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Mamma Mia · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
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  Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Few of us performed the same jobs for
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  Speaker 1: our entire lives. Some may go from stocking shelves as
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  Speaker 1: teens to selling stocks when we're older. We may even
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  Speaker 1: change careers entirely later in life. No one is defined
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  Speaker 1: by what they do for a living. It's just a
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  Speaker 1: piece of who we are, along with our families, our friends,
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  Speaker 1: and the hobbies we enjoy in our free time. But
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  Speaker 1: for one woman, her job didn't just come to define her.
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  Speaker 1: It changed the way that we see the entire universe.
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  Speaker 1: Born in Dundee, Scotland, in eighteen fifty seven, Wilhelmina eventually
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  Speaker 1: became a teacher and was married at twenty to an
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  Speaker 1: accountant named James Orr Fleming. In eighteen seventy eight, mister
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  Speaker 1: and Mrs Fleming emigrated to the United States, settling in Boston,
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  Speaker 1: where they had a son Edward. Sadly, Wilhelmina's life took
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  Speaker 1: a dark turn sometime later when her husband up and
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  Speaker 1: left the family. Forced to find work outside of the house,
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  Speaker 1: she took a job as a maid for a man
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  Speaker 1: named Edward Charles Pickering. He ran the Harvard College Observatory
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  Speaker 1: with the staff of several male assistants for clerical work
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  Speaker 1: such as classifying stars. But one day, Pickering, upset with
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  Speaker 1: the quality of work being done by his assistance, shouted,
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  Speaker 1: my Scottish maid could do better well. His wife agreed
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  Speaker 1: and encouraged him to bring Fleming on as an assistant,
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  Speaker 1: and Wilhelmina excelled, transitioning from dustine and changing diapers to
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  Speaker 1: studying the data coming into the observatory. Pickering even taught
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  Speaker 1: her how to analyze how light or spectra broke down
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  Speaker 1: from the stars. She then viewed this spectra on photographic
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  Speaker 1: plates provided to her by him. He obtained these images
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  Speaker 1: by positioning a prism in front of the telescope's lens,
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  Speaker 1: which split the light into a spectrum of dark and
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  Speaker 1: light bands, much like a fingerprint. Each array was unique,
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  Speaker 1: and it was Fleming's job to examine them and record
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  Speaker 1: any anomalies, and she did cataloging the stars based on
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  Speaker 1: the amounts of hydrogen present in their spectra. Now, her
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  Speaker 1: official title might be confusing to folks today. It was computer,
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  Speaker 1: which was what typists and analysts were called back then.
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  Speaker 1: She even started a group at the college called the
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  Speaker 1: Harvard Computers, made up entirely of women who worked for Pickering,
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  Speaker 1: doing jobs just like hers. But she didn't stop there.
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  Speaker 1: Wilhelmina went above and beyond, earning a spot on a
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  Speaker 1: new project called the Henry Draper Catalog. It was being
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  Speaker 1: funded by Mary Anna Draper, whose late husband, Henry, had
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  Speaker 1: been an astronomer and the first person to take a
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  Speaker 1: photograph of the Moon using a telescope. Wilhelmina was appointed
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  Speaker 1: the leader of the project, but wound up budding heads
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  Speaker 1: with her colleague and fellow astronomer and Tonia Maury. Maury
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  Speaker 1: wanted to classify the stars using their temperatures, size, and
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  Speaker 1: the strength of their spectra. It was a more complicated
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  Speaker 1: way of organizing the data, whereas Wilhelmina chose to utilize
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  Speaker 1: a simple alphabetical method for classifying the stars instead. Eventually,
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  Speaker 1: Wilhelmina's system was improved by another computer, Annie jump Canon,
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  Speaker 1: who organized the stars based on their surface temperatures. This
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  Speaker 1: became known as the Harvard System of Spectral classification and
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  Speaker 1: is still used to this day. The Henry Draper Catalog
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  Speaker 1: was completed in eighteen ninety and contained over ten thousand stars,
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  Speaker 1: many of which had been classified by Wilhelmina herself. Her
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  Speaker 1: work eventually earned her the position of Curator of Astronomical
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  Speaker 1: Photographs at Harvard, the first woman to step into such
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  Speaker 1: a role. But perhaps her most recognized accomplishment occurred two
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  Speaker 1: years before the publication of the Henry Draper Catalog. In
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  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight, Wilhelmina was examining a photo grammatory plate
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  Speaker 1: given to her by William Pickering, Edward's brother. She noted
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  Speaker 1: a nebula among the constellation Orion, with a semi circular
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  Speaker 1: indentation five minutes in diameter thirty minutes south of Zeta. Orionis.
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  Speaker 1: To the average stargazer, it looked just like a horse,
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  Speaker 1: hence its name, the horsehead Nebula. She also went on
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  Speaker 1: to identify the first white dwarf star, although her name
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  Speaker 1: was left off of almost every one of her discoveries.
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  Speaker 1: Almost all of them had been attributed to the Pickerings.
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  Speaker 1: It would be another twenty years before she'd get the
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  Speaker 1: credit that she rightly deserved. Willemina Fleming started out her
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  Speaker 1: career as a maid, an important job for sure, but
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  Speaker 1: one that seriously underutilized her talents. She went down in
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  Speaker 1: history as a prolific astronomer, a staunch supporter of women
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  Speaker 1: in science. It turned out that Edward Pickering was right
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  Speaker 1: all along. His Scottish maid could do better. Humankind is
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  Speaker 1: no stranger to atrocity. Look throughout history and it's clear
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  Speaker 1: that there isn't much humanity to be found within humanity,
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  Speaker 1: and few horrors measure up to what the Nazi regime
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  Speaker 1: carried out during the Second World War. They murdered millions
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  Speaker 1: and performed countless acts of torture on men, women, and
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  Speaker 1: children from all over Europe. At the center of it
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  Speaker 1: all was the Nazis belief that the world should be
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  Speaker 1: rid of inferior races and populated with only the finest
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  Speaker 1: aryan offspring children who were deemed what they called racially
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  Speaker 1: pure and of pure blood. And so in nineteen thirty five,
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  Speaker 1: the lebans Born Project was started. It was the brainchild
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  Speaker 1: of Heinrich Himler, Hitler's second in command and one of
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  Speaker 1: the main drivers behind the Holocaust. Laban's Born or Fount
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  Speaker 1: of Life, became a primary endeavor for Himler in his
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  Speaker 1: pursuit of eugenic supremacy for the Nazis. It was originally
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  Speaker 1: centered around providing support for families who were of the
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  Speaker 1: proper lineage with big sarcastic air quotes here in the
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  Speaker 1: recording booth trust me. This also meant caring for wards
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  Speaker 1: of the state and single mothers if they were of
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  Speaker 1: the correct racial and biological makeup. Single pregnant women who
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  Speaker 1: needed help could come to a Laban's More maternity home
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  Speaker 1: and give birth without facing judgment from their family. But unfortunately,
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  Speaker 1: the initiative grew into more than a welfare system for
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  Speaker 1: down on their luck German women. The goal was to
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  Speaker 1: increase the birth rate, and so women were often recruited
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  Speaker 1: to partner with s S officers in order to give
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  Speaker 1: birth to the next generation of Nazi soldiers, and the
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  Speaker 1: program wasn't just confined to Germany either. By ninety nine,
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  Speaker 1: numbers were not growing fast enough, so more extreme measures
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  Speaker 1: needed to be taken. The Nazis kidnapped children from other
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  Speaker 1: countries such as Norway and Russia, and the native populations
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  Speaker 1: of those countries also gave birth to hap German offspring,
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  Speaker 1: the father's being Nazi soldiers. One of those children, born
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  Speaker 1: in November of ninety was Annie Freed sinny Lnshtad. She
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  Speaker 1: was born in Balingen, Norway, where she lived with her father,
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  Speaker 1: a Wehrmacht sergeant, and her mother and grandmother. After the war,
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  Speaker 1: her father went back to Germany, though, leaving Annie Freed
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  Speaker 1: and her family behind. However, they didn't stay there for long.
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  Speaker 1: Afraid that they might be attacked for helping the Nazis,
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  Speaker 1: Annie Frieda and her grandmother fled to Sweden, while her
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  Speaker 1: mother stayed back in Norway to work, reuniting with them
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  Speaker 1: a few years later. After the tragic passing of her
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  Speaker 1: mother to kidney failure at the young age of twenty one,
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  Speaker 1: young Annie Freed and her grandmother moved around Sweden before
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  Speaker 1: settling down in ninety. She had a lonely upbringing, but
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  Speaker 1: spent many of her summers with her aunts and uncle
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  Speaker 1: back in Norway, giving her a connection to her home country,
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  Speaker 1: and when she returned to Sweden, her grandmother was there
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  Speaker 1: to welcome her back. Annie Fried's grandmother often sang old
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  Speaker 1: Norwegian songs around the house, instilling a love of music
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  Speaker 1: and her granddaughter. This passion blossomed as she grew up.
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  Speaker 1: She perform armed in school and around town for others,
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  Speaker 1: but her first real foray into professional entertainment came when
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  Speaker 1: she was a teenager, kicking off her career by singing
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  Speaker 1: with a fifteen piece big band. She trained on jazz
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  Speaker 1: standards and came to idolize the vocal stylings of American
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  Speaker 1: singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee. As she got older,
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  Speaker 1: Anna Freed went on television and won a record deal
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  Speaker 1: after her first appearance. This ultimately led to her first album,
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  Speaker 1: titled Frieda, after her nickname growing up. It was released
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one and produced by Benny Anderson, her
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  Speaker 1: fiance at the time. Benny was friends with another married couple,
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  Speaker 1: Agnetha and her husband Biorn, who performed as backup singers
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  Speaker 1: on one of Frieda's hit songs. They sounded good together too,
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  Speaker 1: and over the next few years the foursome began singing
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  Speaker 1: under the name Biorn and Benny. Agnetha and Annie Freed,
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  Speaker 1: which didn't exactly quite fit on any marquees. It wasn't
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  Speaker 1: until nineteen seventy three when the band's manager, Stig Anderson
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  Speaker 1: helped them find their new identity t He'd been referring
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  Speaker 1: to them with the shorthand version of their names for
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  Speaker 1: a while and decided to just make it official. From
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  Speaker 1: that point on, Bjorn and Benny, Agnetha and Annie Freed
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  Speaker 1: were no more using just their initials. He combined them
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  Speaker 1: together into a single word, and the rest was musical history.
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  Speaker 1: World War Two led to some truly horrendous crimes by
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  Speaker 1: some of the worst people on the planet, but out
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  Speaker 1: of that horror came a voice, one that went on
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  Speaker 1: to define a generation, the Voice of Aba. I hope
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  Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
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  Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious
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  Speaker 1: yeah h