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Amazing Story · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
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  Speaker 1: full 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. When a child breaks a window, there's usually
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  Speaker 1: a complicated story behind what happened, like how the wind
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  Speaker 1: blew the ball away, and then a bird caught it
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  Speaker 1: and dropped it as it was flying over the house,
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  Speaker 1: which sent it crashing through the window. Never mind the
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  Speaker 1: bat in the kid's hand. Richard sharp Shaver also had
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  Speaker 1: some wild stories in his back pockets. Born in Virginia
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  Speaker 1: in seven, Richard of actually grew up to work in
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  Speaker 1: a factory where one day in nineteen thirty two, he
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  Speaker 1: experienced a bizarre event. It was around that time that
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  Speaker 1: he realized that his welding gun had become calibrated in
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  Speaker 1: such a way that it gave him the ability to
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  Speaker 1: hear other men's thoughts. Not only that, apparently the signal
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  Speaker 1: was so strong that he was able to hear demonic
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  Speaker 1: beans deep below the surface of the Earth as they
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  Speaker 1: tortured other people. Now, the story behind how he came
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  Speaker 1: to possess these powers changed almost every time he told it,
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  Speaker 1: but he always swore that it was true. Richard eventually
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  Speaker 1: had to quit his job, but the factory. He also
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  Speaker 1: gave up his home. As he put it, he became
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  Speaker 1: a hobo for several years before writing a letter to
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  Speaker 1: the popular science fiction magazine called Amazing Stories back in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen forty three. In the letter, Richard told the editors
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  Speaker 1: that he had discovered Man tongue, an ancient proto human
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  Speaker 1: language that predated all other known languages on Earth. Every
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  Speaker 1: syllable and sound in Man tongue had a double meaning,
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  Speaker 1: and Richard could translate those sounds using a special formula
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  Speaker 1: he developed. He provided editor Ray Palmer with that formulas
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  Speaker 1: so that he could see for himself. Palmer used his
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  Speaker 1: technique to reveal the hidden meanings to a handful of words,
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  Speaker 1: and then replied to Richard asking him how he had
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  Speaker 1: discovered this language. Richard had been prepared for that question
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  Speaker 1: with a ten thousand word explanation. He told Palmer that
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  Speaker 1: mantongue had originated among a prehistoric alien race that were
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  Speaker 1: technologically advanced beyond anything they had ever seen. They had
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  Speaker 1: carved out massive cities under the Earth, but fled the
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  Speaker 1: planet due to the Sun's harmful rays. Not all of
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  Speaker 1: them had left, though, and those who remained behind were
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  Speaker 1: split into two different groups. The Terrots were a minority
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  Speaker 1: who had retained their humanity. The other group devolved into
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  Speaker 1: beast like creatures known as Darros or detrimental robots. The Darros,
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  Speaker 1: he claimed, still occupied those cities underground, occasionally snatching a
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  Speaker 1: person from the service to take them down below. Those
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  Speaker 1: humans were then tortured and fed to the Darros. Those
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  Speaker 1: awful creatures had been known to communicate with aliens in
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  Speaker 1: space and use rocket ships to get around. How did
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  Speaker 1: Richard know all of this well. He claimed to have
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  Speaker 1: been captured by the Darros and held against his will
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  Speaker 1: for years. Palmer was entertained by the story, and he
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  Speaker 1: fleshed it out into a novella, which he then published
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  Speaker 1: in Amazing Stories in March of The magazine had gotten
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  Speaker 1: its fair share of letters to the editor before, but
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  Speaker 1: Richard's stories seemed to have sparked a movement. Thousands of
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  Speaker 1: letters poured into Palmer's office from readers who said that
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  Speaker 1: they had also encountered the Darros and heard voices inside
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  Speaker 1: their heads, just as Richard had. Back in nineteen thirty two,
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  Speaker 1: one woman told Palmer that she had been taken captive
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  Speaker 1: in Paris and was kidnapped after writing a secret elevator
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  Speaker 1: into the building's sub basement. She was held in the
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  Speaker 1: underground caverns until a terrorists found her and let her go.
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  Speaker 1: It seems that Richard's story hadn't just connected with readers,
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  Speaker 1: it had spawned an entire organization known as the Richard
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  Speaker 1: Mystery Club, and local chapters started popping up all over America.
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  Speaker 1: Richard continued to supply Amazing Stories with his well Amazing Stories.
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  Speaker 1: The magazine published his tales for years until a massive
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  Speaker 1: letter writing campaign forced them to stop. Authors like Harlan
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  Speaker 1: Ellison called Richard a publicity hound just looking for attention,
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  Speaker 1: while other readers believed his stories were symptoms of mental illness.
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  Speaker 1: Whatever the reason, Amazing Stories cut ties with Richard in
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  Speaker 1: but he never cut ties with his prehistoric races. He
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  Speaker 1: started writing about the artifacts that he'd found that backed
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  Speaker 1: up his claims, such as books made of rocks with
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  Speaker 1: text and pictures etched inside them. He never again experienced
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  Speaker 1: the kind of success that he'd found while writing for
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  Speaker 1: Amazing Stories, though decades later his photographs and art would
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  Speaker 1: go on display in museums all over the country. But
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  Speaker 1: as hails of prehistoric beings living below the earth were
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  Speaker 1: written off as run of the mills science fiction. Through
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  Speaker 1: it all, Richard sharp Shaver continued to believe that his
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  Speaker 1: stories were true, as did the thousands of witnesses who
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  Speaker 1: wrote into the magazine with their own frightening recollections. Was
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  Speaker 1: Richard telling the truth? It's difficult to know for sure
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  Speaker 1: until we do, though, it's probably best to watch our
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  Speaker 1: step and avoid those secret elevators. Big ideas often start
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  Speaker 1: out small. We solve a tiny problem that we deal
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  Speaker 1: with every day, and then our solution finds its way
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  Speaker 1: to others with similar problems. It grows, and all we
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  Speaker 1: had to do was give it a little light. In
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  Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, Westinghouse engineer Frank Conrad started a small experimental
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  Speaker 1: radio station out of his Pennsylvania garage. During World War Two,
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  Speaker 1: Conrad moved his operation to the top of the westing
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  Speaker 1: House factory in Pittsburgh once the war ended, The westing
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  Speaker 1: House Company, with Conrad's help launched the first commercially licensed
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  Speaker 1: radio station in America called k d k A. Over
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  Speaker 1: the years, radio would go through several transformations, from transmitting
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  Speaker 1: wartime news and information to broadcasting ads, supported entertainment, and
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  Speaker 1: everything in between. Heck, you might have learned about this
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  Speaker 1: podcast by listening to the radio, and as the technology grew,
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  Speaker 1: so did broadcast signals. However, there were certain areas of
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  Speaker 1: the world where radio waves just couldn't reach. During the
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  Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, Millet Morgan, a radio physics professor at Dartmouth,
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  Speaker 1: had one particular place in mind, Antarctica. He had discovered
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  Speaker 1: that lightning and auroras generated natural radio waves and believed
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  Speaker 1: that those waves could be manipulated into carrying broadcasts from
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  Speaker 1: other countries or even submarines. His idea was simple, at
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  Speaker 1: least he thought so. He would generate artificial versions of
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  Speaker 1: these natural waves, which he called whistlers, using an island,
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  Speaker 1: yeah an entire island. He began his search for the
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  Speaker 1: perfect venue in the Pacific Ocean, which possessed numerous islands
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  Speaker 1: of the appropriate size and shape. Unfortunately, these islands were
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  Speaker 1: home to freshwater lenses, thin layers of fresh groundwater that
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  Speaker 1: sat atop heavier salt water. These lenses would have caused
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  Speaker 1: interference with any nearby radio signals. His next potential location
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  Speaker 1: looked a lot more promising. It was called Deception Island,
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  Speaker 1: a volcanic island off the coast of Antarctica. A profitable
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  Speaker 1: ceiling operation had been built on Deception Island in the
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  Speaker 1: early eighteen hundreds until the local seal population was close
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  Speaker 1: to going extinct. Then it became a hot spot for whalers,
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  Speaker 1: who erected crude homes and factories there until the nineteen
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  Speaker 1: thirties when their industry collapsed and Deception Island seemed perfect
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  Speaker 1: on paper. The area was known to produce a large
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  Speaker 1: number of the whistlers needed to carry a signal. It's
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  Speaker 1: ring like lagoon even had a name made for radio
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  Speaker 1: telephon Bay. Morgan drew up plans for his island antenna.
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  Speaker 1: He would bounce radio waves between a web of transmission
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  Speaker 1: lines and the local mountain ranges. As the waves relayed
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  Speaker 1: back and forth, they would concentrate into a signal that
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  Speaker 1: could be transmitted back to military subs in the area
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  Speaker 1: or listeners on the island itself. Now, Morgan's proposal was
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  Speaker 1: never put into action. But he wasn't alone in believing
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  Speaker 1: that the earth itself could be used as an antenna.
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  Speaker 1: As early as nineteen o four, U. S. Army General
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  Speaker 1: George Owen Squire realized that trees could do the talking.
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  Speaker 1: In nineteen Squire climbed up an oak tree near Washington,
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  Speaker 1: d C. And hammered a nail into its trunk. Then
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  Speaker 1: he ran an insulated wire down to an old Army
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  Speaker 1: radio back on the ground. The tree became an ton
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  Speaker 1: of that carried a signal from Germany four thousand miles away,
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  Speaker 1: right to Squire's ears. With some fine tuning, he found
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  Speaker 1: that he could pick up messages from ships and other
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  Speaker 1: locations all over the world. Scientific American wrote about Squire's
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  Speaker 1: fluorophone and refer to the transmissions it picked up as
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  Speaker 1: Flora Graham's. His efforts were tested again in nineteen seventy five,
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  Speaker 1: when a group of scientists traveled to South America and
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  Speaker 1: compared their artificial antenna that they brought with them to
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  Speaker 1: those made of the local trees. After a thorough test
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  Speaker 1: in the Panamanian jungle, they determined that it would be
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  Speaker 1: possible to cultivate a forest designed exclusively for collecting and
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  Speaker 1: broadcasting radio signals over vast distances, all of that power
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  Speaker 1: from something as simple as a tree. Curious to say
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  Speaker 1: the least. In the end, maybe it's a good thing
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  Speaker 1: that the birds outside our windows only have their whistles
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  Speaker 1: and warbles to wake us up with in the morning.
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  Speaker 1: Imagine the noise complaint if someone plugged them microphone into
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  Speaker 1: a maple tree. 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 World of Lore dot com. And until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. Yeah,