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Toxic · 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: Virginia shivered as she limped along the mountain road, her
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  Speaker 1: prosthetic leg dragging in the deep snow. There was nothing
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  Speaker 1: but danger and death behind her. In France, the Gestapo
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  Speaker 1: had learned her identity, and she'd woken days ago to
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  Speaker 1: find her own face staring back at her from thousands
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  Speaker 1: of posters that blanketed the city. Her only hope now
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  Speaker 1: was Spain. She wondered what would happen if she died
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  Speaker 1: out here, crossing the Pyrenees on foot. Would anyone find her?
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  Speaker 1: Would her body make it back to America? Because if
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  Speaker 1: Virginia had done her job well, no one would ever
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  Speaker 1: know who she was. And Virginia was very, very good
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  Speaker 1: at her job. Born in nineteen oh six in Baltimore, Maryland,
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  Speaker 1: to a middle class family, Virginia discovered early on that
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  Speaker 1: she longed for adventure. She was great with languages, so
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  Speaker 1: after studying French, Italian, and German in college, she ended
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  Speaker 1: up moving to Poland. There she worked as a clerk
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  Speaker 1: in the US embassy in Warsaw. Her real ambition, though,
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  Speaker 1: was to be a diplomat. Virginia thought that she could
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  Speaker 1: be useful in international relations. Yet, despite multiple applications and
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  Speaker 1: an appeal to Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself, the State Department
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't make her an ambassador. There's a big chance gender
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  Speaker 1: played a role in that, at the time, only six
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  Speaker 1: US ambassadors were women. Around the same time that Virginia
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  Speaker 1: was petitioning the State Department, an incident happened that defined
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  Speaker 1: her young life. When she was twenty seven years old,
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  Speaker 1: she shot herself in the foot while hunting in Turkey.
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  Speaker 1: The wound quickly developed gangreen, and to save her life,
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  Speaker 1: doctors amputated her leg. For the rest of Virginia's life,
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  Speaker 1: she walked using an ill fitting wooden prosthetic that she
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  Speaker 1: nicknamed Cuthbert, which gave her a pronounced limp. Virginia continued
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  Speaker 1: to work in US embassies in Turkey, Italy, and Estonia
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  Speaker 1: until World War II broke out. Across Europe, constantly denied
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  Speaker 1: an opportunity to be an ambassador. Now, Virginia believed that
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  Speaker 1: she could do something that made a difference. Starting in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen forty, she volunteered as an ambulance driver in France.
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  Speaker 1: She quickly met a British spy who recognized Virginia's tenacity,
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  Speaker 1: then put her in touch with British intelligence. By nineteen
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  Speaker 1: forty one, she was one of their first female undercover
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  Speaker 1: agents in France. Posing as a New York Times reporter,
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  Speaker 1: Virginia relied on the Nazis' misogyny. You see, at the time,
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  Speaker 1: the Nazis refused to believe that women were capable of
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  Speaker 1: being a spy. Stationed in Lyon, France, she befriended both
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  Speaker 1: nuns and sex workers, and that way she heard information
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  Speaker 1: that the Germans dropped at church and at the brothel.
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  Speaker 1: She used this intelligence to secure safe houses for the
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  Speaker 1: French resistance and help them plan attacks. Before long, Klaus Barbie,
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  Speaker 1: the infamous Gestapo officer in charge of intelligence in Leon,
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  Speaker 1: became aware that someone was spying on the Nazis. When
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  Speaker 1: he figured out that it was Virginia, he set his
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  Speaker 1: Gestapo officers after her demanding that they bring the limping
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  Speaker 1: lady to him. Although Virginia was able to evade capture
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  Speaker 1: by wearing a number of disguises, by nineteen forty two
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  Speaker 1: she was forced to flee to Spain, walking through the
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  Speaker 1: Pyrenees Mountains in the dead of winter. After her great escape,
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  Speaker 1: England wouldn't send her back into the field, but the Americans,
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  Speaker 1: with their brand new Intelligence office, were looking for a
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  Speaker 1: woman with her experience, so in nineteen forty four, Virginia
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  Speaker 1: returned to France as an American OSS agent. Knowing that
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  Speaker 1: Klaus Barbie had her description, Virginia went deep undercover. On
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  Speaker 1: her SAE second tour, she dyed her hair gray and
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  Speaker 1: drew wrinkles on her face to appear as an old woman.
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  Speaker 1: She ground down her two perfect American teeth and disguised
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  Speaker 1: her limp with long skirts and an old woman's shuffling steps.
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  Speaker 1: On her second tour, Virginia organized fighters to blow up bridges,
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  Speaker 1: derailed trains, and sabotage phone lines. On D Day, Virginia's
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  Speaker 1: efforts directly prevented reinforcements from reaching the Nazis in Normandy
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  Speaker 1: and stopped the troops on the beach from retreating. When
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  Speaker 1: Virginia returned home after the war, she refused to talk
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  Speaker 1: about her service. She reasoned that many of her spy
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  Speaker 1: friends had lost their lives after coming clean to the
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  Speaker 1: wrong person, even when she received a Distinguished Service Cross.
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  Speaker 1: The only witness that Virginia allowed at the ceremony was
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  Speaker 1: her own mother. Virginia spent the next decade working for
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  Speaker 1: the CIA before retiring. She passed away in nineteen eighty
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  Speaker 1: two with her story still unknown in the intelligence circles, which,
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  Speaker 1: in her line of work wasn't really bad thing. After all,
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  Speaker 1: a good spy is someone who doesn't attract attention, which
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  Speaker 1: is why Virginia Hall is probably the greatest spy you've
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  Speaker 1: never heard of. We've all heard of royal food tasters,
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  Speaker 1: unlucky peasants whose job it was to taste the food
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  Speaker 1: of kings and queens to see if it had been poisoned.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't a great job, and it wasn't a fool
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  Speaker 1: proof method of preventing poisoning. I mean, what if the
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  Speaker 1: taster simply had more immunity to the poison than the ruler.
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  Speaker 1: What if the tasters bite of food happened to be
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  Speaker 1: poison free? But the rest of the dish was still deadly.
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  Speaker 1: What if the taster just threw their spoonful of food
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  Speaker 1: over their shoulder when the king wasn't looking well. One
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  Speaker 1: ancient ruler considered all of this and developed a method
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  Speaker 1: of poison prevention that remains one of the most curious
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  Speaker 1: in history. Mithridatees the sixth learned of the dangers of
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  Speaker 1: poison from a young age. In one twenty BC, when
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  Speaker 1: he was still in his adolescence, his father, Mithridatees the
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  Speaker 1: fifth died of poisoning at a massive banquet. It was
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  Speaker 1: a violent and dramatic death too, that stayed with his
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  Speaker 1: son for the rest of his life. The younger Mithridates
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  Speaker 1: had his mother, who was also his aunt, locked in
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  Speaker 1: prison along with his brother. He then married his own
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  Speaker 1: sister and officially became king of Pontus. For those who
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  Speaker 1: don't know, Pontus was a Greek kingdom about as far
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  Speaker 1: from Greece as could be. The capital, Sinop, was the
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  Speaker 1: exact center of the southern coast of the Black Sea.
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  Speaker 1: Mithridedes knew that he would have to be tough to
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  Speaker 1: survive against the Armenians to the east, the Romans to
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  Speaker 1: the west. He exercised constantly, but he also prepared his
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  Speaker 1: body in other ways. Not wanting to meet with the
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  Speaker 1: same fate as his father, he allegedly developed a mixture
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  Speaker 1: that contained every known toxin, but just in tiny amounts.
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  Speaker 1: He mixed it with honey, and then he let it
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  Speaker 1: hardened and consumed one every day as a little piece
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  Speaker 1: of candy. This supposedly made him immune to every poison,
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  Speaker 1: and he made this fact known throughout public demonstrations, where
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  Speaker 1: he would drink whole bottles of poison and walk away
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  Speaker 1: without issue. With his legend secured, Mithridates led the armies
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  Speaker 1: of Pontus north along the eastern coast of the Black Sea,
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  Speaker 1: conquering modern day Crimea. Not satisfied with this, he returned
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  Speaker 1: south to Sinop and then went west and conquered most
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  Speaker 1: of modern day Turkey. This was a bold move, as
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  Speaker 1: part of Asia Minor belonged to the Roman Empire, and
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  Speaker 1: thus began the first of not one, not two, but
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  Speaker 1: three wars between Mithridates and Rome. These three conflicts are
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  Speaker 1: known collectively as the Mithridatic Wars, showing what a legendary
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  Speaker 1: and persistent enemy he was to the Romans. He once
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  Speaker 1: conquered so far west that he was able to connect
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  Speaker 1: his kingdom to the Greek homeland, finally reuniting with fellow
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  Speaker 1: Greeks in city states like Athens and Macedonia. Now, truth
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  Speaker 1: be told, part of his success came down to good timing.
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  Speaker 1: The Romans were engaged in a chaotic civil war at
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  Speaker 1: this time, which led to their leaders making peace with
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  Speaker 1: Mithridates when they otherwise would have kept on fighting him.
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  Speaker 1: They were further distracted by wars with other enemies, including
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  Speaker 1: the legendary slave uprising led by Spartacus. By seventy two BC,
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  Speaker 1: many of these conflicts had been settled, though the Romans
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  Speaker 1: were finally ready to take revenge. Roman general Lucullus began
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  Speaker 1: a now legendary military campaign wherein he rapidly took back
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  Speaker 1: most of the territory that Mithridates had conquered. He did
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  Speaker 1: so with a speed that seems more appropriate for a
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  Speaker 1: board game than real life. When Lucullus was called back
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  Speaker 1: to Rome, another famous Roman general, Pompey the Great, continued
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  Speaker 1: his work chasing Mithridates all the way to his last
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  Speaker 1: remaining conquests north of the Black Sea. In sixty five BC,
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  Speaker 1: Mithridates had left his part of his kingdom under the
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  Speaker 1: rule of one of his sons, who refused to fight
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  Speaker 1: the Romans any further. Knowing that it was a lot cause,
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  Speaker 1: Mithridates then killed him in response, which proved a step
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  Speaker 1: too far for another of his sons, who led Mithridates's
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  Speaker 1: remaining army in a revolt against their king. Finding himself
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  Speaker 1: truly cornered, Mithridates realized that his long life of poison, betrayal,
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  Speaker 1: and conquest had all been for nothing. It turns out
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  Speaker 1: that he kept a dose of the one poison that
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  Speaker 1: could still kill him in his sword hilt, and he
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  Speaker 1: prepared to take it. But he happened to have a
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  Speaker 1: few of his daughters with him, and they begged him
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  Speaker 1: to share the poison, knowing that they would not be
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  Speaker 1: treated well by their brother if he captured them, and
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  Speaker 1: so being a good father, I guess he shared the poison.
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  Speaker 1: But in doing so he made a mistake, because now
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  Speaker 1: when he drank the remainder, he found that it wasn't
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  Speaker 1: enough to overwhelm his already toxic blood. Instead, he had
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  Speaker 1: to take a dagger and plunge it into his own chest.
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  Speaker 1: It's ironic, really, he had worked his entire life to
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  Speaker 1: avoid assassination by poison, so when death finally did come knocking,
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  Speaker 1: that death was so much more painful. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
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  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
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  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.