February 8, 2011 • 34 mins
Regardless of how brilliant they may be in the lab, scientists are still only human. With Valentine's Day on the horizon, Robert and Julie recount the interactions between love and science. Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
unless the calendar is lying to us, this is the
week of Valentine's Day, that's right, Yeah, which probably means
(00:24):
different things to different people. Some may For some people,
it may mean a celebration of the love that I
am now in. For others, it is perhaps a reminder
of a past love and uh and brings with a
certain negative connotations or love that is not yet fully
manifested in one's life, and then it can be equally problematic.
Or maybe it's just how in the world am I
(00:45):
gonna get reservations at a restaurant tonight to uh, to
satisfy the uh, the significant other in my life? That's right?
And I think that we've got a podcast that's that's
gonna cater to some of this, right, But we're not
talking about it. Well, I don't know. I don't know,
because we're not talking like, uh, you know, roses and
(01:06):
kitten farts here, are we? No, we're not. We're talking
hardcore science and love, right though it is conceivable that
a scientists could study either um, kitten farts or certainly
they study flowers. But but yeah, we're we're dealing with
scientists in love. And it's it's a it's an interesting concept.
I mean, it's not out of everyone knows. Scientists are
(01:26):
of course human beings, and they fall in love and
no matter how nailed down there, they're one part of
their life. Maybe with with the strict you know, realities
of science. Uh, they're still subject to this weird human
emotion that entangles all of us. That's right. And we've
talked about scientists being that the obsessive kind before, right,
(01:49):
so it would make sense that scientists and love would
be super obsessed and too scientists and love doubly so,
and might even their love might be so crazy and
strong that it could eventually lead to maybe like the
a bomb. Yeah, it's like, uh, you know, it's like
the like love is an alcohol and uh in zeal
(02:10):
for science is a caffeinated beverage. And then when when
those two things mix, when they are in the same container,
as we'll see in two cases, when when scientists are
in love with each other and share that scientific zeal
and and a and and this love, it becomes something
that can potentially give you a heart attack. It's true.
(02:31):
Right in the club were so specifically we are talking
about well, first let's talk about the Sagans, that's right.
The second Carl Sagan and Andrewin. Yes, yes, and they
had they had a groovy kind of love, Yes, a
cosmic kind of love. I guess you could say, um
to uh. To set this in time, we are going
(02:51):
back to the summer of ninety seven, and that's when
Carl and a lot of you probably know Carl Sagan
of course, the host of Cosmos, which you can get
on you can get it on like Netflix streaming and stuff.
It's it's still wonderful today. Most of the science still
holds up. But you know, astronomer, astrophysicist, um, you know,
cosmologists generally generally was just on the forefront of popularizing
(03:15):
science and just being a a mascot for for scientific inquiry, right,
particularly space, particularly space. Yes, and uh. He was involved
in a little something called the Voyager project, and the
creative director on this was one and Drew In. Now Voyager.
You may remember this mostly from the Star Trek movie
(03:36):
in which a a a fictional Voyager craft comes back superintelligent.
But of course Voyager we were sending them out and
they're still sailing out to the limits of of of
man's discovery and space and uh aboard this particularly two
particular crafts, Voyager one and Voyiger two, was a Golden Record, which,
(03:58):
interestingly enough, jad Aban Rod and Robert Korich of Radio
Lab referred to as quote the ultimate mixtape that's right
of their love because they collaborated on this school record.
I mean, it's also like a mix tape, like hey,
aliens out there, here you go, and maybe we made
a mixtape for you. But it's also it really represent
this this bond that was growing between these two and
(04:20):
this love that was growing between the two between these
two in the summer of Yeah, I mean, it's literally
documenting them falling in love and the moment that they
fell in love in which they chose a specific piece
of music for it, which is amazing, and it's just
out there flinging itself into outer space. Yeah. And currently
Voyager one is one hundred and sixteen point five astronomical
(04:46):
units from Earth. Just to rewind, an astronomical unit is
the distance between the Earth and the Sun. So it's
that distance spread out a hundred and sixteen and a
half times Voyager two is point two astronomic units from
the Earth, and these distances continue to increase. And we
talked about this a little bit in our previous podcast
(05:07):
about alien etiquette, and the idea, of course of this
Golden Record is that it would be intercepted and it
might tell an extraterrestrial life form what life was like.
I suppose you used to say it was um during
that time period, because it's going to be out there
for a while. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I think that
was the sort of the joke to us as well.
(05:29):
Maybe they intercept this in fo years and then they'll
be like, I don't even know what this chicken scratches. Yeah,
and it's kind of a you know, it's it's kind
of a time capsule as well. But but it it
contained the just the record contained spoken greetings in fifty
nine different languages, ranging from ancient Acadian to Wu, a
modern Chinese dialect that's not to be confused with anything
(05:53):
Wu Tang clan or but sadly with the record was
was pressed and sent out before their genesis, but also
Sounds of Earth ninety minutes of of selected music from
both both Eastern and Western classics. Again no Wu tang,
sadly and uh. Also the sound of a kiss, mother's
first words to a newborn child, Yeah, baby crying right. Yeah.
(06:15):
So a vast collection of our human experience, and most
impressive of all, for the purposes of discussing the love
between these two scientists of the sound of a heartbeat,
that's right. What was the idea? Andrew And said, I'd
like to have my heartbeat recorded, right, and then sort
of data scrambled later to to sort of map this out.
(06:40):
Take me down that road, Robert, Yeah, and it's it's
it's fascinating because because the Sagan and and basically went
down and had this recording done, like just just shortly
after they had actually come because they've been professionally aligned
for a while and they knew each other, they were
working each other, but this was after they actually reached
the point where they realized they were in love with
each other, and and and and and just shortly after
(07:00):
they had actually spoken about it with each other, and
then they went and recorded her heartbeat. And now it's
out there on the plate, and it's it's it's it's beautiful.
It's the love and the science um intermingling with each other.
And uh, and you know, maybe it's a little sappy
if you're if you're not in the mood for it
this week. But yeah, but there, I mean, there you go.
You've got this, this incredible collaboration between two people. And
(07:23):
we should also note to that Carl Sagon was married
at the time that um he met Andrew and and
as far as I know, nothing nuts or scandalous went on,
so to speak. I think he actually declared his love
for her over the phone after she had talked to
him about a particular piece of music that they had
been obsessing over. So it was sort of one of
(07:45):
those things that I think that he was like, oh
my god, I'm in love with this person. And then
of course he dissolved his marriage, his first marriage, So
I just want to point that out. I think that
Carl Singgon was a perfect gentleman. I'd like to think that,
but but I don't know that for sure. And of
course Sagan died uh sadly in ninety six. But Anne
continues on continued writing, and she believe currently resides in
(08:06):
New York, YEP and she actually made a comment to
for that radio piece saying something about how sometimes when
she gets a little depressed or you know, nostalgic, thinks
about the Golden Record and this, this document of their
love just flung out into outer space can still traveling. Yeah,
it's kind of a beautiful thought. I think so as well. Yeah, so,
(08:28):
and and it's one of those like grand I mean,
he didn't do it for Valentine's Day, but you know
it's it pretty much trumps anything that any of us
might have us might be scheming for that week. Yeah,
all right, helicopter ride. Sorry, Carl's got you beat. Yeah. Yeah.
But there's another pair, pretty famous pair that has come
to white recently because of a book that's been written
(08:51):
about them. Right though they've of course they've been you know,
people have been studying the for want that this latest
book has been really really fascinating, sort of re examining
their relationship and their contribution to science. Yeah. The book
is called Radioactive Marie and Pierre Curie by Lauren Redness. Uh.
And then this just came out I think in December
(09:13):
two ten. Yeah, followers, and we picked up our copies
in the last week or two. Yeah, and uh, I
was I this is a book. I was really not
sure exactly what to expect um. And we're going to
come back to the curies, but just to briefe, we're
gonna talk about this book because I basically heard from
my wife had heard something about it on the radio
(09:34):
and she's like, hey, this sounds like there's a really
cool book about the curious coming out. And the cover
glows in the dark. There was you. Yeah, I'm like,
all right, I'm there, you know, I mean I left
things ago. I'm wearing glow in the dark shirt right now. Yeah. Uh,
and we always record the podcast in complete darkness. Yeah, well,
which sometimes the candle well yeah, we have to see
the notes and we only use extremely flammable paper, right, yeah,
(09:57):
it makes sense. But but but anyway, this book, so
I get it in right and it's you know, it's
a large, hard bound book, and sure enough, the cover
glows in the dark, but it is it's it's kind
of hard to describe because it's not really one might
be tempted to talk about it as a graphic novel,
but it was that was my initial impression. But generally speaking,
graphic graphic novels are more a case of sequential art,
(10:19):
where you're having a little little boxes or large boxes
of of images that tell a story. Um, and this
is more I guess I would tend to think of
this as an like an illuminated manuscript or a or
just an illustrated biography. But it's not even even calling
it a biography. It's not really accurate. No. In fact,
I heard an interview on MPR with the author of
(10:41):
Laura read Nous, and uh, the the interviewer has had
actually made this um observation that he thought that it
was more like sort of eliminated manuscript or journal like this,
this imagined journal. Yeah, there of what might be Marie
and pre curious experiences. It's kind of scrap bookie. And
(11:02):
I say that in like the absolute best connotation, Like
we're not talking Etsy here, We're talking science scrap bookie,
if it makes any sense. But the reason that we're
getting so excited about this is because Laura Redness really
put a tremendous amount of research into this book. So
she's looking at the trajectory of Marie and Pierre curious relationship,
(11:25):
which is really the heart of this book and is
interesting in and of itself, but she's also looking at
UM what their discoveries UH bore out for us as
humanity and UM. And she's also looking at the future
generations of the curious and what they contribute or what
their contributions were as well. So I mean she she
(11:45):
went to great lengths really to mind a lot of
information of this book. I think we should stop for
a second, just for anybody listening out there is not
really familiar with the curious or refresher UM. Marie Cury
was born Marie Scouldwowski sculd Bwoska sounds good in warsaw
poland um back in, I believe. And she went on
(12:08):
to marry physics professor Purre Cury in uh Pierre Curry,
sorry inn and the two dove into research together like
this is again it's like the the the deal with
with with Carl and Ann. They were they were both
just really under their work, and suddenly they had they
had the chance to be together too, and they fell
(12:29):
in love and they threw themselves at the same research, right,
And actually, let's just go with that, because I think
it's interesting to point out that Marie Curie, who was
really Maria, she changed her name to Marie Um when
she was in Paris. But she was one of very
few obviously women students at Sorbonne, and she was the
first to get her PhD in science and I believe
(12:50):
the first to become a professor there. Yes, and she
was appointed after her husband's death. And she won not one,
but two Nobel Prizes. Yeah, so first woman to win
a Nobel prize, first person to win two alongside Pierre.
So what I'm the reason why I think that's important
is because these are incredible circumstances for this woman to
be in. And the fact of the matter is she
(13:11):
meant Pierre because she just needed some extra lab space.
So someone was like, oh, you should check out the sky.
He's got some extra space. You know, you could probably
use it. So what happens, obviously, is they come together
and they find that they are both the most hardcore
science researchers that they know that exists, and that really
(13:31):
bonds them. So they have this I don't know that
I would call it a passionate sort of love. I
don't know that we know that, but we know that
they're passionate about their research and this really bonds them together. Right, Yeah,
they become like a just just a team of effort,
you know, and and uh and and what did they accomplish? Well, Okay,
at the first Nobel prize I had to do with
(13:52):
her with their isolation of polonium, which is a radio
active elopment named Bymary for hooland her home contry. And
uh and also radium, another radioactive element, and the one
that was far more noteworthy, and we discussed a little
more and she named that one that has the Latin
for light, I believe. And then the second one was
(14:15):
for actually her her inquiry into radioactivity and the fact
that she even discovered that their elements could be radioactive. Right,
So this book is about these two people coming together
about the the thoroughly non scientific things in their lives
that led them to each other. Like she fell in
love with a with a noble um and son, as
(14:37):
I remember, and he was too good for her according
to the family, so it was heartbreak. And then he
had another situation with where he was in love with
someone and it just was not meant to be, you know, right,
So they had both experienced heartache and when they found
each other, um, I think that I obviously drawn to
each other because of their love of science. But Marie
(14:58):
also says, in the as told by Laura Redness in
the book, he caught the habit of speaking to me
in his dream of an existence consecrated entirely to scientific research,
and asked me to share that life. So that, again,
is unusual to have this pair of people, um at
that time period saying okay, let's just throw all caution
(15:20):
to the wind. We'll get married or research like we've
never researched in our life. Maybe we'll have kids. The
kids don't matter in the sense that you'll still research,
and then they'll research too. That's right, create the little researchers.
And so again that's that the was a not something
that was commonly thought. Then it was you get married,
you raised the children. Um, you know, I'll come home
and you make me some you know, roast beef. Right.
(15:43):
And she was still doing that, and she was doing
the science. I mean she was she was going to
the lab with him and working, but but also raising kids, cooking. Um.
So the great thing about Redness is book. I mean,
aside from just being beautiful to look through, I mean,
the illustrations are magnificent, is that she weaves this the
emerging love of the curious with the emergence of this science,
(16:05):
of this fascinating science of radioactivity, right because radium and
plonium by themselves is kind of like okay, yeah, all right,
so there's the elements, but what what's what does that
mean to our society today? Well, tremendous amount. And at
the time that you really had this, especially with radium,
there was just radium zeal. They really took off and
(16:26):
uh and Redness discusses this at length in the book.
And because it was a time, it's like, I think
back to any time where we've developed a new technology, um,
like when electricity was first becoming a thing and in
the utilization of electricity in our lives, like people were
tremendously excited about it, and you know, like you know,
Tesla and Edison are doing all this stuff. It's like,
(16:46):
let's let's show it off. Let's do it. Let's electrocute
an elephant's electricating himself. Yeah, like electurting himself. And there
was there was some fascinating talk in the time where
people were discussing using electricity to execute criminals and some
people were actually speaking up and saying this is just
this is blasphemous because electricity is this holy, blameless creature
and and you you you can't use that to kill
(17:09):
a criminal. That's just that's what. That's horrible. How could
it light up my life and allow me to to
stay up late and kill a criminal or Yeah, that's
just completely ridiculous. This presentation is brought to you by
Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. So you see, and you we
(17:34):
end up seeing the same thing with radium today. You
continue to to see. Anytime there's like any kind of
new science, you can guarantee somebody out there is going
to try and market something to make a buck off
of it. And with radium at the time, it was
it was really kind of crazy. Um. And we should
also point out that the reason that this happened that
radium sort of went nuts is that Marie and pre
(17:54):
Cure decided not to patent radium because they thought, well, no,
I mean, you know, it's only gonna be a handful
of scientist that really need to use it. We don't
need to patent u. Yeah, and they were like and
then they were like, this is a totally beneficial thing.
A lot of great stuff is going to come out
of this, and it just wouldn't be in the spirit
of what we're doing. So along come the all these
radioactive quack cures. Um. Just to just to run through.
(18:15):
I feel like there were a lot of radium water
jars where you just filled up with water and then
you could have radium in your drinking water. Radioactive drinking water.
It seems like a good idea at the time, right, Um,
And it would there were there were rather far more
questionable items such as suppositories. Again we're talking about real
radium in this pository. Yeah, actual radioactive elements, uh, in
(18:39):
a person's rectum for medicinal purposes. You can get radioactive toothpaste. Um. Again,
it's just you could get these these radioactive plates to
put in your cigarette package cigarette. At the at the time,
it's like if you thought, oh, the cigarettes aren't good
enough for me, now that let me add some radioactivity
to that, just to just to boost the health actor
(19:00):
or a little. Um. There were a refrigerator, freezer deodorizers. Uh.
There you could get a flask you could radiate all
your food in the freezer. Is that when I'm here? Right? Yeah?
And and I mean it just went on and on
and and and then on top of that, at the time,
again everybody's willing to rate radium was a expensive and
(19:20):
and and all this hope was wrapped up in it.
The stuff is going to change the world, um. And
and so for a brief time before the dark attributes
of radium became fully known, it uh, it became like
like like if you had had a if you had
like a credit card back in the early nineteen hundreds,
platinum or a gold, neither of those would have been
(19:41):
your higher in card. No, you would want a radium
card because you had it. Yeah, you had a number
of these different radium branded products that were not in
them in and of themselves radioactive. But you had like
radium beer, you had radium nut x condoms, um, you
had radium playing cards, radium cigarettes. Uh, you know, the
(20:04):
list just goes on. So this is like when I
see products in the store and that says all natural
organic and they actually that's sort of like the greenwashing,
they may not be radium washing. Yeah. Wow. So that's
that was a crazy um amount of fervor around something
like that. Yeah, And of course it was not meant
to last. And that's one of against something that's beautifully
(20:27):
woven into this text because it kind of I mean,
it does parallel so often our stories of love where
where love blooms and is awesome, but then they're either
love faulters or it is complicated by other things, and
it maybe it's maybe it doesn't fail, but it is
forced to become a more realistic beast, you know, the
(20:50):
half life it is stabilizes exactly nice. So what I
think is interesting about this too is that you know,
obviously Pierre and Marie didn't really understand how um dangerous
it was to be handling this in the first place anyway.
And the boy were they handling it? Yeah, I mean
they were. They were tossing it around at dinner parties, right. Uh.
(21:12):
Marie had a little bar in a jar next to
her bed that would you know, illuminate blue at night,
which I'm sure was quite pretty. And and then there's
also this uh, this case to where um it was,
And Pierre goes into the United Kingdom's Royal Institution and
there are all these guys, they're scientists from all over
(21:32):
and he rolls up his sleeve to show a burn
on his arm, or what looks like a burn off
to everybody. And this is a wound that had been
caused by radium salts which he had taped to the
skin um for just ten hours fifty days earlier. The
wound was still there. And while he's doing this, he
ends up spilling some of the salts that he's showing
(21:52):
off the table and the the the resulting contamination of
the table was still detectable and in need of cleaning
up like fifty years later. So and and you know,
when we're saying it the way we're presenting it, it it
probably it comes off a little weird and a little
bizarre and maybe a little funny. But the way Redness
(22:12):
presents it, I mean you really, she presents these two
human beings and that are engaged in this thing they
really care about in er enter, engaged in this relationship,
and they keep they keep dealing with this dangerous stuff
and they're getting they're getting more and more sick. It's
having an effect on their bodies and their their well being,
and they realize it on some level, but they she's
(22:33):
still sleeping. They can't stop themselves. Like I was telling
you earlier, it reminds me of of stories you hear
about people that are in an abusive relationship and they
can't They know that it's it's a bad relationship, but
that they can't break themselves away from it because they're
they're tied to it, they're obsessed with it. And that's
that's the the way redness really presents it here, that
(22:53):
that they they're they're so obsessed with the scientific discovery
that they're working with it, they can't they can't separate
themselves enough from it too to save themselves. Well, and
I think it's because it's that quest for knowledge. They
know there's there's more potential than they realize, and in
fact they yeah, I mean they start to say, okay, well,
if if this is killing healthy cells, maybe it can
kill diseased cells, and therefore it could be used in radiations. Right,
(23:17):
And after they had worked with they figured out ways
that what would become X rays where it can be
used to figure out what You don't have to cut
into a limb to see what's going on with the bones,
you can you can we kind of it's easy to
overlook that today just how helpful uh an X ray is? Right, So, yeah,
you've got you've got these two people completely obsessed with us,
(23:37):
completely obsessed with the process, and you know, Rediness does
do a great job of weaving what becomes that story
of radiation, right. So what happens is that you know,
they're playing around with it. They they have um a
couple of daughters, Irene and Eve. And I'm jumping ahead
(23:58):
a little bit because there's a lot of stuff that
happens in marine Pierre Pierre Curie's life. But what happens
is that Irene begins to study radium as well, and
Mary's a scientist Frederick and they actually create artificial radioactivity,
which is to say that they can take an element
(24:18):
and make it radioactive. And then you begin to see
that this is this is information that's being um relayed
from one generation to another. And it makes me think
about our past podcast about tool users and even about
computer viruses, where we talk about how the human is
just essentially a host for information, host for for technology,
(24:40):
and that we're just they're just replicating it based on us.
And that really is evident, I think, in this connection
between the generations here, right, and and also like we're
talking about that the optimism for for radium and all
things radioactive, that optimism beginning to to to fall for
a little and maybe become well, definitely become a lot
more realistic. And part of that was realizing, whoa, that
(25:01):
the Curries are getting really ill. But also when people
were suddenly realizing, hey, we can we can make weapons
out of this um not not only does there's certain
negative health things going on here, but but we could
make a bomb. Yeah, that's right. Is Einstein actually who
who's looking at the situation and looking at the discoveries
of the two generations and sends out a missive to
(25:24):
FDR saying, hey, we we probably need to get behind us.
The Germans are working on it. Yeah. So again it's
like this very interesting in traductory between like the relationships
and how the relationships are bearing out science, which you
know implicates all of us really when you look at it. Yeah. Yeah.
The book also goes it goes a lot into like
it'll it'll deal with the curies and the nodile flash
(25:46):
forward to Robert Oppenheimer, um, you know, contemplating uh, nuclear weapons,
or it will it will skip to Hiroshima or m
or three mile three mile island and in the noddle
it back to the curies. So it it jumps around
in time, A little man gives you this complete picture
of of of what they're working on and what it's
(26:06):
ultimately going to become. Uh, the the atomic tests in
Nevada and the and just like I was not aware
before reading this that anyone ever had a mushroom clop
party where you would go out and have like a
barbecue and I mean not close up but like the
distant smoke. Right yeahar in Las Vegas this was a
big deal, right whatever the years between nineteen and nineteen
(26:28):
sixty three that you would have a mushroom club party,
I guess until they went underground and started detonating there. Um,
but yeah, you see that picture, you see the you
see Radium sort of being born and being teased into
this other, this other thing that becomes this other thing
that becomes the a bomb, just as you see Iren
(26:49):
being born and having this relationship in furthering that technology
and then having she and her husband having another child,
which is the great grandchild or excuse me, the a
child of Murray who becomes a nuclear physicist. Of course. Um,
you know, the book does, as you say, jump around,
but you keep going back to that story of Marie
(27:11):
specifically sort of suffering for her knowledge in a sense. Um.
And you look at how she and Pierre detailed the
accounts of their own decline. Marie more so because Pierre
was killed. Um, he had untimely death. He was killed
in nineteen o six, I believe. Yeah, he was run
over by a carriage carrying thirteen thousand tons of military gear.
(27:34):
Was bal part. Yeah. Um. But Marie at the end
of her life, when she was very, very sick, and
she died from a classic anemia, which is of course
caused by that radiation, she ch unicled her deterioration and
data columns with entries on her body temperature, her color,
her urine discharged and pus and she tracked her level
of pain. I mean, it's just so interesting that even
(27:56):
at the very end of her life that she's sort
of handling it the only way that she knows, County,
which is to make it into data that she can
try to understand. Um. But you know, that's that's the
interesting thing about this is it's the slow death of herself,
and even Irene and Frederick, her daughter and son in law,
are exposed to radiation and also getting ill as well. Yeah.
(28:20):
It's uh again, it's it's a really powerful book. I
I fin it, actually read the second half of it
last night before going to sleep, and so I just
I had all these dreams where where somebody was testing,
like testing nuclear weapons on a college campus, and I'm
when I was getting like really because they were doing
some sort in the dream, they were doing some sort
of like war game, and I just was so angry.
(28:40):
I was like, why are you doing this? This is
so destructive to all of us, And don't you know
that now I'm going to deal with the zombies after
the apocalypse and treat to a mall now I know.
Luckily the zombies didn't show up in the dream, but
that's good, I think. Though. Again, looking back at their accomplishments,
you just have to look at how amazing it is
(29:01):
that they took four years of their lives just specifically
for radon excuse me radium. Um, it's grueling work. They
are in a shed in Paris, they had forty tons
of corrosive materials to go through to extract just one
tenth of a gram of radium. And the reason they
had to do this because they had to prove that
it physically existed, because just to say you know, Okay,
(29:22):
well we've we found this and to try to get
this published, the scientific community wasn't necessarily gonna um take
that at face value, right, so they think about all
that exposure in that time, going through a heat pile
of corrosive materials kind of creepy. So anyway, it's, uh,
you know, we're we're not being bribed to say this,
(29:44):
but it's a great book. So if you if you're
interested in a an atypical science uh book, pick it
up if you want to want to read, if you're
you want to read a romance that has science in
it and and also a store a story of science,
tific advancement and all the complications that come with it
in human culture. Uh, It's it's a really good read.
(30:05):
Also would make for a pretty cool Valentine's Day gift
if you that that other person in your life is
uh is interested in science at all. And I would say,
even it sort of extends beyond that. I mean, it's
it's about humanity, right, Yeah, it's that. It's it's bigger
than just mere romance. Yeah. And I don't mean to
get all goofy here, but I admit that I had
like a tier yeah at my kitchen table. And it
(30:26):
wasn't the love story part of it. I was just like, Wow,
she did a great job and really capturing, um what
science means to us, I think on an individual level. Yeah,
yeah it is. Yeah, it's a great book. Right, enough
with my earnest exclamations, Robert, take us on home. Okay, uh, yeah, Well,
I believe we have a little listener mail here. Okay,
(30:48):
we have have one here from a listener by the
name of Peter, and he writes in Julian Robert regarding
the future of pain podcast. First of all, what is
an Indian burn? I grew up with three boisterous brothers,
and I'm sure that we tortured each other in various ways,
but I've never heard this particular infliction of paint. Um,
do you want to answer that? When in the doing
burnus it's when you take someone's arm, for instance, and
(31:12):
you put both of your hands on and then you
twist in opposite directions until This is my understanding of that.
Other people may have other variations, but you do it.
This is my John my brother method. Um, until your
skinny hands raw and hurts a lot. Okay, alright, So anyway, Uh, Peter,
there you go, and I don't know the atymology, haven't
(31:34):
a matter. Yeah, I don't think it's actually Native American
or air vedic in uh in its origins. Anyway, Peter continues, However,
my bigger question is whether this is an approbo when
he goes on to ask about the racial and ethical references.
So there he goes, that's our answer to Probably doesn't.
But anyway, his main point is, I want to come
back to the new anesthetic technique called continuous peripheral nerve block.
(31:58):
In two thousand nine, I was in a truly horrific
head on car crash caused by a drunk driver, resulting
in severe trauma and burns. I was hopped to hospitalize
for five months, and I am truly grateful for pain
management with opiates. These drugs certainly made me somewhat loopy
and confused, but I wouldn't call it a high. Even so,
these side effects may may have been been side effects,
may have been beneficial. In retrospect, I think that it
(32:21):
was helpful to only gradually become conscious and cognitive of
my permanent injuries if my physical discomfort had been controlled
in such a way that my thoughts were clear and present.
I think that I would have been pained and traumatized
in other ways. It was difficult enough to accept my
missing fingers and toes, large areas of grafted skin, and
generally shattered existence. In addition, I was essentially immobilized on
(32:44):
my back for three months in the narcotic effect of
oxycotton and other medications certainly made this miserable time more tolerable. Fortunately,
as I have continued to recover, I am not in
any constant pain or or even in any significant intermitted pain.
I have learned to walk again, and I am composing
this message with voice recognition software, and I'm working halftime
(33:04):
in my profession. I do have some long term side
effects from the extended period on opiates, such as chronic
difficulties sleeping sleeping, but no addictions. Opiates were definitely worth it.
I'm a regular listener. Thanks for the great podcast, so
h Peter, thanks for writing in that was the The
nerve blocking technique is something we've discussed as well as
the use of opiates, so it's it's really nice to
(33:25):
have some listener feedback on how this actually affects one's
live Yeah, and We're glad that you're doing well as well.
So yeah, thank you for listening. So, hey, if you
have anything that you would like to share with us,
one place you can find us is Facebook, the other's Twitter.
On both of those we are Blow the Mind. And hey,
I actually have a correction within this podcast right now,
right here, and that is that I've been referring to
(33:48):
Lauren Redness as Laura. So Lauren, my apologies and if
you'd like to email us, please do so at Blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
(34:09):
our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride.
Download it today on iTunes
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
unless the calendar is lying to us, this is the
week of Valentine's Day, that's right, Yeah, which probably means
(00:24):
different things to different people. Some may For some people,
it may mean a celebration of the love that I
am now in. For others, it is perhaps a reminder
of a past love and uh and brings with a
certain negative connotations or love that is not yet fully
manifested in one's life, and then it can be equally problematic.
Or maybe it's just how in the world am I
(00:45):
gonna get reservations at a restaurant tonight to uh, to
satisfy the uh, the significant other in my life? That's right?
And I think that we've got a podcast that's that's
gonna cater to some of this, right, But we're not
talking about it. Well, I don't know. I don't know,
because we're not talking like, uh, you know, roses and
(01:06):
kitten farts here, are we? No, we're not. We're talking
hardcore science and love, right though it is conceivable that
a scientists could study either um, kitten farts or certainly
they study flowers. But but yeah, we're we're dealing with
scientists in love. And it's it's a it's an interesting concept.
I mean, it's not out of everyone knows. Scientists are
(01:26):
of course human beings, and they fall in love and
no matter how nailed down there, they're one part of
their life. Maybe with with the strict you know, realities
of science. Uh, they're still subject to this weird human
emotion that entangles all of us. That's right. And we've
talked about scientists being that the obsessive kind before, right,
(01:49):
so it would make sense that scientists and love would
be super obsessed and too scientists and love doubly so,
and might even their love might be so crazy and
strong that it could eventually lead to maybe like the
a bomb. Yeah, it's like, uh, you know, it's like
the like love is an alcohol and uh in zeal
(02:10):
for science is a caffeinated beverage. And then when when
those two things mix, when they are in the same container,
as we'll see in two cases, when when scientists are
in love with each other and share that scientific zeal
and and a and and this love, it becomes something
that can potentially give you a heart attack. It's true.
(02:31):
Right in the club were so specifically we are talking
about well, first let's talk about the Sagans, that's right.
The second Carl Sagan and Andrewin. Yes, yes, and they
had they had a groovy kind of love, Yes, a
cosmic kind of love. I guess you could say, um
to uh. To set this in time, we are going
(02:51):
back to the summer of ninety seven, and that's when
Carl and a lot of you probably know Carl Sagan
of course, the host of Cosmos, which you can get
on you can get it on like Netflix streaming and stuff.
It's it's still wonderful today. Most of the science still
holds up. But you know, astronomer, astrophysicist, um, you know,
cosmologists generally generally was just on the forefront of popularizing
(03:15):
science and just being a a mascot for for scientific inquiry, right,
particularly space, particularly space. Yes, and uh. He was involved
in a little something called the Voyager project, and the
creative director on this was one and Drew In. Now Voyager.
You may remember this mostly from the Star Trek movie
(03:36):
in which a a a fictional Voyager craft comes back superintelligent.
But of course Voyager we were sending them out and
they're still sailing out to the limits of of of
man's discovery and space and uh aboard this particularly two
particular crafts, Voyager one and Voyiger two, was a Golden Record, which,
(03:58):
interestingly enough, jad Aban Rod and Robert Korich of Radio
Lab referred to as quote the ultimate mixtape that's right
of their love because they collaborated on this school record.
I mean, it's also like a mix tape, like hey,
aliens out there, here you go, and maybe we made
a mixtape for you. But it's also it really represent
this this bond that was growing between these two and
(04:20):
this love that was growing between the two between these
two in the summer of Yeah, I mean, it's literally
documenting them falling in love and the moment that they
fell in love in which they chose a specific piece
of music for it, which is amazing, and it's just
out there flinging itself into outer space. Yeah. And currently
Voyager one is one hundred and sixteen point five astronomical
(04:46):
units from Earth. Just to rewind, an astronomical unit is
the distance between the Earth and the Sun. So it's
that distance spread out a hundred and sixteen and a
half times Voyager two is point two astronomic units from
the Earth, and these distances continue to increase. And we
talked about this a little bit in our previous podcast
(05:07):
about alien etiquette, and the idea, of course of this
Golden Record is that it would be intercepted and it
might tell an extraterrestrial life form what life was like.
I suppose you used to say it was um during
that time period, because it's going to be out there
for a while. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I think that
was the sort of the joke to us as well.
(05:29):
Maybe they intercept this in fo years and then they'll
be like, I don't even know what this chicken scratches. Yeah,
and it's kind of a you know, it's it's kind
of a time capsule as well. But but it it
contained the just the record contained spoken greetings in fifty
nine different languages, ranging from ancient Acadian to Wu, a
modern Chinese dialect that's not to be confused with anything
(05:53):
Wu Tang clan or but sadly with the record was
was pressed and sent out before their genesis, but also
Sounds of Earth ninety minutes of of selected music from
both both Eastern and Western classics. Again no Wu tang,
sadly and uh. Also the sound of a kiss, mother's
first words to a newborn child, Yeah, baby crying right. Yeah.
(06:15):
So a vast collection of our human experience, and most
impressive of all, for the purposes of discussing the love
between these two scientists of the sound of a heartbeat,
that's right. What was the idea? Andrew And said, I'd
like to have my heartbeat recorded, right, and then sort
of data scrambled later to to sort of map this out.
(06:40):
Take me down that road, Robert, Yeah, and it's it's
it's fascinating because because the Sagan and and basically went
down and had this recording done, like just just shortly
after they had actually come because they've been professionally aligned
for a while and they knew each other, they were
working each other, but this was after they actually reached
the point where they realized they were in love with
each other, and and and and and just shortly after
(07:00):
they had actually spoken about it with each other, and
then they went and recorded her heartbeat. And now it's
out there on the plate, and it's it's it's it's beautiful.
It's the love and the science um intermingling with each other.
And uh, and you know, maybe it's a little sappy
if you're if you're not in the mood for it
this week. But yeah, but there, I mean, there you go.
You've got this, this incredible collaboration between two people. And
(07:23):
we should also note to that Carl Sagon was married
at the time that um he met Andrew and and
as far as I know, nothing nuts or scandalous went on,
so to speak. I think he actually declared his love
for her over the phone after she had talked to
him about a particular piece of music that they had
been obsessing over. So it was sort of one of
(07:45):
those things that I think that he was like, oh
my god, I'm in love with this person. And then
of course he dissolved his marriage, his first marriage, So
I just want to point that out. I think that
Carl Singgon was a perfect gentleman. I'd like to think that,
but but I don't know that for sure. And of
course Sagan died uh sadly in ninety six. But Anne
continues on continued writing, and she believe currently resides in
(08:06):
New York, YEP and she actually made a comment to
for that radio piece saying something about how sometimes when
she gets a little depressed or you know, nostalgic, thinks
about the Golden Record and this, this document of their
love just flung out into outer space can still traveling. Yeah,
it's kind of a beautiful thought. I think so as well. Yeah, so,
(08:28):
and and it's one of those like grand I mean,
he didn't do it for Valentine's Day, but you know
it's it pretty much trumps anything that any of us
might have us might be scheming for that week. Yeah,
all right, helicopter ride. Sorry, Carl's got you beat. Yeah. Yeah.
But there's another pair, pretty famous pair that has come
to white recently because of a book that's been written
(08:51):
about them. Right though they've of course they've been you know,
people have been studying the for want that this latest
book has been really really fascinating, sort of re examining
their relationship and their contribution to science. Yeah. The book
is called Radioactive Marie and Pierre Curie by Lauren Redness. Uh.
And then this just came out I think in December
(09:13):
two ten. Yeah, followers, and we picked up our copies
in the last week or two. Yeah, and uh, I
was I this is a book. I was really not
sure exactly what to expect um. And we're going to
come back to the curies, but just to briefe, we're
gonna talk about this book because I basically heard from
my wife had heard something about it on the radio
(09:34):
and she's like, hey, this sounds like there's a really
cool book about the curious coming out. And the cover
glows in the dark. There was you. Yeah, I'm like,
all right, I'm there, you know, I mean I left
things ago. I'm wearing glow in the dark shirt right now. Yeah. Uh,
and we always record the podcast in complete darkness. Yeah, well,
which sometimes the candle well yeah, we have to see
the notes and we only use extremely flammable paper, right, yeah,
(09:57):
it makes sense. But but but anyway, this book, so
I get it in right and it's you know, it's
a large, hard bound book, and sure enough, the cover
glows in the dark, but it is it's it's kind
of hard to describe because it's not really one might
be tempted to talk about it as a graphic novel,
but it was that was my initial impression. But generally speaking,
graphic graphic novels are more a case of sequential art,
(10:19):
where you're having a little little boxes or large boxes
of of images that tell a story. Um, and this
is more I guess I would tend to think of
this as an like an illuminated manuscript or a or
just an illustrated biography. But it's not even even calling
it a biography. It's not really accurate. No. In fact,
I heard an interview on MPR with the author of
(10:41):
Laura read Nous, and uh, the the interviewer has had
actually made this um observation that he thought that it
was more like sort of eliminated manuscript or journal like this,
this imagined journal. Yeah, there of what might be Marie
and pre curious experiences. It's kind of scrap bookie. And
(11:02):
I say that in like the absolute best connotation, Like
we're not talking Etsy here, We're talking science scrap bookie,
if it makes any sense. But the reason that we're
getting so excited about this is because Laura Redness really
put a tremendous amount of research into this book. So
she's looking at the trajectory of Marie and Pierre curious relationship,
(11:25):
which is really the heart of this book and is
interesting in and of itself, but she's also looking at
UM what their discoveries UH bore out for us as
humanity and UM. And she's also looking at the future
generations of the curious and what they contribute or what
their contributions were as well. So I mean she she
(11:45):
went to great lengths really to mind a lot of
information of this book. I think we should stop for
a second, just for anybody listening out there is not
really familiar with the curious or refresher UM. Marie Cury
was born Marie Scouldwowski sculd Bwoska sounds good in warsaw
poland um back in, I believe. And she went on
(12:08):
to marry physics professor Purre Cury in uh Pierre Curry,
sorry inn and the two dove into research together like
this is again it's like the the the deal with
with with Carl and Ann. They were they were both
just really under their work, and suddenly they had they
had the chance to be together too, and they fell
(12:29):
in love and they threw themselves at the same research, right,
And actually, let's just go with that, because I think
it's interesting to point out that Marie Curie, who was
really Maria, she changed her name to Marie Um when
she was in Paris. But she was one of very
few obviously women students at Sorbonne, and she was the
first to get her PhD in science and I believe
(12:50):
the first to become a professor there. Yes, and she
was appointed after her husband's death. And she won not one,
but two Nobel Prizes. Yeah, so first woman to win
a Nobel prize, first person to win two alongside Pierre.
So what I'm the reason why I think that's important
is because these are incredible circumstances for this woman to
be in. And the fact of the matter is she
(13:11):
meant Pierre because she just needed some extra lab space.
So someone was like, oh, you should check out the sky.
He's got some extra space. You know, you could probably
use it. So what happens, obviously, is they come together
and they find that they are both the most hardcore
science researchers that they know that exists, and that really
(13:31):
bonds them. So they have this I don't know that
I would call it a passionate sort of love. I
don't know that we know that, but we know that
they're passionate about their research and this really bonds them together. Right, Yeah,
they become like a just just a team of effort,
you know, and and uh and and what did they accomplish? Well, Okay,
at the first Nobel prize I had to do with
(13:52):
her with their isolation of polonium, which is a radio
active elopment named Bymary for hooland her home contry. And
uh and also radium, another radioactive element, and the one
that was far more noteworthy, and we discussed a little
more and she named that one that has the Latin
for light, I believe. And then the second one was
(14:15):
for actually her her inquiry into radioactivity and the fact
that she even discovered that their elements could be radioactive. Right,
So this book is about these two people coming together
about the the thoroughly non scientific things in their lives
that led them to each other. Like she fell in
love with a with a noble um and son, as
(14:37):
I remember, and he was too good for her according
to the family, so it was heartbreak. And then he
had another situation with where he was in love with
someone and it just was not meant to be, you know, right,
So they had both experienced heartache and when they found
each other, um, I think that I obviously drawn to
each other because of their love of science. But Marie
(14:58):
also says, in the as told by Laura Redness in
the book, he caught the habit of speaking to me
in his dream of an existence consecrated entirely to scientific research,
and asked me to share that life. So that, again,
is unusual to have this pair of people, um at
that time period saying okay, let's just throw all caution
(15:20):
to the wind. We'll get married or research like we've
never researched in our life. Maybe we'll have kids. The
kids don't matter in the sense that you'll still research,
and then they'll research too. That's right, create the little researchers.
And so again that's that the was a not something
that was commonly thought. Then it was you get married,
you raised the children. Um, you know, I'll come home
and you make me some you know, roast beef. Right.
(15:43):
And she was still doing that, and she was doing
the science. I mean she was she was going to
the lab with him and working, but but also raising kids, cooking. Um.
So the great thing about Redness is book. I mean,
aside from just being beautiful to look through, I mean,
the illustrations are magnificent, is that she weaves this the
emerging love of the curious with the emergence of this science,
(16:05):
of this fascinating science of radioactivity, right because radium and
plonium by themselves is kind of like okay, yeah, all right,
so there's the elements, but what what's what does that
mean to our society today? Well, tremendous amount. And at
the time that you really had this, especially with radium,
there was just radium zeal. They really took off and
(16:26):
uh and Redness discusses this at length in the book.
And because it was a time, it's like, I think
back to any time where we've developed a new technology, um,
like when electricity was first becoming a thing and in
the utilization of electricity in our lives, like people were
tremendously excited about it, and you know, like you know,
Tesla and Edison are doing all this stuff. It's like,
(16:46):
let's let's show it off. Let's do it. Let's electrocute
an elephant's electricating himself. Yeah, like electurting himself. And there
was there was some fascinating talk in the time where
people were discussing using electricity to execute criminals and some
people were actually speaking up and saying this is just
this is blasphemous because electricity is this holy, blameless creature
and and you you you can't use that to kill
(17:09):
a criminal. That's just that's what. That's horrible. How could
it light up my life and allow me to to
stay up late and kill a criminal or Yeah, that's
just completely ridiculous. This presentation is brought to you by
Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. So you see, and you we
(17:34):
end up seeing the same thing with radium today. You
continue to to see. Anytime there's like any kind of
new science, you can guarantee somebody out there is going
to try and market something to make a buck off
of it. And with radium at the time, it was
it was really kind of crazy. Um. And we should
also point out that the reason that this happened that
radium sort of went nuts is that Marie and pre
(17:54):
Cure decided not to patent radium because they thought, well, no,
I mean, you know, it's only gonna be a handful
of scientist that really need to use it. We don't
need to patent u. Yeah, and they were like and
then they were like, this is a totally beneficial thing.
A lot of great stuff is going to come out
of this, and it just wouldn't be in the spirit
of what we're doing. So along come the all these
radioactive quack cures. Um. Just to just to run through.
(18:15):
I feel like there were a lot of radium water
jars where you just filled up with water and then
you could have radium in your drinking water. Radioactive drinking water.
It seems like a good idea at the time, right, Um,
And it would there were there were rather far more
questionable items such as suppositories. Again we're talking about real
radium in this pository. Yeah, actual radioactive elements, uh, in
(18:39):
a person's rectum for medicinal purposes. You can get radioactive toothpaste. Um. Again,
it's just you could get these these radioactive plates to
put in your cigarette package cigarette. At the at the time,
it's like if you thought, oh, the cigarettes aren't good
enough for me, now that let me add some radioactivity
to that, just to just to boost the health actor
(19:00):
or a little. Um. There were a refrigerator, freezer deodorizers. Uh.
There you could get a flask you could radiate all
your food in the freezer. Is that when I'm here? Right? Yeah?
And and I mean it just went on and on
and and and then on top of that, at the time,
again everybody's willing to rate radium was a expensive and
(19:20):
and and all this hope was wrapped up in it.
The stuff is going to change the world, um. And
and so for a brief time before the dark attributes
of radium became fully known, it uh, it became like
like like if you had had a if you had
like a credit card back in the early nineteen hundreds,
platinum or a gold, neither of those would have been
(19:41):
your higher in card. No, you would want a radium
card because you had it. Yeah, you had a number
of these different radium branded products that were not in
them in and of themselves radioactive. But you had like
radium beer, you had radium nut x condoms, um, you
had radium playing cards, radium cigarettes. Uh, you know, the
(20:04):
list just goes on. So this is like when I
see products in the store and that says all natural
organic and they actually that's sort of like the greenwashing,
they may not be radium washing. Yeah. Wow. So that's
that was a crazy um amount of fervor around something
like that. Yeah, And of course it was not meant
to last. And that's one of against something that's beautifully
(20:27):
woven into this text because it kind of I mean,
it does parallel so often our stories of love where
where love blooms and is awesome, but then they're either
love faulters or it is complicated by other things, and
it maybe it's maybe it doesn't fail, but it is
forced to become a more realistic beast, you know, the
(20:50):
half life it is stabilizes exactly nice. So what I
think is interesting about this too is that you know,
obviously Pierre and Marie didn't really understand how um dangerous
it was to be handling this in the first place anyway.
And the boy were they handling it? Yeah, I mean
they were. They were tossing it around at dinner parties, right. Uh.
(21:12):
Marie had a little bar in a jar next to
her bed that would you know, illuminate blue at night,
which I'm sure was quite pretty. And and then there's
also this uh, this case to where um it was,
And Pierre goes into the United Kingdom's Royal Institution and
there are all these guys, they're scientists from all over
(21:32):
and he rolls up his sleeve to show a burn
on his arm, or what looks like a burn off
to everybody. And this is a wound that had been
caused by radium salts which he had taped to the
skin um for just ten hours fifty days earlier. The
wound was still there. And while he's doing this, he
ends up spilling some of the salts that he's showing
(21:52):
off the table and the the the resulting contamination of
the table was still detectable and in need of cleaning
up like fifty years later. So and and you know,
when we're saying it the way we're presenting it, it it
probably it comes off a little weird and a little
bizarre and maybe a little funny. But the way Redness
(22:12):
presents it, I mean you really, she presents these two
human beings and that are engaged in this thing they
really care about in er enter, engaged in this relationship,
and they keep they keep dealing with this dangerous stuff
and they're getting they're getting more and more sick. It's
having an effect on their bodies and their their well being,
and they realize it on some level, but they she's
(22:33):
still sleeping. They can't stop themselves. Like I was telling
you earlier, it reminds me of of stories you hear
about people that are in an abusive relationship and they
can't They know that it's it's a bad relationship, but
that they can't break themselves away from it because they're
they're tied to it, they're obsessed with it. And that's
that's the the way redness really presents it here, that
(22:53):
that they they're they're so obsessed with the scientific discovery
that they're working with it, they can't they can't separate
themselves enough from it too to save themselves. Well, and
I think it's because it's that quest for knowledge. They
know there's there's more potential than they realize, and in
fact they yeah, I mean they start to say, okay, well,
if if this is killing healthy cells, maybe it can
kill diseased cells, and therefore it could be used in radiations. Right,
(23:17):
And after they had worked with they figured out ways
that what would become X rays where it can be
used to figure out what You don't have to cut
into a limb to see what's going on with the bones,
you can you can we kind of it's easy to
overlook that today just how helpful uh an X ray is? Right, So, yeah,
you've got you've got these two people completely obsessed with us,
(23:37):
completely obsessed with the process, and you know, Rediness does
do a great job of weaving what becomes that story
of radiation, right. So what happens is that you know,
they're playing around with it. They they have um a
couple of daughters, Irene and Eve. And I'm jumping ahead
(23:58):
a little bit because there's a lot of stuff that
happens in marine Pierre Pierre Curie's life. But what happens
is that Irene begins to study radium as well, and
Mary's a scientist Frederick and they actually create artificial radioactivity,
which is to say that they can take an element
(24:18):
and make it radioactive. And then you begin to see
that this is this is information that's being um relayed
from one generation to another. And it makes me think
about our past podcast about tool users and even about
computer viruses, where we talk about how the human is
just essentially a host for information, host for for technology,
(24:40):
and that we're just they're just replicating it based on us.
And that really is evident, I think, in this connection
between the generations here, right, and and also like we're
talking about that the optimism for for radium and all
things radioactive, that optimism beginning to to to fall for
a little and maybe become well, definitely become a lot
more realistic. And part of that was realizing, whoa, that
(25:01):
the Curries are getting really ill. But also when people
were suddenly realizing, hey, we can we can make weapons
out of this um not not only does there's certain
negative health things going on here, but but we could
make a bomb. Yeah, that's right. Is Einstein actually who
who's looking at the situation and looking at the discoveries
of the two generations and sends out a missive to
(25:24):
FDR saying, hey, we we probably need to get behind us.
The Germans are working on it. Yeah. So again it's
like this very interesting in traductory between like the relationships
and how the relationships are bearing out science, which you
know implicates all of us really when you look at it. Yeah. Yeah.
The book also goes it goes a lot into like
it'll it'll deal with the curies and the nodile flash
(25:46):
forward to Robert Oppenheimer, um, you know, contemplating uh, nuclear weapons,
or it will it will skip to Hiroshima or m
or three mile three mile island and in the noddle
it back to the curies. So it it jumps around
in time, A little man gives you this complete picture
of of of what they're working on and what it's
(26:06):
ultimately going to become. Uh, the the atomic tests in
Nevada and the and just like I was not aware
before reading this that anyone ever had a mushroom clop
party where you would go out and have like a
barbecue and I mean not close up but like the
distant smoke. Right yeahar in Las Vegas this was a
big deal, right whatever the years between nineteen and nineteen
(26:28):
sixty three that you would have a mushroom club party,
I guess until they went underground and started detonating there. Um,
but yeah, you see that picture, you see the you
see Radium sort of being born and being teased into
this other, this other thing that becomes this other thing
that becomes the a bomb, just as you see Iren
(26:49):
being born and having this relationship in furthering that technology
and then having she and her husband having another child,
which is the great grandchild or excuse me, the a
child of Murray who becomes a nuclear physicist. Of course. Um,
you know, the book does, as you say, jump around,
but you keep going back to that story of Marie
(27:11):
specifically sort of suffering for her knowledge in a sense. Um.
And you look at how she and Pierre detailed the
accounts of their own decline. Marie more so because Pierre
was killed. Um, he had untimely death. He was killed
in nineteen o six, I believe. Yeah, he was run
over by a carriage carrying thirteen thousand tons of military gear.
(27:34):
Was bal part. Yeah. Um. But Marie at the end
of her life, when she was very, very sick, and
she died from a classic anemia, which is of course
caused by that radiation, she ch unicled her deterioration and
data columns with entries on her body temperature, her color,
her urine discharged and pus and she tracked her level
of pain. I mean, it's just so interesting that even
(27:56):
at the very end of her life that she's sort
of handling it the only way that she knows, County,
which is to make it into data that she can
try to understand. Um. But you know, that's that's the
interesting thing about this is it's the slow death of herself,
and even Irene and Frederick, her daughter and son in law,
are exposed to radiation and also getting ill as well. Yeah.
(28:20):
It's uh again, it's it's a really powerful book. I
I fin it, actually read the second half of it
last night before going to sleep, and so I just
I had all these dreams where where somebody was testing,
like testing nuclear weapons on a college campus, and I'm
when I was getting like really because they were doing
some sort in the dream, they were doing some sort
of like war game, and I just was so angry.
(28:40):
I was like, why are you doing this? This is
so destructive to all of us, And don't you know
that now I'm going to deal with the zombies after
the apocalypse and treat to a mall now I know.
Luckily the zombies didn't show up in the dream, but
that's good, I think. Though. Again, looking back at their accomplishments,
you just have to look at how amazing it is
(29:01):
that they took four years of their lives just specifically
for radon excuse me radium. Um, it's grueling work. They
are in a shed in Paris, they had forty tons
of corrosive materials to go through to extract just one
tenth of a gram of radium. And the reason they
had to do this because they had to prove that
it physically existed, because just to say you know, Okay,
(29:22):
well we've we found this and to try to get
this published, the scientific community wasn't necessarily gonna um take
that at face value, right, so they think about all
that exposure in that time, going through a heat pile
of corrosive materials kind of creepy. So anyway, it's, uh,
you know, we're we're not being bribed to say this,
(29:44):
but it's a great book. So if you if you're
interested in a an atypical science uh book, pick it
up if you want to want to read, if you're
you want to read a romance that has science in
it and and also a store a story of science,
tific advancement and all the complications that come with it
in human culture. Uh, It's it's a really good read.
(30:05):
Also would make for a pretty cool Valentine's Day gift
if you that that other person in your life is
uh is interested in science at all. And I would say,
even it sort of extends beyond that. I mean, it's
it's about humanity, right, Yeah, it's that. It's it's bigger
than just mere romance. Yeah. And I don't mean to
get all goofy here, but I admit that I had
like a tier yeah at my kitchen table. And it
(30:26):
wasn't the love story part of it. I was just like, Wow,
she did a great job and really capturing, um what
science means to us, I think on an individual level. Yeah,
yeah it is. Yeah, it's a great book. Right, enough
with my earnest exclamations, Robert, take us on home. Okay, uh, yeah, Well,
I believe we have a little listener mail here. Okay,
(30:48):
we have have one here from a listener by the
name of Peter, and he writes in Julian Robert regarding
the future of pain podcast. First of all, what is
an Indian burn? I grew up with three boisterous brothers,
and I'm sure that we tortured each other in various ways,
but I've never heard this particular infliction of paint. Um,
do you want to answer that? When in the doing
burnus it's when you take someone's arm, for instance, and
(31:12):
you put both of your hands on and then you
twist in opposite directions until This is my understanding of that.
Other people may have other variations, but you do it.
This is my John my brother method. Um, until your
skinny hands raw and hurts a lot. Okay, alright, So anyway, Uh, Peter,
there you go, and I don't know the atymology, haven't
(31:34):
a matter. Yeah, I don't think it's actually Native American
or air vedic in uh in its origins. Anyway, Peter continues, However,
my bigger question is whether this is an approbo when
he goes on to ask about the racial and ethical references.
So there he goes, that's our answer to Probably doesn't.
But anyway, his main point is, I want to come
back to the new anesthetic technique called continuous peripheral nerve block.
(31:58):
In two thousand nine, I was in a truly horrific
head on car crash caused by a drunk driver, resulting
in severe trauma and burns. I was hopped to hospitalize
for five months, and I am truly grateful for pain
management with opiates. These drugs certainly made me somewhat loopy
and confused, but I wouldn't call it a high. Even so,
these side effects may may have been been side effects,
may have been beneficial. In retrospect, I think that it
(32:21):
was helpful to only gradually become conscious and cognitive of
my permanent injuries if my physical discomfort had been controlled
in such a way that my thoughts were clear and present.
I think that I would have been pained and traumatized
in other ways. It was difficult enough to accept my
missing fingers and toes, large areas of grafted skin, and
generally shattered existence. In addition, I was essentially immobilized on
(32:44):
my back for three months in the narcotic effect of
oxycotton and other medications certainly made this miserable time more tolerable. Fortunately,
as I have continued to recover, I am not in
any constant pain or or even in any significant intermitted pain.
I have learned to walk again, and I am composing
this message with voice recognition software, and I'm working halftime
(33:04):
in my profession. I do have some long term side
effects from the extended period on opiates, such as chronic
difficulties sleeping sleeping, but no addictions. Opiates were definitely worth it.
I'm a regular listener. Thanks for the great podcast, so
h Peter, thanks for writing in that was the The
nerve blocking technique is something we've discussed as well as
the use of opiates, so it's it's really nice to
(33:25):
have some listener feedback on how this actually affects one's
live Yeah, and We're glad that you're doing well as well.
So yeah, thank you for listening. So, hey, if you
have anything that you would like to share with us,
one place you can find us is Facebook, the other's Twitter.
On both of those we are Blow the Mind. And hey,
I actually have a correction within this podcast right now,
right here, and that is that I've been referring to
(33:48):
Lauren Redness as Laura. So Lauren, my apologies and if
you'd like to email us, please do so at Blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
(34:09):
our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride.
Download it today on iTunes
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