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Mind Games · 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: Every single one of us, in our own way, is
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  Speaker 1: passing through history. We have no way of knowing exactly
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  Speaker 1: who is going to earn their place in a history
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  Speaker 1: book on the main page, or who will wind up
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  Speaker 1: as mere footnotes. For those of us who read history
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  Speaker 1: for a living know one thing to be true. There's
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  Speaker 1: more life in between the lines than any history book
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  Speaker 1: can tell us, and it's there that the most fascinating
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  Speaker 1: questions live. Follow me to the Haymarket Theater in London
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  Speaker 1: in the year seventeen forty five, an opera called lyn
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  Speaker 1: Costanza de Luza has just premiered. A lavish spectacle. But
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  Speaker 1: what made this opera notable was not its content or
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  Speaker 1: its production, but a little known musician who contributed three
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  Speaker 1: arias that he'd written. He had just arrived in Europe,
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  Speaker 1: and writers of the time described him as suave and charming,
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  Speaker 1: with dark hair and a fine sense of dress. This
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  Speaker 1: man was arrested in London that same year under suspicion
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  Speaker 1: of spine, but later released due to lack of evidence.
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  Speaker 1: Horace Walpole, the famous British author and politician, referred to
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  Speaker 1: him in one of his letters, he has been here
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  Speaker 1: these two years and will not tell who he is
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  Speaker 1: or whence, but professed that he does not go by
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  Speaker 1: his right name. He sings, plays the violin wonderfully, composes,
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  Speaker 1: is mad and not very sensible. He has called an Italian,
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  Speaker 1: a Spaniard, a poll a, somebody that married a great
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  Speaker 1: fortune in Mexico and ran away with her jewels to Constantinople,
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  Speaker 1: a priest of fiddler, a vast noblemen. The man who
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  Speaker 1: fits this intriguing description was known by a single French title,
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  Speaker 1: the Compe de Saint Germain. He seemingly came out of
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  Speaker 1: nowhere in the seventeen forties, impressing high society in London
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  Speaker 1: with his musical talents, but after his arrest in seventeen
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  Speaker 1: forty five, he did not stay long in London. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: he traveled to mainland Europe, where he ingratiated himself with
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  Speaker 1: the French courts of King Louis the fifteenth. By the
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  Speaker 1: late seventeen forties he had become a close counselor and
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  Speaker 1: occasional political agent for the French crown. He spoke many languages,
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  Speaker 1: including French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, and Spanish, and was
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  Speaker 1: able to converse on a wide variety of topics, from
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  Speaker 1: politics to science. Although perhaps science might be overstating it
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  Speaker 1: just a little, you see, one of the count's primary interests,
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  Speaker 1: according to the stories, was the field of alchemy. It was,
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  Speaker 1: at this point in history, on the decline in comparison
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  Speaker 1: to other natural sciences, but there were still many eager practitioners.
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  Speaker 1: After all, goals like turning lead into gold or achieving
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  Speaker 1: immortality will always inspire some people. As the decades wore on,
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  Speaker 1: members of high society pointed out that he barely seemed
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  Speaker 1: to age. One anecdote tells of an encounter with an
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  Speaker 1: elderly countess in the seventeen sixties who expressed disbelief at
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  Speaker 1: seeing him. She said that she had known account Saint
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  Speaker 1: Germain and Venice back in seventeen ten. She asked if
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  Speaker 1: it was his father that she had met, and instead,
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  Speaker 1: Saint Germain said that he had lived in Venice at
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  Speaker 1: that time, so it was he that she remembered, and
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  Speaker 1: she was amazed. The man she knew was forty five
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  Speaker 1: years old at the time, meaning that he would be
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  Speaker 1: one hundred years old. During their conversation. Saint Germain accepted
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  Speaker 1: the suggestion proudly, still never confirming what his original name
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  Speaker 1: was nor where he came from. Later, at various dinner parties,
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  Speaker 1: he would claim to be over three hundred years old.
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  Speaker 1: Both Voltaire and Casanova wrote about him with skepticism, referring
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  Speaker 1: to him as a teller of enormous lies. Voltaire referred
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  Speaker 1: to him as and I quote, a man who never dies,
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  Speaker 1: who knows everything, but Casanova conceded that as a liar,
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  Speaker 1: Saint Germain was an incredibly persuasive one. In seventeen sixty,
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  Speaker 1: for example, he talked his way into the Hague and
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  Speaker 1: began peace talks to end the Seven Years War between
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  Speaker 1: England and France. No one ever knew where all his
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  Speaker 1: money came from either. He seemed to be wealthy, but
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  Speaker 1: had no bank account or land to speak of. This observation,
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  Speaker 1: of course, fueled rumors of him being a powerful alchemist.
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  Speaker 1: After all, if you can turn any substance into gold,
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  Speaker 1: then you don't need a bank account, do you. After
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  Speaker 1: forty years of traveling freely throughout Europe, charming high society,
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  Speaker 1: and writing music, Saint Germain spent the last few years
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  Speaker 1: of his life life in Central Germany doing alchemy experiments
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  Speaker 1: with the Danish Prince Charles Now In his eighties, he
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  Speaker 1: confided to the Prince that he was the son of
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  Speaker 1: Francis the second Racozzi, a renowned nobleman from Transylvania, which
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  Speaker 1: would explain his wealth and comforts among nobility. Like all
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  Speaker 1: of his stories, this part was never confirmed. Saint Germain
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  Speaker 1: seemingly died in seventeen eighty four, but that was not
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  Speaker 1: the end of his story. Sightings of him persisted long
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  Speaker 1: after his death. After his tall tales, a growing number
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  Speaker 1: of people believe that he really was immortal. In the
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  Speaker 1: two hundred years that followed, many copycats have appeared, claiming
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  Speaker 1: to be the man himself, still alive after all these years.
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  Speaker 1: The most recent was in the nineteen seventies. Even if
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  Speaker 1: the original Count of Saint Germain was just an incredibly
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  Speaker 1: skilled con artist, a talented mister Ripley of the eighteenth century.
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  Speaker 1: There is still something about him that makes even skeptics
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  Speaker 1: want to believe the impossible. Through his lies and charms,
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  Speaker 1: he cast a spell on history. The animal rights movement
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  Speaker 1: seems like a modern phenomenon. You might think that people
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  Speaker 1: only started to speak out against killing animals once food
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  Speaker 1: became plentiful in the second half of the twentieth century. However,
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  Speaker 1: even in the past, when modern conveniences were still a
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  Speaker 1: long ways off, there were compassionate individuals begging others to
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  Speaker 1: think of the animals. One such person was Anna Kingsford,
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  Speaker 1: a nineteenth century physician with some very curious methods when
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  Speaker 1: it came to furthering the cause. Anna was born near
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  Speaker 1: London in eighteen forty six to a wealthy merchant family.
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  Speaker 1: From an early age, she claimed to receive strange visions
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  Speaker 1: and communicate with fairies. These communications gave her a profound
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  Speaker 1: sense of spiritualism and a connection to the natural world.
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  Speaker 1: Though she initially enjoyed fox hunting with her family, a
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  Speaker 1: vision where she saw herself as a fox being hunted
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  Speaker 1: led to her never wanting to participate again. As she
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  Speaker 1: grew older, her love for animals only increased. She had
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  Speaker 1: a pet guinea pig named Rufus, who she confided in.
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  Speaker 1: She became a vegetarian and realized that she needed to
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  Speaker 1: pursue a medical degree if she wanted to convince others
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  Speaker 1: that her diet was the healthiest now. Women weren't allowed
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  Speaker 1: to become doctors in England at the time, and so
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  Speaker 1: she traveled across the Channel to Paris, but she soon
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  Speaker 1: found herself in her own personal hell. It was while
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  Speaker 1: studying at the Natural History Museum there that she heard
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  Speaker 1: a horrible scream of pain from down the hall. Afraid
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  Speaker 1: that someone was being hurt, she raced toward the sound,
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  Speaker 1: only to find a lab where a professor was dissecting
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  Speaker 1: a live dog. At this time, anesthesia wasn't common and
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't used on animal These vivisections, as they were known,
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  Speaker 1: were a horrible thing to behold. Anna was mortified, and
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  Speaker 1: she continued to be every time she saw one of
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  Speaker 1: these experiments. As part of her coursework, she began her
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  Speaker 1: own studies into the chemical composition of both meat and
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  Speaker 1: plant matter, and was encouraged when she found that they
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  Speaker 1: can contain the same chemical compounds. It seems obvious to
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  Speaker 1: us now, but finding that you could get protein from
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  Speaker 1: both meat and certain plants, for example, was a big discovery.
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  Speaker 1: At the time, Darwin's theory of evolution was growing in
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  Speaker 1: prominence as well, and the idea that we are all
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  Speaker 1: related to every other animal on the planet only further
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  Speaker 1: encouraged her. She wrote her thesis on the Benefits of
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  Speaker 1: a vegetarian diet, including some of these discoveries, while also
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  Speaker 1: including some less scientific assertions. For example, she believed that
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  Speaker 1: eating meat made someone more violent and lowered their IQ,
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  Speaker 1: and she also believed that all great warriors in history,
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  Speaker 1: like the Spartans, were great because they ate bread. And
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  Speaker 1: her legacy would continue to be a mixture of science
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  Speaker 1: and superstition. Although she had become a doctor, she would
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  Speaker 1: never let go of her spiritual side. She continued to
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  Speaker 1: claim to have visions and believed in frequent prayer to
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  Speaker 1: evoke God into saving animals. Anna disliked organized religion, though,
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  Speaker 1: believing that it was corrupt, but she did believe in God,
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  Speaker 1: and she believed that if he was the divine source
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  Speaker 1: of life in all humans and animals were a part
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  Speaker 1: of him. But her compassion didn't always extend to her
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  Speaker 1: fellow human beings. You see, Anna maated her life's mission
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  Speaker 1: to put an end to the kind of vivisection that
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  Speaker 1: she witnessed in medical school. She decided to start practicing
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  Speaker 1: what she called white magic, which was essentially the use
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  Speaker 1: of prayer to try and cast spells in the physical world.
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  Speaker 1: Most famously, or perhaps most infamously, this included directing psychic
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  Speaker 1: attacks against some of the greatest vivisectionists of the day.
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  Speaker 1: Among them were names that are still recognizable, such as
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  Speaker 1: Louis Pasteur, Claude Bernard, and Paul Bert died in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy eight and eighteen eighty six. Anna took credit, claiming
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  Speaker 1: that she had used her abilities to assassinate them. Of course,
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  Speaker 1: no one took her seriously. They had died of natural causes,
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  Speaker 1: of course, But to be fair, it wasn't as if
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  Speaker 1: every other scientist of this era behaved rationally all the
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  Speaker 1: time and that Anna was just an outlier. For example,
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  Speaker 1: many scientists of her day had the opposite view of hers,
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  Speaker 1: believing that eating meat actually made someone superior. They used
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  Speaker 1: this to justify racist beliefs that Asians and Africans who
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  Speaker 1: ate a mixed diet were somehow inferior to Europeans. Today,
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  Speaker 1: we know that eating a well rounded diet is best,
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  Speaker 1: although vegetarianism has benefits when it comes to heart health
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  Speaker 1: and a carnivore diet has some advantages for those dealing
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  Speaker 1: with certain chronic diseases. And so Anna's legacy is less
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  Speaker 1: about accurate scientific discovery and more about compassion and determination.
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  Speaker 1: She reminds us to remain curious about the world around us,
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  Speaker 1: to not take anything for granted. In the end, how
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  Speaker 1: we treat our fellow animals may impact us in ways
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  Speaker 1: we simply can't imagine. 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 Manke 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
• 11:43
  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 Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious.