Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we want
you to visualize a map with us. Picture the continent
of Africa, but in the late 19th century. Right
around, say, 1890. Exactly. And if you look at
a historical atlas from that time, it's just
this patchwork quilt of European colors. You've
got British pink stretching from Cairo to Cape
Town. You've got the French blue all over West
Africa. German, Portuguese. Belgian territories,
they are everywhere. The entire continent is
being carved out. It's like a pie at a dinner
table where the only guests are European empires.
The scramble for Africa, it's one of the most
aggressive just... incredibly rapid periods of
colonization in all of human history. In just
a few decades, an entire continent basically
lost its sovereignty. Almost. Almost an entire
continent. Because if you zoom in on the Horn
of Africa, on that eastern side, there is this
one stubborn, distinct shape that stays independent.
Ethiopia. Ethiopia. And the reason that shape
exists on the map today, the reason it wasn't
just swallowed up by European power like all
of its neighbors, it really comes down to one
man. A man who is, well, he's arguably one of
the most complex, heavy hitting figures in African
history. We were talking about Emperor Menelik
II. And when we were going through the source
material for this, what just immediately struck
me was the sheer scale of the contradiction.
This is not a simple story at all. No. Depending
on which source you read, Menelik is either the
architect of modern Ethiopia, this brilliant
strategist who humiliated a European superpower.
Or he's a brutal conqueror who presided over,
I mean, large scale atrocities and famine. It's
a massive duality to hold in your head. And our
mission today is to try and unpack that. We're
not here to pick a side, but to look at the historical
records, the treaties, the letters, the accounts
from his reign, which was roughly 1889 to 1913.
We really need to understand how one man can
be both an anti -colonial hero and, you know,
an imperialist in his own right. So let's rewind
the clock. Before he was an emperor, before the
great battles, he was just a boy. And his start
in life was, well, it was anything but secure.
That's right. He was born in 1844 in Shewa, which
is a region in central Ethiopia. And names are
really important here. He wasn't born Menelik.
What was his birth name? His birth name was Saleh
Meriam. That name, Menelik, came later. It was
given to him by his grandfather, King Salih Selassie.
And it wasn't, you know, a random choice. It's
all back, right? A very specific, very heavy
historical reference. Incredibly heavy. It references
Menelik I, who was the legendary son of King
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. In Ethiopian
tradition, that is the beginning of the entire
Solomonic dynasty. So by giving him that name.
His grandfather was basically prophesying. He
was saying, this child is going to restore the
ancient glory of the empire. He was signaling
a destiny for power. I mean, he was essentially
putting a target on the kids back from day one.
And that target brought trouble pretty quickly.
The sources describe his childhood less like
a royal fairy tale and more like a political
thriller. At just 11, his father dies, and then
suddenly the region is invaded. Invaded by Emperor
Teodros II. Now Teodros is a whole other deep
dive, but for our purposes, he was a unifier,
but a very violent one. He conquered Shura and
he captured the young prince, Salimarium, hauled
him off to the mountain fortress of Magdala.
You know, when I hear imprisoned in a fortress,
I'm picturing a dungeon, bread and water, iron
bars, that whole thing. But that's not what happened
here, is it? Not at all. This was a golden cage
kind of scenario. Teodros was smart. He knew
that to control Shoah, he needed the air under
his thumb. But he didn't want to break the boy.
He wanted to mold him. So what did he do? So
Salimarian was raised in the royal household.
He was educated in statecraft, in warfare, in
court etiquette. He basically had the run of
the place. Teodros even married him off to his
own daughter, Altash. Wow. Talk about keeping
your enemies close. He literally made his prisoner
his son -in -law. It's such a bizarre dynamic,
isn't it? You conquered my people, but pass the
salt, Dad. It's a classic move in feudal politics,
though. Bind them to you by blood and marriage.
It is. But here's the thing about Menelik, and
we see this trait throughout his entire life.
He is incredibly patient. But he never, ever
loses sight of the long game. He enjoyed the
comfort. He played the role of the loyal son
-in -law. But he never forgot he was a prisoner.
He just waited for 10 years. 10 years is a long
time for a young man to wait, especially when
you have a kingdom that's technically yours.
Right. But in 1865, the moment finally comes.
Right. Emperor Teodorus's power was starting
to fracture. He was becoming more and more erratic,
losing support. Menelik saw his opening. On the
night of July 1st, 1865, with the help of a queen
named Warkitu of the Walla Oromo. Who is an enemy
of Teodros. Exactly. With her help, he slipped
out of Magdala. And this is the first really
cool blooded moment we see from him. He leaves,
but he doesn't take his wife. No. He abandons
Altash. It was a completely clean break. He rode
back to Shewa to reclaim his father's throne.
And the fallout was horrific. Oh, it was. When
Teredros found out, he just went into a rage.
The sources recount that he took 29 Oromo hostages
people connected to Queen Workudin and had them
slaughtered. He also beat 12 Amhara notables
to death with bamboo rods. That's just brutal.
It really sets the stakes for this era. Power
wasn't theoretical. It was visceral and incredibly
violent. It was. So Menelik gets back to Shua
and the people welcome him. He's crowned king
or niggas of Shua. But you'd think most people
in his position, having just escaped and with
an army behind them, they might march right back
to Magdala to take the imperial throne, you know,
get revenge. You would think so. But Menelik
doesn't do that. And this is so crucial for understanding
his success later against the Italians. He knew
he wasn't strong enough yet. OK, why not? The
northern regions, Tigray and Gondar, they were
the traditional centers of power. Shua was considered
a bit of a backwater at the time. If he had marched
north then, he would have been crushed. So he
just waits. Again. He turned his back on the
throne for the moment. He focused on consolidation.
He started building. And interestingly, he started
shopping. He really did. I was reading these
accounts from Italian travelers who met him during
this period. They described him as a fanatic
for weapons. One observer said he had the curiosity
of a boy whenever he saw a new piece of machinery.
He was obsessed. But it wasn't just a hobby.
You have to remember the context. Ethiopia was
surrounded. The Ottoman Empire was active. The
modists were rising in Sudan and the Europeans
were circling. You could see the writing on the
wall. Menelik realized earlier than almost anyone
else that if he wanted to survive, tradition
was not enough. He needed breach loading rifles.
He needed cannons. He needed the industrial capacity
of violence. He recognized that the game had
completely changed. Swords and shields weren't
going to cut it anymore. Exactly. And this fascination
with technology wasn't just, you know, admiring
the engineering. It was a survival strategy.
He began courting Europeans, specifically the
Italians initially, to get access to these arms
markets. And this need for resources, for money
to buy these guns, it tries us right into the
most controversial. chapter of his life. It does.
To buy guns, you need gold, ivory, coffee, and
slaves. And to get those things, you need land.
This is the era of the Agar -Makant. Right, the
Agar -Makant. It translates roughly to the cultivation
of land. But I mean, let's be honest, that's
a euphemism. This was conquest. A huge expansion.
From his base in Shewa, Menelik looked south,
east, and west. He began a series of military
campaigns to expand the borders of his kingdom.
And to be clear, this is where the map of modern
Ethiopia is literally drawn. That's correct.
Without these campaigns, Ethiopia, as we know
it, geographically would not exist. He tripled
the size of the empire. He incorporated the Oromo
lands, the Saddam, the Somali regions. But the
methods. Well, the methods are why this is still
such a heated debate today. OK, let's dig into
that, because the experience of this expansion
wasn't the same for everyone, was it? It wasn't
some uniform welcome to the empire party. Not
at all. It varied wildly. In some kingdoms, like
Jemma or Laika in the West, the local rulers
were pragmatic. They saw Menelik's army coming,
an army that was increasingly well -armed, and
they realized fighting was suicide. So they made
a deal. They struck a deal. They submitted peacefully.
And Menelik allowed them to keep their religion,
their local administration, even their own armies,
as long as they paid tribute and acknowledged
his sovereignty. So in those cases, it was more
of a feudal absorption. Yeah. Pay the boss, keep
your house. Exactly. But in other areas, Arcee,
the kingdom of Kaffa, will lie to the resistance,
was incredibly fierce. These were independent
peoples who had no desire to be part of a Christian
highland empire. And Menelik's response to resistance
was brutality. The sources here are very difficult
to read. We're talking about massacres. We are.
In Arsi, for example, the war dragged on for
years. When the resistance was finally broken,
the retribution was severe. We have credible
accounts of mutilation, the severing of hands
and breasts, as a way to terrorize the population
into submission. And this is where that term
neftenia comes from, right? Yes. I heard that
word used in modern political debates in Ethiopia.
It's a really charged term. What does it actually
mean historically? Literally, it means gun carrier
or rifleman. You have to understand Menelik's
constraint. He didn't have the money to pay a
standing army to occupy these vast new territories,
so he used a system where he gave his soldiers
land in the conquered territories as payment.
And the local people. The local farmers were
turned into gabbers, or serfs. They were forced
to work the land for these new armed settlers,
the Niftinya. So it was essentially a settler
colonial system, but an internal one. The soldiers
from the north settle on the land, and the locals
in the south work for them. It fits many of the
definitions, yes. You had a cultural, linguistic,
and religious imposition from the north on to
the south. And this was all compounded by an
absolute catastrophe that hit right in the middle
of these wars. The Great Famine. The Great Famine.
It started with the Rinderpest outbreak of 1888.
This is something out of a disaster movie. It's
cattle disease, right? It's a viral cattle disease.
It was accidentally introduced to Africa by Italian
cattle that were imported to Eritrea to feed
their troops. It swept down the continent like
a wildfire. In Ethiopia, it killed an estimated
90 % of the cattle. 90%. I can't even wrap my
head around that number. Just think about what
that means. In an agrarian society... Cattle
aren't just food. They are the engine. They plow
the fields. They're your savings account. They're
your transport. When 90 % of them die, the society
just collapses. So how many people died? It's
estimated that one third of the entire Ethiopian
population died between 1888 and 1892. A third?
That's apocalyptic. It was. Menelik himself was
reportedly eating beef from cattle that had died
of the disease just to show solidarity, but there
is little he could do. And the timing is so tragic
because it coincided with his expansion. So for
many people in the South, the arrival of Menelik's
armies wasn't just a military defeat. It was
the end of their world combined with starvation
and disease. That trauma is intergenerational.
It hasn't just gone away. It really helps explain
why his legacy is so split. For some, he's the
glorious emperor. For others, he represents displacement
and immense suffering. Absolutely. But here's
the paradox. At the exact same time he is doing
this internal conquering, he's the only one who
seems to see the external threat clearly. He
is playing this high -stakes poker game with
Italy. The diplomatic chess match. This brings
us to the Treaty of Bucol in 1889. Okay, set
the scene for this. Menelik has just become emperor
after his predecessor, Johannes IV, died in battle.
So he needs international recognition to secure
his throne, and he still needs a steady supply
of those wepe we talked about. And Italy is eager
to expand its foothold from the coast. Exactly.
So they sign a treaty of friendship and trade.
But friendship is a pretty loose term in 19th
century diplomacy, isn't it? Very loose. This
treaty contains one of the most... famous lost
in translation moments in history. Or maybe lost
in deception is a better way to put it. Deception
is the right word. It all comes down to Article
17. The treaty was written in two languages,
Amharic and Italian. And the Italian negotiators
assured Menelik that the texts were identical.
They were not. What was the difference? It was
so subtle, but so significant. The Amharic version
said that Ethiopia could use the Italian government
to conduct its diplomacy with other European
powers. It was an option, a convenience offered
to a friend. You know, if you need help sending
a letter to England, we can help you out. No,
the Italian version. The Italian version said
Ethiopia must use the Italian government. That
simple change from could to must changed everything.
It legally turned Ethiopia into a protectorate.
It completely stripped away their sovereignty.
And Italy immediately started acting on that.
Immediately. They sent word to Britain, France,
and Germany saying, Ethiopia is ours now. If
you want to talk to Menelik, you have to talk
to us first. That is just incredibly sneaky.
Did Menelik realize he'd been duped? Not until
he tried to send letters directly to Queen Victoria
and Kaiser Wilhelm. And they wrote back saying,
effectively, why are you writing to us directly?
You're an Italian protectorate. He must have
been furious. He was beyond furious. He realized
the Italians were trying to conquer him with
a pen before they even used a sword. He confronted
them. And this is where I really admire his backbone.
Italy tried to buy him off, didn't they? They
did. They realized the jig was up, so they tried
bribery. They offered him two million cartridges,
two million rounds of ammunition if he would
just accept the protectorate status. That's a
massive bribe for a leader who desperately needs
ammo. It is. But Menelik refused. He essentially
said, I am not selling my kingdom for bullets.
He formally rejected the treaty in 1893. So Italy
moves to Plan B subversion. They look at the
political map of Ethiopia and they see Raz Mengesha
in Tigray Menelik's rival. And they think, great,
we'll just pay this guy to start a civil war
and we can walk in and pick up the pieces. It's
the standard colonial playbook, divide and rule.
They had done it all over Africa. But this is
where the Italians fundamentally misunderstood
Ethiopian culture. What did they miss? Ras Mengesha
and Menelik were rivals. Yes, they had fought.
But when the Italians approached Mengesha, he
realized something critical. The Italians weren't
there to help him become emperor. They were there
to take the land for themselves. So the rival
becomes an ally. Rosman Geisha famously came
to Menelik carrying a rock on his neck as a traditional
sign of submission and repentance. And he pledged
his loyalty against the invaders. He essentially
said, we can fight each other later. Right now,
we fight them. This was the absolute nightmare
scenario for Italy, a unified Ethiopia. And Menelik
then issues his mobilization proclamation. I
have the text here and it still gives me chills.
An enemy has come across the sea to destroy our
fatherland and our faith. Let every man who has
sufficient strength accompany me. And the response
was just overwhelming. This wasn't just a professional
army. It was a levee en masse. Farmers dropped
their plows. Lords brought their personal retinues.
And crucially, they brought their wives and sisters.
That's a detail we often miss, isn't it? The
logistics. We usually just picture men with guns.
Exactly. But an army of 100 ,000 men can't feed
itself in the mountains. The Ethiopian army didn't
have a supply corps with trucks and canned food.
The supply line was the women. Tens of thousands
of women marched with the army, managing the
food, the water, grinding the grain, and the
medical care. Without them, the army would have
starved long before it ever reached the battlefield.
It was an entire nation on the move. So the stage
is set. The Italians, led by General Baratieri,
are marching south from Eritrea. And they're
confident. Maybe a little too confident. General
Berettiere was operating on pure racism. He assumed
he was marching to discipline a disorganized
mob of savages. He estimated Menelik could maybe
field 30 ,000 men, most of them with spears.
He wrote back to Rome, speaking about the Ethiopians
with just utter contempt. And what was the reality
he walked into? The reality was an army of over
100 ,000. And thanks to Menelik's years of buying
weapons, many of them were armed with modern
Remington and Mosin -Nagant rifles. And this
is The Real Kicker. Menelik had Hotchkiss guns.
Break that down for us. What is a Hotchkiss gun?
It's an early form of rapid -fire mountain gun.
It's light, it's portable, and it's deadly. It
fires explosive shells. In terms of artillery
support, the Ethiopians, in some sectors of the
battle, actually outgunned the Italians. So it's
David versus Goliath, but David brought a machine
gun. That's a perfect way to put it. Before the
big showdown at Adwa, there was the siege at
Meikele. And this feels like a masterclass in
psychological warfare for Menelik. It really
was. The Italians were holed up in a fort at
Michele. Menelik's forces, and this was specifically
under the guidance of Empress Tatu, whom we definitely
need to talk more about, they cut off the water
supply. The Italians were literally dying of
thirst. They had no choice but to surrender.
Now, standard procedure in colonial wars of that
time, or any war, really, would be to take them
prisoner or, you know, kill them. Right. But
Menelik let them go. He allowed them to march
out of the fort with their rifles and return
to the main Italian lines. He even gave them
mules to carry their wounded. Why? That seems
incredibly risky. You're just giving the enemy
their soldiers back. It was a cold, brilliant
calculation. The Italian government was telling
its own soldiers that the Ethiopians were barbarians
who would torture and kill them. By showing chivalry?
By acting more civilized than the invaders, Menelik
completely destroyed the Italian morale. The
Italian soldiers were confused. They started
questioning why they were even fighting these
people who treated them with mercy. It's so doubt
in the ranks right before the decisive battle.
So we get to March 1st, 1896, Adwa. The terrain
here is rugged mountains, deep valleys. It's
a nightmare for coordination. And the Italians
had bad maps. Baratieri was under immense pressure
from Rome to get a quick victory because there
were elections coming up in Italy. So he ordered
a night march, hoping to surprise the Ethiopians
at dawn. But his columns got separated in the
dark. They got completely lost in the ravines.
So instead of hitting the Ethiopians as one solid
fist, they just arrived one by one. Exactly.
They were fed into the meat grinder piecemeal.
The Ethiopian forces, who were positioned...
on the high ground just swarmed them. Menelik,
Empress Tetu, and the key generals like Ras Alula
and Ras Makonnen directed these waves of attack.
It wasn't just a skirmish. It was a slaughter.
And the outcome was total. Complete and utter
destruction of the colonial army. Two Italian
generals died. One was captured. Thousands of
Italian soldiers were killed or taken prisoner.
The rest just fled in panic back towards Eritrea.
The news hits Rome and the government collapses.
It was a global shockwave. You have to understand
the mindset of the 19th century. White supremacy
wasn't just some fringe idea. It was the geopolitical
assumption. The idea that an African army could
defeat a European power in a pitched battle was,
to the West, unthinkable. Ottawa forced the entire
world to redraw its mental maps. The New York
Times ran headlines about it. It was breaking
news everywhere. And this brings us to the big
what if. Menelik has won. The Italians are running
for their lives back to the coast. He has all
the momentum. He could have pushed them into
the sea and taken Eritrea back. But he stops.
He halts the army. Why? He had them on the run.
This is one of the most debated decisions in
Ethiopian history. Menelik was, above all, A
pragmatist. He knew that Ottawa was a huge humiliation
for Italy, but he also knew his logistics were
stretching thin. His army was hungry. More importantly,
he calculated that if he pushed further, if he
tried to take the colony of Eritrea, he risked
turning a colonial war into a racial crusade.
What do you mean by that? He feared that Britain
and France would see it as a threat to their
own African colonies and would unite with Italy
to crush him. He couldn't fight all of Europe.
So he chose survival over total victory. He banked
the win. He chose to quit while he was ahead.
He secured the Treaty of Addis Ababa, where Italy,
Britain, and France all recognized the absolute
independence of Ethiopia. He secured the state.
But, by leaving the Italians in Eritrea, he left
a seed that would grow into the fascist invasion
of 1935 and the border wars that plagued the
Horn of Africa for the next century. That's a
heavy trade -off. Sovereignty for the core of
the empire, but leaving that door ajar in the
north. Precisely. It was wisdom in the moment,
but it came with a future cost. I want to circle
back to Empress Taitu. You mentioned her at Mecalae
in Adwa. She wasn't just sitting in the palace
embroidering, was she? Oh, absolutely not. Empress
Taitu Batul was a force of nature. She was Menelik's
third wife from a powerful northern family, which
helped shore up his legitimacy. But she was a
hardliner. When Menelik was considering compromising
with the Italians early on, Taitu was the one
who famously said no. We fight. The bad cop to
his good cop. Very much so. At Adwa, she didn't
just watch. She commanded her own unit of 5 ,000
soldiers. She was on the battlefield organizing
the defense of the camp and reinforcing the lines.
And she was also the visionary behind the capital
city. Arisobaba. Yes. Menelik wanted to build
his capital at Entodo, up in the high mountains.
It was defensive, sure, but it was cold, windy,
and miserable. There was no water. It really
changes the picture of the monarchy when you
realize it was a true partnership. A very effective
one. Menelik was the cool, calculating diplomat.
Teitu was the fiery, decisive nationalist. They
balanced each other perfectly. Menelik pivots
again. He puts down the sword and he picks up
a telephone. He becomes the modernizer. And this
is where we see that fascination with technology
really take root. He opened the floodgates. With
Ethiopia's independence secure, he felt safe
to bring in Western tools without fearing Western
domination. He introduced the telephone, the
telegraph, the first motor cars. He established
the first modern bank. The Bank of Abyssinia.
And the railway. The railway was the game changer.
It connected Addis Ababa to Djibouti to the sea.
It integrated Ethiopia into the global economy
in a way that had never happened before. Before
the train, that journey took weeks by mule. After,
it took days. There is a story I see pop up on
the internet constantly about Menelik and an
electric chair. We have to address it because
it's so strange. The electric chair story. It's
a classic urban legend. So what's the story?
The story goes that Menelik heard about this
new American invention for execution, the electric
chair. He thought it sounded modern and humane,
so he ordered three of them. When they arrived,
he supposedly realized Ethiopia had no electricity
grid. So the story goes he just used one of them
as his imperial throne. It's such a vivid, bizarre
image. Is any of it true? Almost certainly not.
Historians have traced this story back to a Canadian
journalist in the 1930s who likely just made
it up to make the emperor look like a naive savage
mimicking the West. But the fact that the story
survives tells you something about his reputation.
He was known globally as the man who wanted the
future, even if people mocked him for it. It
creates this picture. of a man straddling two
worlds, the ancient Solomonic tradition and the
industrial 20th century. Right. But as with all
reigns, it had to end. And the end of Menelik's
life was... Well, it was complicated. It was
a slow, painful decline. Starting around 1906,
Menelik began suffering a series of strokes.
By 1909, the great line of Judah was incapacitated.
He couldn't speak. He couldn't move. The empire
was effectively rudderless. Empress Tatu stepped
in as regent, trying to hold it all together.
But the nobility resented her power and eventually
sidelined her. And the succession was a complete
mess because he had no living legitimate son.
Right. He had daughters, but the nobility wasn't
ready for a female monarch to rule in her own
right, so he picked his grandson, Lijiasu. But
Iyasu was young, he was volatile, and most dangerously
for that time, he was flirting with Islam. Why
was that such a problem in the empire? Iyasu's
father was a Muslim lord from Walla who had converted
to Christianity. There were rumors, and eventually
evidence, that Iyasu was leaning back toward
his father's faith. He started wearing turbans,
building mosques, making alliances with Somali
Muslim leaders. In a staunchly orthodox Christian
empire, where the emperor is the defender of
the faith, this was political suicide. So Menelik
dies in 1913. He dies, and the political situation
is so tense that initially he wasn't even buried
with a public funeral. They were so afraid of
a civil war breaking out that they kept his death
quiet for a time. Yasu took over but was never
officially crowned. He was deposed just a few
years later, which led to Menelik's daughter
Zuditu becoming empress and Rastafari, who we
all know as Hail Selassie, rising to power as
regent. So when we step back and look at the
whole picture, Menelik II, architect of modern
Ethiopia, brutal conqueror, victor of Adwa. How
do we synthesize all of this? I think we have
to accept that he disrupts our clean narratives.
We like our anti -colonial heroes to be pure
victims fighting back against the oppressor.
Menelik was an anti -colonial hero who was also
an imperialist. He played the game. He played
the game better than the Europeans did. He used
their technology and their diplomatic rules to
beat them. But he also used their methods of
conquest to build his own state. That is the
key tension, isn't it? You can't have modern
Ethiopia without the conquest. But that very
conquest left wounds that are still bleeding
today. Exactly. If you look at the ethnic tensions
in Ethiopia now, the Oromo protests, the debates
over land and language, they trace their roots
directly back to the Neftenya system in the expansion
of the 1880s. Menelik built the house, but the
foundation has cracks. He created the borders,
but he also created the internal divisions. But
at the same time, we can't overstate the importance
of Ottawa. No, we absolutely cannot. Adwa is
a beacon. For the Pan -African movement, for
people like Marcus Garvey, W .E .B. Dubois -Manelik
was proof. He proved that Black people could
unite, organize, and defeat a white superpower.
He shattered the myth of European invincibility,
that psychological victory is just as important
as the military one. It gave hope to colonize
people everywhere, from Ghana to Harlem. Here's
a thought to leave our listeners with. We talked
about that moment after the battle where Menelik
stops and doesn't invade Eritrea. He chose stability
over total victory. Was that the ultimate act
of wisdom that saved his empire from certain
destruction? Or was it the missed opportunity
that condemned the Horn of Africa to a century
of conflict? That is the great what if. If he
had pushed to the sea, maybe the invasion of
1935 never happens. Maybe Eritrea is never a
separate issue. Or maybe Ethiopia would have
been crushed by a united Europe in 1900 and there
would be no independent Ethiopia today. We'll
never know. History doesn't give us the alternate
ending. It just gives us the complexity. And
that is what makes Menelik such a fascinating
figure to study. If you want to dive deeper into
the treaties, the battle maps, or the diaries
from the court, check out the source material
we've linked. There's so much more to this story.
Thanks for listening to The Deep Dive. Until
next time. Stay curious.