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Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey'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. Einstein has been quoted as saying the definition

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Speaker 1: of insanity is doing the same thing over and over

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Speaker 1: again and expecting different results. Except he never actually said that.

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Speaker 1: That quote has also been misattributed to Benjamin Franklin, but

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Speaker 1: it's true origins date back to the nineteenth century. The

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Speaker 1: lesson is clear, though. After something is repeated enough times,

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Speaker 1: the truth tends to be ignored. It's enough to drive

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Speaker 1: one well. You know. It didn't matter how often the

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Speaker 1: Brazilian people told their stories either, their truths were also ignored.

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Speaker 1: Take what happened to topographer Jose Higgins in Salpallo. While

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Speaker 1: standing in a field in nineteen forty seven, Higgins and

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Speaker 1: several workers watched as a round object landed several feet

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Speaker 1: away from their location. Everyone except Higgins was scared off,

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Speaker 1: but the topographers stayed put, watching as three human like

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Speaker 1: creatures left the strange craft. He tried communicating with them

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Speaker 1: for almost an hour. Neither Higgins nor these alien creatures

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Speaker 1: could understand each other, so they boarded their UFO and

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Speaker 1: flew away. Five years later, another incident occurred in Rio

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Speaker 1: de Janeiro when a journalist and his photographer spotted a

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Speaker 1: similarly shaped object flying overhead. The photographer took pictures and

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Speaker 1: had them published in a Brazilian magazine. UFOs and alien

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Speaker 1: encounters have been reported all over Brazil for the last

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Speaker 1: seventy years. Five individual incidents were said to have occurred

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties alone, in hooting one where a

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Speaker 1: fragment of a ship was recovered after it exploded over

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Speaker 1: a beach in Uba, Tuba. But perhaps the greatest number

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Speaker 1: of encounters happened in ninety seven in Cholaris in northern Brazil.

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Speaker 1: Locals noted all kinds of discs, orbs, and cigar shaped

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Speaker 1: spacecraft flying overhead. Some had glowing lights, while others looked

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Speaker 1: like they were on fire. However, the objects didn't remain

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Speaker 1: in the sky. According to the stories, the people in

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Speaker 1: Cholaris were attacked. The ships would chase them and shoot

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Speaker 1: lasers that burned their skin. In some cases, the creatures

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Speaker 1: inside would suck the blood from their human prey. A

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Speaker 1: Brazilian fishing boat was said to have been attacked from overhead.

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Speaker 1: The beams of light that were fired down injured many

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Speaker 1: fishermen and allegedly killed one. Another. Vivid account of an

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Speaker 1: alien attack came from a man named Carlos Cartosa de Paula,

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Speaker 1: who watched as a ball of light came into his

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Speaker 1: house and flew around his room until it stopped just

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Speaker 1: above his legs. It hovered over his lower half and

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Speaker 1: gave off intense heat. Carlos screamed, and the light quickly disappeared.

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Speaker 1: He would later theorize that the glowing orb was looking

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Speaker 1: for a vein so it could harvest his blood. But

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Speaker 1: theories aside. Whatever was behind these attacks was leaving a

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Speaker 1: trail of injured men and women in their wake. Hospitals

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Speaker 1: filled up with people suffering from burns, nausea, dehydration, and yes,

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Speaker 1: a severe loss of blood. Recovery sometimes took days, even weeks,

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Speaker 1: although some didn't recover at all. One woman was attacked

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Speaker 1: and actually got a good look at one of her assailants.

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Speaker 1: She said it had the appearance of a man wearing

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Speaker 1: something like a diving suit. It carried a kind of

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Speaker 1: weapon that fired out a beam of light, causing burns

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Speaker 1: all over her chest. She couldn't run or scream, she

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Speaker 1: was frozen, and she suffered side effects from the encounter

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Speaker 1: for the rest of her life. The Brazilian Air Force

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Speaker 1: was eventually called in as the reports had grown to

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Speaker 1: be too similar and too common to ignore. However, rather

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Speaker 1: than calm the locals with the truth behind what could

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Speaker 1: be causing these attacks, the air force also fell victim

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Speaker 1: to the burning lights. After a few encounters, they left

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Speaker 1: the cholars without so much as a goodbye. They would

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Speaker 1: not say definitively that they were scared off by extraterrestrial

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Speaker 1: life forms, but well, optics are everything. Of course, After

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, the reports of alien attacks slowed down.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy nine, Antonio Carlos Fierra was abducted from

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Speaker 1: the factory where he worked by three humanoid creatures. They

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Speaker 1: had pointy ears and red hair, and injected him with

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Speaker 1: a yellow liquid before returning him to Earth. Another series

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Speaker 1: of sightings and encounters occurred again in nineteen eighty nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty six, nineteen ninety six and well into the two thousand's.

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Speaker 1: Almost none of the subsequent encounters were as direct or

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Speaker 1: as violent as those that occurred in the late seventies.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps the aliens had gotten all the biological evidence they needed,

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Speaker 1: or maybe they realized humans were more of a threat

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Speaker 1: than they had previously thought. Just as with misattributed quotes,

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Speaker 1: the constant repetition and of the truth didn't really matter.

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Speaker 1: The military and the rest of the world had made

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Speaker 1: up their minds. They refused to acknowledge any of the activity,

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Speaker 1: even with photographic and physical proof. But the people of

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Speaker 1: Brazil know what happened to them. They just don't know

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Speaker 1: why the aliens have targeted them for so long, or

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Speaker 1: if the ships will ever show up again in the future,

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Speaker 1: or maybe they're already here and waiting. On a secluded

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Speaker 1: island in the Indian Ocean, there lives a tribe that

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Speaker 1: is untouched by modern civilization. The Sentinel Ease tribe of

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Speaker 1: Northern Sentinel Island live isolated from the rest of mankind.

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Speaker 1: They fire arrows at helicopters that fly too close, and

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Speaker 1: have been known to kill anyone unlucky enough to step

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Speaker 1: foot on their shores. For them, it's all about survival.

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Speaker 1: They have lived alone on this island for generations and

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Speaker 1: are considered some of the healthiest human beings on the planet,

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Speaker 1: mainly because they do not allow disease ridden outsiders to

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Speaker 1: commingle with their people. They build boats, hunt and fish

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Speaker 1: using tools and weapons that they have made themselves. They

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Speaker 1: have survived without the need for any of today's modern conveniences.

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Speaker 1: Poto and Cabengo were also survivors. They weren't part of

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Speaker 1: the Sentinelist tribe, though they were sisters who were found

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Speaker 1: in the late nineteen seventies who had been living in

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Speaker 1: a small tribe of their own. They spoke a language

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Speaker 1: that until then had never been heard by outsiders. For example,

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Speaker 1: the phrase liba cabango at its translated to dear cabango eat,

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Speaker 1: and la moa poto meant here more poto. The girls

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Speaker 1: hadn't been formally educated. They were watched over each day

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Speaker 1: by an elder who made sure that they were fed

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Speaker 1: and clothed, but didn't spend much time with them otherwise,

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Speaker 1: and their parents were away from the morning until late

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Speaker 1: at night. But these girls didn't live on some isolated

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Speaker 1: island in the middle of the ocean. They grew up

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Speaker 1: a lot closer to home in Georgia. Their real names

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Speaker 1: were Grace and Virginia Kennedy. Poto and Cabango were just

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Speaker 1: the names they had given themselves. Grace and Virginia were

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Speaker 1: born in nineteen seventy, and though their birth went smoothly,

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Speaker 1: doctors felt that something was wrong. The twins suffered seizures

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Speaker 1: from birth. A surgeon at the hospital told their father

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Speaker 1: that the girls would have trouble finding their way in

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Speaker 1: the world due to their developmental disabilities. Rather than help them,

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Speaker 1: though their parents left them to their own devices. The

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Speaker 1: Kennedy's were impoverished, and Mr. And Mrs Kennedy both worked

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Speaker 1: all day. They spent most of the day outside the home.

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Speaker 1: Her daughters were looked after by a grandmother who gave

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Speaker 1: them food and tended to their basic needs, but didn't

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Speaker 1: interact with them in any meaningful way. Grace and Virginia

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Speaker 1: almost never left the house, and there were no other

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Speaker 1: kids around for them to play with. As a result,

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Speaker 1: the girls spent nearly all of their time together, pulling

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Speaker 1: bits and pieces of their grandmother's German and mixing it

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Speaker 1: together with the creole tinged English their parents spoke. The

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Speaker 1: result was an entirely new language that only they knew. Mr.

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Speaker 1: And Mrs Kennedy thought the girls had invented their language

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Speaker 1: because they were mentally unable to learn English, but linguists

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Speaker 1: and speech therapists who worked with the twins discovered otherwise.

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Speaker 1: It had actually been their isolation and neglect that had

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Speaker 1: allowed their private language to supersede their parents English. The

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Speaker 1: girls were not developmentally challenged, according to their doctors. They

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Speaker 1: were of average intelligence. They had just never been given

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Speaker 1: a chance to grow. Over the years, the girls became

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Speaker 1: the subjects of numerous studies, journal articles, and news pieces.

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Speaker 1: Doctors also discovered the girls were not as mentally disadvantaged

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Speaker 1: as previously thought. They could learn if they had been

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Speaker 1: given the time and training they needed when they were younger.

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Speaker 1: Over time, speech therapists helped them learn English, which still

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Speaker 1: bore some of the traits of their private language, such

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Speaker 1: as its speed and choppy nature. Their father also made

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Speaker 1: sure they never spoke their native tongue in the house again. Eventually,

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Speaker 1: Grace and Virginia were reintroduced to society. They attended school together,

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Speaker 1: but took separate classes so they couldn't cheat by talking

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Speaker 1: in their secret language during the day. As adults, they

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Speaker 1: were able to find employment and live normal lives. Grace

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Speaker 1: and Virginia had come a long way from their isolated

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Speaker 1: childhood and made up language, and it was all thanks

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Speaker 1: to the doctors and therapists who did the one thing

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Speaker 1: the girl's parents couldn't do. They cared. I hope you've

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Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe

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Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the

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Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was

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Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.

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Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is

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Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can

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Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore

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Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious one