybe you're a fan of Deadliest Catch, a series that follows crab fishermen braving rough weather and rogue waves out on the Bering Strait.

Speaker 9 We have long had a fascination with dangerous jobs and those who perform them, like Ronin. He spent years working a deadly job as well.
But unlike reality stars, he doesn't do it for the money.

Speaker 9 In fact, he doesn't get paid at all. Every day, he risks his life to help make communities safer, and he does it for free.

Speaker 9 On a hot April morning in 2025, Ronin arrived at the commune of Shwaoram in Cambodia, where he'd been working for the past four years. His job is perilous, and few are qualified to do it.

Speaker 9 He arrived at the edge of a vast grassy valley marked by a series of metal poles. These poles hold up a grid of high wires that Ronan uses to move across the field section by section.

Speaker 9 It's taken years to canvas the entire area, but all he has left now is a small section in the corner by the jungle tree line.

Speaker 9 For safety, his partners clip him into a bright red harness so that his feet barely touch the ground.

Speaker 9 And then, light as air, he makes his way, mission impossible style, across the grid, searching for any indication that there might be something lethal buried beneath the grass.

Speaker 9 Over the past four years, Ronin has found dozens of buried landmines, all left over from the Cambodian-Vietnamese War.

Speaker 9 He works for a Dutch organization called the Anti-Personnel Landmines Detection Product Development, or APOPO for short.

Speaker 9 Their mission is to travel the world, clearing out landmine fields left behind in former conflict zones.

Speaker 9 It's estimated that there are more than 110 million landmines buried in 60 countries around the world. But the number of landmines in Cambodia has been especially treacherous.

Speaker 9 Over the last 45 years, landmines have caused more than 65,000 deaths in Cambodia, and more cases of amputation due to landmines than in any other country in the world.

Speaker 9 But Apopo is committed to change that with the help of highly skilled workers like Ronin.

Speaker 9 Since they were founded 25 years ago, they have cleared almost 170,000 landmines and other explosives, making the world a safer place.

Speaker 9 One of the amazing things about Ronin is that rather than scanning the landscape for signs of these deadly devices with his eyes, he uses a different method, his sense of smell.

Speaker 9 The chemical compounds found in landmines can be detected. And when he locates one, Ronin points out its location to his partners by doing something incredibly risky.
He stands on top of it.

Speaker 9 Thankfully, Ronin doesn't weigh enough to actually detonate the landmine. In fact, he only clocks in at roughly three pounds.
And that's because Ronin isn't human.

Speaker 9 No, he's an African giant pouched rat, the largest species of rat in the world. He's about three feet long from nose to tail, with oversized ears and a bullet-shaped face.

Speaker 9 And like most giant pouch rats, he is highly intelligent with a keen sense of smell, which makes him an ideal candidate for this kind of work.

Speaker 9 In fact, Apopo rats are trained to detect far more than just landmines.

Speaker 9 Some of Ronin's co-workers are capable of smelling tuberculosis in medical settings to help stop the spread of the deadly disease.

Speaker 9 They can also sniff out earthquake survivors buried beneath rubble and detect smuggled wildlife parts like elephant tusks to help catch poachers. But few rats are as prolific as Ronin.

Speaker 9 In fact, earlier this year, he became the first Apopo rat to detect 100 landmines, setting a new world record.

Speaker 9 And in the days that followed, he finished his sweep of that particular valley, detecting nine more. That is, 109 more lives potentially saved, and 109 landmines ratted out.

Speaker 4 Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet, with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Speaker 5 Just ask the Capital One Bank guy.

Speaker 1 It's pretty much all he talks about.

Speaker 6 In a good way.

Speaker 5 He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too.

Speaker 6 Aw, really?

Speaker 7 Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

Speaker 2 What's in your wallet?

Speaker 1 Terms apply. See capital One.com slash bank.

Speaker 8 Capital One NA member FDIC.

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Speaker 9 You may have heard the phrase the gold standard, but it's not something most people fully understand.

Speaker 9 And sure, we know that gold is valuable, and they might be aware that the American government keeps a lot of it at Fort Knox, but mostly just because of the James Bond movie, Goldfinger.

Speaker 9 In reality, the gold standard is no longer in use, although gold still holds its value. It's a long, curious history, one that includes multiple well-known presidents.

Speaker 9 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt inherited a catastrophic economy when he he took office in 1933.

Speaker 9 The 1920s had been prosperous, but led to overproduction, overspending, and overspeculation that caused the stock market to crash in 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression to follow.

Speaker 9 Herbert Hoover, the president before FDR, tried to solve the problem by raising tariffs on other countries and revoking the work visas of almost 2 million Mexican immigrants.

Speaker 9 He hoped to make more off the exports to other countries and to provide more jobs for Americans. But neither action worked.

Speaker 9 The other countries just raised tariffs of their own in return, and the loss of Mexican immigrants actually led to more unemployment among American citizens as corporations suffered from the loss of cheap labor.

Speaker 9 While assessing the situation, FDR felt that the United States needed to incentivize other countries to buy its exports again. The country was suffering from deflation.

Speaker 9 In other words, prices had far exceeded demand because no one was buying anything anymore.

Speaker 9 Also at this time, most global currencies were based on what was known as the gold standard, the idea that the government of a country could back up its currency with actual physical gold.

Speaker 9 In 1933, a U.S. dollar was worth 1 20th of an ounce of gold.

Speaker 9 Some feared that the government would try to print more dollars to pay off its debts, and this would mean that money was worth even less than gold.

Speaker 9 And so Americans started to hoard what gold they had. The idea was that even if the dollar became worthless, the perceived intrinsic value of gold might still make it worth something.

Speaker 9 It's a bit confusing, but keep in mind, economics is all just about perceived value. A dollar or a stock is valuable because people agree that it's valuable.

Speaker 9 Gold is a rare mineral with many practical applications, but the majority of it is used to make jewelry. It has value because humans have simply decided that it does.

Speaker 9 And with all of this in mind, FDR came up with a very controversial solution to solve the country's problems all at once.

Speaker 9 He issued Executive Order 6102, which made it illegal for Americans to hold gold bullion or coins. They had to trade it in to the government for dollars.

Speaker 9 FDR also began printing more dollars and reduced the value of a dollar from 1 20th of an ounce of gold to 1 35th of an ounce of gold.

Speaker 9 This basically created the scenario that individual gold hoarders had hoped would benefit them, but instead it allowed it to benefit the federal government.

Speaker 9 And this might have hurt the average American if it wasn't for the fact that it completely reinvigorated the economy.

Speaker 9 With the American dollar now worth less, American goods were now in higher demand overseas because they were cheaper.

Speaker 9 American manufacturers could resume high levels of production, attract investors, and employ more workers.

Speaker 9 Meanwhile, the government could leverage its gold reserves to spend more on government programs that also benefited the average American. The gold standard was effectively ended in the U.S.

Speaker 9 because now gold was just a commodity that the government bought and sold, not this all-powerful resource that the dollar depended on.

Speaker 9 It continued to be illegal to own gold, although gold jewelry, artwork, and manufactured parts were allowed, all the way up until 1974.

Speaker 9 Today, you can buy gold like you might buy a publicly traded stock or even purchase physical coins and bars that you can hold. That is, of course, if you can afford it.

Speaker 9 So the next time someone uses the phrase the gold standard, just remember how complicated that idea really is and how our move away from it transformed the world.

Speaker 9 I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.com.

Speaker 9 This show was created by me, Aaron Mankey, in partnership with How Stuff Works. I make another award-winning show called Lore, Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show.

Speaker 9 And you can learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com. And until next time, stay curious.

Speaker 4 Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet, with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Speaker 5 Just ask the Capital One bank guy.

Speaker 1 It's pretty much all he talks about.

Speaker 6 In a good way.

Speaker 5 He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast, too.

Speaker 6 Oh, really?

Speaker 7 Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

Speaker 2 What's in your wallet?

Speaker 1 Terms apply. See capital One.com/slash bank.

Speaker 8 Capital One NA member FDIC.

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.