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Chew on This · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
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  Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world
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  Speaker 1: is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
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  Speaker 1: open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
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  Speaker 1: on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Earworms. There are those songs you
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  Speaker 1: get stuck in your head and just can't seem to shake.
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  Speaker 1: I'll spare you the torture of mentioning the names of
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  Speaker 1: a few, knowing what sort of impact they might have
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  Speaker 1: on your day, But I think we can all agree
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  Speaker 1: that earworms exist and can really burrow their way into
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  Speaker 1: our minds. There's no science behind it, from what I
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  Speaker 1: can tell, it just seems that every so often the
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  Speaker 1: composer happily stumbles upon a few notes arranged in just
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  Speaker 1: the right way that produce an almost infectious tune. Kids
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  Speaker 1: love to share them, adults love to hate them, and
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  Speaker 1: everyone does their best to avoid them if they can.
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  Speaker 1: One early version of an earworm started out life in
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  Speaker 1: France in the early seventeen hundreds. It was a folk
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  Speaker 1: song written to lament the death of the first Duke
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  Speaker 1: of Marlborough, who had been rumored to have died during
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  Speaker 1: a battle in seventeen o nine. Even though his death
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  Speaker 1: wasn't true, the song struck a chord and stuck around
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  Speaker 1: for many decades. It floated on the fringes of French society,
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  Speaker 1: known only by a few. It wasn't printed or included
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  Speaker 1: in collections of other songs. It was just the sort
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  Speaker 1: of tune you heard at a friend's house or at
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  Speaker 1: a local gathering, and if you remembered it, you might
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  Speaker 1: share it with someone else. And of course all the
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  Speaker 1: best earworms are really easy to remember. Then something changed
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  Speaker 1: in the seventeen eighties. The simple tunes started to get
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  Speaker 1: pulled into new compositions of the day, sort of a
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  Speaker 1: calling card that composers knew their listeners would understand and
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  Speaker 1: relate to. But things really took off when King Louis
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  Speaker 1: the sixteenth and his Queen Marie Antoinette had a new
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  Speaker 1: baby in sevent You see, Little Louis the seventeenth had
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  Speaker 1: his very own wet nurse, a poor woman from a
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  Speaker 1: small village south of Paris. One of the skills that
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  Speaker 1: she brought to the job was her knowledge of lesser
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  Speaker 1: known folk songs, and this one, the ear worm we're
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  Speaker 1: talking about today, known as the Marlborough has Left the
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  Speaker 1: War song, was a tune that had been floating around
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  Speaker 1: in her village for a very long time, so she
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  Speaker 1: sang it to little baby Louis, which of course meant
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  Speaker 1: that Marie Antoinette heard the tune in the process, and
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  Speaker 1: the earworm took roots. She started humming and singing it
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  Speaker 1: as she walked around the palace, infecting others in the process.
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  Speaker 1: From there, the song went viral in away most social
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  Speaker 1: media influencers could only dream of. It showed up in
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  Speaker 1: plays and musicals, It could be heard in the background
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  Speaker 1: at fancy dinner parties of the wealthy elite, and it
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  Speaker 1: was heard by tourists and travelers, so much so that
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  Speaker 1: some of them complained that the song was everywhere and
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  Speaker 1: they were sick of it. But that's not how earworms work.
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  Speaker 1: You can't just make them go away, can't you. From France,
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  Speaker 1: the little Song spread to England and from there out
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  Speaker 1: even further. Charles Dickens included it in an issue of
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  Speaker 1: his weekly magazine Household Words, and in Spain it's sometimes
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  Speaker 1: even sung at birthday parties But the biggest change, and
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  Speaker 1: the one that made it memorable to just about everyone
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  Speaker 1: around the world, was the new set of English lyrics
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  Speaker 1: that replaced the original French ones. Now no one really
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  Speaker 1: knows who wrote them. The words aren't a translation of
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  Speaker 1: the French words, just an entirely new set of lyrics
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  Speaker 1: paired up to the old folk song's melody, and the
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  Speaker 1: mood definitely changed since the original French song was about
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  Speaker 1: the death of a nobleman, and the new English version
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  Speaker 1: is more of a general celebration song, a celebration of
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  Speaker 1: someone great, someone special, someone jolly. But the rich story
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  Speaker 1: behind the song means that every time we sing it,
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  Speaker 1: we draw a line backwards in time to the early
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  Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds and straight through some of the most memorable
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  Speaker 1: figures in history. You might sing it at an office
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  Speaker 1: party or a gathering to celebrate a retirement, or maybe
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  Speaker 1: you just like the way the tune sounds and can't
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  Speaker 1: seem to get it out of your mind. It's an earworm,
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  Speaker 1: after all, one of the first, and I doubts it
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  Speaker 1: will ever go away. The song for He's a jolly
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  Speaker 1: good fellow. Everyone needs a hobby, something they can do
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  Speaker 1: to unwind and channel their creativity into Albert Einstein played
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  Speaker 1: piano and violin. Humphrey Bogart was an avid chess player,
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  Speaker 1: even once coming to a draw with noted Polish grandmaster
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  Speaker 1: Samuel Raszewski and actor Daniel day. Lewis left his craft
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  Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen nineties for ten months to pursue
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  Speaker 1: one of his passions, shoemaking. And then there was Horace
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  Speaker 1: born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in eighteen forty nine. Horace didn't
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  Speaker 1: play an instrument or hustle amateurs at chess. No, he
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  Speaker 1: didn't cobble together shoes In Italy, Horace Fletcher like to chew.
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  Speaker 1: As a young man, Fletcher traveled around performing odd jobs
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  Speaker 1: following his interests. He worked as a writer and artist,
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  Speaker 1: and even managed in New Orleans opera house for a time.
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  Speaker 1: He loved to read, and he indulged in many of
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  Speaker 1: life's pleasures, mainly food. It was this pleasure, however, that
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  Speaker 1: inflicted some of the worst pain he'd ever experienced in
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  Speaker 1: his life. For one, as he got older, he struggled
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  Speaker 1: with obesity and its side effects, such as chronic stomach pains.
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  Speaker 1: He also found himself being refused coverage from a life
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  Speaker 1: insurance policy, a rejection that sounded alarm bells for him.
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  Speaker 1: He quickly realized it was time to make a change.
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  Speaker 1: One day, while traveling to Chicago on business, the middle
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  Speaker 1: aged Fletcher began chewing his food. He'd always chewed his
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  Speaker 1: food before, but this time was different. He kept chewing,
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  Speaker 1: and chewing and chewing until all that was left was
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  Speaker 1: a liquid e goo on his tongue. He believed that
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  Speaker 1: this was the key to proper digestion and weight management.
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  Speaker 1: According to this new practice, which he dubbed Fletcherism, all
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  Speaker 1: food needs to be chewed until it has been turned
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  Speaker 1: into a liquid. Any solid particles were deemed unnecessary and
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  Speaker 1: could be spat out. It sounds absurd today, but at
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  Speaker 1: the time Fletcherism caught on, he became known as the
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  Speaker 1: Great Masticator and argued that his practice could increase a
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  Speaker 1: person's strength despite reducing the amount of food they actually ate.
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  Speaker 1: He also had strict rules about when to consume sustenance.
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  Speaker 1: Followers were instructed to avoid eating when they were sad
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  Speaker 1: or angry, and to wait until they reached a point
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  Speaker 1: that Fletcher called good and hungry. No midnight snacks for him.
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  Speaker 1: He started touring the United States giving lectures on his methods,
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  Speaker 1: methods which were scoffed at by doctors and scientists as
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  Speaker 1: nothing more than self important hokum. That didn't matter, though
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  Speaker 1: Fletcherism had reached far more important spokespeople than doctors. Celebrities
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  Speaker 1: and titans of industry had begun chewing with wild abandoned.
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  Speaker 1: Among them were John D. Rockefeller and author Upton Sinclair.
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  Speaker 1: Even Mark Twain was considered a friend. But something as
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  Speaker 1: important as eating healthy couldn't rely on word of mouth
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  Speaker 1: from business men and writers alone. Fletcher needed to show
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  Speaker 1: its merits definitively. With the help of Yale University's athletic department,
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  Speaker 1: the sixty year old master Cator put on a demonstration
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  Speaker 1: of his system and how it had reinvigorated his youthful stamina.
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  Speaker 1: He performed a series of strength and endurance tests, even
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  Speaker 1: competing alongside Yale's own athletes. According to the stories, he
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  Speaker 1: outperformed all of them, going so far as to lift
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  Speaker 1: three hundred pounds of dead weight with his right calf
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  Speaker 1: over three hundred times, quite a feat. Meanwhile, Fletcherism was
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  Speaker 1: working its way overseas, where London diners would throw munching parties. There,
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  Speaker 1: people would eat together in one big room, seated close together,
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  Speaker 1: chewing their food hundreds of times a minute until it
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  Speaker 1: had been reduced to liquid. Stop watches were even implemented
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  Speaker 1: to time how long people chewed. Fletcher continued to elaborate
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  Speaker 1: on his system. He devised menus where he listed how
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  Speaker 1: many choose it, took the breakdown specific foods, and pushed
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  Speaker 1: low protein diets. Although Fletcherism made its founder a millionaire,
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  Speaker 1: though the fad eventually fell out of favor. Physicians advocated
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  Speaker 1: against it, not only because it lacked empirical evidence to
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  Speaker 1: back up its claims, but also because its followers were
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  Speaker 1: at risk for things like constipation and other elements. Fletcherism
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  Speaker 1: was just one in a long line of food fats,
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  Speaker 1: right up there with Lord Byron's vinegar and water diet
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  Speaker 1: and the popular grapefruit diet of the nineteen thirties. And
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  Speaker 1: that's the problem with food fads. They promise good health
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  Speaker 1: and weight loss, but in reality their flaws simply make
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  Speaker 1: them too hard for people to swallow. 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 Manky 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 World of Lore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.