Latest / Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities / The Wrong Man for the Job

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The Wrong Man for the Job · 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: We've all had to make them at some point in
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  Speaker 1: our lives. We grab a shoebox, some glue and construction
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  Speaker 1: paper and we build a little tableau inside for a
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  Speaker 1: school project. Maybe it depicts a particular scene from a
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  Speaker 1: book that we've read, or an important moment in history.
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  Speaker 1: And when we're done, we stand in front of the
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  Speaker 1: class and tell everyone about what we've made. And honestly,
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  Speaker 1: it can't be over fast enough. Kennet, there is little
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  Speaker 1: l that's more awkward than telling your classmates about the
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  Speaker 1: action figures and paper trees that you've glued inside of
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  Speaker 1: a shoe box. But from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries,
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  Speaker 1: people used to make a living with their tiny dioramas.
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  Speaker 1: Folks would flock to their stands in the streets to
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  Speaker 1: have a look for themselves, but they weren't called dioramas.
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  Speaker 1: Back then, they were called raris. The origin of the
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  Speaker 1: word rarey most likely stems from the word rarity. They were,
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  Speaker 1: in a sense, tiny cabinets of curiosities, but these weren't
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  Speaker 1: collections of disparate objects. Those who operated them back then
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  Speaker 1: called them peep shows, long before that term gained a
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  Speaker 1: more risque definition. During the fourteen hundreds, Italian artist Leon
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  Speaker 1: Battista Alberti painted beautiful pictures which he placed inside a box.
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  Speaker 1: The viewers would look through a small aperture on the
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  Speaker 1: outside and see sunny day scenes turn into night scenes
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  Speaker 1: with the moon and stars in the sky. Scholars today
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  Speaker 1: believe the images may have been partially transparent, whereas certain
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  Speaker 1: parts of the pictures would appear while others would be hidden,
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  Speaker 1: depending on how they were lit inside the box. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: it's also possible that Alberti's box is one of the
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  Speaker 1: earliest types of projectors or magic lanterns, which would shine
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  Speaker 1: light through a lens onto a glass slide with a
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  Speaker 1: picture on it in order to project it onto the wall.
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  Speaker 1: But raries were a little different. They were comprised of
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  Speaker 1: ornate wooden boxes which were subdivided into compartments inside and
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  Speaker 1: within each little box was a scene. Sometimes it was
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  Speaker 1: an illustrated picture of a landscape or a notable event.
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  Speaker 1: Other times the cell held a three dimensional tableau constructed
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  Speaker 1: of paper and other materials. On the exterior of the boxes,
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  Speaker 1: there were viewing holes through which spectators could watch as
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  Speaker 1: the rarey operator would pull a string and move the
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  Speaker 1: pictures around. He also told stories to breathe life into
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  Speaker 1: these static images. Before we had nickelodeons and motion pictures,
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  Speaker 1: we had rares. These kinds of peep shows actually became
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  Speaker 1: most popular in Holland during the sixteen hundreds. Some artists
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  Speaker 1: went so far as to place biconvex lenses over the
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  Speaker 1: viewing holes to exis exaggerate the depth of the images inside. Eventually,
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  Speaker 1: glass slides and translucent illustrations were melded with candlelight. Suddenly,
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  Speaker 1: scenes set during the day could change tonight simply by
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  Speaker 1: moving the candle in a certain way. This was how
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  Speaker 1: raris gave way to magic lantern shows. Later on, during
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  Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds, Japan even got in on the
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  Speaker 1: rarey craze with boxes they called appropriately Holland machines. Rare's
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  Speaker 1: had actually been in Japan since these sixteen forties, after
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  Speaker 1: the Dutch had gifted one to the showgun of the time,
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  Speaker 1: but they didn't gain steam with the Japanese artists until
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  Speaker 1: around the eighteenth century, after the Chinese had started working
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  Speaker 1: with them as well. But not everybody enjoyed the whimsy
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  Speaker 1: of the rari. According to an article in a British
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  Speaker 1: newspaper from eighteen oh three, a soldier had paid a
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  Speaker 1: halfpenny to take a peek inside a rareri that had
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  Speaker 1: been set up on a Lancaster bridge in Stockport. As
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  Speaker 1: he gazed upon pictures of beautiful cities from all over
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  Speaker 1: the world, the showman explained what he was seeing. He said,
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  Speaker 1: there is the famous city of Paris. You can see
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  Speaker 1: the gray Bonaparte haranguing his troops for the invasion of England.
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  Speaker 1: The soldier was incensed. He loathed Napoleon and his men.
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  Speaker 1: In a fit of anger, he hoisted the rary box
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  Speaker 1: and hurled it over the bridge. The showman, though, did
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  Speaker 1: not skip a beat and continued to say, there and
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  Speaker 1: now you see Bonaparte and his troops drowning, and be
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  Speaker 1: damned to them. I guess everyone's a critic curious, isn't
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  Speaker 1: it It's hard to know what a job is going
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  Speaker 1: to be like until you start working there. An interview
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  Speaker 1: isn't enough, and either is reading online reviews. To really
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  Speaker 1: get a feel for a company and its culture, you
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  Speaker 1: have to punch the clock. In eighteen sixty one, a
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  Speaker 1: young man named Sam thought that he had found a
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  Speaker 1: job that would fulfill him and give him purpose. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: he quickly realized that it was nothing but a waste
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  Speaker 1: of time and a death sentence. Sam was from Missouri,
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  Speaker 1: a border state that facilitated both sides of the Civil War,
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  Speaker 1: but it was also a slave state, and its governor,
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  Speaker 1: Claiborne Fox Jackson, was decidedly pro slavery. He'd been born
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  Speaker 1: into a wealthy family of slaveholders and had worked to
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  Speaker 1: push Missouri towards a session against the Union. As for Sam, well,
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  Speaker 1: he hadn't planned on taking any part in the Civil War.
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  Speaker 1: At first. He been a riverboat captain navigating the Mississippi
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  Speaker 1: until Union forces eventually shut it down. With no job,
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  Speaker 1: he went back home to figure out what was next
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  Speaker 1: for him. He was almost drafted by the Union one day,
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  Speaker 1: while he and his friends had been relaxing near their hometown, Levy.
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  Speaker 1: They had been stopped by Union soldiers who brought them
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  Speaker 1: to Saint Louis for the purpose of piloting ships up
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  Speaker 1: the Missouri River. The district commander had been giving the
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  Speaker 1: boys the rundown when he suddenly left to attend to
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  Speaker 1: two young ladies who were waiting nearby. Sam and his
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  Speaker 1: friends snuck outs while nobody was looking and ran straight
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  Speaker 1: back to their hometown of Hannibal. Now at home and safe,
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  Speaker 1: Sam soon read the governor's call for volunteers in his
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  Speaker 1: local paper. Fox wanted young men to join the Confederate
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  Speaker 1: army and take on the Union forces that were invading
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  Speaker 1: Missouri and that included Sam's hometown, and so Sam signed
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  Speaker 1: up along with fourteen other men looking to support their
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  Speaker 1: governor and their state from the Union invasion. In the
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  Speaker 1: summer of eighteen sixty one, Sam loaded up a mule
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  Speaker 1: with a valleys, two blankets, a carpet bag, a quilt,
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  Speaker 1: a rifle, twenty yards of rope, a frying pan, and
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  Speaker 1: an umbrella before heading out to meet Colonel John Rawls,
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  Speaker 1: a veteran of the Mexican American War. Rawls was a
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  Speaker 1: true and tried Confederate who gave Sam and his companions
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  Speaker 1: an impassioned speech about duty and honor, and then made
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  Speaker 1: them swear on a bible to defend Missouri to the death.
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  Speaker 1: But his words fell on deaf ears. These were kids
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  Speaker 1: barely in their twenties who had signed up thinking that
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  Speaker 1: they would be heroes. Instead, they were more like college freshmen,
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  Speaker 1: let loose on their own for the first time in
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  Speaker 1: their lives. They shunned responsibility and flought over chores. Whenever
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  Speaker 1: they heard that Union troops might be in the area,
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  Speaker 1: they hid from battle. One night, when they finally got
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  Speaker 1: the killer instinct Colonel Rowles had been hoping for. A
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  Speaker 1: stranger had come into their camp, hidden by the darkness,
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  Speaker 1: Sam shot him. His fellow troops soon followed. When the
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  Speaker 1: gunpowder had cleared, they realized that they hadn't killed a
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  Speaker 1: Union soldier. They'd murdered an innocent, unarmed man. The boys
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  Speaker 1: continued to camp and patrol the area, almost coming face
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  Speaker 1: to face with a formidable regiment commanded by none other
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  Speaker 1: than Ulysses S. Grant, but they quickly retreated and decided
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  Speaker 1: that war just wasn't for them. Sam ran off to
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  Speaker 1: Saint Louis, where his sister lived, and stayed there until
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  Speaker 1: his brother came calling with the job opportunity out west.
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  Speaker 1: He needed someone to help him with his new duties
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  Speaker 1: as Secretary to the Governor of the Nevada Territory, a
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  Speaker 1: position that had been appointed by President Lincoln himself. Sam
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  Speaker 1: jumped at the chance and high tailed it out of
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  Speaker 1: Missouri until the end of the war. By then, he'd
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  Speaker 1: been long forgotten, at least under his given name of
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  Speaker 1: Samuel Clemons. Soon everybody would know him as humorist and
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  Speaker 1: author Mark Twain, but they wouldn't know that for two
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  Speaker 1: fu awful weeks in eighteen sixty one, the beloved writer
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  Speaker 1: from Missouri had coseplayed as a Confederate soldier. I hope
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  Speaker 1: 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 Mankey 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 Worldoflore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.