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Pros and Cons · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. You have to wonder
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  Speaker 1: if some people are born to be conned the way
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  Speaker 1: others are born to con them. We believed that David
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  Speaker 1: Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear because we wanted to.
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  Speaker 1: We want to believe the Prince promising us untold millions
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  Speaker 1: in an email, because of what it would mean, how
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  Speaker 1: it would change our lives. What we don't often think
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  Speaker 1: about is why people deceive us. In the case of
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  Speaker 1: David Copperfield and other magicians, it's for entertainment to get
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  Speaker 1: a rise out of us, to instill a sense of
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  Speaker 1: wonder and awe in the audience. The supposed pray is
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  Speaker 1: just looking for a quick buck from an unwitting victim.
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  Speaker 1: Then there are people like Victor. Victor was born in Austria,
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  Speaker 1: Hungary at the turn of the century, and he had
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  Speaker 1: a gift. He was a reader of books, yes, but
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  Speaker 1: also of people. There was no real reason for him
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  Speaker 1: to turn to a life of crime, though It's not
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  Speaker 1: like he fell into a deep pit of debt or
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  Speaker 1: lived on the streets. As a teenager, he studied in
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  Speaker 1: Paris and gained fluency in multiple languages. Victor was on
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  Speaker 1: track to be a great student. He might have gone
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  Speaker 1: on to be a great man, but will never know.
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  Speaker 1: At nineteen years old, Victor needed a break from his education.
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  Speaker 1: He went on holiday where he discovered gambling and women,
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  Speaker 1: and those things didn't mix too well for him. Victor
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  Speaker 1: quickly found himself on the receiving end of a nasty
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  Speaker 1: scar on one side of his face. One of the
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  Speaker 1: women he had met had a boyfriend with a jealous streak.
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  Speaker 1: But Victor recovered and he took his talents to the
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  Speaker 1: open seas, where he pulled schemes on unsuspecting travelers sailing
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  Speaker 1: between France and New York. In one he pretended to
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  Speaker 1: be a Broadway producer and solicited investor funds for a
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  Speaker 1: non existent production. As the years passed, victor scams grew
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  Speaker 1: in size and boldness. By the time had come to
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  Speaker 1: do something big, something that would establish his legacy all
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  Speaker 1: over the world. He returned to Paris and came upon
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  Speaker 1: a newspaper story about the Eiffel Tower. The monument had
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  Speaker 1: fallen into disrepair and the money to fix it had
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  Speaker 1: run dry. The article also mentioned how the time might
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  Speaker 1: come one day when the city would have to simply
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  Speaker 1: tear it down. But where Paris saw an eyesore, Victor
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  Speaker 1: saw a way to get rich in the most ludicrous
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  Speaker 1: way possible. He hired a forger to draft fake credentials
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  Speaker 1: for him, then invited several scrap metal dealers to a
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  Speaker 1: large hotel. He introduced himself as a high ranking official
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  Speaker 1: within the government and claimed that Paris just couldn't afford
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  Speaker 1: to keep the Eiffel Tower up anymore. It had to go,
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  Speaker 1: and Victor had been selected to choose the scrap metal
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  Speaker 1: dealer who would haul the pieces away. He read their
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  Speaker 1: faces as he spoke, paying attention to the mannerisms and
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  Speaker 1: ticks that might give away the perfect mark for his
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  Speaker 1: con They weren't hard to spot either. The man who
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  Speaker 1: would end up with the winning bid for victor Sham
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  Speaker 1: business was relatively unknown in the Parisian business community. His
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  Speaker 1: name was Andre and he wanted to make a name
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  Speaker 1: for himself, so after all the bids were sent in,
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  Speaker 1: he put in a little extra just for Victor. It worked.
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  Speaker 1: Victor accepted Andrea's offer and collected both his bribe and
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  Speaker 1: the money necessary to secure the towers supposed sale, and
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  Speaker 1: then he fled to Austria with his winnings. Poor Andre
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  Speaker 1: didn't know what had hit him. He couldn't go to
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  Speaker 1: the police, nor could he tell his fellow business men
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  Speaker 1: without looking foolish. Victor made sure to read the French
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  Speaker 1: newspapers for any mention of his scheme, but when nothing surfaced,
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  Speaker 1: he he'd done it. He had sold the Eiffel Tower. Now,
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  Speaker 1: if that had been me, I'd have stopped there. To
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  Speaker 1: pull off one of the greatest cons in history without
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  Speaker 1: anyone else knowing about it, including the police, would have
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  Speaker 1: been great enough. But I'm not Victor lustig. He wanted
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  Speaker 1: to press his luck, to see if he could hit
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  Speaker 1: the jackpot twice, not once. So one year later he
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  Speaker 1: returned to Paris and tried the same scam again, this
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  Speaker 1: time with a new group of scrap metal dealers, only
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  Speaker 1: this time they were prepared. The police had been tipped
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  Speaker 1: off about Victor's meeting and went after him, but his
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  Speaker 1: craftiness got the better of them. Once again. He moved
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  Speaker 1: to the United States, where he returned to a life
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  Speaker 1: of smaller, pettier crimes. Well almost you see, he'd found
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  Speaker 1: a new mark, a businessman from Chicago, a man no
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  Speaker 1: other con man would have thought to cross. Victor promised
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  Speaker 1: the man that he would double his money if he
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  Speaker 1: would just invest in an amazing new business opportunity that
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  Speaker 1: he had planned. The mar agreed and gave him fifty dollars.
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  Speaker 1: Victor promised that he'd have twice that much in just
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  Speaker 1: one month. Well, the month came and went, and Victor
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  Speaker 1: hadn't doubled the man's money. Except this time, the conman
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  Speaker 1: didn't flee the country. Honestly, there wasn't anywhere that he
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  Speaker 1: could have gone anyway. His mark would have found him
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  Speaker 1: and made him pay one way or the other. So
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  Speaker 1: Victor just returned the fifty dollars to him, without a
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  Speaker 1: cent missing. The mark was so impressed with Victor's honesty
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  Speaker 1: he refused it, telling him to keep it for his trouble.
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  Speaker 1: And the man he tried to swindle out of that
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  Speaker 1: fifty grand none other than the King of crime himself,
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  Speaker 1: al Capone. Roderick Ross McFarlane had always loved nature. He'd
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  Speaker 1: run up off the coast of Scotland in the early
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  Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, where he was surrounded by a veritable zoo
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  Speaker 1: of birds, mammals, and sea life. His love of the
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  Speaker 1: outdoors eventually took him to the Hudson Bay Company, a
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  Speaker 1: retail business specializing in the trapping and trading of first
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  Speaker 1: the perfect place for a budding naturalist to grow his career.
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  Speaker 1: Starting as a clerk, Roderick traveled all over the world,
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  Speaker 1: working his way up to management. He ran the trading
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  Speaker 1: post at several forts in the Northwest territories of Canada
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  Speaker 1: for many years until he was put in charge of
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  Speaker 1: Fort Anderson, farther north in eighteen sixty one. During his
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  Speaker 1: time there, Roderick befriended the local indigenous people who traded
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  Speaker 1: with him and taught him about life in their territories.
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  Speaker 1: He also encouraged them to bring unique specimens they found
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  Speaker 1: for him to send to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington,
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  Speaker 1: d c. Where he worked on the side as a collector.
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  Speaker 1: During the winter, he'd stow away eggs, hides, and other
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  Speaker 1: natural history items and write letters to the museum's curators
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  Speaker 1: about what he found. Then, in the weather warmed up,
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  Speaker 1: he'd box it all up and ship everything south to Washington.
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  Speaker 1: Over time, Roderick and the Inuit came to respect and
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  Speaker 1: enjoy each other's company, which is probably why they approached
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  Speaker 1: him After an unexpected kill one day in eighteen sixty four.
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  Speaker 1: Their hunters had been attacked by a bear that day
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  Speaker 1: and barely survived. Using a Hudson Bay rifle, spears, and knives,
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  Speaker 1: they managed to kill the animal and drag its carcass
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  Speaker 1: back to the trading post, where Roderick happily accepted it.
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  Speaker 1: He honestly didn't think anything of it. It looked a
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  Speaker 1: little different from the other bears he'd taken, but nothing extraordinary.
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  Speaker 1: He skinned the bear, had the hide cured, and then
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  Speaker 1: sent everything to the Smithsonian, as he'd done so many
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  Speaker 1: times before. The items sat in storage for over fifty
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  Speaker 1: years before the Dean of Naturalists, Dr. C. Hart Miriam
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  Speaker 1: found them that he'd never have seen anything like them.
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  Speaker 1: What McFarland had dismissed as a standard barren ground grizzly
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  Speaker 1: bear was actually something in highrely new. It had been
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  Speaker 1: found far outside the normal hunting grounds for bears of
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  Speaker 1: the region at the time. It's fur was yellow, not
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  Speaker 1: dark brown like the grizzlies nor white like a polar bears,
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  Speaker 1: its skull was smaller, and its sharp teeth had formed
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  Speaker 1: much differently than the teeth of the bears known to
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  Speaker 1: the area. Dr Miriam concluded the objects that had been
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  Speaker 1: sitting in a box in the Smithsonian's archives belonged to
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  Speaker 1: a whole new species of bear. Vetti larcis in open
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  Speaker 1: natas is what he called it. It meant ancient, unexpected bear,
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  Speaker 1: though it hadn't entirely been unexpected. Other explorers, such as
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  Speaker 1: journalist Caspar Whitney, noted encounters with bears just like the
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  Speaker 1: one McFarland had been given. Whitney described it as a
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  Speaker 1: cross between a grizzly and the polar, with rear claws
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  Speaker 1: as big as the front, a wide forehead, and ears
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  Speaker 1: like a dog's. Unfortunately, there was no way to verify
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  Speaker 1: the existence of others like it, given the time in
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  Speaker 1: which it was discovered and the lack of similar specimens,
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  Speaker 1: the bear was declared extinct. As our knowledge of different
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  Speaker 1: species and our methods of testing d NA grow, it's
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  Speaker 1: becoming easier to track the lineage of such rare animals.
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  Speaker 1: It's possible the bear really was as Whitney described a
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  Speaker 1: hybrid grizzly polar bear. Others have suggested that the bear
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  Speaker 1: was a species that had survived past the ice age
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  Speaker 1: and died out on that fateful day in eighteen sixty four.
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  Speaker 1: We might never get a definitive answer as to what
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  Speaker 1: species it really was, though, which is disappointing. I know
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  Speaker 1: some might even call that unbearable. I hope you've enjoyed
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  Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
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  Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
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  Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
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  Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manky in part ownership with How Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.