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Way to Go, Ohio · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin Hello, Hello, Revision's History listeners. I'm excited to announce
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: that this season I'm offering a bunch of perks from
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  Speaker 1: my most loyal listeners, the ones who subscribe to pushkin
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  Speaker 1: Plus for those who just can't get enough. We're giving
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  Speaker 1: every episode to our subscribers one week early. Plus. We've
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  Speaker 1: created many episodes released weekly, and I'm calling them tangents.
• 0:43
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  Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus on the Revisionist History Show page in Apple
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Podcasts or at pushkint f M. Deep into the preparation
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: of Season seven of Revision's History, one bitterly cold day,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I sent my producers Leman Gesteu and Elewise Linton on
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: special assignment. Fly to Detroit. Rent a car, go north
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: on I ninety four for a stretch, then turn right
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: off the freeway on the Fredmore Highway and drive all
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: the way to the banks of the Saint Clair River,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: where they will come upon a factory. This is a
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: dumb question. Is it like high security?
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Oh? No, well it's not high security, but we did
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: have to really put on a lot of gear to
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: get in there for food safety reasons.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: You're wearing like hard hats, reflective jackets. Were you wearing
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: like industrial footwear?
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Not footwear? But we had to wear gloves, We around
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: gloves caps for our hair. That didn't really work for
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: either of us.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I wanted to understand an experiment, one of the most
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: important experiments of our modern era, one that's been all
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: but forgotten, and crucially for my own selfish purposes, I
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: wanted them to take a taste test.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: So we had a couple of paper plates in front
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: of us and then a spoon, and then we would
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: spoon a little bit of it into our hands and
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: then taste it from there. I will say that I
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: took way too much. It was overwhelming, for sure.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Guess I'll put too little. Okay this one first?
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: Oh I was strong?
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah right. You weren't blinded, they just but you
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: didn't know which was which. So you have two little
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: plates in front of you. Could they tell the difference? Yes,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: the insiders at the factory know the difference. The rest
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: of us not so much. My name is Malcolm Blackwell.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: You listen Think Too Revision's History, my podcast about things
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: overlooked and misunderstood. This is part two of our investigation
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: of magic wand experiments impossible experiments that could only be
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: done if we waived a magic wand. In this episode,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: you'll hear my magic wand by way of a journey
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: from the banks of the Saint Clair River to the
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: tallest mountains in Europe, on to India and then Ohio.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: This episode is going to require a fair amount of digression. Patience, grasshopper.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: We begin our story over a century ago, a time
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: when you could go many places in the world and
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: find some portion of the local population severely disfigured. If
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: I'm walking around a remote village in the Swiss Alps
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen hundred, what do I see?
• 4:14
  Speaker 5: High up in the Swiss Alps in the mid eighteen hundreds,
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  Speaker 5: you probably probably about half the population would have a
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  Speaker 5: visible goiter.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I'm talking with Michael Zimmermann, University of Zurich about goiters,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: a swelling on the neck right in front of the larynx.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Describe these goiters. How large could they be?
• 4:35
  Speaker 5: Well, I mean, in a child, it's about the size
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: of maybe a lemon. But the older women, particularly the
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: ones who'd had repeated pregnancies, you know, and would have large,
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  Speaker 5: multinadular goiters. They can be the size of a volleyball.
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: I mean they can volleyball, yeah, sure, they can compress
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: the trachea make it difficult to breathe or swallow. They
• 4:56
  Speaker 5: can really be massive.
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  Speaker 1: Some portion of the population with goiters had a related
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: condition what used to be called cretinism.
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: So in children, for example, they don't grow normally, so
• 5:08
  Speaker 5: they're very short, they have characteristic facial features, they have
• 5:13
  Speaker 5: very dry skin, very dry hair, They move very slowly,
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  Speaker 5: their temperature regulation is very poor, they become cold very easily.
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  Speaker 5: And then classically it's associated with cognitive impairment and also
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  Speaker 5: def mutism.
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  Speaker 1: And it's not reversible, it's not. For the longest time,
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  Speaker 1: no one knew the explanation for cretinism or for goiters.
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  Speaker 1: It would be one thing if they appeared everywhere, then
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  Speaker 1: you could say this is just what human beings look like.
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  Speaker 1: But this wasn't everywhere. It was confined to very specific
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  Speaker 1: regions of the world.
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  Speaker 5: I mean, it was famous back in the eighteen hundreds
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  Speaker 5: for British and American tourists to go up in the
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  Speaker 5: Swiss Alps not only to see the beautiful alpine scenery,
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  Speaker 5: but also to see goiter and cretinism. I mean Mark
• 6:04
  Speaker 5: twain very famous quote, I've seen the two things I
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  Speaker 5: want to see in Switzerland, Mount blank and the guiter,
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  Speaker 5: and now I'm going home.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't until the nineteenth century that scientists started to
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  Speaker 1: figure out what might be the culprit iodine, or rather
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  Speaker 1: a lack of iodine in the diet. Iodine is a
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  Speaker 1: trace alment found largely in sea water. There's a lot
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: of iodine in seaweed and in the livers of fish
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  Speaker 1: like cod. If you live in a coastal area, you'll
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  Speaker 1: get iodine in your diet naturally because the wind and
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: rain blowing off the ocean will deposit iodine in the
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: soil and water. If a cown near the coast drinks
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: water with iodine in it, then that iodine gets into
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  Speaker 1: your milk and meat. But go inland and iodine gets
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  Speaker 1: harder to find in nature. Fresh water flushes iodine out
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: of the soil. Worst off are places that used to
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: be covered with glaciers, because when the glaciers were treated,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: they took topsoil and natural iodine with them. No iodine
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: in the soil, no iodine in plants, no iodine in plants,
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  Speaker 1: not enough iodone in the people eating those plants, and
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: when people don't get enough iodone in their diets, their
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: thyroid glands have to work overtime to compensate, so the
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: thyroid becomes huge, like an oversized heart. Think about the
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Swiss Alps, an inland mountain chain with lots of glaciers,
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  Speaker 1: no idon in the soil, and so people living there
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  Speaker 1: have historically been afflicted with goiter. Norway also had a
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: huge goiter problem, so did mountainous parts of China, Russia,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: and goiter was a problem in the United States, of course,
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  Speaker 1: because there are plenty of inland areas in America once
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  Speaker 1: home to glaciers. There's a book published in the nineteen
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: twenties called Defects Found in Drafted Men, which is simply
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: a compendium of the physicals conducted by the US Army
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  Speaker 1: on draftees during the First World War. So basically we're
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  Speaker 1: looking at the entire reasonably healthy male population. Young male
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  Speaker 1: population of the United States gets examined by a doctor
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  Speaker 1: and their health condition is noted in this book. Correct,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: it must be a massive book.
• 8:25
  Speaker 6: It's a big, thick book.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Yet that's the economist Jim Firer who published a study
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: based on that data.
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  Speaker 6: This is pre computerized shaded map showing where some diseases
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  Speaker 6: were common and where some weren't. And this led to
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  Speaker 6: the discovery of what's known as the Goiter Belt, which
• 8:39
  Speaker 6: is the place where goiter was endemic, which is the
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  Speaker 6: upper Midwest.
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  Speaker 1: The Goiter Belt. Just to give you a sense of
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  Speaker 1: the problem, in Houghton County, which is Michigan's upper Peninsula,
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  Speaker 1: five hundred and thirty eight young men were brought before
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  Speaker 1: the draft board. A third of those draftees showed quote
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  Speaker 1: a demonstrable enlargement of the thyroid. In some cases, the
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: goiters were so large that men were turned away from
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  Speaker 1: the army because they couldn't button up the collars of
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: their uniforms. Fire Or estimates the lack of iodine in
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  Speaker 1: places like Houghton County caused significant cognitive impairment as much
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: as a standard deviation in IQ, which is a lot.
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  Speaker 1: A standard deviation can be the difference between being able
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: to handle college and not being able to handle college.
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  Speaker 1: So what's so weird about this? There is literally a
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  Speaker 1: part of the country where people are not as smart
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  Speaker 1: in aggregate as other parts.
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  Speaker 6: Certainly they are not as smart as they could have
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  Speaker 6: been in the absence of being idine efficient. Yes, I
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  Speaker 6: think that's right.
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  Speaker 1: So you have people in various parts of the world
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  Speaker 1: who don't get enough iodine. What do you do about it?
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  Speaker 1: Michael Zimmerman says some of the earliest attempts to fix
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  Speaker 1: the problem were a disaster.
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  Speaker 5: The dose of iodine that they were applying in these
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  Speaker 5: initial studies was extremely high, you know, a thousandfold higher
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  Speaker 5: than what was needed to eliminate goiter, and iodine, like
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  Speaker 5: any nutrient, is poison in a high doses. So a
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  Speaker 5: lot of people developed hyperthyroidism and actually cardiac arrhythmias and
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  Speaker 5: died from excess iodine ingestion. So it was seen kind
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  Speaker 5: of as a double edged sword, and people saw it
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  Speaker 5: as a poison as well as a potential remedy.
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  Speaker 1: There was an iodine backlash and a lot of confusion,
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  Speaker 1: like was iodine a treatment for goiter the way aspirin
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: is a treatment for headache, something you gave once and
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: it solved the problem, or was it a supplement? Was
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: iodine something that people with goiter needed on a continuous basis,
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  Speaker 1: And if so, how much iodine would you need to
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  Speaker 1: give to people, how often, starting at what age? And
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  Speaker 1: how would you give it to them? Did it matter?
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: What the world needed was a proper experiment, careful, rigorous, controlled?
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: And where did salvation finally come from? Akron, Ohio? Surely,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: at least if you were as an old as I am,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: you remember the classic nineteen eighty three hit from Chrissy
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Hind and the Pretenders, My city was gone.
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: To Oh, my city was gone.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: What city is she talking about? Not Cleveland, not swinky Columbus,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: not stuffy, well fed Cincinnati, Akron because Chrissy hin grew
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: up in Akron, so down and disappeared. South Howard is
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: the historic center of old Akron. It got gutted in
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  Speaker 1: the seventies for an empty urban plaza.
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  Speaker 7: Reduced to.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: How many cities get dissed at such a high level
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: by one of their favorite daughters. My friends were finally
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: getting close to revealing my magic wand, very close, and
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: let me make one more promise. My magic wand will
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: give Akron a shot at redemption. Before we go any further,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: a few words about my magic wand experiment. In the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: last episode, I gave several scientists a chance to waive
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: a magic wand to create any experiment they wanted, without
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: regard for the laws of nature or ethics. And then
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: I pounded my chest and said that my magic wand
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: would be the best of all. Why did I say that, Well,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you because all of the other magic wanders
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: I spoke to were trying to solve big, weighty questions,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: existential questions, global questions. Me I'm being super practical. Mine
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: is news you can use. Is a subtle tweak on
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: an experiment that already happened, an experiment conducted early in
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  Speaker 1: the twentieth century by a brilliant young physician named David Marine.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: David Marine was born in Maryland and studied at Johns
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Hopkins School of Medicine. Then he went to do his
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: residency at Lakeside Hospital in Cleveland in nineteen oh five.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Cleveland on the banks of Lake Erie freshwater. Lake Erie
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: one of the Great lakes created by the Laurentide ice
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Sheet twenty thousand years ago. Cleveland built on a landscape
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  Speaker 1: shaped by glaciers which stripped away the iodine as they
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: retreated Goiter Country.
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: According to the legend, he was walking to his first
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: day of work and noticed that many of the women
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: in the neighborhood and all of the dogs had a
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: big goiter.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: That's Michael Zimmerman.
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: Again.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: He studied David Marine's career.
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: So when he was you know, he went to work
• 14:11
  Speaker 5: and he was asked like, what would you like to
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: work on in terms of your research focus here? He said, well,
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: maybe I should work on the thyroid because it seems
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: like there's a lot of thyroid disease around.
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  Speaker 1: In nineteen oh nine, Marine gets called in by a
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: local trout hatchery that's convinced their fish are suffering from
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  Speaker 1: a strange outbreak of cancer. All of the farmed fish
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: have a big bulge right near their thyroid. Marine tells
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: them that's not cancer. Your problem is you're feeding your
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: fish chopped up pigs hearts and livers, and the pigs
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  Speaker 1: of Ohio, which eat the iodine de fishient feedstocks of
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Ohio have no iodine in them. Marine tells them feed
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the fish chopped up seafish. The hatcheries follow his advice
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  Speaker 1: and the fish Goiters go away. In Ohio, David Marine
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: is doctor Gouter. He spends a decade gathering evidence in
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the laboratory. Then in nineteen seventeen, Marine goes to the
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Cleveland school board and says, I'd like to do an experiment.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Let me feed some iodine to your school children to
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: see if I can get rid of goiter. And Cleveland
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: says no. Of course, they say no, I mean, can
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: you imagine this scenario. Iodine is at this point still
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: considered a poison. The Food and Drug Administration wanted manufacturers
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: of iodine to put a skull and crossbones on the package,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: and Marine decides he only wants to dose girls with
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: iodine fifth grade enough, which surely must have seemed a
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: little shady at the time. Imagine that your twelve year
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: old daughter comes home from school one day with a
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: note from the teacher asking for your permission to let
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: little Janey take part in an experiment involving repeated doses
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: of something widely considered a poison. But no worries because
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: it'll be done under the supervision of some guy from
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: out east who's done a lot of work with trout.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Let me just read to you from the instructions Marine
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: wrote out to teachers. Quote, a few of the pupils,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: after two or three days may get what seems to
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: be a slight cold in the head with nasal discharge,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: and possibly more rarely, the appearance of pimples or a
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: slight rash on the body. It is nothing serious. End quote.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: So little Janney's going to come back home with a
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: head cold and covered in pimples and a rash after
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: being fed generous doses of a mysterious liquid. I mean,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: what would you say? You would say no thanks? Cleveland
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: says no thanks. But doctor Goiter has come too far
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: to give up, so he drives forty miles south to
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Akron and proposes the same idea to the Akron School board.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: An Akron doesn't say no. Akron says yes. And it
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: is in Akron that we get the first definitive proof
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: that if you give iodine to people, go to vanishes.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: How quickly did he see that improvement?
• 17:15
  Speaker 5: You saw it in a matter of weeks?
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Wow? So Akron is this weirdly open minded place in Cleveland?
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Is this weirdly closed minded place when it comes to
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: one of the most significant scientific findings of the twentieth century.
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: I think what happened is he went over to Akron
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: because the president of the Akron School District was also
• 17:34
  Speaker 5: an alum of Johns Hopkins and said, what do you
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: think shall we do this together? And the guy said, yeao,
• 17:43
  Speaker 5: I trust you.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: The Akron iodine experiment changes the world. It's up there
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: on the list of greatest public health breakthroughs in history.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: But that was more than a century ago when I
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: said I'd give Akron another shot at redemption. I was
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: talking about now. This whole thing started one day when
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: I was salting my pasta water. A light bulb went
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: off inside my head and I realized I too have
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: a magic wand first thing I did with my magic
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: wand idea I call up Sema Sigayer, who runs a
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: data analytics nonprofit called Cerco Ventures, lots of very smart
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: people using data to solve public health problems.
• 18:31
  Speaker 8: What do we not know about vaccine hesitancy? I think
• 18:35
  Speaker 8: one interesting thing that we do not know is whether
• 18:41
  Speaker 8: an injection actually matters. So I looked at a number
• 18:44
  Speaker 8: of studies, and none of them actually explored whether the
• 18:48
  Speaker 8: form of the vaccine matters.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: What she means by form is that there are plenty
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: of ways to deliver a vaccine. One is by needle
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: in a doctor's office, but you can give yourself a
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: flu shot through an inhaler, and the same thing is
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: being developed for a COVID vaccine. If we'd had the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: choice from day one of the pende to go needle
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: or inhaler, which would have made the most sense. We
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: don't know. Does the person who doesn't want to get
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: vaccinated object to the concept of the vaccination or just
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the form. Segaire said that her firm once did research
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: in India looking at why people were skeptical about certain
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: kinds of medical treatments.
• 19:29
  Speaker 8: And so while this is in India, and I'm not
• 19:31
  Speaker 8: suggesting that this may be true in the US, but
• 19:33
  Speaker 8: it's some really interesting results in that in India, for example,
• 19:36
  Speaker 8: anything in the form of a powder is least value
• 19:38
  Speaker 8: from a medicinal perspective, whereas a pill is of higher value,
• 19:43
  Speaker 8: an injection even higher value, and an ivy even higher value.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Are Westerners like Indians? Do we have an implied hierarchy
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: when it comes to the form of medicine takes. We
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 19:56
  Speaker 8: So it could be that for some people of vaccine
• 19:59
  Speaker 8: in the form of an inhaler may not be as
• 20:02
  Speaker 8: as valuable or perhaps as robust as an injection.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: For example, it's perception like I don't want to use
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: it because I can't imagine that inhaling a vaccine is
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: going to work. That's the thinking, and I can actually
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: sort of understand that that intuitively, there will be a
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: lot of people, particularly enthusiasts, who will be like, no, no,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: give me the real I want a little bit of pain.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: I want the real deal. Who knows where it's going
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: if I'm just sniffing it.
• 20:31
  Speaker 8: I mean, I'll be very honest, that's how I feel personally,
• 20:33
  Speaker 8: despite being a scientist and knowing that Inhaler's work, I'll
• 20:36
  Speaker 8: be like, I'd rather get an injection because my mental
• 20:39
  Speaker 8: model of vaccinations are injections, right, That's how vaccines have
• 20:43
  Speaker 8: always been given. So this is what we know. We
• 20:46
  Speaker 8: know that twenty four percent of Americans are fearful of needles.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: That's astonishingly high numbers. Emma, it is. Yeah, so are
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: the hardcore vaccine skeptics, the people jumping up and down
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: and saying COVID doesn't exist, really just scared of needles,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: like really scared of needles and don't want to admit it. Maybe.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, we see world class athletes giving up millions
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: of dollars in income because they refuse to get vaccinated.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: How on earth would a macho, testosterone driven manly man
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: at the top of their sport admit that they just
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: don't like the needle, even if they're given a lollipop afterwards,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: and even if the doctor distracts them with a puppet
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: and says, look at the puppet. Is this what it's
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: really all about? We don't know. We don't know anything.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: And when you're faced with this many, I don't knows
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: what do you do? An experiment? That's what When David
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Marine did his experiment on the schoolgirls of Akron, he
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: made them drink a little iodine suspended in solution. But
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: that obviously isn't practical if your goal is to give
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: iodine to everyone in Acron on a continuous basis. Besides,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: there were lots of idine skeptics around. Were they going
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: to drink iodine straight up, day in day out? Probably not.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: He needed a better solution. Why does everyone settle on
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: salt as the appropriate agent for delivering iodine to the population.
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: Yeap, Well, salt is you know, in a way, it's
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: a very good food fortification vehicle, period. I mean, it's
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: consumed by everybody in the population, Michael Zeruman. Again, it's
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: consumed in moderation. I mean, we eat too much salt,
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: but no one can eat like twenty or thirty grams
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: of salt in a day. Right. It's a good vehicle
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: for idine because idine is such a trace essential element
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: where we just need micrograms per day. You can easily
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: add it into a few grams of salt, so it
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: just disappears in there. And it's very stable. So if
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: added to reasonable quality salt, it's stable as well. And
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: it's very cheap. Right, So most places salt is a
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: very cheap commodity and even the poor can afford it.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Marine has a colleague, David Cowie, who starts writing letters
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: to the big salt companies of the Midwest pitching the
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: iodine idea.
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: I'm desirous of getting in communication with the proper person
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: in your company, with whom to take up the question
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: of the iodization of all salt used as food in Michigan.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: He writes to Morton Salt in Chicago, owned by mister Morton.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: He writes to Diamond Crystal Salt in Saint Clair, just
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: up the river from Detroit.
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: Before carrying our work any further, we are anxious to
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: counsel with the salt manufacturers and distributors in Michigan, Acquaint
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: them with our plan, give them all the information we have,
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: and get their ideas on the question, particularly as to
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: whether there would be any objection from their viewpoint.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: It works, and soon enough every salt company in the
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: country has agreed to add a dash of iodine to
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: their salt. And that's why there's no goiter to speak
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: of in Cleveland or Akron or anywhere else in the
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: goater belt. Why the IQs of the people in the
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: upper Peninsula of Michigan are no longer a standard deviation
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: lower than everyone Else's why the salt you buy in
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: the supermarket today has a label on the bottom iodized salt.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: That's why I sent my producers Leonelois to Michigan on
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: a cold winter's day, to the Saint Clair facility of
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: the Diamond Crystal Salt Company, the company that said yes
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: to David Cowie and David Marine a century ago. A big, rugged, ancient,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: iconic factory, shimmering in white dust, salt salt everywhere, a
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: temple of salt.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: So it looks Idad looks very similar to salts.
• 24:55
  Speaker 8: It looks almost identical to salt.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Leoneloiz saw the sacks of iodine waiting to be added
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: to mountains of salt. And then they went to a
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: small conference room to answer the crucial question. Is salt
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: the kind of miraculous substance where you can sneak all
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: kinds of stuff into it and no one will be
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the wiser? Wait, so you where did the taste test
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: take place? You're in what what kind of room?
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: Just a general like meeting room.
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: In the back.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: We had lunch altogether. We had burgers and fries, and
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: then we did the taste test after.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: That, and did the fries come salted or did you
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: salt them?
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: It came catered, so neither.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: They didn't need salt. But there was salt on the table.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Of course there was. They were in the bosom of
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: the Diamond Crystal Salt Company, one of the nation's premiere
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: salt making facilities. The entree is going to be perfectly salted,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: so the real taste test, Diamond Crystal flew in its
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: top salt specialists for the occasion. Lee and Eloise were
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: presented with two paper plates of salt, one pier when adulterated.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Heloise and Lee each take a big breath, then a
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: quick drink of water to cleanse the palate.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna guess this one's first one.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: Anybody you think I have no idea. They taste exactly
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: the same, extremely salty. I still taste it.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: It's extremely salty, both of them. Well, this one looks
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: like it's a different density, and maybe they added more
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: stuff to it.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: Oh they're so tiny, though, how can you even see
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: what's bigger?
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: Maybe this looks bigger.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: Oh this is smaller.
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: Oh, I need glasses.
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: That's the issue.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Is so which was? Which is which?
• 26:54
  Speaker 9: This one was the honest.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: They taste exactly the same.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Turns out you can put just about whatever you want
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: in salt and no one's going to notice. I think
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: you can see where I'm going with this. My magic
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: wand well, my, you know my idea. The reason I
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: called you is that I was curious about putting it
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: in salt along with iodine. By it, I mean the
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: COVID vaccine. Now, I realized that, given the present limits
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: of science, that's an impossibility. We don't know how to
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: make a vaccine so stable that you could stick it
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: in a condiment. Maybe someday not today. But that's why
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: this is a magic wand experiment the things that we
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: would love to do but can't because of the laws
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: of nature. But I have explained the rules of the
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: game to Semasigaiar and she has agreed to play. I
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: put it in salt, and I call it something different.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: I say, it's the anti COVID supplement that I'm sticking
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: in your salt. So we've now were not called we're
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: not using the word vaccine at all, because vaccine from
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: most people is associated with the thing that you get
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: in a needle, right, So now we're saying, actually, no, no, no,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: it's just like idine or you know, the the niosin
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: in your weed or whatever, and weed I forget. It's
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: a nutritional supplement that we're putting in salt, which we
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: think will help fight covid. Does my question is does
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: moving the COVID vaccine from the vaccine category to the
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: nutritional supplement category help us with the skeptic.
• 28:44
  Speaker 8: So you're not calling that a vaccine, you're still tricking
• 28:46
  Speaker 8: them in some ways, right, because you're not giving them
• 28:49
  Speaker 8: the full information.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's take it for granted here. There's gonna be
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: some trickery, but I'm calling it. I'm just saying it's
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: a supplement and it just helps you fight COVID accurate.
• 29:00
  Speaker 8: Right, Sure, you've reframed, You've essentially reframed the product in
• 29:06
  Speaker 8: a way that doesn't play into their beliefs that you know,
• 29:11
  Speaker 8: the vaccine has market chips that are following them as
• 29:14
  Speaker 8: doing X. It's yeah, yeah, I think it could.
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: So.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: In other words, the threshold of resistance for something that
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: you eat as part of your regular diet, we would
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: this is what we'd like to find out. Is that
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: lower than your threshold of resistance for something that is
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: a that is framed as a medical intervention. Is there
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: a category of person who who is a COVID skeptic
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: who would then whose skepticism would translate as indifference to
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: some kind of intervention. So it's hard to be indifferent
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: about a shot, particularly when you have to go to
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: the doctor register, wait in line, blah blah blah. But
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: maybe it's so easy to be indifferent too. I'm in
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: McDonald's and it's it's on my fries. So it's like,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: and if I don't believe it COVID exists in the
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: first place, what I would do is roll my eyes.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: The people who think that by eating fries they're protecting themselves.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: But I'm not going to not eat the.
• 30:16
  Speaker 8: Fries, right because I care about the fries.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: I care about the fries. That's my hope. Listeners may
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: remember one of my favorite all time Revisionist History episodes,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: season two, McDonald's Broke My Heart. We take fries very
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: seriously here. Fries can change the world.
• 30:36
  Speaker 8: No, it's true. I mean you don't always have to
• 30:38
  Speaker 8: change someone's belief or their mental model to get them
• 30:41
  Speaker 8: to do a behavior.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:43
  Speaker 8: Right, you can make it very easy. You can make
• 30:48
  Speaker 8: the thing that you want them to do and impediment
• 30:50
  Speaker 8: for something they really care about, as you said, like
• 30:52
  Speaker 8: eating the fries.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, maybe this whole COVID fighting salt
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: idea might be a bust. Remember the whole brew haha
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: over fluoride. The powers that be put fluoride in the
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: water supply back of the nineteen fifties as a simple
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: way to fight tooth decay, and some people are still
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: upset about it to this day. Portland, Oregon, refuses to
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: floridate its water. Go to Portland, ask people there how
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: many cavities they have. They would rather sit in a
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: dentist's chair, all numbed up and get drilled for an
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: hour that have the government slip something harmless in their
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: drinking water. To paraphrase the old cliche, the people of
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Portland will cut off their teeth despite their mouths. There
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: is a scenario where putting the vaccine in salt is
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: every bit is insidious or maybe even more insidious than
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: putting it in a vaccine right in the same way
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: that fluoride was considered to be insidious by virtue of
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: the fact that it was ubiquitous, it was unavoidable and everywhere.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: We're still going to get a skeptic group with the salt.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: The question is whether the skeptic group with the salt
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: is smaller than the skeptic group with the needle.
• 32:13
  Speaker 8: Or now you get another skeptic on top of the
• 32:15
  Speaker 8: existing skeptic you know, I mean, yes, this will be
• 32:19
  Speaker 8: like a massive government intervention my people, who really you know,
• 32:21
  Speaker 8: don't want the government interfering.
• 32:23
  Speaker 6: In their lives.
• 32:23
  Speaker 8: This is that, right, This is like the government now
• 32:26
  Speaker 8: telling me I can't avoid because I have to have
• 32:28
  Speaker 8: the salt with the vaccine.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: What if the geniuses at Maderna came up with COVID
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: vaccine two point zero, which was so incredibly ingenious that
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: we could just throw it in with the iodine in
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: our table salt. Well, we have no idea whether that
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: would help our struggle to get everyone vaccinated. Hence my
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: magic wand Akron versus Cleveland. Just like all times, Akron
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: gets COVID salt, Cleveland gets the needle. All that Semma
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: wave the magic wand so tell me what the experiment
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: should look like.
• 33:05
  Speaker 8: Okay, So I would actually have three arms, so the experiment.
• 33:10
  Speaker 8: So I'd have obviously one arm of the experiment, which
• 33:12
  Speaker 8: is why people have to go and get their needle
• 33:14
  Speaker 8: the regular today. I would have one arm of the experiment,
• 33:18
  Speaker 8: whereas all the salt that a group of people in
• 33:21
  Speaker 8: this place are consuming actually already has the vaccine, right
• 33:24
  Speaker 8: they cannot choose. And then I would have another arm
• 33:27
  Speaker 8: where the packages that you call in the supermarket are
• 33:31
  Speaker 8: actually labeled. You know, some of them have the COVID
• 33:35
  Speaker 8: what did you call.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: It, It's the anti COVID supplement, anti COVID supplement.
• 33:40
  Speaker 8: So some of the packages would have the anti COVID
• 33:41
  Speaker 8: supplement and someone so you give them a choice.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Essentially no choice, salt choice salt needle. That's our magic
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: wand experiment. Cleveland gets it in the arm, Acron gets
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: it in the salt, and someone else has to choose
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: between salts. Let's make that I don't know Toledo three arms,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: three arms. We run the experiment for six months, an
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: experiment in how the form of vaccine affects hesitancy. We
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: kind of know what happens in Cleveland. Most people get
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: their vaccine shots, but there'll still be a big group
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: who don't. But what about Toledo, where you get to
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: choose whether or not you want anti COVID salt supplement.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: We don't know. But the bigger unknown is Acron. You
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: can't live an Acron and not get vaccinated unless you
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: systematically remove all salt from your diet, never eat out,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: consume flavorless pasta, and soup suffer. So do people leave
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Akron in a panic? Or do they say, I'm an
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: Akronite inheritor of a grand tradition of using my salt
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: shaker to solve the greater problems of the world. Fit
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: I'm in, in which case, within days, Acron is the
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: shining city on a hill. Masks come off the hospitals,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Empty strangers give each other hugs and big, sloppy kisses.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: A convoy of angry long hauled truckers chanting my body,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: my Choice, starts out in Cincinnati and heads for Akron,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: only to turn back in frustration when they stopped for
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: luncheon McDonald's in downtown Akron and inadvertently vaccinate themselves. And
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: soon people across this great country, from California to the
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: New York Island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Stream Waters would rise up and say with one voice,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: I'll have Akron salt with my fries. Salt. The tastes
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: like freedom.
• 35:49
  Speaker 9: I went back to how.
• 35:54
  Speaker 10: Oh my beers were gone.
• 35:58
  Speaker 9: There were no mass man days, restaurants, downtown.
• 36:07
  Speaker 8: Sars.
• 36:08
  Speaker 11: COVID is just here, even from unbendilated.
• 36:13
  Speaker 10: Places, salt shakers everywhere, reducing hospital chases.
• 36:25
  Speaker 11: Hey, oh, way to go oh hi yo, Hey way
• 36:37
  Speaker 11: to go Hi.
• 36:48
  Speaker 9: Revisionist History is produced by Eloise Linton, Lee mcgisto, and
• 36:53
  Speaker 9: Jacob Smith, with Tally Amlin and Harrison VJ.
• 36:56
  Speaker 10: Choy.
• 36:57
  Speaker 9: Our editor is Julia Barton. Our executive producer is Meil Lavelle.
• 37:03
  Speaker 9: Original scoring by Luis Gara, mastering by Flon Williams and
• 37:06
  Speaker 9: engineering by Nina Lawrence. Fact check by keish L Williams.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Oh and special thanks to Dave Hall on vocals and guitar.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Additional engineering by Amon Drum and Yuroch Jovanovich at the
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Bridge Studios. Our voice actor was David Glover. Thanks also
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: to the University Hospitals of Cleveland Archive and the folks
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: who make diamond crystal salt at the Cargill Salt Plant.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: I'm Matthew Blaba.
• 38:14
  Speaker 7: I went back to Ohio and the corner was gone.
• 38:23
  Speaker 7: There were no one sightly masses on people's necks downtown.
• 38:32
  Speaker 7: Hey oh wait to go ohi
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Yo, hey oh wait to go higher.