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Affair to Remember · 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: To survive the court of King Louis the fourteenth you
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  Speaker 1: needed one thing money. The sun King had a penchant
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  Speaker 1: for excess, and a typical day in court meant wild parties,
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  Speaker 1: grand feasts, high stakes gambling, and the funds to keep
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  Speaker 1: all of that going. To stay in the King's favor,
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  Speaker 1: some nobles were forced to extremes, and starting in the
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  Speaker 1: late sixteen hundreds, the rush to keep up with the
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  Speaker 1: royals led to a scandal of supernatural proportions. The whole
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  Speaker 1: thing started with a break in. One night in Paris,
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  Speaker 1: somebody was seen going into the laboratory of Captain Goudon
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  Speaker 1: de Saint Croix, which wouldn't have been unusual except that
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  Speaker 1: the captain had just died. The police were called in.
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  Speaker 1: While they didn't find any burglars, they did soon discover
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  Speaker 1: a curious red leather trunk. Inside were letters between the
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  Speaker 1: handsome captain and his lover, the beautiful, married noble woman
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  Speaker 1: Marie de braun Villiere. This was itself not very strange.
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  Speaker 1: All of Versailles knew that Godon and Marie were having
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  Speaker 1: an affair. It was what was in the letters that
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  Speaker 1: was shocking. These weren't simple declarations of love. Many of
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  Speaker 1: the letters instead detailed Marie and Goudon's shared passion trying
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  Speaker 1: to develop the perfect poison, and, judging by the vials
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  Speaker 1: of tasteless, odorless liquid inside the case, it seemed the
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  Speaker 1: two had been successful. As news soon broke, Marie fled Versailles.
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  Speaker 1: She moved from town to town into sky and under
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  Speaker 1: assumed names, always one step ahead of King Louis's royal authorities.
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  Speaker 1: She was finally captured, though in Belgium. After four years.
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  Speaker 1: Between the crown's investigation and Marie's own confessions, a horrifying
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  Speaker 1: picture emerged. While Goudon was still alive, She and the
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  Speaker 1: captain laced cakes with arsenic and fed them to poor
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  Speaker 1: hospital patients to test them. When they finally crafted an
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  Speaker 1: undetectable poison, they moved on to family. Marie poisoned her
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  Speaker 1: father and two brothers, so that she could inherit their wealth.
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  Speaker 1: With this money, she could shine in court and pay
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  Speaker 1: off Goudon's substantial debts. But Marie's execution did nothing to
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  Speaker 1: calm the excitement in court. King Louis was horrified that
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  Speaker 1: someone who could have killed him so easily and without
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  Speaker 1: suspicion had been so close to the crown. Not only that,
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  Speaker 1: the court began to question whether any noble person's death
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  Speaker 1: in the past decade was truly due to natural causes,
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  Speaker 1: or whether there had been other poisoners on the loose. Poisoning,
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  Speaker 1: you see, was thought to be the work of witchcraft.
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  Speaker 1: So King Louis appointed the Chief of Paris Police to
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  Speaker 1: head a new task force, one that would root out
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  Speaker 1: any poisoners, witches, or practitioners of black magic hiding in
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  Speaker 1: the court. The Chief took his new assignment with enthusiasm.
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  Speaker 1: He quickly rounded up scores of fortune tellers, magicians, and apothecaries.
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  Speaker 1: Many of these people gave up lists of clients to
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  Speaker 1: save their own skin. It was common for nobles to
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  Speaker 1: buy charms and love potions from low level alchemists and
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  Speaker 1: sorceresses like these, But now these purchases were cast under
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  Speaker 1: a new suspicious light. Over the next decade, dozens of
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  Speaker 1: people were arrested for poisoning or witchcraft, which had basically
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  Speaker 1: become the same in the eyes of the law. In
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  Speaker 1: sixteen eighty, perhaps the most startling accusations rocked Versailles. A
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  Speaker 1: famous sorceress had named names of her clients, and one
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  Speaker 1: of her best customers was Madame de Montespan, the king's
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  Speaker 1: favorite royal mistress. According to the sorceress, Madame de Montespan
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  Speaker 1: had used the black arts for years to get to
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  Speaker 1: the top. Before she was Louis's lover. She allegedly had
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  Speaker 1: a priest perform a black mass over her naked body.
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  Speaker 1: The sorceress claimed that Madam had poisoned the previous royal
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  Speaker 1: favorites and had fed Louis love potions made with the
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  Speaker 1: body parts of murdered infants, just as Louis had feared
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  Speaker 1: there was a witch in his court and in his bed.
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  Speaker 1: Hearing these shocking revelations about his own lover, the king
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  Speaker 1: began to realize that he had taken things too far.
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  Speaker 1: Madame de monte Spain had seven children with the king.
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  Speaker 1: She was his close friend and confidant and one of
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  Speaker 1: the most powerful women in court, and it would be
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  Speaker 1: foolish to admit that the King of France could be
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  Speaker 1: influenced by such a simple love potion. The Affair of
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  Speaker 1: the Poisons, as it became known, finally came to an
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  Speaker 1: end in sixteen eighty two. By the time King Louis
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  Speaker 1: pulled the plug, over four hundred people had been charged
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  Speaker 1: with witchcraft and thirty six had been executed. More were jailed, exiled,
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  Speaker 1: or died from torture in prison. The French court was
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  Speaker 1: a fraught place where politics and gossip could make or
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  Speaker 1: break a career. Normally, you would expect the deadliest weapons
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  Speaker 1: in such a place to be words, but for a
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  Speaker 1: brief stretch under Louis the fourteenth, if a rival wanted
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  Speaker 1: to poison the opinion against you, they might just take
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  Speaker 1: things a bit too literally. It's good to be king,
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  Speaker 1: or at least that's what mel Brooks says in his
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  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one film History of the World, Part One,
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  Speaker 1: And while that may sound true to us peasants, history
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  Speaker 1: would actually suggest otherwise. Many kings throughout history met with
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  Speaker 1: grisly deaths, and that was especially true during the Roman Empire.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, their kings or emperors were murdered more often
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  Speaker 1: than not, frequently by their own people. This led to
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  Speaker 1: a complicated political structure that was constantly changing. Emperors made
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  Speaker 1: alliances and broke them practically every year. How bad did
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  Speaker 1: it gets? Well? By two eighty six a d. There
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  Speaker 1: were actually two Roman emperors and more would be successors
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  Speaker 1: waiting in the wings, and this included a man named Karazius,
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  Speaker 1: who first gained renown not as an emperor, but as
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  Speaker 1: a pirate. Karazius was a member of a tribe that
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  Speaker 1: was an offshoot of the Celts who had settled in
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  Speaker 1: modern day northern France. His people were conquered centuries before
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  Speaker 1: by none other than Julius Caesar, and so while Karazius
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  Speaker 1: was born into the Roman Empire, he was also part
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  Speaker 1: of a separate, distinct culture, and this perhaps led to
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  Speaker 1: mixed loyalties. But by the third century AD, the Romans
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  Speaker 1: couldn't be too picky about who they picked as their soldiers.
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  Speaker 1: They were fighting rebellions throughout the Empire. Karazias fought in
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  Speaker 1: the Roman Navy, helping to secure Gaul modern day France
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  Speaker 1: for the Empire. One of the two emperors at the time,
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  Speaker 1: Maximian promoted Karazius to commander of his entire non northern fleet.
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  Speaker 1: But this was a bit of a miscalculation. You see,
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  Speaker 1: Karazias had been happy to fight against other tribes in Gaul. However,
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  Speaker 1: now that he had power, why would he not try
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  Speaker 1: to rule over the land that was first settled centuries
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  Speaker 1: before by his own ancestors. Karazis, you see, was supposed
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  Speaker 1: to use his fleet to stop pirates, but instead he
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  Speaker 1: captured the pirates and then hired them with their own
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  Speaker 1: confiscated plunder, and he used this practice to grow his
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  Speaker 1: fleet until finally Maximian ordered his execution. But Karazias moved
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  Speaker 1: fast on the sea, and so he took his fleet
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  Speaker 1: north and quickly conquered modern day Britain. He once again
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  Speaker 1: showed his aptitude for making unusual alliances when he joined
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  Speaker 1: forces with the so called Barbarians of the North who
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  Speaker 1: lived beyond Hadrian's Wall, a massive fortification that divided modern
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  Speaker 1: day England straight across the middle. And because of this,
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  Speaker 1: Karazias was protected in the north, and he had his
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  Speaker 1: pirates fortify the coast to the south Maximian couldn't touch
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  Speaker 1: by about two ninety a d. Maximian and his co
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  Speaker 1: emperor Diocletian had no choice but to recognize Karazius as
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  Speaker 1: the third Emperor of Rome, ruling over both Britain and
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  Speaker 1: Northern France. But as I said, Roman emperors were not
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  Speaker 1: known for keeping their alliances once they had put down
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  Speaker 1: rebellions in other parts of the empire. Maximian and Diocletian
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  Speaker 1: developed a plan to get rid of Karazias. In two
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  Speaker 1: ninety three AD. They appointed two new caesars, which were
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  Speaker 1: basically emperors in waiting. I did say that Roman politics
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  Speaker 1: were complicated, didn't I. Well, one of these caesars was
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  Speaker 1: sent to kill Karazias, who was back in northern France
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  Speaker 1: and out from behind his barricades in Britain. Sadly, Karazius
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't get the chance to prove himself against this new upstart.
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  Speaker 1: He was assassinated by one of his own subordinates that
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  Speaker 1: very same year, and that subordinate then fled back to Britain,
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  Speaker 1: only to declare himself as yet another new emperor. The
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  Speaker 1: rest was a bit of a blur. The Romans chased
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  Speaker 1: down this new upstart, beat nim in battle, and reunited
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  Speaker 1: the empire. Maximian would later be hounded by another new
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  Speaker 1: emperor and ultimately took his own life. In the end,
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  Speaker 1: Diocletian became the only Roman emperor to ever retire peacefully,
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  Speaker 1: marking one of the few moments in Roman history when
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  Speaker 1: it truly was good to be king. Still, I wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: recommend it. Sure the pay is good, but the turnover
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  Speaker 1: is atrocious. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
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  Speaker 1: 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 Theworldolore dot com. And until next time, stay
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  Speaker 1: curious y