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Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is

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Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,

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Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

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Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Our planet is lush with life of all kinds,

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Speaker 1: from the smallest single celled organism to the massive blue

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Speaker 1: whale gliding beneath the waves. Earth is a rich tapestry.

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Speaker 1: Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the varieties of

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Speaker 1: cultures across all seven continents. Where the people in one

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Speaker 1: part of the world might live in a technological paradise

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Speaker 1: of constant digital connection, there might exist in isolated island

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Speaker 1: tribe who have never seen electricity before. In the mid

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, though anthropologist Horace Miner had been studying a

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Speaker 1: strange group of people living in a massive territory below

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Speaker 1: Lake Superior and above the state of Sarona in Mexico.

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Speaker 1: He wrote about them in a paper titled Body Ritual

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Speaker 1: among the Nacarima. The Nacarima prioritized economic pursuits and their

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Speaker 1: appearance above all else, spending their days performing bizarre body

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Speaker 1: rituals in front of shrines in their homes. While every

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Speaker 1: home had at least one shrine, those who had elevated

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Speaker 1: themselves above poorer tribe members often had two or more.

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Speaker 1: In fact, the value of one's living quarters hinged on

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Speaker 1: how many shrines they could fit inside. Minor discovered through

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Speaker 1: extensive study that every shrine possessed a box of elixirs

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Speaker 1: and concoctions that the Nacarima would either ingest or smear

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Speaker 1: across their faces to improve themselves. Such tinctures could only

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Speaker 1: be procured by medicine men, who would hand over the

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Speaker 1: elixir along with an incantation, and there were magical potions

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Speaker 1: for all sorts of purposes too, for a price. Of course,

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Speaker 1: then Acaima couldn't help but hoard these charms, as they

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Speaker 1: were called, even once they had served their purpose. The

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Speaker 1: vessels they were packed in would be stored in the

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Speaker 1: shrine in case their contents ever needed to be used again.

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Speaker 1: And right there in the shrine, underneath that collection of

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Speaker 1: boxes sat a front with water provided from a central source,

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Speaker 1: the water temple of the community. Then Acaima performed daily

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Speaker 1: cleansing rituals at this front, including one that was meant

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Speaker 1: to prevent them from incurring the wrath of the holy

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Speaker 1: mouth men. The holy mouth Men were feared in the

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Speaker 1: community as they performed tortuous acts upon the mouth of people,

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Speaker 1: and they would examine the teeth of the tribes members

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Speaker 1: and carve holes in the ones that had started rotting.

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Speaker 1: Once the holes were large enough, they filled them with

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Speaker 1: a liquid that hardened to protect the teeth from getting worse.

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Speaker 1: Avoiding the holy mouth men involved a daily ritual performed

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Speaker 1: by rubbing a magical substance on a bundle of hogs

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Speaker 1: hairs and moving them around inside their oral gavities. By

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Speaker 1: doing this each day, they were able to prevent untold

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Speaker 1: evils from invading their mouths and driving away their friends.

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Speaker 1: Folks who needed more help than could be provided by

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Speaker 1: the average medicine man or holy mouth man were required

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Speaker 1: to pay at the La Tipso. The La Tipso was

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Speaker 1: a temple where sacred ceremonies were performed. On the very ill.

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Speaker 1: They would have all their clothes removed by a vestal

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Speaker 1: maiden who would collect various fluids and excretions from their bodies.

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Speaker 1: To give to a diviner. The diviner studied the organic

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Speaker 1: substances and determine what it was that was making the

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Speaker 1: Nacaraima member sick. The Nacarima were a culture dependent on

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Speaker 1: magic and ceremonies, all of which were performed in specialized

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Speaker 1: rooms in their homes, far from the prying eyes of others,

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Speaker 1: even from the other members of their own tribes. Horace

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Speaker 1: Miners paper was first seen in American Anthropologist, a journal

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Speaker 1: published by the American Anthropological Association in nineteen fifty six. Today,

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Speaker 1: the rituals of the Nacarima are still widely practiced, though

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Speaker 1: their tools have become more advanced. The bundles of hogs

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Speaker 1: hairs have been changed to nylon, and the Nakarima people

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Speaker 1: hoard elixirs with even more magical powers within their shrines.

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Speaker 1: In fact, this strange tribe isn't too different from you

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Speaker 1: and I. If you look closely, you might even recognize

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Speaker 1: some of its members. Just reverse the letters in the

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Speaker 1: name and you'll see that Horace Minor was simply exploring

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Speaker 1: the large swath of people living between Canada and Mexico

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. Americans. Evolution is a natural process as creatures

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Speaker 1: learned to avoid predators. Over time, their species developed defense

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Speaker 1: mechanisms over the course of tens, hundreds, or even hundreds

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Speaker 1: of thousands of years. But evolution isn't limited to nature.

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Speaker 1: Everything changes over time. Computers get smaller and more powerful,

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Speaker 1: homes are built with stronger materials, and even sports undergo

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Speaker 1: some alterations. For example, tennis has been played since the

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Speaker 1: twelfth century, when it was called jud Palem or game

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Speaker 1: of the Poem. In France. Around the sixteenth century, players

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Speaker 1: stopped hitting the ball with their hands and started using

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Speaker 1: rackets instead. As more people in more countries continued to

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Speaker 1: play it, they also began to change it. A British

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Speaker 1: army officer named Walter Wingfield spent over a year perfecting

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Speaker 1: his own version, which he patented and sold as Spheri

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Speaker 1: Styke or ball playing. Included in the box was a net,

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Speaker 1: rackets and balls. He tested his new sports on unsuspecting

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Speaker 1: guests at a friend's garden party, after which Wingfield's creation

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Speaker 1: took on a life of its own. Spherri Styke found

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Speaker 1: its way to the United States and all over Europe,

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Speaker 1: where it adopted a new and easier to pronounce name,

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Speaker 1: lawn tennis for the simple reason that it wasn't played

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Speaker 1: on a court but on a grassy lawn and stead

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Speaker 1: interest in the sport led to the formation of tennis

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Speaker 1: clubs as well as tournaments in places like New York

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Speaker 1: City in France. And while some of the first tennis

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Speaker 1: balls had been made of leather or wool or strips

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Speaker 1: of cloth, the equipment kept changing with the times. Leather

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Speaker 1: eventually gave way to rubber, a material used in modern

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Speaker 1: tennis ball manufacturing. Of course, there was one problem with

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Speaker 1: tennis back then. No matter what the ball was made

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Speaker 1: out of, it could only be played outdoors. Wingfield's original

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Speaker 1: game design had included illustrations of an hour glass shaped court,

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Speaker 1: which was wider at the ends and more tapered near

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Speaker 1: the net in the middle. He'd wanted to sport to

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Speaker 1: appear beautiful from all angles. Unfortunately, those kind of spaces

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Speaker 1: could only be made outdoors, and winters in Victorian England

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Speaker 1: got quite cold. Aristocratic elites didn't want to have to

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Speaker 1: wait until spring to play tennis again, but they didn't

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Speaker 1: want to freeze either. However, rather than construct a court indoors,

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Speaker 1: they just changed the game entirely again, you see. Back

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Speaker 1: in India during the mid eighteen hundreds, British military officers

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Speaker 1: had found a fun way to pass the time. They

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Speaker 1: would set up books in a row across the center

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Speaker 1: of a table, with one officer on each side. In

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Speaker 1: their hands was a single book, which they used as

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Speaker 1: a racket to whack a golf ball back and forth

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Speaker 1: over the literary wall they'd constructed. Borrowing from both the

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Speaker 1: British military officers and Walter Wingfield's lawn tennis idea, a

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Speaker 1: new game was invented. It used a net, just like

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Speaker 1: in tennis, except it was much smaller. The rackets also

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Speaker 1: got a change. They went from having taught strings in

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Speaker 1: their empty centers to being solid wood padals. While the

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Speaker 1: company Jay Jacques and Son sold a boxed version of

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Speaker 1: the game in England and nineteen o one, Parker Brothers

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Speaker 1: distributed its own variety in the United States. In fact,

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Speaker 1: Parker Brothers bought the name of the game from Jay

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Speaker 1: Jacquin's son not long after it went on sale and

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Speaker 1: litigated everyone violating its trademark. That same year, two more

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Speaker 1: major changes to the game happened. The ball was replaced

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Speaker 1: with a new kind made from celluloid the same material

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Speaker 1: that was used to make camera film. These new types

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Speaker 1: of balls were hollow and filled with air, allowing them

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Speaker 1: to bounce quite high. To aid in their delivery across

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Speaker 1: the net, stippled rubber was glued to the surfaces of

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Speaker 1: the wooden rackets or paddles. Within several years, its popularity

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Speaker 1: spawned organizations where players could connect and compete, followed by

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Speaker 1: tournaments and championships all over the globe. Today, it has

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Speaker 1: become an Olympic sport, chock full of special techniques, strategies,

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Speaker 1: and a glossary of specific terms. What had originally begun

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Speaker 1: as a way to pass the time in winter in

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Speaker 1: the nineteenth century gradually turned into a global phenomenon. Officially

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Speaker 1: it's called table tennis, but Parker Brothers had branded it

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Speaker 1: with a different name, something it had been called since

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Speaker 1: its inception, and one we still used to this day.

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Speaker 1: Ping Pong, 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 Manky

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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 the world of Lore dot com. And until

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Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. Yeah,