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Mini: That Time Humans Loved Radiation · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: to Why we do what we do many I am
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: your host Abraham and I'm your host Shane. We are
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: a psychology podcast. We talk about the things that humans
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and non human animals do, and sometimes we talk about
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the things they have done and we're like, why did
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: we do that thing?
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  Speaker 2: And that's a sure why we did what we did? Yeah,
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: part of this podcast. The subtext of this podcast is
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: why we don't do what we used to do.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: That is also true, and so if you're joining us
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: for the first time, welcome. This is a short form
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: episode type we do called a mini and they come
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: out on Mondays Mini Mondays. We also release full length
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: episodes closer to an hour. I think most of them
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: are around an hour. That those come out every Wednesday,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: and sometimes we will release what we call nostalgia episodes,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: which are reruns of past episodes in place of our
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: sort of normal release and that is when we update
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: a topic that's been out on something we recorded at
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: least five years ago. So that's things that we do.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: But today we're tackling a very interesting topic. This is
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: a weird thing that humans used to do. Oh, hold on,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: before I do that, I've got more preamble, which is
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: that if you'd like to support us, you can leave
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  Speaker 1: us a rating and review, like, and subscribe, Join us
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  Speaker 1: on Patreon, pick up some merch at our merch store.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Go tell a friend. I'll talk more about that at
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the end of this discussion. Is there anything I'm missing
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: before we jump into our topic here?
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: No, I think that covers it.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, Sorry, that was a little rambly, everybody. I'm usually
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: more eloquence than this. Now that's not true. This is
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  Speaker 1: pretty This is pretty powerfully corded, all right. Anyway, everything
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  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about in this discussion today is
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: really based on an entry in a book called Quackery,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Sure by Nate Peterson and Lydia King. It's a very silly,
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  Speaker 1: whimsical book. They usually take some topic and then they
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: sort of understand the history of it. They often will
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: impact them in the context of a story, and this
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  Speaker 1: one I chose specifically because it actually has a fairly
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: clear origin, like where did this begin? And sort of
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: understanding why this came to be in the first place,
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  Speaker 1: whereas a lot of the other ones are sort of
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  Speaker 1: like it's just the thing that people discovered and then
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  Speaker 1: they're like, hey, let's just try it out and we'll
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  Speaker 1: run with it. Right, this one's a little bit more clear.
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  Speaker 1: So anyway, let's dive into this discussion here.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so, once upon a time we got really excited
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: about exposing ourselves to heaping loads of ionizing radiation. It
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: was a bad idea, and we're going to tell that story.
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  Speaker 3: I will say, as a superhero fan, this sounds like
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: the way to go, right, Like, you get exposed to
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: radiation and you're going to get superpowers. Tell everybody right now,
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: that is not at all what happens.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's unpack radiation and we'll help describe why
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: they think they can use this for superhero comics and
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: why it doesn't work that way. Radiation. Just as a
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: brief understanding here. I actually wrote several paragraphs trying to
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: explain this, and I decided that's really outside of the
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: context we're trying to do with this, and so I
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: got rid of them. But yeah, I want to at
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: least leave you with an understanding of what's happening here.
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  Speaker 1: This is essentially energy that is hitting your body, or
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I mean it just travels through space, but it can
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: hit your body on its way traveling through space. But
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  Speaker 1: it's strong enough to detach the electrons in your body
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  Speaker 1: from atoms or molecules in your body, which can cause
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  Speaker 1: chemical changes, including damage to our DNA. The symptoms of
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: this can include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, fevers, inflammation, headaches, fatigue,
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  Speaker 1: and eventually hair loss, bone marrow failure, which sounds horrible, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: neurological problems, blisters, gastro intestinal damage, and death. It is
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: a horrible, horrible way to go. Now, I think the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: idea here is because it can mess with your DNA,
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  Speaker 1: you can sort of loosely logic your way to the
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: idea that like, maybe you get lucky in what it
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: does is rearrange your DNA to be something much more
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: powerful than it should have been, and maybe turn you
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: into something that's like an altered version of yourself, albeit
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: with bulletproof skin. Yeah so far nope, Yeah, so far, Nope,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: it has gotten that lucky. All it has done is
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: shred their bodies from the inside out. So yeah, it
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  Speaker 1: is a terrible, terrible way to die, and it will
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  Speaker 1: not make you superhero. But that is what radiation is.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: So let's talk about Eben Byers, a wealthy industrialist socialite,
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  Speaker 3: which sounds like one hundred percent a character from Great
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: Gatsby and a ladies man. Yeah, in early nineteen hundred,
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: so he's right there, right.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a great Gatsby.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: Maybe he is a great Gatsby. He had won the
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: US Amateur Golf Championship of nineteen o six, which is
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: just wild to think that golf is that old. Now,
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: during a late night Ruckus party in late November nineteen
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: twenty seven, he fell and injured his arm.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: He did, and that's no big thing, it'll go away.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: But his pain lingered much longer than seemed normal. Evidently
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: even for a then forty seven year old man. His
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: private physicians were stumped. The remedies were failing to provide
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: relief to his arm injury, and because of his injury,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: he was having all kinds of problems. This guy was
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: truly suffering a way that most of us cannot understand.
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  Speaker 1: He couldn't really play golf as well as he used to.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: His loopado game was significantly compromised. I mean, really tragic stuff. Yeah,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: now not to worry. We've got good news. These physicians
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: could double dip. They were also getting a generous seventeen
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: percent kickback to prescribe the hot new drug on the market, Ratithor,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: manufactured by Bailey Radium Laboratory in New Jersey.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: By the way, I don't want to eat anything out
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: of a radium laboratory, but.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: No, you shouldn't. Also sounds straight out of the game
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  Speaker 1: Fallout or the TV show.
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  Speaker 3: Like, yeah, Rada Thor is for sure evil.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Yes that, Like you see that and you're like, oh yeah, Fallout,
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  Speaker 1: this is a thing that will definitely kill you.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. Now, this wonder drug promised
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: to contain two microcuries of radium, which was the exciting
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: new medica and the promised cures for everything from dyspepsia
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: to high blood pressure to impotence to apparently broken arms.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Yep, that was the idea here Byers took the medicine
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  Speaker 1: and lo and behold, his arms started to show improvement. Amazing.
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  Speaker 1: He could not have been happier. I mean, this the
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: miracle medicine that really got him back on his feet.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Sure playing golf, finding partners, partners, hiring partners, maybe he
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: began drinking three bottles of Ratathor per day starting in
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: December of nineteen twenty seven, so remember it's November. He's
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: injured himself after four weeks of not healing, which of
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: course everyone knows that broken arms typically heal inside of
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: four weeks, he starts drinking this Ratathor and he's starting
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: to notice improvements in his arm. Bully for him. By
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, just four years later, actually more like
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: three years and some change later, he had consumed a
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: radiation dosage similar to receiving a thousand X rays from
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  Speaker 1: his consumption of Ratathor. The number one thousand is high,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: It's very high. It's that's too many X rays. That's
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: too many X rays. You don't want to receive the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: many X rays. One is like enough for them to
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: put a lead coat over you. So a thousand is
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: is simply too much, and so we must break and
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: inject some ads in the form of radiation.
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  Speaker 3: No Ratathor. Here's ada thor.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, yours was much better than mine. Adathor. Okay, great,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: all right, that was our ad break. So we're back,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: all right.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: So Buyer's was no greedy man he wanted all of
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  Speaker 3: his friends to enjoy the bounty of health that Ratathor
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: could bestow on them, and he began sending cases of
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: help to people in the circles with notes of enthusiastic praise.
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  Speaker 3: It could not imagine sending effectively a radiation bomb to
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  Speaker 3: like anybody, like, hey, hey, you're my best friend here,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: just drink all of this. Drink one thousand x rays.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so he managed to consume a impressive Now again,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: remind I don't know if we actually said this up front.
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  Speaker 1: He was prescribed like a bottle of this a day.
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  Speaker 1: He's like, this is so amazing, I'm drinking three a day.
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  Speaker 1: He managed to consume fifteen hundred bottles of Ratathor by
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  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, at which time he was absolutely riddled
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  Speaker 1: with radiation based cancers. His kidneys had completely failed, his
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: brain had absessed, meaning that he was kind of not
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: really conscious of what was going on anymore, which was
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  Speaker 1: probably for the best for him. At this point. Sure,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: most of his jaw had been removed and attempts to
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: slow the spread of cancer. Remember, he's ingesting this through
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: his mouth, so that's going to get the heavy dose
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: of cancer. There. Sure, And even his skull was covered
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: in holes from the radiation. Like he literally had holes
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: in his skull, which is supposed to keep your brain in.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Just in case you didn't know that, he was gaunt
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: and hollowed out. He weighed a scant ninety seven pounds.
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  Speaker 1: Even his bones were dangerous radioactive. He was so radioactive,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: radioactive that when he died, he had to be buried
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: in a lead line coffin. And even as part of this,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: when they did dig him up later, he was still
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: so radioactive he was too dangerous to studies. They had
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  Speaker 1: to put him back. That is wild.
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  Speaker 3: So let's back up a little bit though, because I
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  Speaker 3: think it's important to have some more historical context. So
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: radium had been discovered and isolated by Marie Curiy and
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: Pierre Currie and nineteen oh two. They also discovered that
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: radium could cause deep flesh burns and reason this might
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: be effective at destroying cancer.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're right, I mean it is. It is
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: effective at destroying cancer. If you point radiation at cancer,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: it will destroy the growing mass of cells. Sure, at
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: the time, there was nothing to treat cancer, so like
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: anything that suddenly offered a promise of a future, like
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: some glimmer of hope was desperately embraced by everyone. So
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, that's like we finally have something. Oh
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: my god, this is so excited, like the world is saved.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: Sure exactly. However, there are two major problems. Right. One,
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: you have to aim it at the cancer, like it
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: has to be. It has to be given direction. Without aiming,
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: it just destroys everything it gets near. It's like using
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: ten sticks of dynamite to kill rodents in your house,
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: Like it'll work, but you won't have a house anymore. Two,
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: the other problem is the fact that it can destroy
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: cancer by burning it should inherently suggest that it should
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: be used in a specific, targeted way, not ingested and
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: allowed to spread throughout the body because you know, like
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: we again want to give it direction.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It's like if you're going to do surgery, like, well,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: we know that knives can help get to the injured organ,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: so let's just cut open all parts of your body,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Like sure, no, probably just the part way you need
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: to do the surgery, right exactly. We're not just trying
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: to de skin someone, right, that's bad, But anyway, logic
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: is hard and capitalism is very opportunistic, so opportunistic as
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: to be at the level of self destructive. Instead, what
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: they saw is can help with cancer, must be good
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: for everything, and the or the better.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: Sure, so they sold home and even portable water tanks
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: infused with radium so you can get your lethal dose
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: of radiation at your convenience. So these were like household items.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they had a fun name. I forgot what
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: it was now, but it was like a water cooler
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: that was a radiated water.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Oh my god.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: They even they being like the opportunistic capitalists and entrepreneurs here,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: they even established radium spas with radium infused baths and
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: radium gas pumped into the room where you could go
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: get this amazing dose of radiation. There was an entire
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: cottage industry of self starting entrepreneurs who traveled the country
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: hawking radium medicines to treat whatever you said your problem
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: just was. Fortunately, though, there is a silver lining here,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: because radium was insanely expensive, so most of the time
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: they were lying about it containing any radium whatsoever, and
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: they and in doing so, they actually saved hundreds or
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: even thousands of lives in the process because they're charlatans.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: So in this one instance, it was good to be
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: a charlatan because otherwise people would have died.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, finally, in the nineteen thirties, the
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: FDA and the FTC launched an investigation and shut down
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: production of radium, likely saving thousands of lives or more.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: Now you don't have radium like that are like purposefully
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: put in products at this point, you know.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's like time and the Sun was fairly brief,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: like it was kind of a five six year sort
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: of thing where it was it was really hot on
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: the market. Maybe a little longer, but they did figure
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: out within a generation at least that this was a
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: very dangerous thing that was killing people. Yeah, and to
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: be clear, like radiation, as we said, it is an
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: actual part of medical treatment and specifically cancer treatment used
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: today like this will still happen. However, again, when it
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: is used, it is highly precisely targeted at the cancer
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: and very controlled doses. The way that they sort of
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: thought about this earlier was like, hey, you've got cancer,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: there a point radiation at it, like like put radiation
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: next to it, and I'm like, yeah, but what about
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: everything that's around the cancer, like that's also getting destroyed, yeah,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: and also spreading more cancer because you now are destroyed,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: You're you are now destroying the healthy cells in places
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: where you don't need to be applying it, and that
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: is actually then causing cancer. Yeah, so it had the
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: opposite problem as well that it. Yeah, anyway, that's the
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: time that humans learned to love radiation.
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: Briefly, what a wild time, man, Yeah, oh man, to
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: be in the world of the Great Gatsby would be
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: so fascinating.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: So anyway, we got to the y, which was that
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: they understood that it helped with cancer, therefore must be
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: good with everything, and therefore this guy died of acute
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: radiation sickness in the nineteen thirties.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: All right, anything you'd like to add or anything that
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: I forgot before we wrap this one up.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: Toxic Avenger is coming out, so.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh man, that looks insane. Ye. Not affiliated with
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Marvel In case you hear the word Avengure and think.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: Ye, yeah, it's Peter Inglish and that's Peter Diningklige and
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: Kevin Bacon. So it's a lot of fun.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm not sure if you guys are familiar
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: with what's the movie called Terrorizer or just.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: Terror Yeah, terrorizing, Terrorizer, Yeah.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Super gory are rated over the top schlocky death horror movie. Anyway,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: if you'd like to tell us that your thoughts on
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: radiation are that one time that humans learned to love
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: radiation and stop worrying, you can email us directly at
• 14:24
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  Speaker 1: for listening because I'm always happy to have ears to
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• 15:06
  Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, anything that I am missing before we
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: say our goodbyes, than Shane, not today, Nope, Okay, I
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: think that is everything. I might be missing something, but
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to close it out anyway and see
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: what happens. So this is Abraham and this is Shane.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Why we Do what we Do? Mini is out.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: Bye.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to Why We Do what We Do.
• 15:25
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• 15:28
  Speaker 2: going to WWDWWD podcast dot com.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.