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Second Chances · 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. Everyone deserves a second chance, although
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  Speaker 1: few truly ever get one, and war there are no
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  Speaker 1: second chances. As the philosopher Plato allegedly put it, only
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  Speaker 1: the dead have seen the end of war. Don Carcos, however,
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  Speaker 1: didn't die, and yet he saw the end of war,
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  Speaker 1: well sort of. The day after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor,
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  Speaker 1: sixteen year old Don went with his older brother to
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  Speaker 1: the local Navy recruitment center in their hometown of Lewiston, Maine.
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  Speaker 1: While waiting for his brother to finish his application, a
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  Speaker 1: recruiter popped his head into the waiting room and asked
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  Speaker 1: the younger Don why he wasn't joining his brother. He
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  Speaker 1: told the man that he wasn't old enough just yet,
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  Speaker 1: but his birthday was a few days away. Good enough,
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  Speaker 1: the recruiter said, and just like that, Don was enlisted
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  Speaker 1: in the United States Navy alongside his older brother. He
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  Speaker 1: was placed on the USS rapid In out of Boston.
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  Speaker 1: The rapid In wasn't a ship meant to see action, though,
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  Speaker 1: it was a tanker that would sail around waters infested
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  Speaker 1: with German submarines in order to refuel Allied ships and cruisers.
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  Speaker 1: One summer morning, while Don was up on the deck,
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  Speaker 1: an explosion rocked the ship. Shrapnel flew everywhere, and something
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  Speaker 1: whacked the young sailor in the forehead, just above his
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  Speaker 1: right eye. He blacked out and woke up in a
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  Speaker 1: hospital in Iceland. Though he hadn't suffered direct damage to
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  Speaker 1: his eye, doctors told him that he would never be
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  Speaker 1: able to see out of it again. They encouraged him
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  Speaker 1: to let them remove it. On refused. If it wasn't
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  Speaker 1: going to bother him, he just as well would keep
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  Speaker 1: everything intact. His military career was over before it even started.
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  Speaker 1: After he'd healed enough, Don went home and got a
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  Speaker 1: job at a local mill. He had to learn how
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  Speaker 1: to function with only one I. His depth perception was
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  Speaker 1: almost gone, and he barely had any peripheral vision. Daily
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  Speaker 1: life was a constant struggle, especially since he lived in
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  Speaker 1: fear of something bad happening to his one good remaining
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  Speaker 1: I But he got by working at the mill for
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  Speaker 1: three years until he earned enough money to pay off
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  Speaker 1: his father's house. After some time, he got married and
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  Speaker 1: had children of his own, eventually settling down on a
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  Speaker 1: two acre horse farm. Now, as Don got older and
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  Speaker 1: his children grew up and built lives of their own,
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  Speaker 1: he moved away. He saw countless doctors over the years,
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  Speaker 1: all of whom told him the same thing. He would
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  Speaker 1: never regain sight in his right eye. No technology in
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  Speaker 1: the world existed that would restore it for him. However,
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  Speaker 1: or despite the prognosis, he never lost hope nor his
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  Speaker 1: love of horses. He got a job at the Manticello
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  Speaker 1: Raceway in New York when he was in his mid sixties.
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  Speaker 1: He was a jack of all trades they're, working as
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  Speaker 1: a security guard who would check in horses before races.
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  Speaker 1: He also did odd jobs around the barn. One night
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  Speaker 1: in two thousand and six, after a particularly tough day
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  Speaker 1: at the track, he arrived home dizzy, barely able to stand.
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  Speaker 1: Something had happened. As he rubbed his good eye, he
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  Speaker 1: noticed something happening with the other one, the eye. His
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  Speaker 1: doctors had told him would never work again. He could
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  Speaker 1: see with it. He covered his good eye to make
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  Speaker 1: sure it wasn't a fluke. The image and the right
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  Speaker 1: one didn't disappear. His sights had been restored, and he
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  Speaker 1: had my buddy Chemo to think for it. My buddy
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  Speaker 1: Chemo was a horse at Manta Sello. Don was putting
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  Speaker 1: a collar around its neck when the horse headbutted him
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  Speaker 1: in the same spot where the explosion had hit him
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  Speaker 1: sixty four years earlier. The impact had been so powerful
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  Speaker 1: that it had thrown the eighty two year old back
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  Speaker 1: into the paddock wall. He was shaken and ended up
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  Speaker 1: with a pretty bad lump on his head, but was
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  Speaker 1: otherwise unaffected, or so he thought. It wasn't until hours
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  Speaker 1: later when he got home and realized something inside him
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  Speaker 1: had been changed. Don tried to keep it a secret afterward,
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  Speaker 1: telling only a few close friends about the incident, but
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  Speaker 1: it didn't take long for the story to spread all
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  Speaker 1: over the world. The montes Cello Miracle. They called him
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  Speaker 1: Don Carcos. The man who had been blind in one
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  Speaker 1: eye for almost his entire life had been cured by
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  Speaker 1: a horse. Now that's what I'd call curious explorers. From
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  Speaker 1: all over Europe spent hundreds of years looking for it.
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  Speaker 1: A sea route to the Pacific Ocean by way of
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  Speaker 1: the Arctic. They called it the Northwest Passage, and between
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  Speaker 1: the fifteenth and twenty centuries, hundreds of sailors set out
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  Speaker 1: to find it. One of those expeditions was led by
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  Speaker 1: British explorer Sir John Franklin, along with the crew of
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  Speaker 1: one thirty men. In May of eighteen forty five, they
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  Speaker 1: set off in two ships, the h M s Erebus
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  Speaker 1: and the h MS Terror. Now Franklin was no stranger
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  Speaker 1: to the sea. He'd been an officer in the Royal
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  Speaker 1: Navy for years, and his new ships possessed some of
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  Speaker 1: the most modern technology of the day, including steam engines
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  Speaker 1: and iron rutters. These were features that led to both
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  Speaker 1: ships being described as unstoppable. Their first stop after leaving
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  Speaker 1: England with Scotland. From there they continued on to Greenland
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  Speaker 1: and finally northern Canada. Two whalers claimed to have seen
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  Speaker 1: the crew in that area around July of eighteen forty
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  Speaker 1: and everyone on board seemed okay. Unfortunately, the Franklin expedition
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't stay that way. Shortly after, they were never heard
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  Speaker 1: from again. Two years went by and nobody knew what
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  Speaker 1: had happened. There had been no letters nor any word
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  Speaker 1: that the ships had found the Northwest Passage. Three more
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  Speaker 1: expeditions were assembled, but not to find the passage. These
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  Speaker 1: went out in search of Franklin and his crew, all
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  Speaker 1: of which returned months later empty handed. Any trace of Franklin,
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  Speaker 1: the crew members, or the two ships had vanished, and
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  Speaker 1: then in eighteen fifty a whole fleet of ships departed
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  Speaker 1: with the sole mission of locating the missing explorers. They
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  Speaker 1: came to an island in northern Canada called Beechey Island,
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  Speaker 1: named for the father's son duo of William and Frederick Beachey,
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  Speaker 1: who first stepped foot there in eighteen nineteen. The island
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  Speaker 1: proved ominous for the search party. What they discovered was
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  Speaker 1: that Franklin and his crew had landed there to rest
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  Speaker 1: for a time, with plans to set back out to
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  Speaker 1: see later at some point. Shortly after they arrived, though
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  Speaker 1: three crew members died. In the years that followed, more
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  Speaker 1: details about the fate of the remaining crew came to light.
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  Speaker 1: It turns out that the Arabis and terror hadn't made
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  Speaker 1: it too far from Beechey Island. They'd ended up getting
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  Speaker 1: trapped in the ice, and the ships were abandoned when
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  Speaker 1: it was clear there was no way to break them free.
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  Speaker 1: Everyone fled to nearby King William Island to regroup, and
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  Speaker 1: that's where further tragedy befell Franklin and his crew. According
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  Speaker 1: to the local Inuit who had seen them, about forty
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  Speaker 1: crewmen had succumbed to starvation, while Franklin himself along with
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  Speaker 1: two dozen officers, had perished in eighteen forty seven, and
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  Speaker 1: based on what little evidence was found, it seems that
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  Speaker 1: at least some of the crew had turned to cannibalism
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  Speaker 1: for survival. Others wrote letters in their final days that
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  Speaker 1: were eventually found during an eighteen fifty four excursion to
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  Speaker 1: King William Island. But perhaps the most chilling remnants of
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  Speaker 1: the Franklin expedition were left back on Beechey Island three graves,
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  Speaker 1: all clearly marked in honor of the first men to
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  Speaker 1: die on Franklin's crew, William Brainy, John Torrington and John Hartnell,
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  Speaker 1: and those bodies were exhumed in the nineteen eighties by
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  Speaker 1: dr Owen Beatty, a forensic anthropology is from Canada. Who
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  Speaker 1: performed autopsies on all three of the bodies. The remains
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  Speaker 1: had been impeccably preserved by the freezing temperatures underground. Now
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  Speaker 1: it had originally been believed that the men had died
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  Speaker 1: of lead poisoning from the cans used to hold their
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  Speaker 1: food and fresh water, but it was later determined that
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  Speaker 1: the men in these graves had died from either pneumonia
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  Speaker 1: or tuberculosis. They had already been in poor health when
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  Speaker 1: they landed on Beechey Island, the harsh environment had only
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  Speaker 1: made things worse. The men were eventually reburied alongside a
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  Speaker 1: fourth Thomas Morgan, who had been part of an eighteen
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  Speaker 1: fifty four expedition to find them. His cause of death, though,
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  Speaker 1: had been scurvy. Today, explorers visit Beechey Island to see
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  Speaker 1: the graves for themselves. They pay their respects to the
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  Speaker 1: men who brave the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage,
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  Speaker 1: unaware that it had all been a one way trip,
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  Speaker 1: and they get to see for themselves one of the
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  Speaker 1: last places that Franklin and his crew ever visited, where
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  Speaker 1: the environment is only slightly colder than the truth. I
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  Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed Today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
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  Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,