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High and Low · 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 right
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  Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to the cabinet of curiosities. Being a movie star has
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  Speaker 1: its ups and downs, I assume anyway. Sure you have
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  Speaker 1: fame and fortune, but one bad film and it can
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  Speaker 1: be lights out for your career. As movies get more
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  Speaker 1: and more expensive to make and actors demand more money
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  Speaker 1: for the roles they play, the expectation of success grows
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  Speaker 1: exponentially higher. Studios place a lot of pressure on certain
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  Speaker 1: stars to deliver big box office numbers. It must seem
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  Speaker 1: bad enough for an actor to feel responsible for a
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  Speaker 1: film success, but imagine being an actor and being responsible
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  Speaker 1: for an entire economy. That's Adam Chang's burden to bear.
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  Speaker 1: Chang was the star of a Chinese television drama a
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  Speaker 1: debut in late nineteen two titled The Greed of Man.
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  Speaker 1: The series focused on two childhood friends and their influence
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  Speaker 1: on the Asian stock exchange once they reached adulthood. It
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  Speaker 1: was a soap opera about power, corruption, and family, and
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  Speaker 1: even though it only ran for a short time, it
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  Speaker 1: became a huge hit. Forty episodes aired, and the show
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  Speaker 1: can still be watched in reruns today. Adam Chang played
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  Speaker 1: the character of Ting Hi, a man who spoiler alert,
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  Speaker 1: killed the corrupt leader of the Asian Stock Exchange over
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  Speaker 1: a woman they both loved. The murder resulted in a
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  Speaker 1: catastrophic economic crash, sparking poverty, violence, and even war. And
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  Speaker 1: that was just on the TV show, But reality wasn't
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  Speaker 1: much different. When the series first aired on October, Hong
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  Speaker 1: Kong's Hang Sang index fell by almost six hundred points.
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  Speaker 1: In September two thousand, an unofficial sequel titled Divine Retribution aired,
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  Speaker 1: and the index dropped a total of one thousand, seven
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  Speaker 1: hundred fifteen points, a crash so powerful that it led
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  Speaker 1: to instability across other markets. Fifteen years later, television stations
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  Speaker 1: began airing reruns of The Greed of Man and Divine Retribution,
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  Speaker 1: and the Hang Sang fell once more, by almost five
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  Speaker 1: hundred sixty points that day. If the stock market crashed
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  Speaker 1: every time these television shows aired, then why did networks
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  Speaker 1: show them at all? That's because the eerie phenomenon wasn't
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  Speaker 1: limited to just these two series. The Hang Sang fell
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  Speaker 1: more than two thousand points in November after the series
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  Speaker 1: Instinct first aired, followed by another sharp drop of three
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  Speaker 1: hundred points two years later when a series called Once
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  Speaker 1: Upon a Time in Shanghai debut. The trend continued for
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  Speaker 1: shows like Cold Blood, Warm Heart, Blade Heart, and Master
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  Speaker 1: of Play. Master of Play alone triggered a ten percent
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  Speaker 1: drop from October of all the way to April of
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  Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, there were fifteen separate instances of the
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  Speaker 1: Hang Sang index posting significant losses, all of which were
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  Speaker 1: tied to the premieres of various television shows, and the
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  Speaker 1: X factor tying them all together Adam Chang. The ting
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  Speaker 1: Hai effect, as it's called, has such a reputation that
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  Speaker 1: academic papers have been written trying to explain where the
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  Speaker 1: phenomenon came from and why it keeps happening. Some economists
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  Speaker 1: believe that superstitious brokers in China sell off stock right
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  Speaker 1: before a change series premiere, thus inadvertently triggering the crash themselves.
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  Speaker 1: What started out as a market anomaly seems to have
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  Speaker 1: become a self fulfilling prophecy, but die hard believers don't
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  Speaker 1: buy that explanation. To them a new Adam Chang series
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  Speaker 1: is a harbinger of doom for their portfolios. Bloggers have
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  Speaker 1: you and called for stations airing Chang series to be
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  Speaker 1: charged with manipulating the markets and for any future projects
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  Speaker 1: of his to be canceled. But the ting high effect
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  Speaker 1: hasn't affected the man supposedly behind it. Despite the pleas
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  Speaker 1: from bloggers and investors, Chang still acts in films and
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  Speaker 1: television shows today with over seventy credits to his name,
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  Speaker 1: and he's not bothered by what people say about him either.
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  Speaker 1: It just can't be true, but I'm used to it now,
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  Speaker 1: he said to him. The whole thing is nothing but
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  Speaker 1: a bit of dramatic fiction. We tend to believe what
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  Speaker 1: we learn in history class is set in stone, it's unchanging.
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  Speaker 1: We don't think about implicit biases or who is writing
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  Speaker 1: the history we read. The going philosophy is if it's
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  Speaker 1: in a text book, it must be true. Nowadays we
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  Speaker 1: know that's not always the case, and that history literally
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  Speaker 1: is written by the victors. Cultures have been lost or
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  Speaker 1: whitewashed due to controversy or inconvenience for those holding the pens.
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  Speaker 1: Take Australia, for example. According to the history books. The
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  Speaker 1: Dutch were the first group of Europeans to set foot
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  Speaker 1: in Australia. In sixteen o six, William Joan Soon and
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  Speaker 1: twenty nine other Dutch sailors navigated its coasts, calling it
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  Speaker 1: New Holland. Years later, the British did what they always
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  Speaker 1: did upon arriving in a new land. They colonized it.
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  Speaker 1: Pretty soon all of Australia belonged to England. Mike I said,
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  Speaker 1: that's what the history books tell us, But the history
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  Speaker 1: books don't tell us everything. If reports are true, Even
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  Speaker 1: the Dutch weren't the first to stroll across Australia's shores.
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  Speaker 1: A century earlier, a group of Portuguese explorers were said
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  Speaker 1: to have crashed off the southern coast, their ship going
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  Speaker 1: lost in what is now Armstrong, but what happened to
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  Speaker 1: the men aboard remains a mystery even now. Reports of
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  Speaker 1: a shipwreck it didn't appear until the nineteenth century, when
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  Speaker 1: dozens of eye witnesses claimed to have seen its surface
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  Speaker 1: from beneath the waves. One moment, it's jagged wooden frame
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  Speaker 1: would rise from the depths, the next it had slipped
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  Speaker 1: away again like a mirage. The mahogany ship, they called it,
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  Speaker 1: though it wasn't actually made of mahogany, its unique design
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  Speaker 1: appeared to be made of a dark wood different from
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  Speaker 1: other vessels. Rumors swirled as stories of the wreck circulated
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  Speaker 1: around the region. It was a Spanish galleon filled with
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  Speaker 1: gold the bloons, or it was really three separate holes
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  Speaker 1: that came and went with the tide. Accounts were varied,
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  Speaker 1: but there was enough consistent detail across all of them
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  Speaker 1: to lend credibility to the original claim that a small
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  Speaker 1: ship not of Dutch origin had crashed and sunk off
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  Speaker 1: the coast of Australia. Original witnesses claimed it came from
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  Speaker 1: Spain or Peru, given the prominence of such ships as
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  Speaker 1: the Santa Isabelle or the Santa Anna. However, the theory
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  Speaker 1: of it being Portuguese was first proposed in in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy seven book by Australian historian Kenneth McIntyre. According to McIntyre,
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  Speaker 1: the mahogany ship had joined two others from Portugal on
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  Speaker 1: a secret expedition to find the Isles of Gold, led
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  Speaker 1: by Portuguese explorer Christa val de Mendonza. The ships set
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  Speaker 1: sail into Spanish owned waters, careful to avoid upsetting Spain
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  Speaker 1: by claiming land within its territory. Upon discovering Australia, one
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  Speaker 1: of the ships crashed, which spooked Mendonza and forced him
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  Speaker 1: and his men to return to Portugal. Any records of
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  Speaker 1: the crash or the voyage were locked away forever never since.
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  Speaker 1: The stories surrounding the Mahogany Ship have turned it from
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  Speaker 1: a myth into a full blown legend. Searches for its
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  Speaker 1: remains have been ongoing since the late eighteen nineties. Towns,
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  Speaker 1: private companies, and nonprofits have all sponsored investigations into the
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  Speaker 1: ship's whereabouts, but nothing has ever turned up. Any artifacts
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  Speaker 1: or wooden pieces dredged up from the water have been
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  Speaker 1: debunked as parts of other wrecks, which have made searching
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  Speaker 1: for this particular ship very difficult. Speculations surrounding the Mahogany
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  Speaker 1: ships provenance has also changed with the passing decades, as
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  Speaker 1: one set of evidence negates another, and historians all over
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  Speaker 1: the world argue as to the vessel's origin. But the
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  Speaker 1: one thing everyone can agree on is that somewhere beneath
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  Speaker 1: the sand and sea is a ghost ship haunting the
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  Speaker 1: minds of those who dare to believe, and one day,
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  Speaker 1: when it finally surfaces for good, it may very well
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  Speaker 1: change everything we know about an entire continent, and for
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  Speaker 1: modern historians, that's sure to give them arise. 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 Mankey 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.