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SMNTY Classics: How We Beat Polio But Not the Mythmaking Around Jonas Salk (Part 1) · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I've never told you Protective of iHeartRadio, and as we
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: are approaching the end of the year, we're bringing back
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: some of our favorite things that we've done.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Honestly, listeners to be real. Samantha and I don't know
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: what time is anymore.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: It could have happened in the nineties.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Samantha accidentally said it was the nineties more than once.
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: More than once.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: I'm all over the place with the years, but I
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: believe this did happen this year for me. Oh, go
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: go get Yes, I got to guest on Cool People
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Who Did Cool Stuff with Market Kiljoy. It was a
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: two part episode and it was on vaccines, which right
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: now feels like a pretty important topic. Yes, yes, and
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: it was really interesting because it was episodes about this
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: guy wasn't great in a lot of ways, but he
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: did do this thing that was really good. And also,
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: as people who know me, especially Samantha knows, I'm shy,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: so in the first episode, I don't talk that much,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: and then Sophie and Margaret were like, he really should
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: interject more so if I'm kind of absent in the
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: first bit, that's because I was like, oh, I can't
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: interrupt this amazing story. You had to warm up into
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: it too, Yeah, because I'd never been you'd been on
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: the show before. Yeah, but I wasn't quite sure that
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: when I should interject. Right, you did a great job.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: I know you did. Always proud of you in advance
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: and after the fact. Thank you, Samantha. I forgiate that.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: And Margaret was great. Margaret was very supportive. So please
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: enjoy this new episode and go check out Margaret's show
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: if you haven't already.
• 2:12
  Speaker 5: Cool Zone Media, Hello.
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: And welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're a
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: weekly reminder that when there's bad things, there's people trying
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: to do good things. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: this week I have a guest. I guess I usually
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: have a guest, but this week I have a guest
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: named Annie Reese.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Hi, how are you? I'm good. I feel like that's
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: a loaded question these days, but yes, I'm good. How
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: are you?
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: I'm also good with air quotes everywhere.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, I'm very excited to be here.
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. And if people
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: haven't heard of you, which is surprising, you are one
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: of the hosts of Stuff Mom Never Told You, and
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: you're also a host of Savor, which is a food podcast,
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: and I haven't actually heard that one yet, but I
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: am learning more and more about how I care about
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: food in terms of like culture and politics and history
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: and stuff. And I just really appreciate y'all's tagline, there's
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: no you in Savor.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Thank you. We Actually the show is big on puns
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: and oh good bad jokes, if you'll allow me to say,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: but yes, that is a huge part of Savors that
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of times people divorce food
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: from politics when they really shouldn't, and history when they
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: really shouldn't. And there's just so much to learn from
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: what you're eating every day. So that's my bitch for Saver.
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: I want to hear it now. I like stuff Mom
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: Never Told You, and I think people will like these
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: things too. And if there's one thing you can say
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: about the current administration, this is not going to be
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: an episode about the current administration. Oh, I have to
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: do the rest of the introductions, including Sophie, who's our producer.
• 3:54
  Speaker 6: Hi, Sophie, Damn, it's just gonna forget me. I got
• 3:58
  Speaker 6: a bright pink.
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: Hat on I never forget you.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: I would never forget thank you, thank you.
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: And good house plants always, good house plans, Thank you.
• 4:06
  Speaker 6: Pretty bushy behind me today, I'm like, oh, I want
• 4:08
  Speaker 6: to touch it.
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: We also have a new audio engineer who's Eva. Everyone's
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: to say hi to Eva.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Hi Eva, Hi Eva, Hiva.
• 4:17
  Speaker 6: Eva's great. He's gonna put that out there.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and actually Eva's been editing our book Club, one
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: of my other shows. They cools on Media book Club
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: for a while.
• 4:25
  Speaker 6: Now, don't worry. We didn't get rid of Rory. Rory's
• 4:28
  Speaker 6: just working on a different project.
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, mining coal. Yeah, actually not doing the mining of
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: the coal. But if you hang out in a cage,
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: you can keep track of when there's bad chemicals in
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: the air.
• 4:39
  Speaker 6: I feel like we should make people, at least, you know,
• 4:42
  Speaker 6: say how to Rory one more time? I think, Hello, Rory,
• 4:46
  Speaker 6: Hi Ri Hi riy if you want to say hi
• 4:48
  Speaker 6: Rory Morey. He's editing behind the Bastards now.
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: So oh I am, well, okay, the current administration thing?
• 4:58
  Speaker 6: Yeah, what's going on there? That was like, go really wild,
• 5:01
  Speaker 6: little teaser you did?
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: So I went and did a Have you all ever
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: heard of lavender graduations?
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: No? No, I have not.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: I hadn't, and I'm kind of embarrassed that I hadn't.
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: It's LGBT groups on college campuses to have a graduation ceremony,
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: and I went and did a talk at one yesterday.
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: As we record this, and I was very like, how
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: is this gonna go? They hired a kind of fiery
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: anarchist to come give them their LGBT speech. I'm going
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: to tell them about gay people who had burned down
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: Nazi records, and then it kind of helped realizing that
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: everyone is really aware that things aren't okay right now.
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: So that was kind of actually promising. So in a
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: weird way, the one nice thing you can say about
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: the current situation is that no one has their head
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: in the sands in the same degree anymore.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: That's fair. Did it go well?
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, the event went great. It was really heartwarming. Actually,
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: it was a very like, oh, the kids are all
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: right kind of moment, which is condescending to say because
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: they're not kids. There are like twenty two. I don't
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: know how people are when they graduate college twenty two,
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: who knows twenty two? Yeah, So if there is one
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: thing this does actually relate to what we're gonna talk
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: about this week and a lot in the near future.
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: If there's one thing I can say about the current
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: administration of the United States, it's that it has made
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: us realize that there's an awful lot of stuff we
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: take for granted.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: Like, I've never been a big like government person, this
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: is just true about me, right, But I'm a big
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: like social services person. But I'm like, Oh, there's all
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: of these things that are really really good that we
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: try to do as a society, and we like stuff
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: that society tends to do for us, and a lot
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: of that stuff is being taken away. So I've decided
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: to spend some time focusing on these every miracles that
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: we take for granted, things that our parents or grandparents
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: might not have taken for granted, things that we can
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: no longer take for granted. So this week I want
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: to talk about vaccines. Ooh, yes, I like vaccines. Vaccines
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: are cool as hell, easily in the top five best
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: things humans have come up with. I don't know the
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: other four in that list are, but probably burritos. Specifically,
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: I want to talk about the polio vaccines, and I'm
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: going to use the plural here on purpose, because people
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: talk about the polio vaccine as if there's one vaccine,
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: and there is a whole wild history behind polio vaccines,
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: and they have functionally, but not literally, eradicated polio. Have
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: you heard much of this story?
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: No?
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: But I do have a friend who works at the CDC.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: She has not been fired yet, oh shit, yes, And
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: she is the biggest proponent of vaccines. She like, if
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: you catch her at a party, somehow vaccines will come up.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: And polio vaccine is one of her favorite stories to tell.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: So I know it's got a history behind it.
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: And a different history than I thought it did. Because
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: this week's story is going to follow an arc that
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: is familiar to regular listeners of the show, and that
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: Sophie and I spend a lot of our time complaining
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: about in signal chats, which is that I start off researching,
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: usually a guy who is famous for having to accomplished
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: something right, and then I spend a week researching. I
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: read most of a biography, I'd read a whole bunch
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: of other stuff. I get about ninety percent through my research.
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: When I find out something that makes me have to
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: change everything about the story.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: It happens all too often.
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: It's so annoying. It has happened when I've researched women before,
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: but it happens all the time with men, where you're like, oh,
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: and you're gonna like research this person, and they're like, oh,
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: they I'm a We're a horrible monster to the people
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: closest to them, or actually all of this is myth
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: making and they're a con artist, or just like whatever it.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Is, you know, Yeah, taking credit a lot of times.
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, speaking of taking credit, you ever heard of a
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: guy named Jonas Salk?
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Have? Yes, this is.
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: The man, Sophia. You heard of this guy?
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: No?
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: I hadn't. And I think that, like you and I
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: live under a specific rock because like at least everything
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: I've read has been like, ah, yes, the most household
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: name medicine person in the world.
• 9:34
  Speaker 6: And I'm like, I've never heard of this man.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, what have you heard of Jonas Sock? Before I
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: tell you about Jonahs Sock.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: I just knew he was involved in like medicine. I
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: just have heard his name from my elementary school days.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: Perhaps that makes sense.
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Jonas Sock, the man who defeated polio. He was
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: a Jewish race poor in New York City from a
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: family of Eastern European immigrants. He worked his entire life
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: to fight disease and make the world a better place,
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: and along the way he became a sort of medical
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: rock star for his work developing a polio vaccine. He
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: is famous for saying he refused to patent this vaccine
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: because the world needed it. He said in an interview quote,
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: how can you patent the sun? And that what I
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: just read you is true? Ish, It is so close
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: to true that it is a massive fuck off.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Lie.
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: Is such a lie?
• 10:37
  Speaker 6: Fascinating?
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: And I like, I learned that about seven hours ago.
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: He learned something every day, I know, like the fact
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: that the thing you've been researching for five days nonstuff,
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: isn't it true?
• 10:52
  Speaker 6: It's not even like true kind of it is.
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: It's so true that it becomes a lie.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Oh Okay.
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: He did develop a polio vaccine. He developed the first
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: polio vaccine, the first functional one was we'll talk about it.
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: He didn't, Actually, we'll get to it, okay. The first
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: polio vaccine that was widely tested is often called the
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: Salk vaccine, and he worked to do that with a
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: private anti communist foundation, one that claimed that public investment
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: in research was how communism would win in America, so
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: it couldn't be publicly funded. This is not reflecting the
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: politics of Jonah Sauk himself, but this is the organization
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: funded him. His vaccine saved uncountable lives, mostly white, middle
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: and upper class lives in the United States of America.
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: Then another Eastern European Jewish man who also came up
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: in New York City, developed a polio vaccine in partnership
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: between American and Soviet scientists. This vaccine was cheap, more
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: easily administered, and really slightly more dangerous by one context
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: and less dangerous by another context. That vaccine ended polio.
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: After polio is effectively destroyed, the US went back to
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: Salks vaccine because when you have plenty of time and
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: medical facilities and can do booster shots and all that stuff,
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: Salks vaccine edges out a little bit. So it was
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: not Jonas Salko beat polio. It wasn't even Albert Sabin,
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: who was this direct competitor, the one who I just said,
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: Because no one person beat polio. It was an enormous
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: undertaking by thousands of researchers from across the world that
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: beat polio, and the Great Man. Theory of history is
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: once again a bunch of fucking garbage. And I didn't
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: know most of that when I wrote this fucking episode.
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: So consider it a story about how myths are built.
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: But first we're gonna talk about polio. I don't know
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: anyone who's had polio to my knowledge, and that is
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: because I was born after these vaccines. Poliomyelitis is a
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: viral infection. Most infections are either bacterial or viral, and
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: this one's viral. It has been around for kind of forever,
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: at least thousands of years. He was first given a
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: name in eighteenth century, and then it started really fucking
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: people up in the nineteenth century. It actually the places
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: that first really hit was Europe and then the United
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: States in the nineteenth century. In nineteen oh eight or
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: nineteen oh nine, I have read both. A guy actually
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: looked really close and was like, I have seen the
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: actual virus that does this. And that has got to
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: be a strange time to be a scientist where you're like, ah,
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: I am looking through a microscope and seeing the actual object.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, I can't imagine back in those days where you
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: were just this looks different. I'm not sure why. Let
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: me try to come up with some reason. Just the
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: way we've understood viruses throughout time and how that's changed
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: is fascinating to me, honestly.
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, totally, And I'm kind of excited about all the
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: things that people are going to look back one hundred
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: years from now if they're still alive in the world's
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: and been cooked to death. But otherwise I'm like excited
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: about all the things. I'll be like, remember when people
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: thought the following you know, right, Polio was absolutely terrifying
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: to people. It barely causes any symptoms in most people,
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: so it's easily transmitted. So like adults get it and
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: transmit it, but they don't they're not affected by it,
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: basically not. Most of the time, it is transmitted through
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: the fecal oral route, which is there's just like different
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: ways that you know, is the following thing airborn. This
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: is the kind of fun thing that's fun to talk
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: about at parties. Actually, well with your friend, it probably
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: is fun to talk about a parties.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: She does love talking about it.
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, My favorite thing I like bringing up is that
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: hand sanitizer doesn't do anything for fecal oral routes, diseases,
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: and so you actually need to wash your hands after
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: you go to the bathroom. You can't just like use
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: hand sanitizer. Yeah, makes me real popular.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, these are the fun things in life. You know.
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: This is why I go to so many parties and
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: I'm invited everywhere.
• 15:13
  Speaker 6: That sounds like you, Yeah, totally.
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: It is my goal to be invited to all the parties.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: It is not my goal to go to all the parties.
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: Oh yeah, co one hundred percent. I want to be invited,
• 15:23
  Speaker 6: but I'm not coming, Like, please keep inviting me, because
• 15:28
  Speaker 6: if you don't, I'll be really sad about it.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: But I'm not coming, I know, but if you're not reinvited,
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: which is fair but still not okay, no, okay, oh okay.
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: The best is when you have a friend where you
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: can invite each other to things and you know it's
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: safe because you know that both of you are gonna
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: be like, eh, I gotta hang out with my dog today.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Sorry, gotta have that like dog back burner. Excuse, Yeah, totally,
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: I am good.
• 15:56
  Speaker 6: My favorite the.
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: Like, Oh, my dog is just kind of needs to
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: get home soon. My dog is training. It gets socially exhausted.
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: My dog has to record some podcasts in the morning.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: Here you go.
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: So polio almost exclusively affects children, and I'm going to
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: get into it because polio might come back because of
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: the motherfucker in charge of the fucking anyway, whatever, we'll
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: get to that. When you first get polio, you get
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: a runny nose and a sore throat. Then you get
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: a fever, then horrible pain throughout all your muscles or
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: some of your muscles, depending leaving you thrashing and misery
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: in your bed. Then when the fever breaks, it's not over.
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: It means the virus is moved from the blood to
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: the nervous system. Within a few days, your muscles become paralyzed,
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: but your body doesn't go numb. You can still feel
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: all your muscles, you just can't use them. Among people
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: catch it symptomatically like this. I have read a ten
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: percent mortality rate and I have read a twenty five
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: percent mortality rate. I believe the lower number. It kills
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: you by paralyzing essential functions. If it goes up in
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: your brain, you will stop being able to swallow, You'll
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: foam at the mouth and drown.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: It's bad it's really Yeah, that sounds terrible.
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: You the listener have probably seen if you all seen
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: the pictures of iron lungs. Yes, yes, so they have
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: been used for other things. It's like, if your lungs
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: are paralyzed, this is the object that would help you.
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: Back in the day. Now we use intubation and other
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: things more often, although iron lungs have come back thanks
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: to COVID. Iron lungs are huge metal tubes that you
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: go into with only your head sticking out, and the
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: machine varies the air pressure, so it sort of breathes
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: for you. Your head's not in it, but basically it's
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: a like forces your chest to expand. It brings airs,
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: and it's like manually working a bellows. If your lungs
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: are paralyzed, you need this thing. Most people only spent
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: about two weeks or a couple of months in the
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: iron lung while recovering. But plenty of people, and every
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: time I say people, when I'm talking about polio, I'm
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: talking about children. Plenty of children. Well, I guess in
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: this case people lived their entire lives in iron lungs.
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: There is one woman, Martha Lillard, who got polio nineteen
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: fifty three when she was five years old, who was
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: still alive as of when I looked, and still lives
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: in one, and she's having trouble finding parts to keep
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: her iron lung in good repair because she's the only
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: person living in one. Long term left people often regained
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: some use of their muscles, but generally people were disabled
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: for life, and polio scared the piss out of everyone.
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: It was killing and paralyzing children. The most famous polio
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: survivor is Franklin Roosevelt, the progressively served as president of
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: this country for the longest and could scarcely walk and
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: relied on leg bracesm wheelchairs. So in nineteen sixteen there
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: was this massive polio outbreak in New York City. Basically
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: summertime in major cities was polio's time to shine. Babies
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: were dying of polio at a fantastic and terrible rate,
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: one every two and a half hours. Jesus Christ, Yeah,
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: that's too often. There's I've read so many stories about
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: doctors who were like, I don't know, just like walking
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: through these wards and just being like watching children dying constantly.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: And there's a lot of emotional stuff I didn't put
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: in this part of it. It's transmission wasn't yet understood.
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: People assumed it was airborne basically, and they tried everything
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: to stop it. Families were quarantined, windows were screened to
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: keep flies away. The trash got picked up extra well.
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: Those two things actually probably helped them. Playgrounds were shut down.
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: Kids had their noses and throats rinsed with salt water daily,
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: which has got to be one of the worst things
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: that I can imagine happening on a daily basis. Most tragically,
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: seventy two thousand stray cats were killed by the city
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: because people thought they spread it and none of it worked.
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: But you know, it did work to save everyone who
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: has polio, and so I think we can promise that
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: all of the following people are capable of curing polio.
• 20:07
  Speaker 6: Yeah, why not.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: It's our sponsors. They're all legally capable of understanding what
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: parody is and not getting mad about this ad transition.
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: That's what they're capable of doing. Here's a bunch of ads,
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: and we're back. But unfortunately they didn't have the products
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: that support this podcast yet, or they might. I don't
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: know what we got advertised. Some of that stuff has
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: been around for a while, but they didn't have enough
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: of it. They didn't even have podcasts back then. They
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: had to listen to people on soapboxes and radio, and
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: actually we've been doing basically the equivalent of podcasts forever.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, honestly, like, if you're thinking about a
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: lot of this sounds like COVID to me, And I
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: feel like the y whole manisphere thing that happened during
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: COVID where people were isolated and they didn't have real
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: information and they were just like, I don't know, I
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: don't understand that. A lot of negative things around health
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: came out out of that and it's still impacting us
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: to this day, which I'm sure we'll talk about.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot of overlaps between this and like
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: we will talk about some like really early anti vaxxers
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: during this, but there was actually this thing where like
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: it seems like from the reading that more people were
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: willing to trust experts than like currently.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: That's fun. Yeah, I love that.
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: People started fleeing the city. And to be clear, there's
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: outbreaks everywhere, but New York City is like particularly bad.
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: Twelve hundred kids a day escaped the city with their
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: families for a little while, but then other cities soon
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: stopped letting them come in. Kids and babies were taken
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: to Kingston Avenue Hospital and quarantined for two months away
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: from their families, and then cops would go around and
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: steal children from their families to take them to the hospital.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: I only got one sentence of that, and I want
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: to know more about what happened there. Was it like
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: you got a runny nose, Now you got to go
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: to the you know, quarantine, the death land.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: I don't know the police are coming, you know. I
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: have had a couple of instances where I have had
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: something like swine flu, and basically they've been like, you're
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: going to this quarantine zone and I didn't know what
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: was happening, and they just told me where to go.
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: Wait, you've been quarantined by who? What happened?
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: I was quarantined just multiple times. One time when I
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: was flying into the US. That was when I had
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: bird flu. One time at college when I had swine flu,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: uh huh, and they didn't want to report it because
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: if they had to report it, they would have shut
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: down the university. And then another time where a doctor
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: was just like, please go home and quarantine.
• 23:12
  Speaker 6: I feel really great about that.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: That made me really confident. Yeah, they basically were like,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: just don't tell Anyboddy, go back to your door.
• 23:22
  Speaker 6: I feel really confident about the American education system. I
• 23:26
  Speaker 6: feel like we're really setting the priority straight.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: They did give me a mask and some clothes and
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: the instructions to stay in my room away from people
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: for a couple of days.
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: So college kids are notoriously good at following instruction, definitely socializing.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: It was also Halloween. I remember very specifically Jesus Christ.
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: My Halloween costume is the person with mask and gloves.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: I did stay in my room.
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: That's good.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's good. So if there's ever like a new
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: anim mole named Flu, are you just personally convinced that
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: you are going to get it? Kind of like once
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: there's like a snake flu, I'm like staying away from
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: you for a while.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's fair. I think that's a really
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: fair response. Honestly.
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: Well, just like the thing that saved you, the epidemic stopped.
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: Because summer stopped. Two four hundred people, mostly kids under five,
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: died in New York City that summer, and around nine
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: thousand were paralyzed. Nationwide, twenty seven thousand kids died or paralyzed,
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: and I don't know which because it was confusingly written
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: and I tried across reference, but it doesn't always work.
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: It was a bad summer. Every summer across the world,
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: polio came back, and it mostly slowly got worse. Fifteen
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: thousand kids a year were disabled by polio in the
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: United States, and is peaked in nineteen fifty two. In
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: the early nineteen fifties, the thing that most Americans were
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: afraid of was nuclear war, which makes sense. The second
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: thing after that that they were the most afraid of
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: was polio. And it's like one of those things where
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: it's like Polio's is like an old timey disease. You're like, oh,
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: that could have been like that bad. We're still around
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: as a species, and I've never met anyone in polio,
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: you know, right, Maybe most people are better at thinking
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: things through than I would have been.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it had a huge impact though. I know
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: we've talked about it, but in terms of like the
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: ada and all those kind of things.
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, one of the things that we're not going
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: to get into too much, but the start of the
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: disability rights movement, and also the start of the concept
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: of physical therapy. Yeah, comes out of polio, and of
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: course that was done by a woman and isn't as
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: written about as much. And then I'm as guilty as
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: anyone else because instead I'm going to complain about a man.
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: That's the main thing I'm gonna do this episode.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes you've just got to
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: complain about a man. Yeah, understantally, totally.
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: In nineteen fifty five, the polio vaccine, the first one,
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: was administered, and the way it's usually presented is that
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: basically overnight polio dropped from disabling fifteen thousand kids a
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: year to about one hundred cases a year. This isn't true.
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: It did start turning the tide dramatically, but it wasn't
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: until nineteen sixty two, I think, when the other vaccine
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: that we'll talk about later came in that it started
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: dropping to one hundred cases a year.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: So was it a kind of marketing thing.
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: It's that people want a simple history with a hero,
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: and Jonas Salk, the guy that we're going to talk about,
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: mostly was a hero. He stopped polio, you know, by
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: nineteen seventy nine, Polio is effectively eliminated in the United
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: States until the modern anti vax movement, which is basically
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: a death cult.
• 27:02
  Speaker 6: Uh huh.
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: In twenty twenty two, the US got some cases of
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: polio for the first time since nineteen seventy nine. Great, yeah,
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: with RFK Junior in charge, moving forward, Well, let's let's
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: talk about that real quick. RFK Junior soon to be
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: remembered as one of history's greatest monsters. Yes, he has
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: gone on record to say that the polio vaccine has
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: quote killed many, many, many, many many more people than
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: polio ever did. Such an idiot uh huh wow, because
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: he was like, oh, he like gives people cancer or something.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: And also he claims that the vaccine didn't actually reduce
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: polio cases, that it is quote a mythology and quote
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: just not true. Studies have shown, of course, that the
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: polio vaccine does not cause cancer and that polio has
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: been pretty much completely eliminated worldwide because of these vaccines.
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: Everyone of every political party who allowed RFK Junior to
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: come to power has fucking blood on their hands. Yeah,
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: polio is bad and it was real bad. And this
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: is the story about people developing the vaccine, but it
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: actually starts in its way with people fighting against the flu.
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: So we're gonna talk about the flu real quick too.
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: The flu is way harder to vaccinate against, although we
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: do it fairly well. Regardless, people should get their flu shots.
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: I never bothered because I was like, I'm young and
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: can do whatever. And then I like have a doctor
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: friend and he's like, that's not the point. The point
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: is that if you don't get it, old people die.
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: I'm also like closer and closer to an honorary old
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: person myself, but yeah.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: I had the same thing where it's like I don't
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: need it. It just kind of makes me feel a little
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: off for a couple days. Why should I get it?
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: And then somebody sat me down and was like, it's
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: not just about you. Yeah, kind of the point totally.
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: And there's like some people who can't get the shot
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: at all because they're immunocompromised. I think there's seventeen million
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: people living in the US who have actual medical reasons
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: that they can't get vaccinated do an immunocompromisation.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Whatever.
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: We still successfully vaccinate against the flu, even though mutates
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: all the time, which is why it's like less effective.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: The polio vaccine was like good bye polio, right, and
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: we haven't been able to say good bye flu. Polio
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: doesn't like to mutate all that much, but the flu
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: mutates like it's its full time job. You have the
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: polio outbreak of nineteen sixteen, and then you have the
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: Spanish flu, which is the closest covid parallel, especially because
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: they wore masks and stuff. And this is a global
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: pandemic from nineteen eighteen to nineteen twenty and this fucking
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: thing killed like twenty five to fifty million people and
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: a lot of people. Yeah, this was during World War One,
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: and the Spanish flu was as good at killing soldiers
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: as a masked charge against machine guns was like World
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: War One was like when we were really bad at
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: understanding that you can't charge a machine gun, you know,
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: And so they'd be like, Oh, I'll just send more young,
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: poor people in front of that machine gun.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: That'll work.
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: I think for actual soldiers, combat deaths edges out. I
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: didn't write down the numbers, but they're in the running
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: with each other. The thing that really scared people about
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: the Spanish flu is that it was affecting healthier people
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: than the flu usually did, and we didn't have the
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: flu shot yet, but public health departments did their best.
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: I think there's kind of this interesting thing where it's
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: like people do try, you know, and you're like, oh,
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: they did things wrong, and you're like, yeah, yeah, but
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: they did things they Yeah, they did what was what
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: they thought they could, you know.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, going back to my friends who works in the
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: health industry, they were trying to learn as much as
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: they could about in this case, COVID, but it was
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: constantly changing. They were getting new data. It was moving
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: so quickly. I can only imagine back in nineteen seventeen, yeah,
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: or nineteen thirteen. But yeah, yeah, in that area in.
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: Front of me, Yeah, yeah.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: I memorized you know that, Yeah, that wasn't you didn't
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: have ready access. Actually, that's kind of an interesting juxtaposition
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: of like, in some cases, I think that boone is
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: having more access than maybe in other cases it's kind
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: of a detriment, which is what we're seeing today in
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: terms of you know, misinformation disformation. But oh yeah, totally,
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: but not that that didn't exist before. But yeah, but
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: she was saying that we were always trying to figure
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: it out as quickly as we could to get solutions,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: because there are also people who don't want their loved
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: ones to die, I know.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: And it's like, oh, you said last week it was this,
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: and you're like, hey, you were aware that, Like the
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: whole point of science is to change your mind as
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: new information comes in, but then act on the best
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: available information the entire time. Like that doesn't feel like
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: a hard concept from my point of view.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: You know, yeah, no, that makes total sense that you
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: would get new information, take that in and then make
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: your informed opinion. Yeah.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: And so in New York City, when the Spanish flu came,
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: they basically built a social distancing infrastructure. They staggered business
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: hours so that not everyone was on public transit at once.
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: They got rid of rush hour in order to fight
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: the flu. Oh wow, I wish they would just do
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: that anyway, What.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: Am I saying?
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: I live in the mountains. I haven't had to deal
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: with rush hour, and like, I don't remember how many
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: years they got. Well it's painful, yeah, yeah, there's no
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: one around. Yeah, like you like we have to like
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: wait for a tractor. That's the most annoying thing that
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: I have to put up with, you know, hilarious but
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: then when you finally pass them, they're just like, oh, hey,
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: how's it going, you know, give the wave.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: They also got theaters to sell only half their seats
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: to people, so you have an empty seat next to you,
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: and people started covering their mouths when coughing, which was
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: a new technology at the time.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Wow, I love this. See I do the vampire cough.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: No, yeah, we've moved from hands to the yeah.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: Bodies piled up unburied, and in nineteen eighteen, twenty one
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: thousand New York City children were orphaned. And that is
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: the New York city that our main character of the
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: week was born into, the one that his competitor would
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: move to. Jonas Salk was called a hero, and he
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: seemed to kind of revel in that identity. There's a
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: lot of like arguments this is a man that there
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: are hagiography is about This is a man where they're like,
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: either he's just a complete piece of garbage, or like
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: almost everything you read about it is like he's just
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: basically the best. This is Jesus walking amongst us. You know,
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: much like Jesus. He was Jewish, he was hard working
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: as fuck, and he tirelessly worked to make the world better.
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: He also wasn't the only person doing this work.
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: Oh.
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: Also, we'll get to this at the end. He was
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: like a eugenicist and had really wild ideas and it
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: was a real sketchy.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Oh that's fun, said his wife to horsed.
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: Him and for pretty solid reasons, and anyway, we'll get
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: to that.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: There it go, girl, Yeah, you're a eugenicist. I think
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: I should get out of it.
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, yeah, And I think there were
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: a lot of breakups around Trump's election, you know. I
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: think that there was a lot of people who are like, oh,
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: I could put up with my boyfriend until this is
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: just the step too far. This is too real now.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure I.
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: Met someone who would that basically have up into and
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: I don't feel bad for him at all, but I'm like, oh,
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: I'm so sorry that you wait, no, never mind. Anyway,
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: Jonahsolk wasn't the only person doing this work around vaccines,
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: and people have complained about him taking credit for more
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: than his own work. And he started off his life
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: as a leftist. He was actually investigated by the FBI
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: for communist sympathies. Then he moved to a political and
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: he wound up writing mystical eugenesis shit about how scientists
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: should control the human race genetically by introducing viruses into
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: people's embryos. That's the big medical hero the twentieth century,
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: Jonas Salk. But one thing that Jonas Salk had access to, No,
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: he didn't. Actually he raised very poor. Well, I bet
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: some of our products and services were actually affordable. So
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: probably because some of them are just losing your life
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: to Anyway, here's some ads of all of them, and
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: have no complicated feelings about the nature of my work.
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: Here they are. We're back, and we're talking about Jonas Salk.
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: Born with no middle name, but he's going to get
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: one in an interesting way.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: Can't wait.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: That's my teaser. And it's not like me just adding
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: a eugenicist in quotes. It's the middle name or whatever. No,
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: he actually gets an actual middle name. Jonah Salk was
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: born on October twenty eighth, nineteen fourteen, in East Harlem
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: in a tenement building. He was the first son of
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: Dora and Daniel Sulk. His mother was a Russian Jew
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: from what's now Belarus. Her own parents had owned a
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: tavern in Minsk. Dora came over to Manhattan with her
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: family when she was thirteen, where she lived with others
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: in the wildly overcrowded tenements of the Lower East Side
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: and worked in the garment industry, which was not known
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: for good working conditions. And people who've listened to this
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: show and order have much of a grasp know that
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: the reason that Jews were leaving the Russian Empires that
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: the programs were real not nice. The family did fairly
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: well for themselves, and Dora became a foreman at the
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: tenement the sewing garment industry whatever, I don't know the
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: name of the place she worked, and the family moved
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: to East Harlem, where like more people had like actual
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: homes but were still kind of crowded into them. This
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: is a like move from like poverty to lower middle class.
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: That's the best I can tell. Okay Jonas's dad, Daniel,
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: was a Lithuanian Jews born in the US and a
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: lace maker who designed women's neck where he was quiet
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: and humble. His mom was driven in loud. I have
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: read so many biographies for this work where they just
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: like really want to complain about overbearing moms to the
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: point where I actually just question everything about the way
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: the history is presented.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the history of the overbearing mom, I
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: always question it every time I see it.
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: I'm like, yeah, In this case, Jonas likes his mom
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: and appreciates that she was a taskmaster.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay.
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: When they wound up with Jonas their eldest kid, mom
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: was very active in directing his education and making sure
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: he started reading right away. And shit, she became a
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: stay at home mom and was apparently kind of domineering
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: our boy. Jonas skipped a bunch of grades, was very quiet,
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: ignored sports, and read books. He wasn't a very happy kid.
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: His mother treated him like an adult pretty much right away.
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: But he never blamed anything on his mother and said
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: that he inherited her work ethic and is very grateful
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: for it. And it is important to this story that
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: he is a Jewish kid, the child of an immigrant.
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: His Judaism is important to his work. He's not necessarily
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: like super observant near the end of his life as
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: a kid, he is, but the likeultural and sort of
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: theological underpinions remain important to him. I believe his entire
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: life he consciously accepts the Jewish obligation of takunalum, which
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: is repairing the world. You have an obligation to make
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: the world a better place, which is I think cool
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: as hell, although obviously people can interpret that to me
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: and I want to inject viruses and the children to
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: make them have different, you know, genetic structures. But first
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: he just saves millions of lives.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: Right, you know, at this level.
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and he doesn't do any of the philosophical stuff
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: he dreams of later, so the thing he practically does.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: It just seems a dream he has in his head.
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: I like went back and forth like four times already.
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: I had a moment where I was like, do I
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: have to just scrap this and styling, and I'm like,
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: he's just actually complicated and overall not looking great, but
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: he's still interesting. Early on, he decides that he wants
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: to work relieving the suffering of the sick and the injured.
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: And there's so much myth making about this guy, and
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: like there's like things you'll read where he's like he
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: saw the nineteen sixteen and nineteen eighteen pandemics, and I'm like, no,
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: he didn't. He was like three years old. He did, though,
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: grow up in the wake of those crises, and he
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: absolutely grew up knowing people who were paralyzed and dealing
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: with a lot of disability as a result of polio.
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: When he was twelve, he went to an all boys
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: prep school for City College. This school is free, but
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: it's incredibly hard to get into, which means that it's
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: mostly the children of immigrants who go there, and especially
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: Jewish immigrants based on the demographics of New York at
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: the time. I like grew up so outside of this concept.
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: This place is like preppy. I like didn't understand what
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: a prep school was. This place is as preppy as
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: a prep school can prep. Their school newspaper is in Latin.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, Yeah.
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: It is more of a humanities school than a stem school.
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: And once he was there, he did not stand out.
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: He was class secretary, but not class president. The only
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: thing that stood out about him was that he was
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: a sharp dresser. He was quiet and dedicated and figured
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: he'd become a lawyer or a politician to make the
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: world better. Once again, politicians famously always making the world better.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: Definitely, Also just like, I guess I'll just be a lawyer, yeah,
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: or a politician.
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, whatever, ever makes the world better one of those
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: things I don't know. Yes, he was a prep school nerd.
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: He was in the Current History Society, and he was
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: in the Law and Debate Society. Oh wow, the Law
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: and Debate Society is one society. So that sounds extra miserable.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: That sounds really intense. Yeah, the law and debate. Yeah,
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: not just debate. Yeah, we must have the law.
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: Whoever wins the debate gets to tell everyone who lives
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: and dies, so it's going to be totally normal.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: He was the advertising manager for the yearbook and assistant
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: business manager of the school paper.
• 42:08
  Speaker 6: They get a.
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: Picture of this guy, you're just like, he doesn't have
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: a lot of friends, Like, no one hates him. He's
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: just there, you know.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was doing a lot, we must say it was.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: You want to guess what year he started college.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: No, heleas, don't make me.
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: He was fifteen years old when he started college, because
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: of course he fucking was.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Oh gosh.
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: He went to City College, which is what it was
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: a prep school for that he went to. And City
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: College was prestigious and free, and it was also eighty
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: percent Jewish because it was the place that immigrant kids
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: can go to. He barely made any friends. He was
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: going to do pre law, but then his mom was like, Na,
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: you'd be terrible as a lawyer. You can't even beat
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: me in an argument ow because he's not very like assertive,
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So he went into pre med and then his
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: mom was like, now you're too weak to be a doctor.
• 42:58
  Speaker 6: You should be a Teacher's fun and he.
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: Stood up for himself. Again he's myth making against his
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: overbearon mom, who he actually loved. He was like, no,
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: I like medicine.
• 43:09
  Speaker 6: He doesn't have a wife to blame at this point.
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: I know, but he will have a wife to blame soon,
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: don't worry. Yeah, yeah, give it to that.
• 43:16
  Speaker 6: Men like this always have some woman where like it
• 43:19
  Speaker 6: was her.
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely. He was like, I'm going to do medicine,
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: but I don't want to be a doctor. I want
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: to do medical science. He had read a book about
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: Louis Pasteur, the guy who did want a vaccine or whatever,
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: and he was like, all right, vaccines and shit, that's
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: my fucking thing. The problem with this there's this free
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: school and it's full of Jewish immigrant kids, is that
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: higher education was anti Semitic and had informal caps on
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: the number of Jewish kids admitted. So it was very
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: hard for the city college kids to get into higher schools,
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: like once they finished their undergrad This entire establishment was
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: built in funded to help the children of immigrants. But
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: there's like a serious glass ceiling put into place by
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: WASP America. So Jonas Salk applied everywhere, and every place
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: rejected him except one. So we went to what's now
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: called the New York University College of Medicine. His interest
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: was in medical research, and so people were like, just
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: get a PhD instead of an MD, and he was like, no,
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: I'm going to be a doctor, just a research doctor.
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: And in this new school he was entirely unremarkable and forgettable.
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: He barely made any friends. He lived at home with
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: his overbearing mom. Sorry anyway, oh god. He had to
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: find work to pay for school, so he started working
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: in research, and he was good at medical research right away.
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: If you were interested in animal rights, this man is
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: not a hero.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: I was just one of the many maybe categories we
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: can say.
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that one's like a style at the time
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: thing and like animal testing is a complicated subject that
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: I don't want to get into the morality of anyway whatever.
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: He starts working in research, and he is good at
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: this shit right away. His second research project was to
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: cultivate scarlet fever, or rather the bacteria that causes it,
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: and give rabbits scarlet fever. He improved the process of
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: cultivating bacteria, speeding it up by a factor of seven,
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: and got his first paper published in an academic journal
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: when he was twenty two. So this is like kind
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: of the first time he's like really like standing out,
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, is overbearing mom.
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we're all doing air quotes this whole time. I
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: think everyone can hear it in our voices.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: I hope you can hear the air quote.
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: Has been like you're not good at this, You're not
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: good at this. He's been a part of all these
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: organizations and now has something that he feels good at.
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: It's really painting a picture of somebody who was trying
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: a bunch of things and looking for the one thing
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: that like they would really excel at.
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, totally. He's good at this stuff. He might not
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: be as groundbreaking as people later paint him, but he
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: is genuinely good at this stuff. And when he gets
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: interested in vaccines. There are a few bacterial vaccines and
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: a few viral vaccines around, and bacterial vaccines can be
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: made using dead bacteria, but viral vaccines at the time,
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: like for smallpox, rabies, and yellow fever, they had to
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: be made out of weakened but live viruses. So you
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: isolate a virus, beat it up, tell it that it's
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: no good, never going to amount to anything, and then
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: you inject that into someone. And this is seen as
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: an axiom. Viral infections can only be vaccinated against by
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: live viruses, and live virus vaccines are inherently a bit riskier.
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: People still use them and actually it's going to be
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: a live virus that's going to actually get rid of folio.
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: Live vaccines are more likely to provide lifelong immunity. You
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: and everyone listening to this has likely had both, and
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: if you haven't, then get mad at your parents for
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: not vaccinating you and go get vaccinated. But live vaccines
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: are not always appropriate. The flu shot we use now
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: is an inactive vaccine. It's a dead virus vaccine. And
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: Jonah Sulk is part of why we get the flu shot.
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: He was working for a virologist named Thomas Francis Junior,
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: who was the first man to isolate the flu virus
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: and later who developed the flu shot, or led the
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: research team that developed the flu shot. There's a lot
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: of I mean, no one's like writing hagiographies about him,
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: but you know, he's part of a team. Thomas had
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: Jonas try to stimulate antibodies in mice with that flu virus.
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: The basic idea of vaccines, which people probably know, but
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: in case you don't, say, either contain antibodies to a
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: viral bacterial infection, or they convince your body to make
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: its own antibodies, which is even better. So Jonas is
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: working to stimulate antibodies in mice with dead flu viruses
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: like a normal person who has normal hobbies. Yeah, I'm
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: actually gratefully did this. I'm not complaining.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: Meanwhile, he fell for a woman named Donna Lindsay, who
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: was an inch taller than him and from a rich
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: family and was pursuing her master's in social work at
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: this point. They're both leftists and they shared a desire
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: to make the world better. This does not sound like
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: a really great romance. He was completely smitten with her
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: and she was like, I don't know, and I've read
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: it described in multiple places as he basically kind of
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: wore her down until she was like final, marry you.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. She was like, I don't need you, I'm good.
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: But he, yeah, he persisted, which means that she's gonna
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: have to like give up her career and like raise
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: their kids, and like it was a you know, it
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: was the early twentieth century.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: It was like the type of romances that we still,
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: unfortunately sometimes paint romantically, but at the time was very
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: romantic of just a man being like I got her.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: Eventually I wore her dad. Yeah, she saw how smart
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: I was. I'm not a nerd.
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, totally well, and he's like she's so beautiful, and
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: she's always like he's all right, I don't know. He
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: graduated on June eighth, nineteen thirty nine, and he and
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: Donna got married on June ninth, nineteen thirty nine, the
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: very next day. And the reason it happened in this
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: order is that she's from this like wealthy Jewish family,
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: and his parents don't like that her family isn't really
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: practicing Jewish, but her family doesn't like that his family
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: is poor. Donna's dad is already pretty mad that his
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: daughter is marrying below her station, so he insisted that
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: it be done after he graduated, so that the announcement
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: could say Jonas Edward Sulk MD. And you might be
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: thinking to yourself, but doesn't he not have a middle name? Well,
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: Donna's dad was mad that Jonas didn't have a middle
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: name had not been properly anglicized, so he insisted that
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: Jonas take Edward as a middle name. So he gets
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: his middle name from his father in law, who's like,
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: you are an Edward.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: Wow, there's also something to be said about you know what,
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: the day after you graduate, we're just gonna take out
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: all the air out of what you did.
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah and put it here totally, totally.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a real move. Okay.
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: So he's married now and I think he moves out
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: of the house. He has a two year internship at
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: a research hospital and he wanted to keep doing virology,
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: but he was Jewish and he wasn't from an ivy league,
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: so he kept getting turned down everywhere until his former supervisor,
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: Thomas Franz and Junior, the guy who had him testing
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: dead viruses on mice, brought him out to ann Arbor, Michigan.
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: To keep working on influenza. Eventually, Donad's going to be like,
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: I'm you can't just fucking drag me all over the
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: country for your shitty fucking research and then ignore me
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: all the time. But that hasn't happened yet, and he
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: like never talked about her or their relationship, Like, are
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: we shocked to know? Anyway? They're out. Ann Arbor, Thomas
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: Francis Junior and some others had developed a vaccine ready
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: for human trials for the first time for the flu shot,
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: and the lab rats that they were going to use
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: for this were patients at state hospitals for people with
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: severe mental illnesses who were not in any way able
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: to provide meaningful consent.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that nightmare Land. Yes it is okay.
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: Jonas Salk spoke at the end of his life about
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: the importance of taking calculated risks in order to advance science.
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: He seemed to genuinely consider the human costs of those risks,
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: but he sure took a lot of them. He oversaw
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: eight thousand patients who got the vaccine or a placebo.
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: Antibodies went up, but there was no flu that season,
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: so they couldn't really prove anything. So they were like, ah,
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: the problem is that none of these people got the flu.
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: Option A, oh, no way to hear.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: Option B.
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: Take infected mouse lung tissue and spray it into people's
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: noses who are not able to consent because they have
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: severe mental illnesses and rewards of the state. He goes
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: for Option B.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: Yep, that's what I was afraid of.
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this kind of thing did not fall out of
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: style until the Nuremberg Trials of nineteen forty seven, when
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: people were like, maybe there should be ethical standards for
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: testing on people.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe there's a lot.
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: Of stuff that the Nazis did that was kind of
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: just what everyone in the West was doing, but cranked
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: up like three notches, you know, yeah, and it made
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: everyone feel like, oh, were we doing.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: Let's really go for it. Yeah, if we're gonna do it,
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: let's just go yeah, and made everybody else be like
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, yeah.
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: You'd think they'd be like, maybe this eugenics thing is
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: no good, but it actually took decades before the West
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: got over their obsession with eugenics. Some people like Sock
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: died obsessed with I don't know if he defined what
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: he did as eugenics. I couldn't actually find the answer
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: to that, but we'll talk about that later. This worked,
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: the flu shots and the giving people the flu without
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: their permission. The control group got the flu at about
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: fifty percent, while the vaccinated folks got it at sixteen percent,
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: So it's a very effective at stopping the flu. That year.
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: In nineteen forty three, they got to show the world
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: that they'd done good as a flu epidemic spread. Twelve
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: five hundred soldiers were put into a trial. No need
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: to spray infected mouse lungs into their noses because there's
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: actually a flu this year, and only two percent of
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: the inoculated folks got sick, and the mental patients who
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: had been tested on the year before were still immune.
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: So dead viruses can work. And that's where we're going
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: to leave it today. Our hero is doing great things.
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: It's just messy. This is just like like he's not
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: in any way acting abnormally to what he does for
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: work at this point, and that's just an indictment of
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: people refusing to think about ethics.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: Wow, well, I'm very eager to see the downfall of
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: this year. Oh that doesn't happen like the keys of
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: the downfall.
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: No, he die as a hero.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Ah Okay.
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: I started researching him because people painted a real pretty
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: picture of him, and I was like, he's going to
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: win to cover because you can paint a real pretty
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: picture of this man, And like, maybe this is just
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: like a no Heroes moment right where you're like, well, yeah,
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: whoever does this kind of work is going to have
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: a willingness to hurt people to help people in a
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: way that is like morally messy. But I still kind
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: of come down on this particular guy not so great.
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: In the end.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: I think taking in the complexities of anybody is good. Yeah,
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: and then like science, weighing the information you get and
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: forming your opinion.
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: Ah, all right, Well instead of telling the listener what
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: to think about this man, you mean, I should just
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: continue to explain this story and then interesting es. Although
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: I didn't name this cool, people did cool stuff, so
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: I always feel like I got to kind of specifically
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: be like, this man is not worthy of the title,
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: but the thing that happened, the creation of a polio
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: vaccine is.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: Well, that's also complicated. You know, this show is just
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: called cool stuff too.
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, totally, it's just cool stuff. Well, if people are
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: like but I want to hear you any Reese on
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: the podcast more, but I don't want to wait till Wednesday.
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: What can they do?
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: Well, you can find me on stuff when I never
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: told you, or Savor wherever you get your podcast, and
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: I'm out and about but not really yeah, fair enough.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: I don't even know why say yeah, but yes, you
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: can find me there.
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: I finally post on Instagram like yesterday, being like, I'm
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: not checking Dmazon here anymore. I am so tired of
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: meta with a company.
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah, pretty much that's where I am.
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: Still on Blue Sky you can find me there. I'm
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: on Substack find me there. And podcasts and also what
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: podcast I listened to this week that I was like,
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: I can't wait to plug this one on air now.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: I don't remember what it was, dudeude, I don't know.
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: Sorry, it was probably sixteenth minute, but I don't even
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: remember what the most recent sixteenth minute was.
• 57:10
  Speaker 6: So it's about the Hawk Tua SEC scandal.
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: Oh, I mean I did listen to that, but I.
• 57:16
  Speaker 6: Was like, that doesn't seem like something you'd be like wow,
• 57:19
  Speaker 6: wow wow about really great episode by the way, she.
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: Listened, it is a good episode. Good Yeah, And it
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: was a good update to it.
• 57:24
  Speaker 6: I don't know, but like financial scandal, not really your What.
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: Was the most recent Hood Politics?
• 57:29
  Speaker 5: Maybe?
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: Is that Politics? A great show? Yeah?
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: Well, listen to Hood Politics with prop and sixteenth minute
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: and everything else from cool Zone Media and everything else
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: that Annie Reese does and listen to all of it
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: before Wednesday, because I will be quizzing you.
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Hi everyone, Bye.
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
• 57:52
  Speaker 5: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: on the iHeartRadio appts.
• 58:01
  Speaker 6: Or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: That brings us to the end of this episode that
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: I guessed on of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: with Margaret Kiljoy. Shout out to Sophie who is also
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: on the show and contacted me and Ian the producer,
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: who is great. Uh and yeah, it was just a
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: wonderful experience. We love them and go go check them
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: out again if you have not already. We will bring
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: part two of this two parter about vaccines soon, but
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: in the meantime, if you would like to contact us,
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: you can You can email us at Hello at stuff
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: Whenever Told You dot com. You can find us on
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: Blue skuy at mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram and
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: TikTok at stuff When Never Told You. We're also on YouTube.
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: We have new merchandise at compurerou and we have a
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: as always to our super producer Christina, executive Prusumya, and
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks to you for listening
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: Stefan Never Told You Struction of My Heart Radio. For
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can check out
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: the heart Radio app, Apple podcast or if you listen
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: to your favorite shows