October 28, 2025 • 50 mins
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, we all know the inspiring and tragic story of Marie Curie -- however, not everyone is familiar with the absolute boom in radium-associated merchandise, which took the world by storm before the public understood the dangers of radiation. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive into a bizarre tale of capitalism, marketing, and consequence: let's call this parable 'The Radium Era.'
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our own
mythical super producer, Max the Radiation Williams, Max Radiation Boy Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yes, I'm just glowing, y'all. You always are you? If
you are? You doing a new skincare routine? Hopefully not
involving radium? Yeah, or the condition no well fare maybe
the written maybe radium could knock the condition right out?
Why not try at this point? Why not? Why not? Well,
we'll tell you why not? Max it just a little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
They called me, Ben Bullen. You also just heard mister
Noel Brown there and the rumors are true, fellow Ridiculous Historians.
We have returned from some time at sea. We're pleased
as punch, or perhaps pleased ask plutonium to rejoin you today.
So we've all heard of radium, right.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
M Yeah, And can I just take a quick moment
to say I missed you guys, Ben, I saw you,
but we didn't record. This is the first recording we've
done in a little bit, and we've both been under
the weather for travel crowd, and I'm happy to be back. Yeah,
radium is certainly something that we learned about when studying
the periodic table in school, and I think we all
learned about Marie and.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Pierre Curie and the discovery of radium. That was going
to be I totally forgot you guys. That was going
to be part of my intro today and a cooled
intro because one fun, dumb fact about me, I'm one
of those people who can name every element on the
periodic table. It's a useless skill.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Incorrect by the slanet parties.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Thanks, but we know the periodic table, despite having a
weird name, and despite being somewhat imperfect, it is a
phenomenal assembly of some amazing revelations, and some of those revelations,
as we're going to discover, are indeed deadly revelations. We
(02:30):
always talked about Marie Curie, We've mentioned her in the
past multiple times.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Absolute hero of the show.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Her and Pierre, as you said, discovered radium in eighteen
ninety eight. But when they discovered it, and these are
very clever people, when they discovered it, it is safe
to say they weren't sure what they were getting into.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
No I mean, that's kind of a lot of the
stories we talk about n ridiculous sister involving science. There's
a whole lot of f around and find out, and
oftentimes you have folks like Marie and Pierre finding out
not in the best possible way for science. No.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Originally, the CUIs, being scientists, had they had an idea
of what radium could be used for, or what we
would call the applications, and they said, look, radium can
help with cancer treatment, or it can help the emergent
science of X ray technology. They had no idea about
the merch they had no idea about how capitalism and
(03:34):
American marketing worked. This was a panacea. This was snake
oil medicine. This was a cure all that you could
use to treat anything.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Sort of like how we're seeing a lot of the
marketing and rollout surrounding artificial so called artificial intelligence. Huh's
let's just give it a try. Who knows what. We
don't have to worry about the knock on consequences. We'll
figure that out later. And here's one for the older heads.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Back in that halcyon era of the nineteen nineties, when
every business discovered the word digital. I've had to put
the word digital on everything they made, even.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
If it did make sense. And now now it seems
so data, doesn't it, But you still do see it.
It is one of those remnants that has stuck around.
So the early nineteen hundred saw radiums well. Actually, to
quote our brand new research associate, Dylan, not Dylan the
Tennessee pal, but Dylan will come up with a cool
nickname for you later this first episode with us, so
we're excited to have him join the ridiculous history research cadre.
(04:34):
But yeah, the nineteen hundred saw radium's luminescence property is
becoming quite in vogue.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, this is ubiquitous at some point. You're seeing it
mentioned on the tens for medicine, You're seeing it advertised
as a feature of industrial products. It's great for marketers
and radiation poisoning aside, it's great for it's great for
that consumer and corporations because the luminescent properties are instantly recognizable, right,
(05:06):
They're distinctive. So if you are making watches, you are
going to use radium based paint on your watches or
your airplane dials. Right for instrumentation, if you are going
to a party and you want to make an impression
as a young lady, you're using radium infused glowing makeup
on your face, but also your teeth.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Oh and also your fingernails. Yeah. Also, why not go
ahead and since we're at the party and we're having
a good time throwing a few back, let's just put
a little radium in the cocktails for fun. Yeah yeah, yeah,
it is uh boil boy. It makes me think of
like Matt Hatter syndrome and just you know, these substances
that were just used so ubiquitously and then caused real,
(05:48):
real problems down the road. And of course that is
because unbeknownst at the time, this radium exposure was incredibly
harmful and detrimental to the long term health of the
individuals exposed to it.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Absolutely, and you've probably heard folks of parables like the
story of the Radium Girls, one of the most well
known cases of documented overexposure to radium. Their activism and
their outcry directly led to stricter workplace laws that also
themselves led to the creation of stuff like OSHA, the
(06:23):
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. But there's a lot more
to it. So we're giving you. We've given you the gist.
Let's dive in. Let's understand why the United States went
absolutely head over heels for radium. And to answer that
question on first step has to be learning what radium
(06:46):
is and meeting the Curis and.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Dylan.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
I'm just going to tell you not all the jokes
lanned every time.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
It's okay, it's you know, curry, Currey's curry, potato potatos.
We do know about the sarbon, the sarball, the absolutely
luminous university if we're talking about glowing stuff more, you know,
in the scientific world in Paris, France, where Pierre taught
chemistry at the School of Physics and Marie attended college
(07:16):
there as a student of physics and maths. Yeah, I
said it. I'm saying maths. I just like the way
it sounds. They had an immediate connection because of shared
interests and absolute, unflinching love of science and scientific discovery,
and they did eventually get married in July of eighteen
ninety five, so just a year later, very quick, quick courtship.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
And because of their common interests, they were propelled along
a professional career as well as a romantic one by
the end of eighteen ninety five, our buddy Pierre has
published his thesis, his doctoral thesis on the connection between
temperature and magnetism, and this was a real banger for
(08:03):
the target audience. As a matter of fact, it established
what we today call Curie's law.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
That's right. And then in eighteen ninety seven Marie would
join her husband working for the university herself in the laboratory,
helping Pierre expand on these discoveries around magnetism. That is,
until a new interest caught their attention in a very
very real way that would change their lives and carve
a path.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Through history and science, an irradiated glowing path. So this
is how stuff breaks down. Marie is diving into the
research of a French physicist, this guy Enton, Henri the Querol.
He presented just a really weird talk in eighteen ninety six,
(08:54):
on February twenty fourth, about uranium rays. And he was talking,
you know, to other people in this rarefied air of
scientific research. And while he is in his presentation, folks
just picture ted talk, all right, that's the way he's doing.
Amrie's doing a tech talk. He's explaining to onlookers that
(09:15):
when uranium based crystals are exposed to sunlight, they leave
a permanent shadow on photographic plates. This is a weird
thing to just tell people. So he demonstrates it on stage,
and this is kind of the emergent X ray technology
we were teasing at the top here. So Marie Curie
(09:36):
sees a lot of potential in this, and she says,
what if other elements can do this as well? What
if there's a chemical compound that's as good or better
than uranium.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
For X rays? That's right, So she used a principle
that was always near and dear to a dear friend
of the show, Lauren Vogelbaum, back when she was on
tech stuff with frenemy of the show than the Quistor Stricklin.
The piezoelectric effect, which is a very fascinating effect which
refers to the ability of certain materials, elements, minerals, et cetera.
(10:13):
Quartz is a good example to generate an electrical charge
when they are they have a stress applied to them.
That's something that Lauren was always fascinated by. I remember
whenever the pioso electric effect could come up, she would
light up. So this is exactly what Marie used to
test her theory about other chemical compounds, so the strength
of radiation isn't dependent upon the compound itself, but it's
(10:34):
dependent on the levels of uranium or thorium that it contains.
She also found that many chemical compounds of the same
element are different in structure and in chemical characteristics. Finally,
the ability to radiate is tied directly to the interior
of the atom, and only uranium and thorium contain the
ability to give off radiation at this point in time.
(10:58):
That is the case in the trade jectory of her discoveries,
and you know, the greater scientific body of knowledge around
these elements.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
And so, folks, what would you do if you were Marie?
For anybody who's been in a successful loving relationship, probably
you want to brag to your partner, right, because we're
always trying to get our significant others to think of
us as cool people. So she runs and tells Pierre.
Pierre joins her and says, let's keep researching this together.
(11:32):
Fast forward. It's June eighteen ninety eight. They achieved Marie's
long sought after discovery, and the next month, a publication
in July breaks the news to the world, the Cures
have discovered a substance three hundred times the strength of uranium,
and they named it polonium. And then the Cures ride
(11:56):
back in eighteen ninety eight, December twenty sixth to the
Academy of Sciences and they say, dj college voice, another one.
We found something else. We're calling this one radium.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So in nineteen o three, while Antoine, Henri baccorel Pierre
and Marie Currie shared in a Nobel Peace Prize in
Physics for their discoveries and radiation, the rest of the
world was looking to the future wrapped up in this
new marketing craze around the miracle compound, as it was pitched,
(12:33):
known as radium.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, this is where we see the origin of the
radium fad, or what Dylan rightly calls the radium era.
The radium fad reaches US shores around nineteen four And
do check out our earlier episodes on medicine shows and
other quack kaka meimi cures and griffs, folks. You will
(12:57):
enjoy that. And you definitely should know about medicine shows.
So that's kind of the milieu in which this is occurring.
We don't have things like the FDA in its current form.
You know, we don't have as a young nation, we
don't have these federal resources and institutions to keep corporations
(13:17):
and doctors honest. You can literally have a good enough pattern,
as we call it in British drifting, and you can
go and sell whatever kind of monarchy you want, as
long as you get away before the law finds you. Look,
I don't want to be unfair. I'm not saying that
all these people selling radium branded stuff were themselves bad
(13:39):
faith actors, because they did see doctors across the pond
use radium to kill cancerous cells, right, and they didn't know,
just like the curies didn't know at the time, they
didn't know about the damaging effects of radiation exposure. This
was still very new, untrammeled ground.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Right, and it wasn't until the thirties that evidence of
this type of poisoning became very apparent and the government
then had to act. But we'll get to that.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
There is an insane number of companies during the radium
era that included radium in whatever they were already making
as as like a selling point. So the idea was
radium as a concept was so popular, so established in
the zeitgeist that if you're walking through your local market
(14:39):
or general store, you probably would be more likely to
buy anything that had the word radium on it.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, it's the stuff of the future, you know, Man,
it glows. What else do you want? So we start
to see some sort of trendy applications of radium. In
nineteen oh four, for example, someone named L. D. Garner
came out with a product, a drink called Liquid Sunshine. Yeah,
I remember that one did not have any LSD in
(15:08):
it either, just lots of poison. This was a radium
based water beverage and it was mega popular in the
early twentieth century, specifically around New York City.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And again, I know it's easy for some of the
younger folks in the crowd to make fun of us
New Yorkers at the turn of that century who were
drinking radium based water beverages. But listen, folks, if you
drink Laqui, you don't really have room to talk now,
kind of. It was the lacua of its day. It
just happened to have radium in it, for sure.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
And Dylan also points out a fad that I think
you and I and Max all remember where there were
like gummies and various sweety snack kind of things that
would like dye your tongue and teeth certain colors. And
speaking from experience, they also had the potential to dye
your your poop.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
And then in nineteen fourteen we have the again we
have a water based thing, the Great Radium Spring Water Company,
which was originally Fred m Ostia's company. They they come
directly from another bit of quackery, the concept of restorative waters,
(16:17):
which is very popular here in the United States, and
is indeed the reason that one of our streets in
Atlanta is named Ponce de Leon. This is a true story.
The Ponce City Market, where our office was based for
a number of years, contains one of the seven sacred
springs of Indigenous Native culture. It's a fun fact if
(16:41):
you ever get the chance to visit. There is a
water tower that still collects water from that spring. So
people were very into restorative waters or curative waters.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Fountain of youths. I'm right, yeah, for sure. And this
also I think I'm pretty synchronous with the work of
John Harvey Kellogg, who was a huge fan of enemas
and also things like restorative waters and sort of like
med health spa kind of treatments, and of course the
inventure of corn flakes.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Yeah, and so our pal fred In Oistier. He originally
names his water company Pittfield's Pine Crest Spring and then
changes the name because he's like, ah, we got to
get around with this radium. All the kids love this
radium stuff. We're gonna call our company a Great Radium
(17:31):
Spring water company.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Doing jazz hands what he's saying. And they made some
pretty bold claims that we're not necessarily you know, accurate,
always creating lore. Yeah, for sure. They claimed that the
water was from the titular Great Radium Spring wherever the
(17:53):
hell that was supposed to be, but later went on
to pivot, you know, uh and sell ginger ale instead, right,
And they maybe they had to pivot because there were
so many other radium beverage groups getting in the mix.
I think it was nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
We got Bailey Radium Laboratories, who made Ratathor.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Radathor, my favorite pokemon in his final form, Radathor Energy drinks.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Radathor. Bailey Radium and Ratathor therefore are founded created by
William J. Bailey and their advertisement. So if you see
them in the grocery store, their advertisement is triple distilled
water that is guaranteed to contain at least one micro
curi each of radium two twenty six and radium to
(18:43):
twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's a feature, not a bug, you know, yes, yes,
just just look at the little radium for a treat.
He actually went so far as to try to back
up this claim with something of a reward for anyone
who could prove he's proved me wrong, has proved that
it contained any less than the advertised amounts of one
(19:04):
microcuity each of those two substances. He also offered a
guarantee that Ratathor is harmless. Oh good, and every respects great.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah, this is this is weird because they were positioning
themselves to be the red Bull or the monster Energy
or the Celsius of their day. And this again, it
shows us how how much more blurry the line was
between medicine and a treat because Ratathor is getting prescribed
(19:38):
by actual facts. Shout out to you, Lauren, actual facts,
doctors to cure injuries. You can pour it right on there,
you know, yeah exactly, just you know, slug half of
this and then pour the rest of it on the gunshot.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
You'll be fine. And a real wolverine situation, you know, right,
bite down and pour the ra out of thor on
the wound. So, uh, we know that there's there's war ahead.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
While we're on the subject of food and bev, I
think we should talk about German radium chocolate.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Can we can we please? Radium man? Yes? From buck
on brown, not brown b r o w n brown
b r a u n perhaps pronounced brawn. Likely this
did not make it into the US, sort of like
today you can't find a proper kinder egg anymore. Yeah,
because they think we're too stupid and we're gonna choke
on you know, the little tiny toy inside, which you
(20:33):
know to be fair. Maybe is true, but it is
refreshing to be in Europe where you can get a
proper kinder egg.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
That's one of the first things I buy in town. Also,
I don't like the I don't like the pseudo kinder eggs.
There's different halves.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
It's a little for the thing. It's like a little
almost like a nutella biscuit thing, like it's got like
a little pocket of dunk A use type icing that
you put on this other thing. Not far events, but yes.
Radium chocolade was likely not sold in the States because
at this point the awareness of the dangerous surrounding radium.
(21:09):
By nineteen thirty one was much more widely known. It
was advertised as an energy bar type food with the
tagline eat this and feel great. Got it. I'm gonna
do a quick translate. I kind of know roughly what
it is, but it's curly fun. Yeah, and German it
would be sn z dasfu linzy zich gross ahtim. Yeah,
(21:34):
there you go, and it goes.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
We see this craze going through other products as well,
like makeup and skincare. There was a ton of stuff
released in Europe and in the United States that said
if you put radium on your skin, that glow will
that lumin essence will do something curative for your epidermis.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
There were recurative right there we go.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
We're talking creams, salts, suppositories.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
And yeah, you know what, I can't help but think
about And I'm sure you're on the same page, and
I'm sure Max is too. At least it's crossed your
mind with all of this stuff, especially the glowing aspect
of it and the sort of nineteen twenties trendiness of it.
All the Fallout games, there's so many, you know, the
glowing one, all of these ghouls that have clearly been
so irradiated that they're actually putting out like a ghoulish
(22:28):
green glow. It's just such a cool franchise and I'm
so stoked about the next season of the series coming
out soon. And to jump in here, think about what
is the best Nuca Cola at least in terms of
like is the Niccola radium. It's the quantum quantum which radiates.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
There you go, yeah, yeah, I mean we see this
all the time in the intersection of capitalism and scientific innovation. Also,
there's something Look, we're adults here, folks, I'm going to
keep it pg.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Thirteen.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
But there's something that's always baffled me about humanity ever
since the early days. The suppository idea humanity runs into
every new discovery, and some member of the species says, also,
we should see if we could put it in our butts.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
What if we put it on our butts? For everything?
You know, what can harm fire? For the wheel for rockets,
radium is no different. Who was putting fire in their butt.
It seems like you learn your lesson from that one
real quick. Yeah, I just don't know why this is
a continual thing that humans do. So in Radium, the advertisers,
(23:37):
some of whom were grifters and some of whom were
just misled.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yes, they were seeing this panacea, right, this cure all
for everything from acne to wartz, A lot of stuff
that could be a more vague general condition like having
a bad headache, or a very general condition like having
(24:03):
what is called insanity.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Ye did also stuff like blind this, yeah, or just
general malaise, you know, for pep Spoon your way to
health with Vita Meta Radium.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yes, yeah, And I love the nomenclature for the specific
names in this era of fake medicine. Also, all right,
so these are like the new kids on the block
when it comes to snake oil salesman, right, They're basically
the Wall Street version of this.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Which we have an episode on just this concept of multiples.
I'm sure if you go back, but I do seem
to recall a recent one where we talk a lot
about the origin of the term snake oil and various
quack remedies.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the one we mentioned there at
the top. We've got to find the name of that
when Max. If you could look that up, you'll be
an absolute legend. Not that you aren't already a legendary
glowing ghoul.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, not that you aren't.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Already good safe it. So we also know that radium
found its way into household goods. Every I think everybody
in the US has one of those mysterious under the
sink storage spots for clean cleaning and stuff. And sometimes
you just get it for one specific kind of cleaning
(25:23):
and it just lives in your house under the sink
for years afterwards.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yeah, until you know the one time where you actually
need to use it, perhaps if that ever even comes.
But it's better to have than not to have, or
have even four of them because you forgot you bought
it already, and then the actual situation comes up where
you need it and you realize, man, this this happened before,
and I have too many bottles of sewer fly drain cleaner.
So companies were quick to jump on the radium train.
(25:49):
Household goods companies folks manufacturing things like paint, because they
love the luminescent properties of radium and that also extended
to everything from life light switches, giving a glow in
the dark quality to your switch so you could see
it in the dark. We now know how to do that,
I think without radium, thank god. So this would of
course make finding the switch in the dark a little
(26:11):
bit of an easier task. We even saw it in
children's toys. And we are of course segueing gently into
the true dark side of the knock on consequences of
this radium craze.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Yeah, you knew what was going to happen, folks. A
lot of this goes back to maybe not specific toy manufacturers,
but more the manufacturers of components that were used in
finished products, most especially makers of radium luminescent paint. The
(26:46):
big one here is the United States Radium Corporation. They
had a claim to fame a paint called undark, which
I love.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
By the way, that's solid branding.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, Undark is is luminescent because it contains radium. It's
invented by a guy whose name I love, doctor Sabin
Arnold Vaughan Sochoki, and he cop notch name, doctor Vaughan Sochaki,
which does sound like something I would make up in
an improv set h he says, look, yeah, it's well
(27:20):
and good that I've made this magic glowing paint for
watchfaces and airplane instrumentation.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
But I see a future that's much bigger. We can
take un dark and we can paint entire rooms with it,
entire houses on dark. Slow. Your role on Shaki such
Skia and him coughing at the end is because of
the radium. He's losing it. He's also just so excited
(27:49):
he can't contain himself. The light thrown off by radium paint,
he says, on the walls and ceilings would in color
be like soft, gentle moonlight, and it would also be
you know, killing you softly, you know, with its song.
So we're getting to it here. It is the devastating
reality of radium use. We're going to jump into the
(28:09):
story of the Radium Girls, which we teased there at
the top of the episode, and then get into a
person named Evan Byers. So, although radium products continue to
exist in the US well into the early thirties, the
first signs as we mentioned, and the government kind of
(28:30):
starting to take notice of these horrific effects started to
become clear. Nearly a decade prior to that. You know,
the wheels of regulation do grind slowly, It would seem
the same as it ever was. Two of the most
prominent cases that brought some of these dangers to light
are the case of Grace Fryer and her fellow Radium Girls,
(28:53):
and then, of course, as we teased the case of
Eben Byers, why don't we start right up with Grace
Fryer and the Radium Girls.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah, and on our way to that, folks, one thing
we want to establish here is why radium poisoning in
particular is so terrible for you.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
This is it.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Basically, we've been dancing around this, but to give it
to you playing the human body treats radium like calcium,
so it deposits the radium deep within your bones. And
once the radium infiltrates your bones, it can just chill there.
It can be dormant, in the state of torpor for
years and years, years before you get the first sign
(29:32):
of radium poisoning.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
That's why it took so long.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
It's just sort of irreversible damage. That's why it was
such a stealth killer, and.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
It took them some time to start to see these results.
Playing out. It's a nopes. I guess we might have
should have done our homework a little more thirty years
ago or so, when right when people like Grace Friars
start realizing something's wrong. Now she is. She is one
of those.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
People we mentioned earlier, a dial painter. So if you
have a wristwatch or if you have an airplane, two things.
I'm sure everybody has.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
The dream a wristwatch and an airplane, and every household the.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Backing on your watch face has to be made by someone.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
And isn't that funny? Ben the trend of this. Obviously
they figured out better ways to do it, but like
the indiglow watches, you know, obviously it's safer alternative to radium,
but something that kind of carried forward because of this
sort of precedent here with the glowing watch faces. It
wasn't theory a good idea, And again, like the glow
in the dark everything, I'm glad they figured out a
(30:39):
way to do it because it is a cool effect
and quite useful in a watch.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Oh, this is going to lead to a weird tangential
story at the end, by the way, folks, So stay tuned,
all right, Grease Fryar has painted loads and loads of
dials with this on dark paint.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
It's her job.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
She checks into the factory. She's about that life. She
does this every day. It is like so many other
factory jobs, repetitive, tedious, and demands precision because she has
to apply paint to the tiny numbers on the dial d.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
T B T twelve one two three, and that's her
whole day.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
So when you're doing this, you have to continuously move
the brush and pointing it in different directions, and you
can't mess up the dial. You can't paint too far
over the boundaries. So the thing that Grace and a
lot of the Radium girls start doing is dragging the
bristles of the brush between their lips, redding it with
(31:44):
their tongue. It's kind of like how people, some people,
often older readers, have the habit of licking their finger
when they turn the page.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Mm hm yeah, but Radium or no, probably not the
best practice. Don't lick paint. Just gotta be a better
way to do that. So, yeah, she was doing this
day in and day out, painting hundreds and hundreds of
these dials. Grace is quoted saying this about her experience
working in the factory or on the line. Our instructors
(32:15):
told us to point them with our lips. I think
I pointed mine about six times to every Watchtyal. It
didn't have any taste, and I didn't know it was harmful.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, exactly this, And this makes sense for anybody who's
a painter or an artist hanging out with us today.
We've all done that thing at some point where you
try to you just improvise some way totally to get
a finer tip on the brush.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
So this makes sense.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
They're following like, they're not dummies, they're good employees. They're
doing what their bosses told them to do. And the
Radium Core management has what a lot of therapists call
toxic positivity. Yeah, they just keep saying everything is great,
this is gonna be fine. Yeah, lick the tip of
(33:06):
that radiated brush. And also, hey, you're not just factory workers.
This is a radioactive olive garden. When you're here, your family,
your brand ambassador. So ladies, go rep the product. Put
on dark on your nails, put it on your face,
put on your teeth, you know, just inject it right
(33:29):
into your neck. Why do we add makeup for teeth,
radium core. That's a great idea, Ben, I think you're
onto something.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Let's put that. Let's put a pin in that one. Yeah,
And some of these little tricks evolved organically as ways
of kind of passing the time at work, trying all
these different methods of using the paint in some of
these fun ways. And to your point, Ben, it then
became this sort of brand ambassador quality of parading the
stuff and evangelizing the wonders of radium and radium paint.
(33:57):
So Grace didn't really notice any effects for years until
one day she was working at a bank, well after
her career as a radium girl had come to an end,
and she blew her nose into a handkerchief and it glowed.
I don't love hearing that. Also, Also, we do have
(34:19):
knowing bad guys in this story. Of course they knew,
they knew what they knew. Yeah, just to emphasize, right,
everybody who was involved with the actual chemistry and production
of un Dark, and all the C suite guys they
wouldn't touch this stuff. They knew what was up.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
So how inhuman is it for them to watch these
poor workers throwing this odd everywhere? So Grace has the
glowing stop booger moment, and then she realizes maybe upper
management hasn't been telling her the entirety of the truth.
Now her condition progresses. By nineteen twenty two, she starts
(35:03):
to lose teeth. She gets severe acute pain in her jaw,
so she goes in for an X ray, right, and
X ray technology has been involving in step with this
as well, And the doctors look at the X rays
and say, holy crap, you have severe bone decay.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
What happened?
Speaker 1 (35:19):
It's as though the calcium that should be in your
bones was replace something else.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, And the reason we know about Grace is because
she was the one who stood up and spoke up
and became sort of a figurehead for all of the voiceless,
you know, workers and folks that had been consumers. Likely
we don't know all those stories, but we know Grace's story.
This set her on a mission to get justice for
(35:46):
herself and those in her same position who were knowingly
exposed to the stuff by some really bad actors. So
specifically we're talking about the dial painters. They had, now
for purposes of public perception, been dubbed the Radium Girls
and they were railing against the harmful conditions that they
(36:08):
were exposed to by US Radium Corporation.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Absolutely, and in doing so, there's no two ways about it,
they saved people's lives, people who otherwise would have been
exposed to this stuff. But as in any underdog story,
this is a real speaking truth to power situation. The
good guys are outnumbered and they are out financed, so
(36:32):
they have an uphill battle in the courts. Luckily, there
are good guy lawyers who come by to contribute their
efforts to the cause. In particular, I'm thinking of Raymond Barry,
the lawyer who, along with the Radium Girls, launched a
lawsuit against the company US Radium Corps for two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars. Because of the horrible conditions that
(36:59):
each of these people were laboring under. They were living
on borrowed time, They literally physically probably would not survive
the full grind of a court case of this magnitude
was something as well funded as this corporation, so they
made the decision. Well, they were forced to settle for
(37:19):
ten thousand dollars each and an annual payment of six
hundred bucks. Better than nothing, but to them I think
more important than the cash was the recognition of what
had happened.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
It's exactly right, sadly as triumphant relatively speaking, an outcome
as this was, and a win for all of the
folks that did not have a voice who were exposed
to the stuff. Grace Fryar was, in her pursuit for justice,
not able to outlive the harmful effects of the radium exposure,
(37:53):
and passed away sadly on October twenty seventh of nineteen
thirty three at the age of thirty four.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
We can't overemphasize that, folks thirty four years old. We
have one other story one to wrap up with here
about the radium era. This is a name we mentioned
that might be familiar to some of us in the
audience today, Eben.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Bayer's slight trigger warning for this one. It's a little
grizzlier than the last one. Inst in real body horror stuff,
So Eben Byers. We'll get into it with humor. He
is called a US amateur golf champion, and the phrase
amateur golf champion feels paragole. Yeah right, I'm a professional amateur. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
I love that he's an elderly Orphan. He's the president
of am Buyers Company out there in Pittsburgh, and in
nineteen twenty seven, he's got a pretty gnarly arm injury
because the guy's always going golfing, right, and his doctor C. C.
Moya says, all right, Evan, here's what you gotta do.
(39:04):
Your arm's not feeling one hundred percent. You gotta drink
this new thing I just learned about. It's called Ratathor. Yeah,
pound half of it and dump the rest right on
the arm.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Yes, what can I just say that CC moyar sounds
like the kind of thing that would be emblazoned on
the side of one of those quack snake oil salesman wagons.
Just I'm sorry, No, no offense to anyone with his name,
But something about a doctor named C. C. Moyar just
seems a little bit suss. So at the time of
this prescription, he was fifty years old, and over the
(39:38):
next three years until in nineteen thirty, he consumed a
lot of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yeah, three bottles of Ratathor per day on average. And
remember boy, he said about Radathor earlier, folks, this is
the one that was guaranteed yes to have at least
one micro cury each of radium two twenty six and
two twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Two flavors, yeah, at the same time. And if it
didn't have that, the company would give you one thousand
dollars if you could prove it didn't have all that radium.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
So this is this is one of the ones that
definitely is going to poison you.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
And uh oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
As as as he goes through, you know, chasing that
radium dragon, his teeth begin to fall.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Out because as we mentioned, this stuff hits you right
in the bone density. It replaces that calcium that gives
us healthy bones, and his teeth begin to fall out,
as you said. And an FTC employee, Robert Wynn, in
the course of the case surrounding this gentleman and his condition,
(40:45):
had this to say, and this is the grisly bit.
His whole upper jaw except two front teeth and most
of his lower jaw had been removed. All the remaining
bone tissue of his body was slowly disintegrating and were
actually forming in his skull. A more gruesome experience in
a more gorgeous setting would be hard to imagine. What
(41:08):
is the gorgeous setting He's referring to I wonder Pittsburgh unclear.
We do know this.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
This is a terrible way to go, folks. As far
as death and illness, we do know this was happening
to other people. Again, Ratathor was something was an energy drink.
People were drinking it like you would drink an energy
drink today. So Buyers is not the only person who
suffers these terrifying consequences. But because he is of the
(41:44):
patrician class, because he is a businessman, a professional, amateur
golf champion professional, Yeah, yep, no, yeah, that's technically true.
Because of his place in society, more people are paying
attention to what happens to him, and this leads to
a higher public awareness of radium in general.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
In that goes two ways, Ben, Because of that position
that he occupied in the upper echelons of society there
in Pittsburgh, he was something of an influencer. He was
an evangelist of this stuff, and he was telling all
his friends about it, and yeah, I bet he, you know,
offered it to his golfing buddies, not to mention, feeding
it to his race horses, and gifting cases of it
(42:29):
to his business colleagues and there's an incredible article that
Dylan linked us to from o r AU dot org
that has a bunch of great details about this case.
And this man seemed like an interesting fellow. He apparently
was quite the ladies man, and he earned at Yale
as a young man the nickname Foxy Grandpa.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Foxy Grandpa. All right, uh, well, well, we love a
foxy Grandpa. We also know that we also know that
despite the grizzly ends that Grace Fryer, the Radium Girls,
and Evan Bayer's met, their suffering did lead to positive change,
(43:11):
Challenging something as powerful as a corporation at a time
when women's rights were still considered a controversial thing. That's huge,
and the fact that the Radium Girls won their case
in any form, shape or fashion is monumental. That Evan
Bayer's tragedy makes another comparable, lasting impact in the progression
(43:36):
of things that we enjoy today but don't really recognize
until they're gone. Stuff like government regulations like hey, freedom, Yeah,
let's not put fingers in the chili. That used to
be a hot take, and companies used to say, don't
tread on me, man. We can't we can't afford to
(43:56):
not have a few fingers go into chili. You're gonna
mess are business? Well, you know that's where the flavor
comes from. And Ben to your point earlier about regulation
in terms of what we now have, you know, for
better or worse, at times, an agency, the FDA that
is responsible for overseeing and regulating and making sure that
things that consumers consume do not contain poison at the
(44:20):
very least.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
But again results may vary. But the case against Bailey
Radium Laboratories was actually filed by the Federal Trade Commission.
It's almost like when you you know, it's like you
get somebody that's done one really horrible crime on another
technicality like racketeering or whatever it might be, because you
can't get them for the other thing. And they didn't
(44:42):
have the mechanisms at this time to necessarily pursue them
for putting out poison and not saying that's what it was.
So they had to get them almost on like I
don't know, fraud, yes, claims that's exactly thank you. And
the doctor, by the way, doctor C. C.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Moyer is lying his keyster off, oh yeah all the time,
and he's saying, look, I drink the same stuff I
recommended to my guy. I'm fifty one years old, I'm active, I'm.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Healthy, healthy racecourse.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Yeah, so people are still not until these consequences occur.
People still don't understand what's happening when they take radium.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
But they are.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
But the companies have a spidery sense. They know this
is not entirely on the up and up. They definitely
know it doesn't fix stuff that they claim it fixes.
They definitely know they can sell a lot of it
and become wealthy.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Well, you know what the markup was, ben right, I
think crazy Town dude, and that guy Bailey was made
a very very wealthy man. But this case from the
FTC did finally put an end to his radium reign.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Good, I mean, Jesus eight. This ultimately leads to OSHA.
This leads to workers' rights.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
OSHA being the Occupational safety and basically an organization that
makes sure that work conditions are not detrimental. Yes workers, Yes, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
It's one of those things that sounds boring to a
lot of people here in the United States. Pretty often,
when you get your very first job somewhere in the
employee area, there's going to be usually an elderly laminated
side yep, from OSHA.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
That's exactly right. And you know you hear people gripe
in about OSHA inspections and things like that, OSHA violations,
like it's some sort of you know, gripe basically, but
the alternative is far far gripe here. Yes, yeah, and
I like that turn of phrase. There.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
There's one story we're not going to have time to
get to, but I want to shout out David Hahn,
the radioactive boy Scout.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
You remember this guy, I know him by name, but
I'd love just the tiniest bit of overview if that's.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Oh yeah, of course, this is the kid who uh
this classic boy Scout stuff is a Michigan kid who
built a homemade nuclear reactor who is seventeen.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
I want to go get her. You love to see it.
He figured out that he could scrape radioactive material from
household project products, including you know, watch faces. Yeah, and
you know it's interesting. We didn't talk about this, but
Mercury occupied a similar oh yeah space in consumer products.
(47:39):
Would they People were just crazy for the stuff, and
as we mentioned earlier, it does look really cool. And
as we mentioned earlier, it was used to treat the
felt in hats, and that's where the term matt as
a hatter came from. But I think mercury thermometers are
maybe a little less popular than they used to be,
but you can still get them. Yeah, and you know,
kids would break them open and watch the little ball
roll around. And I and a few years ago went
(48:01):
to Spain and went to the institute of this really
cool artist, Joan Miro and he made a fountain, uh,
filled entirely with mercury, and it's encased in a glass
thing because it's you know, but it wasn't for a
really long time. You can just walk right up to
it and put your finger in it. And yeah. But anyway,
one of the coolest things I've ever seen. But yeah,
there's an interesting parallel between the radium craze and the
(48:22):
mercury craze. I love mercury.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Uh, it's just it's so interesting, it looks so cool. Yeah,
don't touch it, don't play with it, don't break the thermometer.
What the thermometers that are really popular now And I
see this anytime I'm in Japan. We actually picked one up.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
I think. Yeah, they're in the States too. It's the
thermometer that looks like a little gun. Way yeah, yeah,
it looks like a little gun with a flat abbreviated
so fun, and so you put it on someone and
then you just pull the trigger and it goes yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Yeah, there's there's one example that Max is holding up here.
There are other ones that can do it from further away,
which is uncomfortable because I've been in situations where I'm
walking in and the authority figure just holds the gut
up and shoots it at you to check your temperature
in the days of COVID. Anyway, story for another day, Folks,
(49:21):
we are back in the saddle.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Big thanks to our super producer, Max the Watchface Williams.
Big thanks to our composer Alex Williams who created this
slap and bop you're hearing right now.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Huge thanks to mega, mega wonderful addition to the Ridiculous
History research team, Dylan Clark. This is what's such a
wonderful first entry for our buddy Dylan to the show.
We're happy to have him. And huge thanks to Chris
Frasciotas and Eves Jeff Cuts, both here in spirit big,
big thanks to friend of the show, Lorden vogelbaumb big
(49:59):
thanks rude dudes of ridiculous crime. If you dig us,
you'll love them. Reluctant, grudging, faint praise, very scant, performative,
insincere attempt at things. Wo to Jonathan, strictly Deka the
quiztarn oh Man, you really late it on. I'm with you,
(50:19):
uh no, I'll all jokes aside. We really love Jonathan
and huge thanks to you, Bam. This is a lot
of fun and you know, disturbing fun, but also educational
and of course ridiculous. Let's go get some energy drinks.
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(50:40):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our own
mythical super producer, Max the Radiation Williams, Max Radiation Boy Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yes, I'm just glowing, y'all. You always are you? If
you are? You doing a new skincare routine? Hopefully not
involving radium? Yeah, or the condition no well fare maybe
the written maybe radium could knock the condition right out?
Why not try at this point? Why not? Why not? Well,
we'll tell you why not? Max it just a little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
They called me, Ben Bullen. You also just heard mister
Noel Brown there and the rumors are true, fellow Ridiculous Historians.
We have returned from some time at sea. We're pleased
as punch, or perhaps pleased ask plutonium to rejoin you today.
So we've all heard of radium, right.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
M Yeah, And can I just take a quick moment
to say I missed you guys, Ben, I saw you,
but we didn't record. This is the first recording we've
done in a little bit, and we've both been under
the weather for travel crowd, and I'm happy to be back. Yeah,
radium is certainly something that we learned about when studying
the periodic table in school, and I think we all
learned about Marie and.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Pierre Curie and the discovery of radium. That was going
to be I totally forgot you guys. That was going
to be part of my intro today and a cooled
intro because one fun, dumb fact about me, I'm one
of those people who can name every element on the
periodic table. It's a useless skill.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Incorrect by the slanet parties.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Thanks, but we know the periodic table, despite having a
weird name, and despite being somewhat imperfect, it is a
phenomenal assembly of some amazing revelations, and some of those revelations,
as we're going to discover, are indeed deadly revelations. We
(02:30):
always talked about Marie Curie, We've mentioned her in the
past multiple times.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Absolute hero of the show.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Her and Pierre, as you said, discovered radium in eighteen
ninety eight. But when they discovered it, and these are
very clever people, when they discovered it, it is safe
to say they weren't sure what they were getting into.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
No I mean, that's kind of a lot of the
stories we talk about n ridiculous sister involving science. There's
a whole lot of f around and find out, and
oftentimes you have folks like Marie and Pierre finding out
not in the best possible way for science. No.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Originally, the CUIs, being scientists, had they had an idea
of what radium could be used for, or what we
would call the applications, and they said, look, radium can
help with cancer treatment, or it can help the emergent
science of X ray technology. They had no idea about
the merch they had no idea about how capitalism and
(03:34):
American marketing worked. This was a panacea. This was snake
oil medicine. This was a cure all that you could
use to treat anything.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Sort of like how we're seeing a lot of the
marketing and rollout surrounding artificial so called artificial intelligence. Huh's
let's just give it a try. Who knows what. We
don't have to worry about the knock on consequences. We'll
figure that out later. And here's one for the older heads.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Back in that halcyon era of the nineteen nineties, when
every business discovered the word digital. I've had to put
the word digital on everything they made, even.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
If it did make sense. And now now it seems
so data, doesn't it, But you still do see it.
It is one of those remnants that has stuck around.
So the early nineteen hundred saw radiums well. Actually, to
quote our brand new research associate, Dylan, not Dylan the
Tennessee pal, but Dylan will come up with a cool
nickname for you later this first episode with us, so
we're excited to have him join the ridiculous history research cadre.
(04:34):
But yeah, the nineteen hundred saw radium's luminescence property is
becoming quite in vogue.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, this is ubiquitous at some point. You're seeing it
mentioned on the tens for medicine, You're seeing it advertised
as a feature of industrial products. It's great for marketers
and radiation poisoning aside, it's great for it's great for
that consumer and corporations because the luminescent properties are instantly recognizable, right,
(05:06):
They're distinctive. So if you are making watches, you are
going to use radium based paint on your watches or
your airplane dials. Right for instrumentation, if you are going
to a party and you want to make an impression
as a young lady, you're using radium infused glowing makeup
on your face, but also your teeth.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Oh and also your fingernails. Yeah. Also, why not go
ahead and since we're at the party and we're having
a good time throwing a few back, let's just put
a little radium in the cocktails for fun. Yeah yeah, yeah,
it is uh boil boy. It makes me think of
like Matt Hatter syndrome and just you know, these substances
that were just used so ubiquitously and then caused real,
(05:48):
real problems down the road. And of course that is
because unbeknownst at the time, this radium exposure was incredibly
harmful and detrimental to the long term health of the
individuals exposed to it.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Absolutely, and you've probably heard folks of parables like the
story of the Radium Girls, one of the most well
known cases of documented overexposure to radium. Their activism and
their outcry directly led to stricter workplace laws that also
themselves led to the creation of stuff like OSHA, the
(06:23):
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. But there's a lot more
to it. So we're giving you. We've given you the gist.
Let's dive in. Let's understand why the United States went
absolutely head over heels for radium. And to answer that
question on first step has to be learning what radium
(06:46):
is and meeting the Curis and.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Dylan.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
I'm just going to tell you not all the jokes
lanned every time.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
It's okay, it's you know, curry, Currey's curry, potato potatos.
We do know about the sarbon, the sarball, the absolutely
luminous university if we're talking about glowing stuff more, you know,
in the scientific world in Paris, France, where Pierre taught
chemistry at the School of Physics and Marie attended college
(07:16):
there as a student of physics and maths. Yeah, I
said it. I'm saying maths. I just like the way
it sounds. They had an immediate connection because of shared
interests and absolute, unflinching love of science and scientific discovery,
and they did eventually get married in July of eighteen
ninety five, so just a year later, very quick, quick courtship.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
And because of their common interests, they were propelled along
a professional career as well as a romantic one by
the end of eighteen ninety five, our buddy Pierre has
published his thesis, his doctoral thesis on the connection between
temperature and magnetism, and this was a real banger for
(08:03):
the target audience. As a matter of fact, it established
what we today call Curie's law.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
That's right. And then in eighteen ninety seven Marie would
join her husband working for the university herself in the laboratory,
helping Pierre expand on these discoveries around magnetism. That is,
until a new interest caught their attention in a very
very real way that would change their lives and carve
a path.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Through history and science, an irradiated glowing path. So this
is how stuff breaks down. Marie is diving into the
research of a French physicist, this guy Enton, Henri the Querol.
He presented just a really weird talk in eighteen ninety six,
(08:54):
on February twenty fourth, about uranium rays. And he was talking,
you know, to other people in this rarefied air of
scientific research. And while he is in his presentation, folks
just picture ted talk, all right, that's the way he's doing.
Amrie's doing a tech talk. He's explaining to onlookers that
(09:15):
when uranium based crystals are exposed to sunlight, they leave
a permanent shadow on photographic plates. This is a weird
thing to just tell people. So he demonstrates it on stage,
and this is kind of the emergent X ray technology
we were teasing at the top here. So Marie Curie
(09:36):
sees a lot of potential in this, and she says,
what if other elements can do this as well? What
if there's a chemical compound that's as good or better
than uranium.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
For X rays? That's right, So she used a principle
that was always near and dear to a dear friend
of the show, Lauren Vogelbaum, back when she was on
tech stuff with frenemy of the show than the Quistor Stricklin.
The piezoelectric effect, which is a very fascinating effect which
refers to the ability of certain materials, elements, minerals, et cetera.
(10:13):
Quartz is a good example to generate an electrical charge
when they are they have a stress applied to them.
That's something that Lauren was always fascinated by. I remember
whenever the pioso electric effect could come up, she would
light up. So this is exactly what Marie used to
test her theory about other chemical compounds, so the strength
of radiation isn't dependent upon the compound itself, but it's
(10:34):
dependent on the levels of uranium or thorium that it contains.
She also found that many chemical compounds of the same
element are different in structure and in chemical characteristics. Finally,
the ability to radiate is tied directly to the interior
of the atom, and only uranium and thorium contain the
ability to give off radiation at this point in time.
(10:58):
That is the case in the trade jectory of her discoveries,
and you know, the greater scientific body of knowledge around
these elements.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
And so, folks, what would you do if you were Marie?
For anybody who's been in a successful loving relationship, probably
you want to brag to your partner, right, because we're
always trying to get our significant others to think of
us as cool people. So she runs and tells Pierre.
Pierre joins her and says, let's keep researching this together.
(11:32):
Fast forward. It's June eighteen ninety eight. They achieved Marie's
long sought after discovery, and the next month, a publication
in July breaks the news to the world, the Cures
have discovered a substance three hundred times the strength of uranium,
and they named it polonium. And then the Cures ride
(11:56):
back in eighteen ninety eight, December twenty sixth to the
Academy of Sciences and they say, dj college voice, another one.
We found something else. We're calling this one radium.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So in nineteen o three, while Antoine, Henri baccorel Pierre
and Marie Currie shared in a Nobel Peace Prize in
Physics for their discoveries and radiation, the rest of the
world was looking to the future wrapped up in this
new marketing craze around the miracle compound, as it was pitched,
(12:33):
known as radium.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, this is where we see the origin of the
radium fad, or what Dylan rightly calls the radium era.
The radium fad reaches US shores around nineteen four And
do check out our earlier episodes on medicine shows and
other quack kaka meimi cures and griffs, folks. You will
(12:57):
enjoy that. And you definitely should know about medicine shows.
So that's kind of the milieu in which this is occurring.
We don't have things like the FDA in its current form.
You know, we don't have as a young nation, we
don't have these federal resources and institutions to keep corporations
(13:17):
and doctors honest. You can literally have a good enough pattern,
as we call it in British drifting, and you can
go and sell whatever kind of monarchy you want, as
long as you get away before the law finds you. Look,
I don't want to be unfair. I'm not saying that
all these people selling radium branded stuff were themselves bad
(13:39):
faith actors, because they did see doctors across the pond
use radium to kill cancerous cells, right, and they didn't know,
just like the curies didn't know at the time, they
didn't know about the damaging effects of radiation exposure. This
was still very new, untrammeled ground.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Right, and it wasn't until the thirties that evidence of
this type of poisoning became very apparent and the government
then had to act. But we'll get to that.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
There is an insane number of companies during the radium
era that included radium in whatever they were already making
as as like a selling point. So the idea was
radium as a concept was so popular, so established in
the zeitgeist that if you're walking through your local market
(14:39):
or general store, you probably would be more likely to
buy anything that had the word radium on it.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, it's the stuff of the future, you know, Man,
it glows. What else do you want? So we start
to see some sort of trendy applications of radium. In
nineteen oh four, for example, someone named L. D. Garner
came out with a product, a drink called Liquid Sunshine. Yeah,
I remember that one did not have any LSD in
(15:08):
it either, just lots of poison. This was a radium
based water beverage and it was mega popular in the
early twentieth century, specifically around New York City.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And again, I know it's easy for some of the
younger folks in the crowd to make fun of us
New Yorkers at the turn of that century who were
drinking radium based water beverages. But listen, folks, if you
drink Laqui, you don't really have room to talk now,
kind of. It was the lacua of its day. It
just happened to have radium in it, for sure.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
And Dylan also points out a fad that I think
you and I and Max all remember where there were
like gummies and various sweety snack kind of things that
would like dye your tongue and teeth certain colors. And
speaking from experience, they also had the potential to dye
your your poop.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
And then in nineteen fourteen we have the again we
have a water based thing, the Great Radium Spring Water Company,
which was originally Fred m Ostia's company. They they come
directly from another bit of quackery, the concept of restorative waters,
(16:17):
which is very popular here in the United States, and
is indeed the reason that one of our streets in
Atlanta is named Ponce de Leon. This is a true story.
The Ponce City Market, where our office was based for
a number of years, contains one of the seven sacred
springs of Indigenous Native culture. It's a fun fact if
(16:41):
you ever get the chance to visit. There is a
water tower that still collects water from that spring. So
people were very into restorative waters or curative waters.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Fountain of youths. I'm right, yeah, for sure. And this
also I think I'm pretty synchronous with the work of
John Harvey Kellogg, who was a huge fan of enemas
and also things like restorative waters and sort of like
med health spa kind of treatments, and of course the
inventure of corn flakes.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Yeah, and so our pal fred In Oistier. He originally
names his water company Pittfield's Pine Crest Spring and then
changes the name because he's like, ah, we got to
get around with this radium. All the kids love this
radium stuff. We're gonna call our company a Great Radium
(17:31):
Spring water company.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Doing jazz hands what he's saying. And they made some
pretty bold claims that we're not necessarily you know, accurate,
always creating lore. Yeah, for sure. They claimed that the
water was from the titular Great Radium Spring wherever the
(17:53):
hell that was supposed to be, but later went on
to pivot, you know, uh and sell ginger ale instead, right,
And they maybe they had to pivot because there were
so many other radium beverage groups getting in the mix.
I think it was nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
We got Bailey Radium Laboratories, who made Ratathor.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Radathor, my favorite pokemon in his final form, Radathor Energy drinks.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Radathor. Bailey Radium and Ratathor therefore are founded created by
William J. Bailey and their advertisement. So if you see
them in the grocery store, their advertisement is triple distilled
water that is guaranteed to contain at least one micro
curi each of radium two twenty six and radium to
(18:43):
twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's a feature, not a bug, you know, yes, yes,
just just look at the little radium for a treat.
He actually went so far as to try to back
up this claim with something of a reward for anyone
who could prove he's proved me wrong, has proved that
it contained any less than the advertised amounts of one
(19:04):
microcuity each of those two substances. He also offered a
guarantee that Ratathor is harmless. Oh good, and every respects great.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah, this is this is weird because they were positioning
themselves to be the red Bull or the monster Energy
or the Celsius of their day. And this again, it
shows us how how much more blurry the line was
between medicine and a treat because Ratathor is getting prescribed
(19:38):
by actual facts. Shout out to you, Lauren, actual facts,
doctors to cure injuries. You can pour it right on there,
you know, yeah exactly, just you know, slug half of
this and then pour the rest of it on the gunshot.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
You'll be fine. And a real wolverine situation, you know, right,
bite down and pour the ra out of thor on
the wound. So, uh, we know that there's there's war ahead.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
While we're on the subject of food and bev, I
think we should talk about German radium chocolate.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Can we can we please? Radium man? Yes? From buck
on brown, not brown b r o w n brown
b r a u n perhaps pronounced brawn. Likely this
did not make it into the US, sort of like
today you can't find a proper kinder egg anymore. Yeah,
because they think we're too stupid and we're gonna choke
on you know, the little tiny toy inside, which you
(20:33):
know to be fair. Maybe is true, but it is
refreshing to be in Europe where you can get a
proper kinder egg.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
That's one of the first things I buy in town. Also,
I don't like the I don't like the pseudo kinder eggs.
There's different halves.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
It's a little for the thing. It's like a little
almost like a nutella biscuit thing, like it's got like
a little pocket of dunk A use type icing that
you put on this other thing. Not far events, but yes.
Radium chocolade was likely not sold in the States because
at this point the awareness of the dangerous surrounding radium.
(21:09):
By nineteen thirty one was much more widely known. It
was advertised as an energy bar type food with the
tagline eat this and feel great. Got it. I'm gonna
do a quick translate. I kind of know roughly what
it is, but it's curly fun. Yeah, and German it
would be sn z dasfu linzy zich gross ahtim. Yeah,
(21:34):
there you go, and it goes.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
We see this craze going through other products as well,
like makeup and skincare. There was a ton of stuff
released in Europe and in the United States that said
if you put radium on your skin, that glow will
that lumin essence will do something curative for your epidermis.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
There were recurative right there we go.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
We're talking creams, salts, suppositories.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
And yeah, you know what, I can't help but think
about And I'm sure you're on the same page, and
I'm sure Max is too. At least it's crossed your
mind with all of this stuff, especially the glowing aspect
of it and the sort of nineteen twenties trendiness of it.
All the Fallout games, there's so many, you know, the
glowing one, all of these ghouls that have clearly been
so irradiated that they're actually putting out like a ghoulish
(22:28):
green glow. It's just such a cool franchise and I'm
so stoked about the next season of the series coming
out soon. And to jump in here, think about what
is the best Nuca Cola at least in terms of
like is the Niccola radium. It's the quantum quantum which radiates.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
There you go, yeah, yeah, I mean we see this
all the time in the intersection of capitalism and scientific innovation. Also,
there's something Look, we're adults here, folks, I'm going to
keep it pg.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Thirteen.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
But there's something that's always baffled me about humanity ever
since the early days. The suppository idea humanity runs into
every new discovery, and some member of the species says, also,
we should see if we could put it in our butts.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
What if we put it on our butts? For everything?
You know, what can harm fire? For the wheel for rockets,
radium is no different. Who was putting fire in their butt.
It seems like you learn your lesson from that one
real quick. Yeah, I just don't know why this is
a continual thing that humans do. So in Radium, the advertisers,
(23:37):
some of whom were grifters and some of whom were
just misled.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yes, they were seeing this panacea, right, this cure all
for everything from acne to wartz, A lot of stuff
that could be a more vague general condition like having
a bad headache, or a very general condition like having
(24:03):
what is called insanity.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Ye did also stuff like blind this, yeah, or just
general malaise, you know, for pep Spoon your way to
health with Vita Meta Radium.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yes, yeah, And I love the nomenclature for the specific
names in this era of fake medicine. Also, all right,
so these are like the new kids on the block
when it comes to snake oil salesman, right, They're basically
the Wall Street version of this.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Which we have an episode on just this concept of multiples.
I'm sure if you go back, but I do seem
to recall a recent one where we talk a lot
about the origin of the term snake oil and various
quack remedies.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the one we mentioned there at
the top. We've got to find the name of that
when Max. If you could look that up, you'll be
an absolute legend. Not that you aren't already a legendary
glowing ghoul.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, not that you aren't.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Already good safe it. So we also know that radium
found its way into household goods. Every I think everybody
in the US has one of those mysterious under the
sink storage spots for clean cleaning and stuff. And sometimes
you just get it for one specific kind of cleaning
(25:23):
and it just lives in your house under the sink
for years afterwards.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yeah, until you know the one time where you actually
need to use it, perhaps if that ever even comes.
But it's better to have than not to have, or
have even four of them because you forgot you bought
it already, and then the actual situation comes up where
you need it and you realize, man, this this happened before,
and I have too many bottles of sewer fly drain cleaner.
So companies were quick to jump on the radium train.
(25:49):
Household goods companies folks manufacturing things like paint, because they
love the luminescent properties of radium and that also extended
to everything from life light switches, giving a glow in
the dark quality to your switch so you could see
it in the dark. We now know how to do that,
I think without radium, thank god. So this would of
course make finding the switch in the dark a little
(26:11):
bit of an easier task. We even saw it in
children's toys. And we are of course segueing gently into
the true dark side of the knock on consequences of
this radium craze.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Yeah, you knew what was going to happen, folks. A
lot of this goes back to maybe not specific toy manufacturers,
but more the manufacturers of components that were used in
finished products, most especially makers of radium luminescent paint. The
(26:46):
big one here is the United States Radium Corporation. They
had a claim to fame a paint called undark, which
I love.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
By the way, that's solid branding.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, Undark is is luminescent because it contains radium. It's
invented by a guy whose name I love, doctor Sabin
Arnold Vaughan Sochoki, and he cop notch name, doctor Vaughan Sochaki,
which does sound like something I would make up in
an improv set h he says, look, yeah, it's well
(27:20):
and good that I've made this magic glowing paint for
watchfaces and airplane instrumentation.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
But I see a future that's much bigger. We can
take un dark and we can paint entire rooms with it,
entire houses on dark. Slow. Your role on Shaki such
Skia and him coughing at the end is because of
the radium. He's losing it. He's also just so excited
(27:49):
he can't contain himself. The light thrown off by radium paint,
he says, on the walls and ceilings would in color
be like soft, gentle moonlight, and it would also be
you know, killing you softly, you know, with its song.
So we're getting to it here. It is the devastating
reality of radium use. We're going to jump into the
(28:09):
story of the Radium Girls, which we teased there at
the top of the episode, and then get into a
person named Evan Byers. So, although radium products continue to
exist in the US well into the early thirties, the
first signs as we mentioned, and the government kind of
(28:30):
starting to take notice of these horrific effects started to
become clear. Nearly a decade prior to that. You know,
the wheels of regulation do grind slowly, It would seem
the same as it ever was. Two of the most
prominent cases that brought some of these dangers to light
are the case of Grace Fryer and her fellow Radium Girls,
(28:53):
and then, of course, as we teased the case of
Eben Byers, why don't we start right up with Grace
Fryer and the Radium Girls.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah, and on our way to that, folks, one thing
we want to establish here is why radium poisoning in
particular is so terrible for you.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
This is it.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Basically, we've been dancing around this, but to give it
to you playing the human body treats radium like calcium,
so it deposits the radium deep within your bones. And
once the radium infiltrates your bones, it can just chill there.
It can be dormant, in the state of torpor for
years and years, years before you get the first sign
(29:32):
of radium poisoning.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
That's why it took so long.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
It's just sort of irreversible damage. That's why it was
such a stealth killer, and.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
It took them some time to start to see these results.
Playing out. It's a nopes. I guess we might have
should have done our homework a little more thirty years
ago or so, when right when people like Grace Friars
start realizing something's wrong. Now she is. She is one
of those.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
People we mentioned earlier, a dial painter. So if you
have a wristwatch or if you have an airplane, two things.
I'm sure everybody has.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
The dream a wristwatch and an airplane, and every household the.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Backing on your watch face has to be made by someone.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
And isn't that funny? Ben the trend of this. Obviously
they figured out better ways to do it, but like
the indiglow watches, you know, obviously it's safer alternative to radium,
but something that kind of carried forward because of this
sort of precedent here with the glowing watch faces. It
wasn't theory a good idea, And again, like the glow
in the dark everything, I'm glad they figured out a
(30:39):
way to do it because it is a cool effect
and quite useful in a watch.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Oh, this is going to lead to a weird tangential
story at the end, by the way, folks, So stay tuned,
all right, Grease Fryar has painted loads and loads of
dials with this on dark paint.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
It's her job.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
She checks into the factory. She's about that life. She
does this every day. It is like so many other
factory jobs, repetitive, tedious, and demands precision because she has
to apply paint to the tiny numbers on the dial d.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
T B T twelve one two three, and that's her
whole day.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
So when you're doing this, you have to continuously move
the brush and pointing it in different directions, and you
can't mess up the dial. You can't paint too far
over the boundaries. So the thing that Grace and a
lot of the Radium girls start doing is dragging the
bristles of the brush between their lips, redding it with
(31:44):
their tongue. It's kind of like how people, some people,
often older readers, have the habit of licking their finger
when they turn the page.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Mm hm yeah, but Radium or no, probably not the
best practice. Don't lick paint. Just gotta be a better
way to do that. So, yeah, she was doing this
day in and day out, painting hundreds and hundreds of
these dials. Grace is quoted saying this about her experience
working in the factory or on the line. Our instructors
(32:15):
told us to point them with our lips. I think
I pointed mine about six times to every Watchtyal. It
didn't have any taste, and I didn't know it was harmful.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, exactly this, And this makes sense for anybody who's
a painter or an artist hanging out with us today.
We've all done that thing at some point where you
try to you just improvise some way totally to get
a finer tip on the brush.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
So this makes sense.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
They're following like, they're not dummies, they're good employees. They're
doing what their bosses told them to do. And the
Radium Core management has what a lot of therapists call
toxic positivity. Yeah, they just keep saying everything is great,
this is gonna be fine. Yeah, lick the tip of
(33:06):
that radiated brush. And also, hey, you're not just factory workers.
This is a radioactive olive garden. When you're here, your family,
your brand ambassador. So ladies, go rep the product. Put
on dark on your nails, put it on your face,
put on your teeth, you know, just inject it right
(33:29):
into your neck. Why do we add makeup for teeth,
radium core. That's a great idea, Ben, I think you're
onto something.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Let's put that. Let's put a pin in that one. Yeah,
And some of these little tricks evolved organically as ways
of kind of passing the time at work, trying all
these different methods of using the paint in some of
these fun ways. And to your point, Ben, it then
became this sort of brand ambassador quality of parading the
stuff and evangelizing the wonders of radium and radium paint.
(33:57):
So Grace didn't really notice any effects for years until
one day she was working at a bank, well after
her career as a radium girl had come to an end,
and she blew her nose into a handkerchief and it glowed.
I don't love hearing that. Also, Also, we do have
(34:19):
knowing bad guys in this story. Of course they knew,
they knew what they knew. Yeah, just to emphasize, right,
everybody who was involved with the actual chemistry and production
of un Dark, and all the C suite guys they
wouldn't touch this stuff. They knew what was up.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
So how inhuman is it for them to watch these
poor workers throwing this odd everywhere? So Grace has the
glowing stop booger moment, and then she realizes maybe upper
management hasn't been telling her the entirety of the truth.
Now her condition progresses. By nineteen twenty two, she starts
(35:03):
to lose teeth. She gets severe acute pain in her jaw,
so she goes in for an X ray, right, and
X ray technology has been involving in step with this
as well, And the doctors look at the X rays
and say, holy crap, you have severe bone decay.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
What happened?
Speaker 1 (35:19):
It's as though the calcium that should be in your
bones was replace something else.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, And the reason we know about Grace is because
she was the one who stood up and spoke up
and became sort of a figurehead for all of the voiceless,
you know, workers and folks that had been consumers. Likely
we don't know all those stories, but we know Grace's story.
This set her on a mission to get justice for
(35:46):
herself and those in her same position who were knowingly
exposed to the stuff by some really bad actors. So
specifically we're talking about the dial painters. They had, now
for purposes of public perception, been dubbed the Radium Girls
and they were railing against the harmful conditions that they
(36:08):
were exposed to by US Radium Corporation.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Absolutely, and in doing so, there's no two ways about it,
they saved people's lives, people who otherwise would have been
exposed to this stuff. But as in any underdog story,
this is a real speaking truth to power situation. The
good guys are outnumbered and they are out financed, so
(36:32):
they have an uphill battle in the courts. Luckily, there
are good guy lawyers who come by to contribute their
efforts to the cause. In particular, I'm thinking of Raymond Barry,
the lawyer who, along with the Radium Girls, launched a
lawsuit against the company US Radium Corps for two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars. Because of the horrible conditions that
(36:59):
each of these people were laboring under. They were living
on borrowed time, They literally physically probably would not survive
the full grind of a court case of this magnitude
was something as well funded as this corporation, so they
made the decision. Well, they were forced to settle for
(37:19):
ten thousand dollars each and an annual payment of six
hundred bucks. Better than nothing, but to them I think
more important than the cash was the recognition of what
had happened.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
It's exactly right, sadly as triumphant relatively speaking, an outcome
as this was, and a win for all of the
folks that did not have a voice who were exposed
to the stuff. Grace Fryar was, in her pursuit for justice,
not able to outlive the harmful effects of the radium exposure,
(37:53):
and passed away sadly on October twenty seventh of nineteen
thirty three at the age of thirty four.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
We can't overemphasize that, folks thirty four years old. We
have one other story one to wrap up with here
about the radium era. This is a name we mentioned
that might be familiar to some of us in the
audience today, Eben.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Bayer's slight trigger warning for this one. It's a little
grizzlier than the last one. Inst in real body horror stuff,
So Eben Byers. We'll get into it with humor. He
is called a US amateur golf champion, and the phrase
amateur golf champion feels paragole. Yeah right, I'm a professional amateur. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
I love that he's an elderly Orphan. He's the president
of am Buyers Company out there in Pittsburgh, and in
nineteen twenty seven, he's got a pretty gnarly arm injury
because the guy's always going golfing, right, and his doctor C. C.
Moya says, all right, Evan, here's what you gotta do.
(39:04):
Your arm's not feeling one hundred percent. You gotta drink
this new thing I just learned about. It's called Ratathor. Yeah,
pound half of it and dump the rest right on
the arm.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Yes, what can I just say that CC moyar sounds
like the kind of thing that would be emblazoned on
the side of one of those quack snake oil salesman wagons.
Just I'm sorry, No, no offense to anyone with his name,
But something about a doctor named C. C. Moyar just
seems a little bit suss. So at the time of
this prescription, he was fifty years old, and over the
(39:38):
next three years until in nineteen thirty, he consumed a
lot of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yeah, three bottles of Ratathor per day on average. And
remember boy, he said about Radathor earlier, folks, this is
the one that was guaranteed yes to have at least
one micro cury each of radium two twenty six and
two twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Two flavors, yeah, at the same time. And if it
didn't have that, the company would give you one thousand
dollars if you could prove it didn't have all that radium.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
So this is this is one of the ones that
definitely is going to poison you.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
And uh oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
As as as he goes through, you know, chasing that
radium dragon, his teeth begin to fall.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Out because as we mentioned, this stuff hits you right
in the bone density. It replaces that calcium that gives
us healthy bones, and his teeth begin to fall out,
as you said. And an FTC employee, Robert Wynn, in
the course of the case surrounding this gentleman and his condition,
(40:45):
had this to say, and this is the grisly bit.
His whole upper jaw except two front teeth and most
of his lower jaw had been removed. All the remaining
bone tissue of his body was slowly disintegrating and were
actually forming in his skull. A more gruesome experience in
a more gorgeous setting would be hard to imagine. What
(41:08):
is the gorgeous setting He's referring to I wonder Pittsburgh unclear.
We do know this.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
This is a terrible way to go, folks. As far
as death and illness, we do know this was happening
to other people. Again, Ratathor was something was an energy drink.
People were drinking it like you would drink an energy
drink today. So Buyers is not the only person who
suffers these terrifying consequences. But because he is of the
(41:44):
patrician class, because he is a businessman, a professional, amateur
golf champion professional, Yeah, yep, no, yeah, that's technically true.
Because of his place in society, more people are paying
attention to what happens to him, and this leads to
a higher public awareness of radium in general.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
In that goes two ways, Ben, Because of that position
that he occupied in the upper echelons of society there
in Pittsburgh, he was something of an influencer. He was
an evangelist of this stuff, and he was telling all
his friends about it, and yeah, I bet he, you know,
offered it to his golfing buddies, not to mention, feeding
it to his race horses, and gifting cases of it
(42:29):
to his business colleagues and there's an incredible article that
Dylan linked us to from o r AU dot org
that has a bunch of great details about this case.
And this man seemed like an interesting fellow. He apparently
was quite the ladies man, and he earned at Yale
as a young man the nickname Foxy Grandpa.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Foxy Grandpa. All right, uh, well, well, we love a
foxy Grandpa. We also know that we also know that
despite the grizzly ends that Grace Fryer, the Radium Girls,
and Evan Bayer's met, their suffering did lead to positive change,
(43:11):
Challenging something as powerful as a corporation at a time
when women's rights were still considered a controversial thing. That's huge,
and the fact that the Radium Girls won their case
in any form, shape or fashion is monumental. That Evan
Bayer's tragedy makes another comparable, lasting impact in the progression
(43:36):
of things that we enjoy today but don't really recognize
until they're gone. Stuff like government regulations like hey, freedom, Yeah,
let's not put fingers in the chili. That used to
be a hot take, and companies used to say, don't
tread on me, man. We can't we can't afford to
(43:56):
not have a few fingers go into chili. You're gonna
mess are business? Well, you know that's where the flavor
comes from. And Ben to your point earlier about regulation
in terms of what we now have, you know, for
better or worse, at times, an agency, the FDA that
is responsible for overseeing and regulating and making sure that
things that consumers consume do not contain poison at the
(44:20):
very least.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
But again results may vary. But the case against Bailey
Radium Laboratories was actually filed by the Federal Trade Commission.
It's almost like when you you know, it's like you
get somebody that's done one really horrible crime on another
technicality like racketeering or whatever it might be, because you
can't get them for the other thing. And they didn't
(44:42):
have the mechanisms at this time to necessarily pursue them
for putting out poison and not saying that's what it was.
So they had to get them almost on like I
don't know, fraud, yes, claims that's exactly thank you. And
the doctor, by the way, doctor C. C.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Moyer is lying his keyster off, oh yeah all the time,
and he's saying, look, I drink the same stuff I
recommended to my guy. I'm fifty one years old, I'm active, I'm.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Healthy, healthy racecourse.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Yeah, so people are still not until these consequences occur.
People still don't understand what's happening when they take radium.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
But they are.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
But the companies have a spidery sense. They know this
is not entirely on the up and up. They definitely
know it doesn't fix stuff that they claim it fixes.
They definitely know they can sell a lot of it
and become wealthy.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Well, you know what the markup was, ben right, I
think crazy Town dude, and that guy Bailey was made
a very very wealthy man. But this case from the
FTC did finally put an end to his radium reign.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Good, I mean, Jesus eight. This ultimately leads to OSHA.
This leads to workers' rights.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
OSHA being the Occupational safety and basically an organization that
makes sure that work conditions are not detrimental. Yes workers, Yes, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
It's one of those things that sounds boring to a
lot of people here in the United States. Pretty often,
when you get your very first job somewhere in the
employee area, there's going to be usually an elderly laminated
side yep, from OSHA.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
That's exactly right. And you know you hear people gripe
in about OSHA inspections and things like that, OSHA violations,
like it's some sort of you know, gripe basically, but
the alternative is far far gripe here. Yes, yeah, and
I like that turn of phrase. There.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
There's one story we're not going to have time to
get to, but I want to shout out David Hahn,
the radioactive boy Scout.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
You remember this guy, I know him by name, but
I'd love just the tiniest bit of overview if that's.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Oh yeah, of course, this is the kid who uh
this classic boy Scout stuff is a Michigan kid who
built a homemade nuclear reactor who is seventeen.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
I want to go get her. You love to see it.
He figured out that he could scrape radioactive material from
household project products, including you know, watch faces. Yeah, and
you know it's interesting. We didn't talk about this, but
Mercury occupied a similar oh yeah space in consumer products.
(47:39):
Would they People were just crazy for the stuff, and
as we mentioned earlier, it does look really cool. And
as we mentioned earlier, it was used to treat the
felt in hats, and that's where the term matt as
a hatter came from. But I think mercury thermometers are
maybe a little less popular than they used to be,
but you can still get them. Yeah, and you know,
kids would break them open and watch the little ball
roll around. And I and a few years ago went
(48:01):
to Spain and went to the institute of this really
cool artist, Joan Miro and he made a fountain, uh,
filled entirely with mercury, and it's encased in a glass
thing because it's you know, but it wasn't for a
really long time. You can just walk right up to
it and put your finger in it. And yeah. But anyway,
one of the coolest things I've ever seen. But yeah,
there's an interesting parallel between the radium craze and the
(48:22):
mercury craze. I love mercury.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Uh, it's just it's so interesting, it looks so cool. Yeah,
don't touch it, don't play with it, don't break the thermometer.
What the thermometers that are really popular now And I
see this anytime I'm in Japan. We actually picked one up.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
I think. Yeah, they're in the States too. It's the
thermometer that looks like a little gun. Way yeah, yeah,
it looks like a little gun with a flat abbreviated
so fun, and so you put it on someone and
then you just pull the trigger and it goes yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Yeah, there's there's one example that Max is holding up here.
There are other ones that can do it from further away,
which is uncomfortable because I've been in situations where I'm
walking in and the authority figure just holds the gut
up and shoots it at you to check your temperature
in the days of COVID. Anyway, story for another day, Folks,
(49:21):
we are back in the saddle.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Big thanks to our super producer, Max the Watchface Williams.
Big thanks to our composer Alex Williams who created this
slap and bop you're hearing right now.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Huge thanks to mega, mega wonderful addition to the Ridiculous
History research team, Dylan Clark. This is what's such a
wonderful first entry for our buddy Dylan to the show.
We're happy to have him. And huge thanks to Chris
Frasciotas and Eves Jeff Cuts, both here in spirit big,
big thanks to friend of the show, Lorden vogelbaumb big
(49:59):
thanks rude dudes of ridiculous crime. If you dig us,
you'll love them. Reluctant, grudging, faint praise, very scant, performative,
insincere attempt at things. Wo to Jonathan, strictly Deka the
quiztarn oh Man, you really late it on. I'm with you,
(50:19):
uh no, I'll all jokes aside. We really love Jonathan
and huge thanks to you, Bam. This is a lot
of fun and you know, disturbing fun, but also educational
and of course ridiculous. Let's go get some energy drinks.
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(50:40):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
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