Morbid Mondays - Episode 27 - Real Life Nuka-Cola! Radithor

Ever wanted to know what it would be like to sip some rads? This isn't your grampas energy drink...actually it is! It's Radithor!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Oh, thank you for the thumbs up this time. Greetings.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello.

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Now I'm fucking mad. Welcome to, or welcome back to Morbid Mondays, your unhinged source for what the fuck moments throughout all of history, where we will take turns giving you a weekly tour through all of the gross, gory, and downright moments in history. We're your hosts. I'm Katie.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

I'm Brian.

SPEAKER_03 0:24

Alright, let's get the fuck into this, shall we?

SPEAKER_01 0:26

You were like halfway through it.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Oh yeah. I was ready to power the fuck through. I was gonna go. Took me like five minutes to find it in this notebook. You'd think at this point I would just put a sticky tab on it so I could just open to it.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Yeah, I I actually pulled mine out so it would just be like there.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

Yeah, I don't trust myself to keep hold of it. Bingo! It's like you know me or something. All right. So we just did the pre-show and we were all over the fuck place with that. Yeah. Which is like pretty standard for us.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:56

Just in general conversation. Oh, my husband. Good job. Um sorry, he texted me. And uh we we we spoke briefly on like like the boldness of coffee and energy drinks, right? Like talking about the caffeine and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yeah. I love it. I'm a big fan of drugs.

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Same.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Caffeine.

SPEAKER_03 1:19

Honestly, same.

unknown 1:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

And caffeine's one of those drugs that's just like designed to make you work better.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yeah, pretty much.

SPEAKER_03 1:24

Like your whole body is like, yes. Vasodilator? Yes, please.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Right. Don't you don't feel sleepy. No. At least that's the what it does.

SPEAKER_03 1:33

Well, I for for normal people, those of us with ADHD, we have to drink copious amounts of it. Yeah. To to overcome the nap time that comes from it. Uh that's a lesson I learned the hard way, that's for sure. So what if I told you that um energy drinks aren't a new thing?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

I would believe you. Um, because there's I I can think of a few off the top of my head that are energy drink adjacent. One of them is uh comes from the Middle East, which is kind of a Gatorade type thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

So it's a vinegar and like oil mix that's like electrolytes and stuff. Um there is the original energy drink of South America, which is chewing on coca leaves. Oh, uh, which is Jesus, which is not cocaine. No, no, it's not, but it does cure altitude sickness. And uh that's really that's I mean, found by a guy that was exiled from his town and was starving and started eating stuff.

SPEAKER_03 2:31

And actually, fun fact, um, uh hot chocolate, yeah, as we as as we would recognize it, is very, very, very old and was originally Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

That it's uh uh King Montezuma the second, or at least we called him Montezuma the second, drank copious amounts of it.

SPEAKER_03 2:47

It's fucking crazy, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:48

He was a he was fucking jet.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

It was it was like a medicinal compound then, like it was a health drink.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Had chili powder and all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

It's fucking crazy. Well, anyway, as fun as all of those facts are, that is absolutely not where I was going with this. Uh so well I it tracks because it's in the same vein. But I'm I'm I'm let me rephrase. So you remember one of my original TikToks was the Radium Girls, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_03 3:15

Like the 1920s through into the 30s, like all of the bullshit, like after m Marie Curie discovered uranium and radium and and all of the glowing radioactive gonna kill you, niss.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

I'm gonna give you a name and you're gonna immediately cringe. Are you ready for this?

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Uh sure.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

Radathor.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Yeah, I fought him in a DD campaign one time. Pretty sure he was a red wizard?

SPEAKER_03 3:48

That was a marketed energy drink.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Is this like fucking Nuca-Cola? Kinda. Rad is in radium? Yep. Are you ready for this? And thorium.

SPEAKER_03 4:00

Well, I don't think there was thorium involved. I think it was just a fun way to finish out the word.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Yeah, I was like, that would 100% kill you.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

So in the late 20s and uh early 30s of the 1900s, that's how recent this was. And I'm I'm sure I'm sure that at least some of our listeners, and I know you for sure, are are familiar with the radium girls. Like the uh the what did they call them? The shining girls? Ghost girls. Um they had a whole bunch of really like like cute, fun nicknames until they started dying.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Yeah, for people who were painting uh glowing um glow-in-the-dark watch hands.

SPEAKER_03 4:48

Correct. Good job.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

And licking the teeth. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 4:51

They were pointing the brush with their lips and teeth. And that is how they were ingesting lethal amounts of radium.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:57

So here's a story that happened parallel to this that I had no idea about until my partner brought it to me on Thursday.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Which definitely caused, because I'm like looking into your eyes and you're like, wow, like a hundred percent you went down a rabbit hole.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

I did. I did, I did. You should I I'll I'll show you all the tabs open on my fucking laptop and my Chromebook because it's insane.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

I want you to know that like as a person who consumes copious amounts of strange, maybe phosphorescent green energy drinks, um, you mentioning earliest energy drinks and then something called Radathors scares the shit out of me.

SPEAKER_03 5:43

I know. I and it and the wildest thing to me, like, I I get that we uh that we we as as a as a society and a generation now have grown up outside and far, far, far, far, far the fuck away from the discovery and invention of these things. But I cannot fathom how these people thought that ingesting a radioactive substance was any kind of good for you.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

I mean, if I guess if you've read a lot of comic books, yeah. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 6:18

I I don't know. I mm I am not the I am not the one to be a fucking superhero ever.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

So where are we where are we going with this? Because I'm like, because who the fuck is eating that's crazy. All right, let's go.

SPEAKER_03 6:36

So in the 20s, it it was it was the uh the radium girls that get a lot of media about this because like it was part of part of the breakthrough case of companies lying to their employees about telling people that you know this this the substance that we're telling you to we're not telling you to ingest it orally, but it is it is inevitable that you will because of how we are training you to paint these very fine details and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:08

And like The Radium Girls is how we got OSHA and like, you know, all sorts of laws around this stuff. But what got me is how hard they had to fight for it, given all of the evidence, and like especially once the corporate cover-up was was exposed.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Fuck yeah, that's always a thing, though, is it's like, well, we didn't tell you to leak the brushes. But like you said, it's like impossible to do the job unless you're constantly wetting the brushes.

SPEAKER_03 7:40

And so, like, and you can't write them in water because then it Yeah, it it dips with the oil on the brush itself, which is which is what holds it to that point, so you can paint those fine details for watches, plane dials, trains. Like there were there was this with the with the discovery and the uh discovery of radium, uh radium 226 and radium 228 specifically, which were the ones that glued. Uh, there was this insane fad to use it on and with everything.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_03 8:14

Like it was the new thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Yeah, it was like space age.

SPEAKER_03 8:18

It's like kind of like Seven Brew right now.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Oh, yeah, it's the new thing in town. We're just freaking out.

SPEAKER_03 8:24

Everyone's losing their shit out.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

For regular ass coffee. Alright, cool.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

So in between 1920 and 192 1939, there were there were over 112 confirmed deaths because of like the radium paint, basically. And like that, that's a thing. And there there are multiple movies on the Radium Girls that you can watch, and I highly suggest you do. And because I I've I've covered the Radium Radium Girls before, like I did an entire segment on them that weirdly got popular at my job at the time.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:57

Yeah, that was weird. My TikTok crossing over into like real life was weird. Like my boss coming up to me, like, so that's how we got OSHA? And I'm like, whoa, I'm uncomfortable with the fact that you have seen me in a corset. Um that's a real conversation. Yeah. That happened. Weird VN. 7 a.m. Anyway, so Radathor. What the fuck and why the fuck?

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 9:26

Happens with okay. Let me let me give you a little bit of context beyond what I've given you about like how radium is like the fad element at the moment, because it's there are multiple movies on Marie Curie. Please go watch them. They're amazing, especially the most recent one. But uh there what what you don't get a whole lot of are like the conmen and snake oil salesmen. And let me introduce you to someone named William Bailey. William J. Bailey.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Yeah, it's just normal of a name.

SPEAKER_03 10:05

He is he is one hell of a known con man, a Harvard dropout, which tells you that he was intelligent enough to get into Harvard, but either too lazy to hack it or just said, fuck this.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah, or yeah, or too successful as a con man to care.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

I think that I think it's that second one, because this man, I don't know how in his incredible con man career spanning from like 1915 all the way to like 1930. 1932 is when he was essentially booted out of business. So in that expansive career of conning people, this man was only arrested twice.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Damn.

SPEAKER_03 10:53

Arrested twice and he was fined once.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

So he wasn't even really caught.

SPEAKER_03 10:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Yeah. Like that's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

It's insane.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Fine does not mean jail. I know.

SPEAKER_03 11:03

It just means that dad.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

Slap on the wrist. So he'd been arrested twice, fined once, and this home homeboy, Kanjob here, to borrow a name from Constantine, would go on to found Bailey's Laboratories. Which is where he decided that he was going to be the entrepreneur of radium bullshit.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 11:40

Radium at this point is the fad thing, right? Like it's it's everywhere. And when I tell you that radium found its way into everything, I mean it. Hair creams, toothpastes, uh-huh. Yeah, cosmetics. And uh and thanks to our boy, our boy Mr. Bailey over here, Bill. Um a couple of interesting devices. Uh one one was called a a radio radio chronoder in in chronod oh my god, I cannot read my own handwriting. It was a thing that held a little pellet of radium against your scrotum. And it was supposed to increase both virility and fertility.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Not do that.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

No, you know what's crazy is that like the Nazis knew it wouldn't do. Well, this is in the 1920s. Correct. So we haven't even gotten there yet. Oh, that's wild. Yeah, it will make you sterile.

SPEAKER_03 12:39

Yeah. And he was and he was productively, actively, successfully selling all of these things. Like there were there were suppositories.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Great way to not have a prostate anymore. Um that's yeah. Yikes and he's I mean, or have a giant prostate. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yikes.

SPEAKER_03 13:03

And his most successful invention was Radathor, which was a tiny vial, about this big.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

A little glass vial?

SPEAKER_03 13:13

A little glass vial. And a little glass vial goes into the gun like a battery. I will do all of Zydrate.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Oh man.

SPEAKER_03 13:21

Test me!

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Oh man.

SPEAKER_03 13:23

It was a tiny glass vial with about an ounce of fluid in it that carried one he claimed. And he he literally he said an award, like, like, if you can prove that this has less than two unit of measurement of your of not uranium, not uranium of radium in it. I will pay you a hundred dollars. And no one ever could disprove it because all of these vials had at least one and a half to two uh microcuries of radium in them.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Okay, so we're talking about very small amounts.

SPEAKER_03 14:01

Yeah, they it's tiny, and like I I wrote down a whole mess. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Yeah, because how much is a mic yoga?

SPEAKER_03 14:08

I I know, I know, I know. It's insane. Because I went I went through and did like all of the because there's so many ways to measure this element, and like none of them are one to one or one to one point five, like they're all like they're all math equations.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Yeah. Because you're talking about extremely small amounts of something that does not behave normally in in the sense that like it's not like it's not gonna be it's not gonna be like simple solution math.

SPEAKER_03 14:40

It's radium.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:42

Well, I've I've got a I've got a fun one for you because I got real sick and fucking tired of all of this fucking math later on in this.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:51

Because I I I know that you you spoke to uh you spoke to my other half about having done the math.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Yeah, you said it was like it's it was hard to measure, and there was like seven steps because of all the weird measurement systems.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

And Americans will use anything but the metric system. Did you know there's a unit of measurement called a giraffe?

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Does it measure neck length?

SPEAKER_03 15:11

It measures like the length of like the size of a giraffe in distance.

unknown 15:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:17

I know, I know, I know. Well, that was that was part of the rabbit hole that we went down because we were trying to figure out like how can I convert this into something that is a little more understandable beyond micro curies and the D measurement word that I can look at and not read. Yeah. Because dyslexic, and there's like a little too many letters that look the same right beside each other, like E's and C's. Also, dyslexic for anyone that didn't know. Anyway, so yeah, he was selling irradiated water as an energy drink.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Wow. Yep. Under the, I'm sure, marketing understanding that this molecule contains more energy than like anything else.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

Liquid sunshine.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Liquid sunshine.

SPEAKER_03 16:06

Enough energy to wake the dead.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

We will not do that. It will help them decompose really fast.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

Yeah. So we as a general society know that radiation is bad for you, with the exception of the very small doses that you get when you get an x-ray.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:26

And even then, they won't x-ray you too many times in a row.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Right, and they also stand outside of the room.

SPEAKER_03 16:32

And they give you a lead shield on what they're not x-raying. Yeah. So we know that. Also, uh did you know that they had portable x-rays in World War One?

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yes. Isn't that so cool? Yeah, that is super dope. That was a lot of great, lot of great medical science out of World War One. Before World War One, they could not set a femur.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Like, not on the battlefield.

SPEAKER_03 16:56

Oh no, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

But they had a a stretcher for your bones. The medic because if if like you broke a large bone uh in your body, the rest of your muscles. The femur is the largest. Yeah, but your muscles will pull it, right? Like, and it will start piercing things. So they had an issue for a long time. If you broke your femur, they would have to cut your leg off. Because there was no way for them to have it healing.

SPEAKER_03 17:19

Yeah, they can't stretch you back out.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Yeah, if it got like snapped in half.

SPEAKER_03 17:22

Like it will it will heal in a compound.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

So they they built a brace that stretches your leg out.

SPEAKER_03 17:29

Ow.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

It hurts, but it saves your leg.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

It saves a leg.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

And it saves your life, usually.

SPEAKER_03 17:35

Alright, so introduced in 1918, Radathora was advertised as a panacea. Now, for those that don't have that particular word in their vocabulary, that is a cure-all.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:46

That is what miracle drug. In what was it in Harry Potter? Bizor.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Oh, yeah, yeah. Right, because they were just looking for another word that meant like this will cure anything.

SPEAKER_03 17:56

It is, it is literally it was advertised as a literal cure-all for everything. Low energy, fertility, uh, libido.

unknown 18:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:06

Not kidding.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

No, it was like hair loss. One stop below the philosopher's stone. Yeah, like in yeah. Wild. The fact that that was used as a hair cream is doubly funny to me because it's like the first thing that happened.

unknown 18:21

I know.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Put it on your teeth and hair. That'll okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:25

See you in two years.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:28

Uh, so our our shockingly clever con man, Mr. Bailey here, started kicking out products left and right, and Radathor became his like best seller. And then he decided that he was going to going to uh embark on a shockingly illegal scheme now, in which he partnered with several doctors for a kickback.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

God damn it.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

Every time they pr they would prescribe Radathor, they would get like six percent of the profit from the prescription.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

And now we all we all understand that that money has changed due to inflation. Like this is this is a time period. This is this is 1918, 1920, 1930, where like newspapers were 10 cents.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Oh shit, yeah. Yeah, everything was everything was very cheap.

SPEAKER_03 19:23

It was much, much, much cheaper. Like we we would hear these prices and go, that's unreal.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

This is the time period when people literally said, I'll buy that for a dollar. Because that was like a a genuine amount of money at the time.

SPEAKER_03 19:35

So speaking of that dollar.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

God damn it.

SPEAKER_03 19:39

Would you would you like to know how much a vial of Ratathor was?

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Please tell me it's one dollar.

SPEAKER_03 19:44

It is a doll, it is anywhere from a dollar to two dollars. Depending on how much markup that pharmacy decides.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Wow, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

Yeah. Which is a lot of fucking money.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

And like I mean, uh it's a decent amount. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:57

I did I did some conversions between like, you know, today's monopoly money and the real money from back then.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

That is roughly $17.50.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Excellent.

SPEAKER_03 20:06

For a single vial of an ounce. It is a one-ounce vial that did not always have an ounce in it. It had anywhere from a half ounce to like three-quarters of an ounce in it.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Oddly. Oddly, though.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

Is it giving insulin? Because it's giving insulin to me.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

It probably only really works as a scam because of how expensive it is. Like, number one, there's that thing in marketing where if you want people to really like think your product is exclusive, you put a stupidly high price tag on it. Because everybody with money is kind of dumb. And no, it's not that confirmed. Is that people uh people really like to be uh in the exclusive club. And so you put a big price tag on it.

SPEAKER_03 20:50

Yeah, big price price. It also speaks luxury.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Yeah. Because you can make it like bespoke. It's like it's something the poorers don't have, you know.

SPEAKER_03 20:58

Well, thankfully, that price tag probably saved a lot of lives.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

That's exactly what I was thinking. Because you can't do it like every day.

SPEAKER_03 21:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

You probably can't do it more than like once a month.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

Ooh, so I don't I don't know if any of you know if any of the rest of you know this, but kickbacks are illegal. Super illegal now. Uh for for very, very, very good reasons, and this may have been part of that.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

So didn't didn't stop those opioid guys.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

Well no. Yeah the 80s were wild. All right, so let's jump forward a little bit. So in in 1927, the uh the man about town, the big wig on the scene, was Mr. Uh Mr. Ebenezer Byers or Evan. Not Evan, Evan. E B B E E. Evan Ebenzer.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Is it is it by B-E-Y-E-R?

SPEAKER_03 21:55

B Y E E.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

B Y E. Oh, yeah, okay.

unknown 21:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

So it's like we're we're We're super rich, so we're like Dutch. You know what I mean? Like that's that's the that's the rich people of the time.

SPEAKER_03 22:06

So this guy was into everything. He inherited like a whole steel mill steel mill business. He was a like star golf player. He was a super socialite. Like this man was everywhere. This man was like the big cheese, as it were, at the time. It's 1927.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

He's the cat's meow.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

And I've seen pictures of him. He was he was pretty handsome too. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that most of the chicks he pulled were because of his money.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

But well, if you got all three, you know.

SPEAKER_03 22:38

He wasn't bad to look at. So this guy is a big shit, right? And he's traveling via train because that was that was the classy thing to do. So Mr. Byers goes to bed in his train, and the train either hits a bump or like has to pull a fast off, whatever it is. The point is he falls off the top bunk and hurts his arm. Not breaks it, but like I'm pretty sure the bone was bruised, like just reading through his his medical thing, the rabbit holes I went down on this one. Mr. Byers gives it a couple days, like waiting for the pain to stop. And when it doesn't, he finally decides to go to the doctor. Guess what? Radathor. He goes to one of the doctors who prescribes recommends and prescribes him Radathor.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

I want you to know that Radathor does sound like the villain from like the mouse of Baker Street.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

It does, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Ratigan. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 23:35

It's definitely a name. And it took me a second to figure out how to say it, too. Because like I kept trying to like add another eye in there, like turn it into like Radiathor for some reason.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Because that it sounds better.

SPEAKER_03 23:47

Right? I guess. I don't know. So said doctors on the kickback list for Radathor. He prescribes it, and Ebon, guy that he is, is like, okay, if the doctor's prescribing it to me, it's good for me. It's safe. I'm gonna take it.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

This is why people don't trust medicine sometimes. This kind of shit right here.

SPEAKER_03 24:08

And here's the thing. For whatever reason, he's he's prescribed the one vial a day, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:15

But he's got money.

SPEAKER_03 24:17

But he does have money.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

So he starts taking his one vial a day, and he decides that fuck, this shit is working. I don't know how. I have no fucking clue. So the how or why he felt better.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

I think probably just time.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

But like honestly, I think I think it was psychosomatic. Yeah. I think it was placebo effect. It was all in his head.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

And then he's young.

SPEAKER_03 24:41

Nope.

unknown 24:42

No.

SPEAKER_03 24:42

He's he's like he's like late 40s, early 50s.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

It's not super old, but like, yeah, it's not young, but like, god damn it.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

Uh I know, I know, I know, I'm right behind you.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Yeah, but but at the same time, like, yeah, he's he's he's young enough to where his bones are healing. Because he didn't break it, right?

SPEAKER_03 25:01

No, it wasn't a break. He it I'm looking at it from a modern perspective, like reading, reading what's what was left, what I could find of his medical history and charts, I I'm pretty sure it was just a bad bruise.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Yeah, if he's moving his arms around, yeah, you know, like and then he's taking the placebo. He's probably feeling great. If there's any real medical effect, is that his body is fighting what's in it and giving him a little bit from that. But like, you know what I mean when people go like, oh man, this stuff's really working, but it's really like you're you're having flu-like symptoms from your shit trying to fight off whatever the fuck you just put in it.

SPEAKER_03 25:39

Dude, it's fucking crazy. Like, especially considering like what we know about it now. Oh, this I have no idea how you were feeling anything but sick, bud.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

After yeah, after a a week of this, I'm sure he was developing an ulcer.

SPEAKER_03 25:54

Oh boy. Yeah, like that's so let me let me horrify you just a little bit more. Within a couple of weeks of having like begun his Radathor regimen, Mr. Byer decides that he likes this so much. He feels so great about this, and it's fantastic. It's fixed his libido, it's fixed his arm, he's he is he is feeling so much better. Like he's he's definitely living his Foxy Grandpa life, which like that that was one of his nicknames, by the way. Foxy grandpa 45 apparently that came from his college days, simply because he was he was a golfer.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Okay, yeah, yeah, sure. He dressed like an old man. Probably.

SPEAKER_03 26:40

He was said to be very, very suave.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Yeah. And like golf is in the 1920s was definitely like well, it is now a money game, but like back then it was like almost an aristocrat thing. Yeah. Which is funny because it comes from like poor Scottish people.

SPEAKER_03 26:58

But like So he decides he likes Radathor so much that he goes from his one vial a day to two vials a day to three vials a day.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Dude, wouldn't it be crazy if we could autopsy this guy? Like if we had modern medical charts on this guy, and his initial I feel better is because he had like an enlarged prostate and this helped shrink it somehow.

SPEAKER_03 27:24

I I can't even fathom. I I legit like it makes no sense to me.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

I mean, I I imagine he's if he's taking three vials, I know it's not a lot, because I don't really don't know how it's a micro.

SPEAKER_03 27:36

It's anywhere from a house half ounce to an ounce of the um of of the fluid itself.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

Yeah. But uh you've got to be talking like parts per million in radium.

SPEAKER_03 27:48

Let me let me let me put you let me put this into just a little bit of like comedic perspective for you. You know bananas are radioactive, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Yeah, but you gotta eat like fucking crazy amounts of bananas.

SPEAKER_03 27:58

Like well, he's consuming the he's consuming the radioactive equivalent of 25,000 bananas at once.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

So close to the amount that it takes to kill you, though, because I think it's like isn't it like 50,000 bananas? Oh wait, no, no, no, hang on.

SPEAKER_03 28:18

I added a zero, it's 2,500, not 2500.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Okay, I was just like, it's some stupid number of bananas.

SPEAKER_03 28:24

But like it's a lot, it's it's too much, is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

It's a bananas amount.

SPEAKER_03 28:32

So I want you to know that that bananas conversion thing was where all of the what the fuck math came from.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Oh shit. Oh, okay. That makes perfect sense. Oh my god. So he's he's eating. Side note about the bananas thing, I always thought was very funny. If you tried to eat enough bananas to have uh a trace amount of radiation in your body, it's it's insane. Everything else will get you before the radiation does.

SPEAKER_03 29:00

So our boy, Evan Byers, has decided that he loves Radathor so much. So much. He's kind of become like the unofficial spokesperson and poster boy for Radathor. Like, this guy is buying cases and giving them away to his friends.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Oh no.

SPEAKER_03 29:18

Uh his his he's making sure that all of his like lady friends, like his girlfriends that he's chilling with, they're all getting Radathor. He gave it to his racehorse at some point. The fuck. This man, this man loves Ratathor.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

Jesus Christ. And that horse's name was Captain Marvel. Fuck, what the hell? That's so crazy. That's a nuts.

SPEAKER_03 29:42

Um I know, I know, I know, I know.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

And like, but they think it's great.

SPEAKER_03 29:47

They they this this is the time period where they are convinced that radium is harmless. Like, they don't quite understand.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Because nobody's making it in mass amounts, I'm assuming.

SPEAKER_03 30:01

To refine like an ounce of radium, it takes like 25 tons of uranium or something. Like, I I watched something about the processing of uranium to get to radium, and it is a lot. That's wild. I would imagine that it would have been insanely expensive.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Oh, so I just looked it up. I wanted to know how many bananas it would take to kill you at one time for you to die of radiation, of what they call mycosavirts of radiation.

SPEAKER_03 30:31

Mycosavts, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

50 million bananas at one time. Yeah. 50 million bananas. Holy crap. So, but he's still eating a dumb amount of fucking because that's from potassium. That's not from radium, it's just from the trace amounts of radiation in potassium.

SPEAKER_03 30:50

It is a fucking lot. That's it's so much. And like I said earlier, thank God for the price point on it, because that probably saved so many lives because it was so expensive to buy.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

That is a nuts price tag for like a couple bottles a shot.

SPEAKER_03 31:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Is I mean, that's like illegal liquor money. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like that's that's that's crazy. Because like I I've one of my favorite things in the world is looking up old advertisements. Oh, I know. And you're right, like to go see a movie that was like brand new, it's it was literally a nickel. It's a nickel. It's a nickel.

SPEAKER_03 31:29

Literally a nickel. And you could go, I mean Where like even now, like a movie night date is gonna cost you $60.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

Yeah. If you went even in like the the 50s and 60s, there were dime stores.

SPEAKER_03 31:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Right? So if you're in the 20s, a two-dollar fucking shot is wild.

SPEAKER_03 31:52

Yeah. So okay, let me let me give a little bit of education about radium itself. So radium hits like a heavy metal, okay? Like it hits your system and continues to irradiate you until it goes it passes out of your system.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:11

However, did you know that radium sits on the same column on the periodic table as calcium?

SPEAKER_01 32:20

Nice.

SPEAKER_03 32:21

So that means that your body goes, oh, that's a building block. Let me just keep that.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Cool.

SPEAKER_03 32:28

No.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:30

No, in fact, quite the opposite of cool.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Yeah, so it just stays in your body.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

That is, oh no.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Surrounded, I guess, by fat at some point.

SPEAKER_03 32:38

Well, it it seeps into your bones specifically.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Sweet.

SPEAKER_03 32:43

Like, and I I I wrote it down because like I read that and went, oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

So so are our homeboys about to get leukemia from uh taking shots of whoa.

SPEAKER_03 32:57

I okay, I I I have to quote this because it's what I immediately thought of when I started reading all of this. I instantly had Cave Johnson's voice in my head. And that's that is that is a voice from uh from Portal, Portal 2 specifically. We haven't quite nailed down what element it is, but let me tell you this, it's a lively one, and it hates the human skeleton.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

In a transatlantic accent, I'm sure. I can't let me tell you this, Sonny. It's it's gonna fucking kill you.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

Literally. Cave Johnson is a character, and Portal was were both of them were two of the best games I've ever played.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Um This is crazy. I I'm having a hard time, even if I because I know they don't know this. I know, I know in my head, this is just like somebody saying that like eating paint was good for you, and then you just start fucking every day.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Like this is this is wild to me. And at the same time, this is how these griffs work. Because like people today, right now, there is a book that is circulating on the internet.

SPEAKER_03 34:17

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

That has like cures for AIDS in it. Oh no. And they're all like plant shit. It's all like take turmeric and cinnamon and like listen, I I am I believe in some of the homeopathic stuff. Yeah, for like a headache.

SPEAKER_03 34:38

Or for like settling a stomach, or like small things.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Yeah, things that that are like food reactions. Or sleep reactions, that kind of shit. Small stuff. Yeah, like swelling is a good one. Yeah. Small amounts of swelling. Like turmeric is good for you for small amounts of swelling.

SPEAKER_03 34:55

Marshmallows for sore throat.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

I know we keep coming back to that one, but like But like once you get to serious medical shit, time for serious medical solutions. But that's the crazy thing. It's a fucking doctor giving this shit out.

SPEAKER_03 35:06

Yeah. Oh, doctor on a kickback.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

On a kickback, yeah. That's yeah, that's how a lot of fucking things got into the market. The whole country got real fucking happy on benzos for a little while.

SPEAKER_03 35:19

So starting in 1927, Arbor Ebon started taking three bottles of Radathora Day. And did so for two years. Now that is the equivalent of six microcuries a day. So I won't go into how much radiation that is, but it's too damn much.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

That's fucking wild. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 35:50

And in 1930, he was literally forced to stop drinking it because it it it was causing him uh he had a host of symptoms.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Yeah. Yeah, he probably fucking pissing blood every day. Because his internal lining was shot, and I'm sure he had arthritis at this point if it's fixating in his bone.

SPEAKER_03 36:12

So across two years, that was literally 1400 doses of this. You're holding your phone up like you got something to say.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

I'm I'm looking.

SPEAKER_03 36:22

I just wanted to- Are you translating the microcuries? Because like it's difficult.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

Yeah, because it's not a physical size, it's the amount of decay. So it's the evidence of that thing. And uh oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 36:36

You see why I like agonized over the math about this yesterday?

SPEAKER_01 36:40

How many micro curies?

SPEAKER_03 36:42

Six a day.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

Six a day. My god, that's so crazy. How I'm just gonna put in how much radium does it take to to give you like instant cancer. How much radium does it take to to leave one micro curi? I'm so like because it We're live Google and go. It's crazy because you're telling me this, and I'm going, this is fucking nuts.

SPEAKER_03 37:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

I mean, because to me it's like if somebody told you that like cadmium was good for you, and then you were taking trace amounts of cadmium every day. That's because I've I've watched footage of people who've like died of radiation poisoning. It's bad. Like, granted, that's mass load. That's like you walked in front of a fucking thing you shouldn't be in front of. But like, I know, you know what I mean? Like, because I've seen the Radium Girls pictures, and I'm like, uh yikes.

SPEAKER_03 37:35

How, how, how, how?

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Yeah, how are you feeling after years?

SPEAKER_03 37:39

How two years of it. Two years at above prescribed dosage.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

It's a so it's a super or one microgram. To produce one microcurie of radium uh 226, you need approximately 10 to the negative six power grams or one microgram of pure radium.

SPEAKER_03 37:59

It's a minuscule.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

It's minuscule, but we don't know the dilution that he used. Well, he said how many was supposed to be in an hour. Two two micro so two microcubes. So two micro.

SPEAKER_03 38:11

So it was it was one radium-226 and one radium-228, specifically. And he challenged anyone to prove that he didn't have that in his product. Because he did. He did. He was selling death in a bottle.

SPEAKER_01 38:25

He damn sure was, because I'm looking at like a thing about the units. A sample of cobalt 60 emits one microcurry of radioactivity. That's goddamn, that's so goddamn crazy. Because it's not gonna leave his system, and he's doing triple the amount every day.

SPEAKER_03 38:43

Every day for two years. Until suddenly he until until his symptoms basically got so bad he had to admit or it he had to stop. Like basically everything here, let me let me get into this really quick so I can like explain to you how bad this was. So at the same time, like in parallel time, the radium, the radium girls thing is happening. Like that story is beginning to break. Like all of the women that are working in these in the factory with the glowing paint and stuff are not only presenting symptoms, but are coming forward with a lawyer whose name I have completely forgotten, and I could go to the front of my notebook and like read off all of the radium girls thing because that's in this same notebook. Um, all of that is happening at the same time, and it's enough that the uh that the federal trade com can read my own handwriting.

SPEAKER_01 39:35

FTC.

SPEAKER_03 39:36

The FTC is has basically stood up and gone, okay, something's wrong. Something's wrong because we have all of these factory workers that are having the exact same symptoms, and we can't keep calling it syphilis because they now have they have lawyered the fuck up, which by the way, they did initially try to pass off all of the like the bro the bone melting and shit. Yeah, yeah, before having a syphilis.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

Exactly what happened there. That's what when I watched uh spoilers for Enola Holmes. Um, when I watched the Nola Holmes, that by the by the end of it I'd figured out what was going on because I was like, I know, I know these systems. This happened in real life. Yeah, like that's what was it?

SPEAKER_03 40:15

We were watching something last night and I diagnosed it from We were fucking watching Scrubs! We were watching Scrubs and uh one of the like one of the patient characters who's supposed to you know help the interns through it's the new season of Scrubs, yeah, comes through with like and with a list of symptoms, and I he has scurvy Damn ten minutes later, you have scurvy, boom someone give me my diploma.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

Anyway, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:50

So the FTC has not only like started noticing the news coverage from the radium girls, they're also getting independent uh reports and complaints and like people are getting sick from various products that have radium in them. So they decided what better like kind of let's go, let's go to the poster boy for Radathor, someone who who is who has who is and has been taking a radium product for years and been loud about it, about how wonderful it is, how great it is. Let's let's let's go check in with Mr. Byers. So they sent an agent to to Byers like Seaside Mansion where he had quietly like retired.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

At the age of like 50?

SPEAKER_03 41:45

Mm-hmm. 51, I think. Uh and when they get there. It ain't pretty. The the uh the lawyer will go on record as saying Mr. Byers' upper and upper jaw and most of his lower jaw, excepting two front teeth, had been removed, with all remaining bone tissue of his body disintegrating. There were even holes forming in his skull. He appeared to be the living dead.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

Holy shit.

SPEAKER_03 42:27

So for anyone that doesn't know, radium melts your fucking bones. Like it gets into you, and once it's gotten that deep, it just sits and burrows and burns and just disintegrates.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

As it like debinds the calcium from like your bones. Yeah. Yikes.

SPEAKER_03 42:50

Yeah. And uh it's it basically so there are no images of of Ebon Bayer online, other like after all of this has gone down. There is one that got viral, but it's not him. It's from a random soldier in World War One. I do not recommend you look it up because it's kind of horrifying. And like it's it's it's gruesome, but it's not him. I know because I looked and I dug. Dog with a bone.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

Yeah. Oh, not this bone.

SPEAKER_03 43:26

No, no, not those, not those squishy spongy bones.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

Uh yikes.

SPEAKER_03 43:31

So yeah, the lawyer confirms that like this is this is from radium. Like, Ebben Bayer, poster boy for Radathor, has all of the same symptoms as the factory workers. I think it was Phil Philadelphia, I think is where the factory was.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

I don't remember.

SPEAKER_03 43:53

I believe it was. But it's it's undeniable proof at this point. And virtually overnight because of the celebrity that Ebon Bayer was. Like he he was very, very, very famous, very popular, who had quietly retired from the public view, presumably because he was starting to feel the effects of the radium itself, and like, you know, wasn't feeling good. Retired essentially. And then lo and fucking behold, he's a gaping hole where his mouth used to be. That's crazy. It's insane, right? But thanks to the FTC and Evan Byers being like, Yeah, please please come interview me for this. Radium is virtually overnight swept off the shelves.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_03 44:49

Can you imagine living in a society where you have been told over and over for years now that this element, this fun, glowing little thing that has been added to everything from the water you drink to the toothpaste, your hair cream, cosmetics? They all promised you these industries, the media, promised you that it was safe, it was harmless, it was good for you. Has now been completely wiped off the market.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

You know what it kind of reminds me of? Talcum powder. I like grew up, we used to get it in like Christmas socks and shit. Like they they would give you like a little, like if you're a dude, right? You used to get like a cologne. Uh a Satsuma Orange. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 45:46

Uh but delicious, but I never understood it either.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

It's a apparently it's a British thing. They do that. Uh, but like, I don't know, it made it into our family somehow. But uh we got some, you know, like some some chocolate coins. Yeah. That my grandmother grew up in Polish Chicago. So it's a little bit of that. And uh so and you would get like a little thing of like deodorant or talcum powder. Because it's like you stink. You're a teenage boy, you stink. Yeah. So you put it in your shoes. And then I remember being in my like 30s and someone going, like, oh yeah, it causes like cancer. Yeah. Specifically in women.

SPEAKER_03 46:23

It's a carcinogen.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Yeah, and and because of open orifices, people were getting like vaginal cancers from it. And I was like, like ovarian cancer from it. And I was like, What the fuck? You know, like that, yeah, that was such a shock. And then my more science-y friends being like, that can't be real. This sounds like a frivolous lawsuit, and I'm going, like, no, they've known about it for years.

SPEAKER_03 46:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:46

And I was like, what the fuck?

SPEAKER_03 46:48

Which is exactly what happened with the radium girls. Like the the people that produced it, like the people that were not in the the clock painting section of things were handling it correctly. They were using gloves, tongs, safety gear, and then they were handing it off to these women who had no idea who they had straight up lied to and told them it's perfectly safe. Now point the brush between your lips and your teeth and ingest these micro doses of radiation.

SPEAKER_01 47:19

Yeah. Of enough radiation to be visible to the outside.

SPEAKER_03 47:23

And the worst part of it is they thought it was so safe. I'm sorry, I've I've jumped topics because I I was very passionate about the Radium Girls thing. Because once again, the Radium Girls is how we got OSHA. They would paint their nails and their teeth with it, and then go out on the town and have fun. Because being being a factory worker, like being one of the painters, was like the it girl job at the time.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

I remember seeing ads that it was like, I mean, there's a reason they call them the Radium Girls. They were called that before the tragedy, because it was just like they were called like the Shining Girls or something like that. It it was a little bit like being a um the modern day equivalent in like industry standards, I would say is like um Korea Air, their flight attendants. Yeah. Or the ones from um uh United Emirates.

SPEAKER_03 48:16

Yeah, it was it was the it job. Yeah, it's like it was the one that you wanted to do.

SPEAKER_01 48:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:21

And like, and and if I recall correctly, their their pay was pretty good too.

SPEAKER_01 48:25

It was higher than a lot of standards. When you see pictures of them, they they're working in a very clean factory.

SPEAKER_03 48:31

Yeah, like they they're not the the pictures that I have seen, like, and of course, there there are going to be horror stories everywhere about every job. Yeah, that's just how it goes. Not all places are the same. But it was it was it was a sought-after position.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:48

And then as these women began to felt fall ill from the radium eating away at their bones and causing tumors, they were initially passing, they were sending them to company doctors who were who were passing it off as syphilis.

SPEAKER_01 49:05

Yeah. Which that's also why you never go to the fucking company doctor.

SPEAKER_03 49:10

Which damaged their reputations as people, as women specifically. Like it labeled them as loose women. So that's their credibility down the drain already. Which, first of all, fuck society for that.

SPEAKER_00 49:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:23

And then it complete and and the worst part of it is, the worst part of it is the company knew that it was a that it was a poisonous, a deadly substance. And they lied and they covered it up.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

The the god of the corporation is the dollar. Like that that that's what it is. Like they anything for a profit. And and it the how it works, this is why like I hate the like owner class, and and I get very, very upset about like factory owners that that pull shit like this. Because everyone else, the the way that this kind of shit happens is that they're all afraid to lose their jobs.

SPEAKER_03 50:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

So they're held in this kind of like debt bondage over this because they will keep passing the buck. They can they can people can justify a lot of shit if it if they're gonna lose their whole livelihood for standing up. The buck stops with someone. Someone made the decision to start that chain. And that person, all those deaths.

SPEAKER_03 50:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 50:25

Everybody else is still culpable. They're still an accessory to the crime. That motherfucker's a mass murderer.

SPEAKER_03 50:32

Yeah. It's it's disgusting how like Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:38

Yeah, you wanna you wanna like scream. Katie's making strangling motions in the air.

SPEAKER_03 50:43

And like pained faces because like I once again, this is not the first time that I have covered this era and this particular element. I did I did a whole section on the Radium Girls, and it's one of it was one of my most well like researched TikToks, TikTok series, I guess, because I think I did it in three parts.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:04

Because it was a lot. But just the fact that people lied about the safety of radium, and it took 112 women dying and one celebrity.

SPEAKER_01 51:19

Yeah. Fame.

SPEAKER_03 51:22

Which by the way, Ebon would like three months after the interview and after all of this, like after the ball got rolling when the FTC got involved and was like, oh shit, yeah, no, okay, we this is bad. Fix this. Evan died at 51. Like, I think it was March 31st. I'm pretty sure. Yes, March 31st, 1932. He finally died.

SPEAKER_01 51:45

That's so crazy. Like, yeah, from from semi-pro athlete to dead in a matter of years.

SPEAKER_03 51:51

To spongy radioactive bones, dead. And his his autopsy, by the way, his autopsy notes, the New York Times ran them. Like published them.

SPEAKER_01 52:03

Well, that's one way to get it made illegal.

SPEAKER_03 52:06

And his and his autopsy notes, like his cause of death was listed as radium poisoning. Overnight.

SPEAKER_01 52:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:13

The entire radium industry shut down.

SPEAKER_01 52:16

Can I tell you a crazy story about? So do you remember that kid that made a nuclear reactor in his backyard?

SPEAKER_03 52:23

It's funny that that guy has come up so often lately. And uh it my partner and I were talking about him literally last night.

SPEAKER_01 52:30

So he was looking for a great deal of radium because that's the thing that he could obtain.

SPEAKER_03 52:36

Smoke detectors, right?

SPEAKER_01 52:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 52:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

Yes. Uh small amounts of thorium and radium. And so like he was looking for a lot of like, yeah, junked smoke detectors, and he built a rad detector on the front of his car, and he would drive around to antique stores and listen for the ticking because he was looking for radium glass. Or or is it radium glass? It it's irradiated like the glowing green. He was looking for that, and he was also looking for radium dials because he was looking for clocks with radium, he was gonna strip it off. He went and he found some clocks that ticked, and one of them he brought home, and when he opened up the face, the person who had been painting the dials left a jar of it inside. There was a jar of radium that was in someone's house for like a hundred years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:31

Well, that happened in that just under a hundred years because that happened in like 2018 or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 53:35

Yeah. Right. And I mean, and and like glowing dials are still a thing, but it's not radium anymore. It's a d you know, it's like a phosphorus thing. Yeah. But um yeah, he found a little he found a little painter's vial where somebody was touching the clock up and it was on the shelf. You know, when you open when you open a clock, there's like a little shelf in there.

SPEAKER_03 53:52

And uh he found an entire vial of radium paint.

SPEAKER_01 53:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:57

That's insane. That's so radioactive.

SPEAKER_01 54:00

He was just driving around and his uh Geiger counter just started going like, is it Geiger? Yeah. Yes, you are correct. Uh started just going fucking insane, and then he pulled over and he that's that's where he got a lot of his stuff from in his early attempts. And uh That's crazy. It is pretty wild. It's nuts that it takes a whole factory of women can die and they're able to cover it up. But it is true.

SPEAKER_03 54:27

They didn't cover it up. Like that, that that that press coverage went very, very, very live and turned like half the nation on them.

SPEAKER_02 54:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:34

Because they they lawyered up, they had proof, they had the they had the uh the the original report about the the radium paint and its handling and like just how generally like caustic it was. They had the original report compared to the one that had been officially published, and they were very, very different. And they tracked down the uh the independent um people that went in to do said report, like the scientists, they tracked them down and got them in as witnesses. Like so there was there there was in fact a reckoning that happened with this, like it blew very, very, very, very open, very wide, and very public because like one woman stood up and said, No.

SPEAKER_01 55:12

Good. Um fuck those guys.

SPEAKER_03 55:15

But like radium getting pulled off the shelf, like that report all came from Evan.

SPEAKER_01 55:21

Wild.

SPEAKER_03 55:22

Yeah. And uh here's the thing is that our boy Bill Bailey never saw any sort of conviction or jail time for this at all.

SPEAKER_01 55:31

Like it wasn't illegal when he did it.

SPEAKER_03 55:33

But he got his he got his factory shut down and that was it. However, he did he did ironically die of bladder cancer in 1949.

SPEAKER_01 55:46

Please tell me it was from drinking his own bullshit.

SPEAKER_03 55:49

And 20 years later, when he was exhumed, and I quote, his bones had been ravaged by the radiation.

SPEAKER_01 56:00

Maybe just being in the factory.

SPEAKER_03 56:02

Well, no, he was also partaking of it. According to him, he said, and I quote, I have dr I have drunk more Radathor than any living person on this planet.

SPEAKER_01 56:11

Yeah, because there's only like so many people that have enough money to take it constantly.

SPEAKER_03 56:17

Yeah, and clearly he was only drinking the one vial a day as opposed to Evan's three vials a day, which by the way, speaking of Evan, Evan, when he died, was buried in a lead-lined casket.

SPEAKER_01 56:29

So he would leach into the groundwater? Correct. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 56:33

And Evan was also exhumed 20 years later. And uh he he his bones were still hot at that point. And like you you I had to look it up because at first I was like, so what, he was like actually hot?

SPEAKER_01 56:49

No, no, no, no, he's just ticking on the counter.

SPEAKER_03 56:52

He he was radioactive, 50 times the normal amount of just like natural radiation in the human body.

SPEAKER_01 57:00

God, that wow, shit.

SPEAKER_03 57:02

And uh if you ever see Radathor like like in an antique shop, you're just nosing around and you see a little a little tiny about the size of your thumb vial that says Radathor on it, don't touch it, don't buy it. Absolutely the fuck not because that bottle, that cork, that label, that whole thing is still radioactive to this day.

SPEAKER_01 57:26

Yeah, sure. I mean the half-life is probably hundreds of years.

SPEAKER_03 57:28

Do not touch it, do not touch it.

SPEAKER_01 57:31

Oh wow. Damn. Ratathor. Jesus Christ. It did sound like a supervillain, and it was.

SPEAKER_03 57:40

She's literally, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:42

Gee, that's dude. I'm having such a hard like I know, I know.

SPEAKER_03 57:47

The fact that people were just consuming radium for fun. Knowing what we know now, do you know that do you know that Madame Madame Curie, her husband, one of her daughters all died from leukemia?

SPEAKER_01 57:58

I imagine so.

SPEAKER_03 57:59

From exposure.

SPEAKER_01 58:00

Yeah, because she was like fucking pioneering radioactivity. Yeah, I mean kitchen and shit.

SPEAKER_03 58:05

Props to her, like absolutely what's what's the word? Um canonize her because she deserves it.

SPEAKER_01 58:12

Yeah. She was I mean, doing amazing things, but it it cost her well, not an arm and a leg, but like, you know, her whole life.

SPEAKER_03 58:20

Like she believed she died of leukemia.

SPEAKER_01 58:22

She she had lost like fingers by the end of it.

SPEAKER_03 58:25

Like it was gnarly, and one of her daughters had had something blow up in her face that was radioactive and also died of leukemia. So did her husband. Like only one of her daughters made it out of that alive, and that was because she did something entirely else. She was like, no, I have no interest in science. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 58:40

Damn.

SPEAKER_03 58:41

Yeah, it's fucking crazy.

SPEAKER_01 58:43

Ratathor. Ratathor.

SPEAKER_03 58:46

One of the OG energy drinks.

SPEAKER_01 58:48

I dude, that's what I think. I'm gonna start. Every time I hear Nuca Cola, I now will know exactly what it would do to you.

SPEAKER_03 58:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:58

Melt your bones.

SPEAKER_01 58:59

Melt your bones. It's how the ghouls happened, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 59:02

Fuck, dude.

SPEAKER_01 59:02

Yeah, god dang it.

SPEAKER_03 59:04

It's a gnarly way to go to like I was already familiar with this because, like I said, I covered the Radium Girls, and that that particular story is near and dear to my heart because like it broke my heart.

SPEAKER_01 59:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:17

Like reading all of that. Like, there were there were women as young as 13 working in that factory. There were children working in that factory.

SPEAKER_01 59:24

Yeah. Maybe coming back.

SPEAKER_03 59:27

Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 59:29

I so I come from a family that is very, very affected by the opioid crisis. Uh, and people fought real hard, and some of them made it out. And uh that is a thing that 100% started because a very wealthy family put something out that they knew was gonna cause a lot of problems. And there were almost certainly a lot of paid-off people.

SPEAKER_03 59:50

Oh yeah. And it's a very similar situation.

SPEAKER_01 59:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:54

Like people that produced this product knew that it was dangerous and still sold it anyway. And I'm not sure if if Mr. Bailey knew that he was selling something that dangerous. I I don't know if he was in as in-depth into the production or as knowledgeable. Probably not. I would hope not.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:16

But probably not because like the the the pharmaceutical, like the amount of shit that was like, this has got volcanic ash in it. It's yeah, like the that the the amount of shit like that that existed between like 1860 and and like 1940.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:34

And I say that because it's like just before you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:38

This is the period of you have ghosts in your blood do cocaine about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:42

Right. Yeah, there's a lot of new science that's like emerging in this time period. And a lot of stuff that's not quite science.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:52

The radio uh Madame Curie was what 1849 was when she discovered everything. So it's only been it's only not it's not been long.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:05

No, it's like 60 years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:07

From the where like it's still relatively new. So they could almost be excused for not knowing better. But the fact is that running parallel to this, like all of this happening between 1920 something and 1930, all of this running parallel to it is the stuff coming out of I want to say it's Philadelphia, is where the the US Radium. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:34

New Jersey. Everything's legal in New Jersey. Oh man, uh the Radium Dial Company in Illinois was the other, yeah, was the parent company.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:45

Yeah, it it was nuts. And these two stories were running parallel to each other is the thing. It's nuts, right? And it's infuriating that all of these people made themselves so sick because people lied and told them it was good for them.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:00

You know what another another crazy scam artist that uh has done a lot of shit that's probably made a couple of people sick, it's probably not killed anyone. Um, and I think with the kind of deregulation of a lot of things here in America, eventually you're gonna start seeing some of these, like, you know, we talked about in a previous episode, like what's the next like fountain of you thing. Oh, yeah. All these designer peptides and shit, and CRISPR stuff and all that other kind of stuff. Somebody's gonna get hurt before it's all over with. But um, you know, designer steroids, all that kind of shit, someone's gonna get fucked up. But it reminds me of the liver king a little bit. Liver king is like a microcosm of this kind of shit. Do you remember the liver king? He was this guy that did like I have simulated hunts and I sleep on a bed of furs because I'm trying to be a caveman in the modern era, and he had like fake abs and like did a bunch of steroids and shit. So he ran this like YouTube thing where his whole thing was that he was like, be like a caveman until you get your masculinity back or whatever. And he was he would sell you free like like cold boxes that come in the mail. Cold boxes, yeah, you know, like you order steaks. Oh, okay, like the swan truck or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:21

Yeah, HelloFresh, that kind of shit. It comes in like in cold packs. Um, so he would send you beef liver, right? And you would eat the fuck out of beef liver and be the l like just like the liver king and work out and do these simulated hunts and shit. You would like run through his backyard and throw a spear.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:40

Wouldn't that give you like like if you if you were consuming that much liver, wouldn't wouldn't you literally overdose on vitamin A?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:47

You would, yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:48

Like that's toxic.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:49

That's exactly what people pointed out. Are you serious? Yes. Yes. Kudos to you because yes, liver has a lot of vitamin A in it, and you cannot eat it every day.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:59

No, you will get sick, will get violently ill.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:02

Yeah. Thankfully, it's not super deadly. You can pass it pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:07

I feel like I can't claim full credit for that. I keep getting these ads for these primal queen supplements that's supposed to be like various beef organs and whatnot that are supposed to like fix your hormonal stuff. And I looked into it and I saw that it had a whole bunch of like liver like listed in it. I was and I was like, that that's ringing a bell for me for some reason. Hang on. I I this is this is linking something back to my past, like my my childhood where my grandmother would only make liver and onions like once a month.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:39

Yes, because you you literally can't eat it all the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:41

You can OD on vitamin A.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:43

And then also just just in general, a lot of the so the reason here in America why uh these these supplement companies don't have to fucking it's because a lot largely they're unregulated. They are completely unregulated.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:56

Yeah, like that you can you can claim shit all day long, but the fact that you don't have that FDA seal of approval means something.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:04

Yeah. On the back, if it says supplement, it is not fully regulated by the FDA. There are, I say fully regulated because there are banned substances here in America, right? Like nobody can sell you coca leaf as a substance, like as a supplement. They can't do it. Um, because that's a banned the FTC and and the FDA and the Port Authority and everybody says, and the FBI says, if you have it, you're gonna be in trouble, right? So in the 80s, the Reagan administration and a couple other guys too, it's been an ongoing thing. There was a big push to regulate over-the-counter supplements because some of them are quite dangerous. You can't take a lot of them, right? And if it's considered medicine, it's regulated. So like Nyquell regulated. Um however pseudophedrin regulated.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:55

If you're a supplement and controlled, there was a big thing about.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

Like home health and all this kind of stuff, and some like right-winger types really pushed not regulating your supplements. You know who the guy on the front of all these commercials, the PSAs that reached out to you about like, hey, call your congressmen, have them not regulate your health, should be your priority. Those kind of things? Uh-huh. Mel fucking Gibson.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:23

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:23

He was a major movie star at the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:25

Yeah, I know. And then he went off the deep end.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:28

Yeah, yeah. So, like, I don't think he has anything really to do with that. I think he was just a paid spokesperson.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:34

But like, that was a thing in the 80s. And so it it they it got very popular, hugely popular. People called in that bill to regulate supplements failed phenomenally. It was not even close. A lot of people did not want their supplements regulated. Never mind that most people were not taking supplements at that time.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:58

Or that you could potentially off yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:00

Yeah, because this we're not talking about like people don't really understand this. That like I'm not talking about fucking Centrum Silver. No. If you go to a large pharmacy that has a huge supplement area, like one of these old school pharmacies, and then like walk around at a health food store, prime example. There is tons of that shit that is just griftery bullshit.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:24

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:24

It does nothing for you. Like you've mentioned colloidal silver many times.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:29

Colloidal silver gets on my goddamn nerves. Yeah. I had an uncle that pro I've told this story to you a thousand times. Yeah. But like he was convinced that it was gonna help my mother.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:40

And so, like, yeah, there's all all those fucking things, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:45

None of these things do anything, anything for autism. Not a goddamn thing. I have to mention that. Like, it's bonkers, but like that's where we are, right? So when we bounce back to things like radium and shit, it's not hard to see how, like, before any of these laws existed, and before they really knew what they were doing, but like this is why things like the FDA exist.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:13

The FDA was largely put in place over milk sickness.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:16

Yes. Okay, I'm so mad because like I want you to know that swill milk was was my my original subject. Was it really?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:25

Is that how you bounced because you went yeah, because FDA is kind of like in adjacent to what the FDC does?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:31

Like, I I I spent a couple of days looking up swill milk and like all of the shit that they did to it to like make it palatable and sellable.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:38

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:39

And all of the people that got sick.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:41

Uh super sick from fucking bacteria that will 100% kill you.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:45

Listeria.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:46

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:47

That's it.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:47

Let me tell you, let me let me traumatize you about it. I'll at least make you laugh in the middle.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:53

Yeah. But raw milk, Katie.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:55

Oh my god, don't get me started on that again.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:58

Sweet. I've actually had raw milk.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:59

I have too.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:00

It's sweet. It's really good. However, you can right now, if you really want sweet orange milk, you can get that shit in fucking fruity pebbles. Yep. Whey protein.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:12

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:12

That's all it is.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:13

It's fat and whey. That's what makes it special.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:17

Ten out of ten recommend rise protein.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:20

Put a little collagen shot in there if you really want to. Yep. You can recreate that shit in a glass in your house.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:27

And it's so much safer. So much safer.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:30

We went crazy off topic, but also like kind of on topic.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:34

It falls into like FTC and FD FDA regulation because that's a lot of what happened here. The FDA is like literally what cracked down on this and put a stop to it and probably saved millions of lives.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:46

Bro, science was the wild west for a hot second.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:49

The amount of shit people got away with.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:52

Do you remember a few years ago there was a trend where like everything was like pitch midnight black?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:56

Yeah, water. You could get charcoal water. There was charcoal ice cream.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:01

We went to the Color Factory, which is a great big like art exhibit museum interactive thing. And at the end of it, they had charcoal ice cream.

unknown 1:10:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:11

And I'm on so many goddamn prescriptions. I can't eat that.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:16

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:16

It will fuck your because it it binds, it binds to things.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:20

Yep. It's carbon. That's what carbon does.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:24

Anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:24

Oh my god. Yeah, all that shit is just like that's something that I'm sure has killed people.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:30

Activated charcoal?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:31

Because it was in water and all kinds of shit. And like it's the thing is if you die from that, you won't die from the charcoal. The charcoal's not going to really do anything to you. What it will do is that you have somebody who's like taking a medication to prevent something, like maybe a heart medication or something. It looks like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:47

It's weird that you went there because I like the drug name that popped into my head was a torpostatin.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:51

Yeah. Fuck. Whatever the symptom was that led to them having a heart attack.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:56

It's because they ingested a whole bunch of charcoal that basically pulled all of that medication out of your system.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:00

Yeah, they pissed it out.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:02

Yeah. And then part of part of one of the reasons that they uh that they warn women specifically when you're on antibiotics and birth control have a secondary form of contraception. Contraceptive.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:11

Because you take the wrong thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:13

Yeah. Charcoal binds it out. Most of the antibiotics will cancel out your birth control. By the way, in case you didn't know that.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:21

Jeez Christ. Ironically, the thing that is meant to kill alien life in your body makes it easier to put alien life in your body.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:33

Alright, so I'm gonna cut us off here because we will, in fact, just ramble. Yeah. So y'all have fun. Thank you for joining us on this odd episode of Morbid Mondays. And remember, don't add to the population or take from it.

unknown 1:11:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:48

My brain's gonna be racing thinking of all the other things that have probably killed a bunch of people. You know, like unreal.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:54

Oh, do you do anything in the anything, anything in a Victorian home.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:58

Oh shit, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:59

Especially like the original like arsenic and heated bathtubs. Don't fall asleep in that bath. Maybe I'll do an episode on that. Ooh, that'll be fun. All right, we're done. Bye guys.