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Birthday Boy · 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 are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: I think everyone has that one friend who makes a
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  Speaker 1: huge deal out of their birthday every year. They don't
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  Speaker 1: just have a party or go out for a fancy dinner. Rather,
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  Speaker 1: they throw a huge bash with a ton of food, drinks,
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  Speaker 1: and music that rages on until the sun comes up,
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  Speaker 1: and they expect all of their friends to join in
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  Speaker 1: on the fun. It isn't just a celebration, it's a festival.
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  Speaker 1: While back in eighteen ninety nine, one mother threw her
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  Speaker 1: son a birthday shindig of his own, and it was
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  Speaker 1: so opulent it made a royal coronation look like a
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  Speaker 1: five year old's birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. Her
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  Speaker 1: name was Sarah Goodrich and she had been an actress
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  Speaker 1: on Broadway, where she eventually met a man named Edwin Knowles. Edwin,
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  Speaker 1: if you're curious, had come from Rhode Island, finding his
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  Speaker 1: way to the New York theater scene as an up
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  Speaker 1: and coming actor. He had gotten his start performing with
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  Speaker 1: The World Sisters, a trio of siblings who put on
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  Speaker 1: a burlesque show in the mid nineteenth century. Then in
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  Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies he met Sarah. The two were soon married,
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  Speaker 1: and six years later Edwin took on the role of
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  Speaker 1: managing places like Brooklyn's Grand Opera House and Manhattan's Fifth
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  Speaker 1: Avenue Theater on West twenty eighth Street, and eventually he
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  Speaker 1: transitioned from managing other people's theaters to opening his own,
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  Speaker 1: such as the Amphion Theater in the Williamsburg district of Brooklyn.
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  Speaker 1: The Amphion would go on to become the site of
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  Speaker 1: a brutal animal attack in nineteen ten. A wolf being
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  Speaker 1: kept in a cage there broke free during the performance
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  Speaker 1: and bit a number of the audience members. A police
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  Speaker 1: officer did his best to stop it, but the wolf
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  Speaker 1: ended up just shredding his pants instead. The wolf was
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  Speaker 1: eventually captured and handled, and the show resumed as normal. Sarah,
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  Speaker 1: on the other hand, had her own responsibilities to tend to.
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  Speaker 1: She had run for president of the Professional Women's League
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  Speaker 1: of which she was a member. She sadly lost the race,
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  Speaker 1: but did not lose her standing. She also took care
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  Speaker 1: of the home that she and her husband lived in
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  Speaker 1: on Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn, along with their son, Coco.
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  Speaker 1: Sarah spoiled Coco usually on his birthday in early July,
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  Speaker 1: but it was his thirteenth birthday party on July fifth
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  Speaker 1: of eighteen ninety nine that made all of the headlines.
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  Speaker 1: It started out as a breakfast one that counted among
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  Speaker 1: its guests the Pash women who had supported Sarah's failed
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  Speaker 1: presidential run. Coco had been sitting by himself in the
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  Speaker 1: drawing room when they arrived with gifts in hand. They
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  Speaker 1: placed at his feet all sorts of boxes filled with jewelry,
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  Speaker 1: beads and framed engravings. He said nothing, simply letting them
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  Speaker 1: drop their gifts off, as though they were making an
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  Speaker 1: offering to a temperamental king or a watchful deity. The
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  Speaker 1: one newspaper article referred to the event as a birthday
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  Speaker 1: festival and compared it to the party that Empress Eugene
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  Speaker 1: had thrown for Napoleon the Third. Once the gifts had
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  Speaker 1: been delivered, Coco was escorted into the dining area. He
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  Speaker 1: wore around his neck a string of pearls, and the
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  Speaker 1: cushion of his seat was covered in green silk adorned
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  Speaker 1: with embroidered lotus leaves. Coco has fed all kinds of
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  Speaker 1: delicious foods, as you might expect from attending parties of
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  Speaker 1: your own, including crackers, putting almonds, and milk. Since he
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  Speaker 1: was still so young, though, he didn't partake in the
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  Speaker 1: wine that his mother and the other friends were drinking.
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  Speaker 1: After they had finished eating, the women rose from their
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  Speaker 1: chairs and danced a quadrille to entertain the birthday boy,
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  Speaker 1: and he sat there watching them perform just for him.
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  Speaker 1: When the dance ended, they read him poetry in his honor.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't a normal birthday party for a thirteen year
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  Speaker 1: old boy. I don't know a lot of teens who
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  Speaker 1: would enjoy watching their mother's friends dance and read poetry,
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  Speaker 1: but Coco seemed to enjoy, from what I can tell,
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  Speaker 1: and as you'd imagine, Various news outlets reported on the
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  Speaker 1: elaborate breakfast, writing things like he is faithful to his home,
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  Speaker 1: he is affectionate without servility, he is charmingly decorative. The meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: an article in the New York Dramatic Mirror said, he
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  Speaker 1: doesn't look a day over seven. That's kind of a
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  Speaker 1: strange thing to write about a thirteen year old boy,
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  Speaker 1: But the papers weren't writing about a boy, or a
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  Speaker 1: girl or a person at all. Missus Knowle's beloved Coco,
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  Speaker 1: you see, was her cat. It's important that we preserve
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  Speaker 1: the legacies of culture's past, whether they're ruins of ancient buildings,
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  Speaker 1: or tools used by people who lived thousands of years ago,
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  Speaker 1: or the books written during their lifetimes, and when possible,
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  Speaker 1: those artifacts should be available ethically, of course, for us
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  Speaker 1: to study and learn from. That's where museums come in.
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  Speaker 1: We visit these giant repositories of history so that we
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  Speaker 1: can better understand those who came before us. But museums
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  Speaker 1: are not a modern construct. In fact, the first museum
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  Speaker 1: in history is over two thousand, five hundred years old,
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  Speaker 1: and its original curator with someone you might not have expected.
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  Speaker 1: Around five point thirty BCE, in an area of the
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  Speaker 1: Middle East known as Mesopotamia, there was a king. His
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  Speaker 1: name was Nabonitis, and he ruled over an empire known
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  Speaker 1: as Babylon. Nabonitis also had several children his son Belshazzar
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  Speaker 1: eventually became the last king of the Neo Babylonian Empire,
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  Speaker 1: but it was one of Belshazzar's siblings who was responsible
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  Speaker 1: for the earliest known museum in the world. You see,
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  Speaker 1: Anni Galdinana was both a princess and a high priestess
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  Speaker 1: of the empire, and she was also an archaeologist. She
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  Speaker 1: had developed a love of antiques thanks to her father,
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  Speaker 1: who was also an antiquarian. He taught her about the
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  Speaker 1: past and its importance to the future of their dynasty,
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  Speaker 1: and it was he who encouraged her to start a museum.
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  Speaker 1: Any Galdi would explore the southern parts of Mesopotamia that
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  Speaker 1: her father had already excavated and collect what she could
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  Speaker 1: with guidance from Nabonitis. She would then bring these items
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  Speaker 1: back to the palace and store them in a temple
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  Speaker 1: next door. Much like today's museums, any Galdy's exhibits were
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  Speaker 1: put on display to educate visitors about the history of
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  Speaker 1: the region. She saved many artifacts too, including part of
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  Speaker 1: a statue of King Shulgi, the second king of the
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  Speaker 1: third dynasty of Er, as well as a kuduru, a
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  Speaker 1: stone boundary marker carved by the Cassites between the sixteenth
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  Speaker 1: and seventh centuries BCE. The objects stored in any Galdi's
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  Speaker 1: museum could be traced back as far as two thousand BCE,
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  Speaker 1: and most had actually been excavated by her, not her father.
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  Speaker 1: Thousands of years later, a husband and wife team of
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  Speaker 1: archaeologists discovered the museum during a dig. Their names were
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  Speaker 1: Leonard and Catherine Woolley, and they had been uncovering sections
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  Speaker 1: of the adjoining palace at Er when they stumbled on
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  Speaker 1: Anegaldi's pet project. Although they knew the site they were
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  Speaker 1: excavating dated back to the Neo Babylonian era, they had
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  Speaker 1: no idea that their efforts would reveal such a startling find.
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  Speaker 1: The ancient person of any Galdi had preserved a past
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  Speaker 1: that was ancient to her, so that thousands of years later,
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  Speaker 1: modern archaeologists would have access to and otherwise lost history.
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  Speaker 1: In cataloging their collection, the Woolies discovered that Anygaldi had
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  Speaker 1: gone to the trouble of arranging it in chronological order.
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  Speaker 1: The goal was to convey the passage of time to
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  Speaker 1: the museum's visitors. She had also carved symbols into clay cylinders,
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  Speaker 1: which acted like the plaques or labels that you might
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  Speaker 1: find on the wall of a modern museum to explain
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  Speaker 1: each exhibit. These labels were written in three different languages too,
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  Speaker 1: including Sumerian, and revealed all sorts of information about the
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  Speaker 1: items that she had collected, including how old they were
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  Speaker 1: and where she had found them. As the millennia passed
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  Speaker 1: and the Sumerian dynasties died out, many are facts wound
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  Speaker 1: up in private collections, you know, cabinets of curiosities. They
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  Speaker 1: were often displayed without any accompanying information and indications of
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  Speaker 1: their providence. Instead, collectors would arrange the various items in
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  Speaker 1: a way that was esthetically pleasing to the eye. But
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  Speaker 1: by the late seventeenth century, all of that started to change.
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  Speaker 1: England's Oxford University took possession of John Tedescant the Elder's
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  Speaker 1: collection after his death in sixteen thirty eight. He had
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  Speaker 1: acquired all kinds of books, coins and strange objects over
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  Speaker 1: his lifetime, which eventually became the Ashmolean Museum, opened in
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  Speaker 1: sixteen eighty three. But museums like the Ashmolean, with their
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  Speaker 1: clear labels and carefully mounted historical exhibits can all trace
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  Speaker 1: their origins back thousands of years earlier to the woman
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  Speaker 1: who started it all. She was a princess, a priestess,
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  Speaker 1: a daughter, an archaeologist, and a historian, all wrapped up
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  Speaker 1: into one. Her name was Ennigaldi Nana, the woman who
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  Speaker 1: made history by saving it. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
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  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
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  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
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  Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time,
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  Speaker 1: stay curious.