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Drama Island · 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: What does it mean for a piece of writing to
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  Speaker 1: be dangerous? Writers love to say that ideas are powerful things.
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  Speaker 1: But does an idea itself have power? Or does the
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  Speaker 1: power come from the context in which the idea exists.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, that's an impossible question to answer, an even
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  Speaker 1: more abstract version of which came first the chicken or
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  Speaker 1: the egg? But for an idea to be truly danmed Injurius,
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  Speaker 1: it first has to be treated like a threat to
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  Speaker 1: the status quo, even within something as seemingly trivial as
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  Speaker 1: escapist fiction. In the early nineteen tens, China was undergoing
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  Speaker 1: a massive upheaval. The imperial rule of the country came
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  Speaker 1: to an end after two thousand years, with the Republic
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  Speaker 1: of China taking its place. The end of the Qing
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  Speaker 1: dynasty was in some ways a culmination of China's growth
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  Speaker 1: into a world of global collaboration. Foreign relations had taken
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  Speaker 1: off in the late nineteenth century, and cultural imports like
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  Speaker 1: cinema began to reshape how the people of China expressed
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  Speaker 1: and entertained themselves. In the process, some relics of the
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  Speaker 1: old world fell away, and others found themselves reborn. In
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  Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Now, this Republican period saw a boom
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  Speaker 1: in what would later be called the Mandarin, Duck and
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  Speaker 1: Butterfly genre of fiction. These were lurid romance, stories of
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  Speaker 1: forbidden love and high drama, a uniquely Chinese equivalent to puliction.
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  Speaker 1: But of course the popularity of this sort of low
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  Speaker 1: art did not go unnoticed by those in power. The
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  Speaker 1: new government soon deemed that they needed to conduct an
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  Speaker 1: audit of the sorts of popular writing that was read
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  Speaker 1: by the common people. On July eighteenth of nineteen fifteen,
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  Speaker 1: they established a council for conducting such a review under
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  Speaker 1: the Ministry of Education. The Fiction Committee would rank publications
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  Speaker 1: into three categories. Upper rank fiction we should try to promote,
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  Speaker 1: middle rank work that can be allowed, and lower rank
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  Speaker 1: works that we should try to restrict or ban. Of
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  Speaker 1: the sixteen literary magazines that they reviewed. Two made the
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  Speaker 1: upper rank, eleven were deemed middle rank, and three were
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  Speaker 1: unfortunate enough to get the label of lower rank. And
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  Speaker 1: of the bottom three, only one received a recommendation for banning.
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  Speaker 1: It was titled may You or Eyebrown Talk, a relatively
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  Speaker 1: new magazine. May You was edited by a woman named
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  Speaker 1: Gao Gianhua and her husband. Its first edition had hit
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  Speaker 1: shelves on November seventeenth of nineteen fourteen, and it ran
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  Speaker 1: for almost a year without incident. The material within its
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  Speaker 1: pages was provocative but popular. It featured stories from women authors,
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  Speaker 1: often romances, interspersed with artwork and photographs. Some of these
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  Speaker 1: were related to the stories, others were included purely for
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  Speaker 1: marketing purposes to sell more copies, and it was these
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  Speaker 1: images that drew the government's eye, as many of them
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  Speaker 1: were nudes or otherwise suggestive. Realizing that her magazine was
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  Speaker 1: gaining negative attention from the government, Gou decided to cease
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  Speaker 1: publication of Mayu after eighteen issues. The final issue of
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  Speaker 1: Mayu was published on April sixteenth of nineteen sixteen. It
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  Speaker 1: was officially banned that September. The committee's decision reads in
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  Speaker 1: part this association, in examining a magazine called May You,
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  Speaker 1: has found that its language and topics seemed specifically aimed
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  Speaker 1: at destroying moral barriers and harming social standards. Among all
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  Speaker 1: fiction magazines, its errors are the gravest. If this sort
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  Speaker 1: of fashion were to spread, it would do considerable harm
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  Speaker 1: to social morality. Now you have to understand that in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen China there was no contesting such a ban.
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  Speaker 1: Life had to move on. Gao did not revive May You,
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  Speaker 1: but she and her husband continued to edit and publish
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  Speaker 1: other magazines for decades to come. None of these, though,
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  Speaker 1: were as enduring as the eighteen months they'd spent publishing
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  Speaker 1: May You. In the many decades since the magazine's censorship,
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  Speaker 1: the content of the magazine was obscured by controversy, with
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  Speaker 1: many critics dismissing the content of the magazine itself. It's
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  Speaker 1: no coincidence that the term Mandarin duck and butterfly was
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  Speaker 1: itself a pejorative term, an implicit critique of the stories
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  Speaker 1: that it described. History, however, has a funny way of
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  Speaker 1: applying hindsight to stories like these. Although a minor blip
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  Speaker 1: in the history Chinese literature, May You struck an important milestone.
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  Speaker 1: It was the first fiction magazine published in the country
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  Speaker 1: that was primarily edited and written by women, with stories
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  Speaker 1: marketed toward female readers. Rather than do considerable harm to
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  Speaker 1: social morality, as they said, what the magazine actually did
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  Speaker 1: was provide a brief but crucial outlet for authors who
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  Speaker 1: had no other avenue for being published. They practiced their craft,
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  Speaker 1: and one hundred years later, their work is still being studied.
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  Speaker 1: We could only hope that our own words will last
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  Speaker 1: half that long. Many of us wish that we could
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  Speaker 1: escape the confines of civilization and go live in paradise.
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  Speaker 1: But in nineteen twenty nine, doctor Friedrich Ritter and his
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  Speaker 1: former patient and lover Dore Strauch did just that. They
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  Speaker 1: left their native Germany to live alone together on Floriana Island.
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  Speaker 1: This island is a small speck of land in the Galopagos,
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  Speaker 1: a cluster of islands west of Ecuador in the Pacific.
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  Speaker 1: It's a beautiful place with incredibly diverse wildlife. There are seals, iguanas, tortoises,
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  Speaker 1: wild pigs, and exotic birds like herons and flamingos. But
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  Speaker 1: living outside of civilization is hard, regardless of the scenery.
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  Speaker 1: Dore and Friedrich had no running water, plumbing, or electricity.
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  Speaker 1: Food was scarce. Friedrich was a strict vegetarian and expected
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  Speaker 1: Dora to live the same way, and this made things
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  Speaker 1: even more difficult. And it should go without saying that
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  Speaker 1: paradise is a relative term, especially depending on who you're
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  Speaker 1: sharing it with. Right. Friedrich was a strange, controlling man
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  Speaker 1: who believed in a very strict way of life. He
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  Speaker 1: had a lot of bizarre ideas about the body. For example,
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  Speaker 1: he had all of his teeth removed because he wanted
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  Speaker 1: to make his gums strung. It didn't work, and so
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  Speaker 1: he had to use a pair of steel dentures while
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  Speaker 1: living in the galopagus. He also thought that Dora's sclerosis
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  Speaker 1: could be cured with willpower alone, and he chastened her
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  Speaker 1: when she used a cane. In reality, he was a
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  Speaker 1: cult leader of a cult of two. Doray was trapped
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  Speaker 1: under his influence. So imagine Friedrich's fury when his isolated
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  Speaker 1: fiefdom was abruptly invaded by Heinz and Margaret Whitmer and
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  Speaker 1: their thirteen year old son. Margaret was pregnant with their
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  Speaker 1: second child and they wanted to have a child there
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  Speaker 1: in paradise, living like Friedrich and Dore, Friedrich didn't see
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  Speaker 1: them as potential new accolytes, though they were rivals. They
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  Speaker 1: were more working class than Friedrich and Dora, who came
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  Speaker 1: from sophisticated backgrounds. They were also quickly proved to be
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  Speaker 1: more hard working and adept at living in nature than
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  Speaker 1: Friedrich and Dora had. The Whitmers quickly found a cave
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  Speaker 1: and used it for shelter while tending to a successful garden,
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  Speaker 1: hunting for food, and holding a stone house. Friedrich and
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  Speaker 1: Dore lived in a mostly wooden, open air home that
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  Speaker 1: was shabby by comparison. Oh And when it came time
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  Speaker 1: for Margaret to give birth to her new baby, Friedrich
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  Speaker 1: begrudgingly helped her deliver, and while he was already near
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  Speaker 1: his limit, another new neighbor arrived, Eloise Bosque de Wagner Verhorn,
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  Speaker 1: a wealthy Austrian woman who wanted to build a hotel
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  Speaker 1: for rich travelers on the island. She arrived with two assistants,
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  Speaker 1: both of whom were her lovers, Alfred and Robert, and
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  Speaker 1: they helped her set up camp on the island, and
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  Speaker 1: Aloise quickly proved to be the most irritating neighbor of
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  Speaker 1: all for Friedrich. She constantly fought with her lovers and
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  Speaker 1: their arguments could be heard all over the small island.
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  Speaker 1: They randomly fired off pistols just because Eloise liked to
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  Speaker 1: shoot animals and then nurse them back to health, and
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  Speaker 1: she also shot at passing sailors if they got too
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  Speaker 1: close to her patch of the land. And to top
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  Speaker 1: it all off, she began to steal food from the
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  Speaker 1: other two groups when her so applies ran low. She
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  Speaker 1: was no farmer or hunter. She mostly relied on deliveries
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  Speaker 1: from Ecuador. When one of her lovers, Alfred, fell out
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  Speaker 1: of her favor, he started showing up at the other camps,
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  Speaker 1: telling his neighbors about his troubled love life and how
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  Speaker 1: difficult Eloise was. And then one day in March of
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  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, Eloise and her other lover, Robert, disappeared
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  Speaker 1: from the island. Alfred claimed that they had left on
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  Speaker 1: a passing yacht, but no one saw any ships that day.
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  Speaker 1: Dora thought that she remembered hearing a gunshot and a
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  Speaker 1: scream during the night, and when she went to visit
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  Speaker 1: the Whitmers, she found that their house had a new
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  Speaker 1: tin roof, one that used to belong to Eloise. She
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  Speaker 1: began to wonder if they had helped Alfred kill Eloise
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  Speaker 1: and Robert and then cover it up. But of course,
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  Speaker 1: Friedrich had just as much reason to want Eloise gone
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  Speaker 1: as anyone else. She was the most obnoxious intruder to
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  Speaker 1: his personal island kingdom, and Doray had become increasingly disillusioned
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  Speaker 1: with the island and with Friedrich, and perhaps he thought
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  Speaker 1: that Eloise's wilful personality was a bad influence. Curiously, just
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  Speaker 1: a few months later, in November of nineteen thirty four,
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  Speaker 1: Friedrich came down with a terrible case of food poisoning.
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  Speaker 1: Dora's story was that he ran out of fruits and
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  Speaker 1: vegetables and had to resort to eating some dead chickens
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  Speaker 1: despite their vegetarianism. On the other hand, Margaret Whitmer found
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  Speaker 1: it suspicious that Dora was perfectly fine. Then again, she
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  Speaker 1: had just as much motive to poison Friedrich herself and
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  Speaker 1: framed Dora. By this point, the two groups absolutely hated
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  Speaker 1: each other. Friedrich died from his illness. Dora left the
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  Speaker 1: island after that, returning to Germany. Alfred Eloise's remaining lover
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  Speaker 1: died after the boat he took to get off the
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  Speaker 1: island crashed and stranded him on a smaller piece of land.
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  Speaker 1: Only the Whitmers remained. Their descendants still live on the
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  Speaker 1: island today. It was they and not Eloise, who eventually
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  Speaker 1: built a hotel there on the island. And looking back,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps it's not too strange that the one group to
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  Speaker 1: survive were also the hardest workers with the best survival skills.
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  Speaker 1: But as to whether or not they murdered any of
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  Speaker 1: their neighbors along the way, well, we'll just have to
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  Speaker 1: remain a bit curious. I hope you enjoyed today's guided
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  Speaker 1: tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created
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  Speaker 1: by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched
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  Speaker 1: and written by the Grim and Mild team, and produced
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  Speaker 1: by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the
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  Speaker 1: people who make it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of
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  Speaker 1: Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well
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  Speaker 1: as ebook and audiobook, and if you're looking for an
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  Speaker 1: ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all the
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  Speaker 1: same stories, but without the interruption, for a small monthly fee.
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  Speaker 1: Learn more and sign up over at patreon dot com.
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  Speaker 1: Slash Grimandmile, and until next time, stay curious.