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Bird on the Brain · 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 right there on display, just waiting
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  Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Switching between roles is an essential part of any performer's work,
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  Speaker 1: but sometimes the line can blur between where a character
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  Speaker 1: ends and the real person begins. During World War II,
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  Speaker 1: for example, Josephine Baker was one of the most famous
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  Speaker 1: performers in Europe. She was a burlesque dancer and an
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  Speaker 1: opera diva with a knack for shocking her audiences. As
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  Speaker 1: it turns out, though her star persona was just a
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  Speaker 1: cover for her real career espionage. Josephine was born freeda
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  Speaker 1: Josephine MacDonald in Saint Louis, Missouri, in nineteen oh six.
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  Speaker 1: Early on, she saw dancing and singing as her way
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  Speaker 1: out of poverty. While she was still a teenager, she
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  Speaker 1: joined a traveling vaudeville troupe and appeared in an all
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  Speaker 1: black revue on Broadway. She dreamed of becoming famous, but
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  Speaker 1: found that in deeply segregated America it was nearly impossible
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  Speaker 1: for a black woman to be a star, and so
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  Speaker 1: at the age of nineteen, when she was asked to
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  Speaker 1: appear in an all black burlesque in Paris, she jumped
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  Speaker 1: at the chance. France quickly proved to be everything America
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  Speaker 1: wasn't there, Josephine was an instant star. She performed in
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  Speaker 1: outrageous ensembles of feathers and pearls and honestly not much else,
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  Speaker 1: and she did well too. She strolled the streets of
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  Speaker 1: Paris with Chiquita, her pet cheetah, on a leash studded
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  Speaker 1: with diamonds, and in Paris she found the ability to
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  Speaker 1: write her own story, often making revisions. She told one
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  Speaker 1: source that she was the daughter of an influential black lawyer,
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  Speaker 1: and another that her father was a famous Spanish dancer.
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  Speaker 1: I don't lie, she was quoted as saying, I improve
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  Speaker 1: on life. A core part of Josephine's act was to
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  Speaker 1: provoke a strong reaction, but with fascism on the rise
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  Speaker 1: as the nineteen twenties came to a close, not every
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  Speaker 1: strong reaction was a positive one. In nineteen twenty eight,
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  Speaker 1: Josephine began a European tour in Vienna, Austria. As she
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  Speaker 1: arrived in town, protesters shouted at her and street signs
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  Speaker 1: labeled her a black devil. It wasn't a warm welcome,
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  Speaker 1: and Josephine would later go on to say that it
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  Speaker 1: brought her back to the racist riots that she saw
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  Speaker 1: in Saint Louis as a child. Over the next decade,
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  Speaker 1: Josephine found herself in the crosshairs of the German and
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  Speaker 1: Italian governments, probably because Josephine was an incredibly successful, provocative,
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  Speaker 1: self made black celebrity, and it didn't hurt that her
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  Speaker 1: husband was a French Jewish sugar merchant, and all of
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  Speaker 1: this made the Nazi publish a leaflet against her in
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  Speaker 1: the late nineteen thirties. According to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Gerbels,
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  Speaker 1: Josephine was the face of degenerate art. At the same time,
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  Speaker 1: she was banned from performance in Germany and Italy. So
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  Speaker 1: when the French Resistance came knocking on Josephine's door in
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  Speaker 1: the late nineteen thirties, they were a welcome company, and
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  Speaker 1: when their intelligence bureau suggested she act as a secret agent.
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  Speaker 1: She jumped at the chance. She dined with dignitaries and diplomats,
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  Speaker 1: and despite the performance ban, she still had influential fans
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  Speaker 1: in German, Italian and Japanese society. Everything Josephine did was big, loud,
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  Speaker 1: and attention getting. Nobody would suspect her of being a spy.
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  Speaker 1: She immediately got to work. She attended parties at Italian embassies,
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  Speaker 1: writing down overheard secrets on her arms. She flew her
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  Speaker 1: personal playing to drop aid and occupied French towns, and
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  Speaker 1: smuggled Jewish fugitives to neutral Portugal. She traveled under the
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  Speaker 1: guise of a European tour, pinning sensitive information to her
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  Speaker 1: bra and underwear. She banked on the fact that no
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  Speaker 1: one would subject the famous Josephine Baker to a strip search,
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  Speaker 1: and she was right. In November of nineteen forty, Baker
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  Speaker 1: arrived in Spain for a new performance. As she disembard arked, Spanish,
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  Speaker 1: German and Italian officials crowded around her, desperate for an autograph.
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  Speaker 1: None of them thought to check her bags. If they had,
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  Speaker 1: they would have found a complete dossier on Nazi air
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  Speaker 1: bases and plans all written in invisible ink on her
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  Speaker 1: sheet music. By nineteen forty one, Josephine was in Morocco
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  Speaker 1: helping to secure passports for Jews fleeing the Nazis. She
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  Speaker 1: fell sick with perry and titus and inflammation of the
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  Speaker 1: stomach lining, and spent the next year recovering in a
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  Speaker 1: Casablanca clinic. Her hospital room quickly became a rendezvous for
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  Speaker 1: agents to meet and share information, all posing as fans
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  Speaker 1: of Josephine. After the Allies won World War II in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, Josephine returned to her beloved Paris as
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  Speaker 1: a French national hero. For her work, she received two
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  Speaker 1: of the highest military honors that France awards while Josephine's
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  Speaker 1: heart was in Paris. After the war, she continued her
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  Speaker 1: fights in America. She protested against segregation, often publicly walking
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  Speaker 1: out of all white nightclubs, and she was even at
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  Speaker 1: the March on Washington in August of nineteen sixty three,
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  Speaker 1: where Martin Luther King Junior made his famous I Have
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  Speaker 1: a Dream speech. She gave a speech of her own there.
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  Speaker 1: Josephine Baker died in nineteen seventy five, after seventy one
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  Speaker 1: years of being a provocateur both on and off the stage.
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  Speaker 1: She remains the only American born person to be buried
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  Speaker 1: with full French military honors. She was a chorus girl
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  Speaker 1: and a burlesque dancer, an opera singer, and a movie star,
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  Speaker 1: but her finest role was as an undercover agent, and
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  Speaker 1: for that she should take a bow. He's an unsung
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  Speaker 1: hero of science and engineering. When we discussed the world's
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  Speaker 1: greatest inventions, we talk about the light bulb, the movie camera,
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  Speaker 1: and the phonograph, all of which are attributed to Thomas Edison.
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  Speaker 1: But if it wasn't for Nikola Tesla, we wouldn't have
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  Speaker 1: wireless radios or the remote control. Was not appreciated when
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  Speaker 1: he was alive, but he certainly revered now for his
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  Speaker 1: scientific contributions. Born in modern day Croatia in eighteen fifty six,
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  Speaker 1: Tesla came to America as an immigrant when he was
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  Speaker 1: twenty eight years old. At the time, he was working
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  Speaker 1: for the Edison Machine Works, a manufacturing company owned by
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  Speaker 1: his would be rival. He only spent six months there
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  Speaker 1: before striking out on his own, allegedly over an unpaid
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  Speaker 1: bonus that was denied by Edison himself. For the next
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  Speaker 1: fifty years, Tesla worked on his own inventions, including a
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  Speaker 1: motor that ran on alternating current, his famous Tesla coils,
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  Speaker 1: and wireless lighting. He was building the future. But in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, when he was seventy eight years old,
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  Speaker 1: something odd happened. Time stopped. In other words, he met someone.
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  Speaker 1: The stranger had wandered into the New York hotel where
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  Speaker 1: he'd been living. She was brought to his room on
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  Speaker 1: the thirty third floor, as Tesla was known for taking
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  Speaker 1: in strays. By this time, he was in bad shape.
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  Speaker 1: He was destitute and had already been evicted from anner
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  Speaker 1: of hotels in the city, but that didn't stop him
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  Speaker 1: from offering help where it was needed, and he quickly
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  Speaker 1: noticed that there was something different about her. They were
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  Speaker 1: connected somehow. They could talk to each other using only
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  Speaker 1: their minds. During these telepathic chats, her eyes would emit
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  Speaker 1: beams of light right at him. He cared for her
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  Speaker 1: in a way that he had never cared for anyone
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  Speaker 1: else before, and she remained by his side for a
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  Speaker 1: long time until one fateful night she came to him
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  Speaker 1: while he was already in bed, ruminating on a problem
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  Speaker 1: in his mind. She sat on his desk and they
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  Speaker 1: spoke as they always had, one mind connected to another,
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  Speaker 1: the light shooting from her eyes. This was how he
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  Speaker 1: found out the terrible news that she was dying. He
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  Speaker 1: told his biographer John O'Neill. When that pigeon died, something
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  Speaker 1: went out of my life. I knew my life's work
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  Speaker 1: was finished. That's right. The woman that had captivated this
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  Speaker 1: old scientist's heart was a pigeon. Tesla had actually been
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  Speaker 1: obsessed with birds for a number of years. He made
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  Speaker 1: his own bird seed and kept baskets in his room
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  Speaker 1: as man makeshift nests, and he never closed his windows.
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  Speaker 1: They remained open at all hours so the neighborhood pigeons
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  Speaker 1: could come and go as they pleased. He would walk
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  Speaker 1: through the city at night and feed them as he
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  Speaker 1: passed by. He also used a special whistle to call
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  Speaker 1: them to him. They would fly over and perch themselves
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  Speaker 1: on his arms like pets. He even found himself in
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  Speaker 1: trouble with the law because of his love for pigeons.
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  Speaker 1: After trying to catch an injured homing pigeon in front
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  Speaker 1: of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, Tesla was taken to the local
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  Speaker 1: precinct and held for processing. He did everything he could
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  Speaker 1: to prove that he wasn't some random person on the street.
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  Speaker 1: He was Nikola Tesla, the once famous inventor. But of
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  Speaker 1: all the birds he cared for, it was this one
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  Speaker 1: female pigeon, white with great tipped wings that made him
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  Speaker 1: forget the rest. No matter where I was, that pigeon
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  Speaker 1: would find me, he said. When I wanted her, I
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  Speaker 1: only had to wish and call her and she would
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  Speaker 1: come flying to me. She understood me, and I understood her.
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  Speaker 1: I loved that pigeon. Nikola Tesla was a man of
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  Speaker 1: many eccentricities. For example, he had an obsession with the
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  Speaker 1: number three, and he hated pearls. In fact, he despised
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  Speaker 1: them so much that he refused to talk to any
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  Speaker 1: woman wearing pearls. He also never married, believing himself to
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  Speaker 1: be unworthy of a woman's affections. Instead, he poured his
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  Speaker 1: energy into science and inventions. But he did love one
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  Speaker 1: creature above all else, that white pigeon. Others may have
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  Speaker 1: seen it as just another wild animal, but to Tesla
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  Speaker 1: it was so much more. Because of this bird, his
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  Speaker 1: heart grew wings. 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.