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Home Weird Home · 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 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: In the fall of the effects of the Roaring Twenties
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  Speaker 1: literally came crashing down. Americans had left their farms in
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  Speaker 1: rural towns for the promises of wealth and excess only
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  Speaker 1: found in big cities. Unfortunately, the stock market, which had
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  Speaker 1: been on a meteoric rise, finally fell from the sky
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  Speaker 1: and took with it the fortunes of countless investors. This
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  Speaker 1: kicked off a period of time known as the Great Oppression,
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  Speaker 1: which lasted from nineteen twenty nine until nineteen thirty nine,
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  Speaker 1: and during those ten years people lost their jobs, their homes,
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  Speaker 1: and even their lives. But one man refused to let
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  Speaker 1: the depression get him down. Instead, he channeled his sadness,
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  Speaker 1: his anger, and the last of his money into some
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  Speaker 1: prime swamp front property in New Jersey. His name was
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  Speaker 1: George Dyer, and he believed that he had been led
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  Speaker 1: to New Jersey by an angel. This same angel allegedly
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  Speaker 1: gave him a vision of what he would build on
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  Speaker 1: the four acres of land that he purchased for four dollars,
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  Speaker 1: and so George walked for ten days and one twelve
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  Speaker 1: miles to the South Jersey town of Vinland. Once he arrived,
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  Speaker 1: he got to work building himself a house with whatever
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  Speaker 1: he could find around him. The walls were crafted from
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  Speaker 1: random rocks and pieces of cement, while he used old
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  Speaker 1: car chassis to make floorboards. Fenders were bent into gables,
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  Speaker 1: and he repurposed old bed frames as doors. He even
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  Speaker 1: made the paint from scratch by grinding up red bricks
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  Speaker 1: into motor oil. Any object, vehicle part, or piece of
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  Speaker 1: debris was fair game for inclusion in the home. Wagon
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  Speaker 1: wheels formed the base of towers he built around its perimeter,
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  Speaker 1: and he carved up a massive cypress log for his
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  Speaker 1: dining table. The chairs were made from smaller stumps. Around
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  Speaker 1: the exterior of the property, George had dug out ponds
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  Speaker 1: and cultivated gardens to keep himself going. He relied on
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  Speaker 1: the natural New Jersey fauna for sustenance. There were plenty
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  Speaker 1: of rabbits and fish to eat, as well as squirrels
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  Speaker 1: and even the occasional frog. By the time he finished
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty two, he was ready to unveil his
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  Speaker 1: Depression Palace to the world. George Dyer had built it
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  Speaker 1: to show visitors that they didn't have to let the
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  Speaker 1: current economy keep them down. He believed that and I quote,
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  Speaker 1: education by thought can lift all the depressed peoples out
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  Speaker 1: of any depression, calamity, or catastrophe. George Daner welcomed people
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  Speaker 1: into the palace for twenty five cents apiece and gave
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  Speaker 1: them grand tours of the various rooms he had structed.
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  Speaker 1: For example, he had guests crawled through an area named
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  Speaker 1: the Jersey Devil's Den before visiting a room he called
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  Speaker 1: the Knockout Room. This room was home to a single chair,
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  Speaker 1: above which George Danner had hung a large boulder. He
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  Speaker 1: encouraged anyone who wanted to forget their troubles to sit
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  Speaker 1: in the chair and let the boulder take away those worries.
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  Speaker 1: No one, as far as we can tell, ever sat
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  Speaker 1: in that chair. George was quite a character and a
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  Speaker 1: brilliant marketer. Robert Ripley of Ripley's believe it or Not.
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  Speaker 1: Fame published a cartoon about the Depression Palace, and George
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  Speaker 1: appeared on the nineteen fifties human interest television program You
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  Speaker 1: Asked For It. A documentary film titled The Fantastic Palace
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  Speaker 1: was also made by Universal Pictures and followed the intrepid
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  Speaker 1: homeowner around the house on one of his tours. The
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  Speaker 1: Depression Palace's popularity came to a head in nineteen fifty seven, though,
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  Speaker 1: when George Daner inserted himself into a very serious criminal investigation.
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  Speaker 1: An infant named Peter Weinberg had been kidnapped in New
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  Speaker 1: York State. The police and the FBI searched for weeks
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  Speaker 1: and were eventually led to the Depression Palace by Danner himself.
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  Speaker 1: He claimed that he had been contacted by the kidnappers,
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  Speaker 1: who had allegedly stowed the child in one of the
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  Speaker 1: dungeons in his home. The authorities arrived and George was
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  Speaker 1: forced to admit that the whole thing had been a charade.
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  Speaker 1: He'd done it for the attention and to draw more
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  Speaker 1: tourists to the house. As punishment for providing false information
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  Speaker 1: to federal officials, he was sentenced to one year in prison.
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  Speaker 1: The house was left abandoned, and tourists kept coming, but
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  Speaker 1: not for guided tours. They picked the place clean and
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  Speaker 1: stole all sorts of random objects from the property. They
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  Speaker 1: even burned down part of the house. Danner was released
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  Speaker 1: one year later at the ripe old age of one hundred.
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  Speaker 1: He was an old, broke and broken man with almost
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  Speaker 1: nothing to his name. His home was in a serious
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  Speaker 1: state of disrepair, which he was too old and destitute
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  Speaker 1: to fix up himself. He died on October nineteen sixty four,
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  Speaker 1: at the age of one and four. The city eventually
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  Speaker 1: tore the rest of the structure down in nineteen sixty nine,
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  Speaker 1: but it wouldn't be gone forever. In two thousand one,
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  Speaker 1: a nonprofit organization took up the cause to restore the
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  Speaker 1: eccentric home back to its former glory. Over the next
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  Speaker 1: sixteen years, with help from numerous grants and donations, the
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  Speaker 1: Palace of Depression was mostly rebuilt, and a small museum
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  Speaker 1: was at a next door. This strange and unconventional home
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  Speaker 1: continues to persist through depressions, recessions, abandonment, and new ownership,
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  Speaker 1: truly living up to the reason it was built in
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  Speaker 1: the first place. The show people everywhere that no matter
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  Speaker 1: how things get, home can be anywhere you make it,
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  Speaker 1: even apparently if that home is made out of old
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  Speaker 1: card parts and bed frames. One of the oldest sports
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  Speaker 1: in history also happens to be one of the most violent.
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  Speaker 1: The concept of fighting another person has existed since the
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  Speaker 1: dawn of humanity, but fighting someone for sports can be
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  Speaker 1: charted all the way back to the third millennium BC,
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  Speaker 1: possibly even earlier. We simply don't know because of the
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  Speaker 1: lack of written record from before that point. And while
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  Speaker 1: boxing has taken on many forms over the years, the
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  Speaker 1: sport we recognized today seems to find its early roots
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  Speaker 1: in England during the sixteenth century. Back then, it was
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  Speaker 1: called bare knuckle boxing or prize fighting. This was an
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  Speaker 1: era before weight classes were established, before they even had
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  Speaker 1: referees to call a match. As time passed, though, boxing
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  Speaker 1: as a sport was often outlawed and considered no different
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  Speaker 1: than any other illegal activity, but it sure was popular,
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  Speaker 1: so much so that Thomas Edison and his staff filmed
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  Speaker 1: a fights in his New Jersey film studio in the
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  Speaker 1: eighteen nineties. You see, Edison wanted to test his new
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  Speaker 1: kinscope by showing short films that he had made at
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  Speaker 1: the studio. This boxing movie would be one of them.
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  Speaker 1: In the film, two fighters named Sullivan and Corbetts went
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  Speaker 1: head to head their hands clad in boxing gloves, as
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  Speaker 1: their manager watched from outside the ring. The manager was
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  Speaker 1: a circus owner by the name of Professor Wilton, and
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  Speaker 1: his traveling show was quite a spectacle. Forty performers entertained
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  Speaker 1: audiences with daring feats of danger, such as jumping through
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  Speaker 1: flaming hoops and putting up fires. Walton's circus made appearances
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  Speaker 1: at countless vaudeville theaters all over the US at the
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  Speaker 1: turn of the century. The man himself was quite an
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  Speaker 1: established trainer up to that point, which made sense. Most
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  Speaker 1: of his family was in the training business as well.
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  Speaker 1: Sullivan and Corbett had trained for two years before they
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  Speaker 1: made the Edison film. The movie was directed by William
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  Speaker 1: Kennedy Dixon, one of Edison's employees and the man responsible
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  Speaker 1: for bringing both the kinetograph camera and the kinetoscope to life.
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  Speaker 1: He also came up with the idea for using thirty
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  Speaker 1: five millimeter perforated film in both advices, but the accountants
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  Speaker 1: at Edison Studios weren't convinced that people wanted to see
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  Speaker 1: a boxing match on film. After all, they'd witnessed such
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  Speaker 1: exciting sequences as a handshake in which a man and
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  Speaker 1: a woman shook hands for four seconds, as well as
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  Speaker 1: fred OTTs sneeze five second tour to force, where one
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  Speaker 1: man experienced the earth shattering relief of unclogged nostrils on camera.
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  Speaker 1: Dixon and his cameraman, William Hays, believe the boxing match
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  Speaker 1: would not only be exciting but also profitable. With kinetoscopes
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  Speaker 1: starting to appear in most major cities, people were going
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  Speaker 1: to line up and pay whatever it took to see
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  Speaker 1: the fight of the century, and so the filmmakers pointed
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  Speaker 1: the camera straight at the boxing ring they had set
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  Speaker 1: up in their West Orange studio. The fighters were brought in,
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  Speaker 1: gloved and ready for action as Professor Welton took a
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  Speaker 1: seat behind them. Watching the film today, it's hard not
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  Speaker 1: to sneak a glance at Welton, who can't seem to
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  Speaker 1: take his eyes off of Corbett and Sullivan as they
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  Speaker 1: rained down punches on each other for a whopping twenty seconds.
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  Speaker 1: That's right, Their new movie tripled the length of their
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  Speaker 1: previous endeavors. It was a glimpse into the future of cinema,
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  Speaker 1: as stories would require more time and more film to
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  Speaker 1: say everything they needed to say and what didn't you
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  Speaker 1: know it? The boxing picture was a hit and not
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  Speaker 1: only demonstrated the capabilities of Edison's technologies, but also the
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  Speaker 1: skill with which Professor Welton trained his fighters. After all,
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't easy tying such boxing gloves on their little paws.
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  Speaker 1: Oh I'm sorry, I forgot to mention Professor Welton was
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  Speaker 1: in charge of a traveling cat circus. His fantastic feelines
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  Speaker 1: could do all sorts of tricks like ride bicycles and
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  Speaker 1: walk across tight ropes. In fact, the cats were so
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  Speaker 1: well trained it only took Dixon in Heists one take
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  Speaker 1: to get the footage they needed of the fighting fee lines.
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  Speaker 1: You may not be able to teach an old dog
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  Speaker 1: new tricks, but Professor Welton proved that you can at
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  Speaker 1: least teach a couple of cats two box. 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.