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The Dirty Neighbor · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
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  Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: We often use the term ahead of their time to
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  Speaker 1: describe people who made great breakthroughs in arts or science.
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  Speaker 1: Leonardo da Vinci was ahead of his time, as was
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  Speaker 1: Galileo Galilei. They're people whose contributions to our world will
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  Speaker 1: always be celebrated, but those are the lucky ones. Sometimes
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  Speaker 1: being ahead of your time means no one will understand
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  Speaker 1: you until long after you're gone. In January two thousand
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  Speaker 1: and four, music historian David Garland aired a special episode
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  Speaker 1: of his New York radio show Spinning on Air. He
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  Speaker 1: was interviewing Gene Deeci, a former denizen of Greenwich Village.
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  Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties, Gene spent a lot of time
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  Speaker 1: making amateur recordings of up and coming folk and rock musicians.
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  Speaker 1: During the show, Gene played an old tape that he'd
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  Speaker 1: made of a friend of his in the nineteen fifties
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  Speaker 1: an aspiring folk singer songwriter named Connie Converse. The music
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  Speaker 1: was startlingly modern, sounding like a singer songwriter, but coming
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  Speaker 1: from years before that style was popular. It paired acoustic
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  Speaker 1: guitar with Connie's witty, poetic lyrics. The songs were often
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  Speaker 1: tinged with a melancholy minor. It sounded like something Bob
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  Speaker 1: Dylan or Joni Mitchell would record, just several years before
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  Speaker 1: either of them had started writing music. Listeners were hooked,
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  Speaker 1: but they walked away from the broadcast with more questions
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  Speaker 1: than answers. As Gene explained, the woman who made those
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  Speaker 1: haunting songs couldn't be reached for comment, as she had
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  Speaker 1: been missing for thirty years. Connie Converse was born Elizabeth
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  Speaker 1: Converse on August third of nineteen twenty four in Laconia,
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  Speaker 1: New Hampshire. She grew up in a religious household with
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  Speaker 1: a minister father, but early on began to lean towards
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  Speaker 1: a more bohemian lifestyle. In nineteen forty five, when she
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  Speaker 1: was twenty one years old, she dropped out of college
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  Speaker 1: to move to New York City. There, she started smoking
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  Speaker 1: and drinking, writing songs, and going by the name Connie.
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  Speaker 1: She was an intensely private person and didn't perform at
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  Speaker 1: the coffee shops and speakeasies in Greenwich Village, but she
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  Speaker 1: did do small concerts at parties and in friends living rooms,
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  Speaker 1: and gained a fan base among musicians there, like future
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  Speaker 1: folk star Pete Seeger, and Connie knew that she didn't
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  Speaker 1: fit the mold of what record companies were looking for.
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  Speaker 1: She wrote to her brother about going to auditions and
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  Speaker 1: sending in demo recordings to executives, always receiving the same
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  Speaker 1: inevitable reply. Her music was lovely, but not commercial. The
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  Speaker 1: closest Connie ever came to breaking through was a single
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  Speaker 1: TV appearance on a CBS morning show in nineteen fifty four.
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  Speaker 1: She performed for Walter Cronkite, but still couldn't get a
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  Speaker 1: record executive to call her back. After years of rejection,
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  Speaker 1: she finally decided to give up on her dream of
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  Speaker 1: a music career, and in nineteen sixty one, she moved
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  Speaker 1: in with her brother in ann Arbor, Michigan. Once there,
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  Speaker 1: she quickly found work as an editor for a scholarly
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  Speaker 1: journal on conflict resolution. She threw herself into anti war
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  Speaker 1: activism and life at the university, but it must have
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  Speaker 1: been difficult to see the explosion of music just like
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  Speaker 1: hers in New York right after she left the city.
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  Speaker 1: For example, Bob Dylan moved to New York the same
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  Speaker 1: year she left. Two years later, he had a massive
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  Speaker 1: singer songwriter full kit with his nineteen sixty three album
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  Speaker 1: The Freewheel In Bob Dylan. Connie worked in ann Arbor
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  Speaker 1: for the next decade or so. Her music from her
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  Speaker 1: time in New York relegated to tapes that her brother
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  Speaker 1: kept in storage. She grew increasingly frustrated with her life there, though,
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  Speaker 1: and incredibly depressed. By nineteen seventy four, she decided to leave.
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  Speaker 1: She left a bundle of letters telling her friends and
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  Speaker 1: family she was starting a new life, piled all of
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  Speaker 1: her possessions into her Volkswagen Beetle, and drove off into
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  Speaker 1: the sunset. Now, whether Connie truly did move somewhere else,
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  Speaker 1: or had an accident or ended her own life, Connie's
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  Speaker 1: family couldn't tell. Though her brother hired private investigators, he
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  Speaker 1: heard no word from Connie for the next thirty years,
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  Speaker 1: not until Gene Deach played her unreleased Kitchen recordings on
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  Speaker 1: the radio. In the years since, it seems Connie has
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  Speaker 1: finally found her audience. After that two thousand and four
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  Speaker 1: radio broadcast, two audio engineers approached Gene Deach and were
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  Speaker 1: able to release an album of Connie's songs in two
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  Speaker 1: thousand and nine, and in twenty twenty three, a brand
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  Speaker 1: new album was released called Music's It was an album
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  Speaker 1: Connie recorded and arranged herself back in nineteen fifty six.
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  Speaker 1: Plenty of artists never see success in their own time,
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  Speaker 1: but luckily for Connie, it seems her music is finally
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  Speaker 1: getting a long awaited reprise. Who doesn't love a good
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  Speaker 1: hot shower to kick off the day, or maybe you're
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  Speaker 1: an evening bather. Either way, taking a few minutes to
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  Speaker 1: relax and clean our bodies is more than just good hygiene.
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  Speaker 1: Research shows that beyond keeping our skin and hair clean
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  Speaker 1: from dirt and germs, regular bathing promotes exfoliation, leads to
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  Speaker 1: improved sleep, and even has mental health benefits. It's just
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  Speaker 1: about the most basic form of self care we practice,
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  Speaker 1: and we treat it like a sacred ritual. Studies show
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  Speaker 1: that sixty six percent of Americans bathe once a day.
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  Speaker 1: That's technically more than what's recommended two or three times
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  Speaker 1: a week is ideal, but we can't seem to get enough.
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  Speaker 1: At least most of us can't. There are always exceptions,
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  Speaker 1: like one man from southern Iran who didn't bathe for
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  Speaker 1: over six decades, earning himself a tie of the world's
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  Speaker 1: dirtiest man. The locals call him a moo Hadjie. A
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  Speaker 1: moo is a far Sea word for uncle, but it's
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  Speaker 1: often used as an affectionate term for elderly men, sort
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  Speaker 1: of like old Timer. No one in his village knew
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  Speaker 1: Uncle Hadjee's full name or what happened to his family.
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  Speaker 1: He was an old nomad who lived on the edge
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  Speaker 1: of town. He had refused to bathe for years, and
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  Speaker 1: was always caked in so much dirt and soot that
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  Speaker 1: he was almost indistinguishable from the rocky landscape. When asked
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  Speaker 1: why he became a drifter, he would only say that
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  Speaker 1: he had gone through some emotional setbacks when he was younger.
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  Speaker 1: It seems that when he was in his early twenties,
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  Speaker 1: he developed a crippling fear of soap and water. He
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  Speaker 1: stopped bathing entirely and embraced celibacy and a nomadic lifestyle,
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  Speaker 1: and while never washing was his most defining characteristic, it
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  Speaker 1: was only the start of his unhygienic behavior. He liked
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  Speaker 1: to eat rotting porcupines, scraped off the road, and smoked
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  Speaker 1: animal dung from a pipe. When his hair or beard
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  Speaker 1: got too long, he burned it over a fire rather
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  Speaker 1: than cutting it. When it got cold, he donned an
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  Speaker 1: old military helmet instead of a coat. He did have
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  Speaker 1: one healthy habit, though, while he avoided letting it touch
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  Speaker 1: his skin, he drank over five liters of water every day. Still,
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  Speaker 1: it's not ideal that he collected that water in a
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  Speaker 1: rusty oil tin. Now. Despite choosing to live in isolation,
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  Speaker 1: by most accounts, Uncle Hajie had a joyful, friendly disposition.
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  Speaker 1: The local community tried their best to take care of him,
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  Speaker 1: which led to frustrations when he refused to change his ways.
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  Speaker 1: He grew irritated whenever people pressured him to stop eating
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  Speaker 1: rotten food or drinking filthy water. He did let the
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  Speaker 1: villagers build him a cinder block house to live in,
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  Speaker 1: but he still preferred to sleep outside in a shallow
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  Speaker 1: hole that he had dug in the ground. At one point,
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  Speaker 1: a group of young men even captured him and tried
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  Speaker 1: to force him to shower, but he narrowly managed to escape.
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  Speaker 1: It's tempting to judge someone like Uncle Hadjie, mostly because
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  Speaker 1: of how irrational and uncomfortable his lifestyle scenes. Modern science
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  Speaker 1: tells us that poor hygiene can lead to all kinds
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  Speaker 1: of unwonted conditions, from diarrhea and lice to blindness, and
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  Speaker 1: it's not just dangerous. Failing to adhere to social expectations
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  Speaker 1: of cleanliness risks driving people away, alienating them from their neighbors.
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  Speaker 1: Some psychologists think that what he suffered from was alblutophobia,
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  Speaker 1: the irrational fear of bathing and water. Like many anxiety disorders,
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  Speaker 1: coming in contact with the subject of the phobia can
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  Speaker 1: cause intense, elevated heartbeat, difficulty breathing, and panic attacks. With
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  Speaker 1: that in mind, it makes more sense why he might
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  Speaker 1: have avoided soap and water for as long as he did.
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  Speaker 1: But even if most people would consider his lifestyle irrational,
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  Speaker 1: it's hard to argue that it worked for him. In
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  Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, he finally relented by taking a bath
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  Speaker 1: for the first time in roughly sixty five years. Only
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  Speaker 1: a few months later, he passed away at the extremely
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  Speaker 1: ripe old age of ninety four. I'm not saying that
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  Speaker 1: makes him right, but it does make you wonder. It
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  Speaker 1: might even get you to forego that daily sholler, maybe
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  Speaker 1: just this once. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
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  Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time,
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  Speaker 1: stay curious.