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Selects: Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Feminist Physician · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Hi, their friends, It's me Josh, And for this week's Select,
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Speaker 1: I've chosen our April twenty twenty episode on Elizabeth Blackwell,
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Speaker 1: who is a complex person to say the least, and
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Speaker 1: she's a great example of how nobody fits neatly into
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Speaker 1: one group or another. And she's a great lesson and
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Speaker 1: how a person who you might hold different views from
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Speaker 1: and values from can still be one of your heroes.
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Speaker 1: I hope you get a lot out of this episode
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Speaker 1: about Elizabeth Blackwell, the feminist icon.
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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:41
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
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Speaker 1: Charles w Charles Chuck, Wayne Twain Bryant, and there's Jerry
0:50
Speaker 1: Jerome Roland, the Rizzy, And I'm just Josh, like just
0:56
Speaker 1: Jack was just Jack Wow, Okay, heck coming in, Thank you.
1:01
Speaker 1: Let's do a little jazz hands there.
1:03
Speaker 3: Just call me Twain Chwain from now on, Chwain. It's
1:07
Speaker 3: not awkward to pronounce.
1:08
Speaker 1: It's really close to schwing. Remember that shwing, Oh man,
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Speaker 1: I totally forgot about it until just now. Shwing, Chuck shwing, shwing.
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Speaker 3: That's how you have to say it.
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Speaker 1: No, you can say it anyway like schwing.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, what I really love is that we're talking
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Speaker 2: about America's first woman physician, an amazing woman named doctor
1:35
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Blackwell, who had an amazing family and her story
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Speaker 2: is incredible, and we're saying shwing, shwing at the beginning.
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Speaker 1: Right, especially considering that she was a a rather puritanical
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Speaker 1: person in a lot of senses, she would probably not
1:54
Speaker 1: have been down with us saying shwing.
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Speaker 2: No, no, because you know what, uh, she and her
2:02
Speaker 2: family were Quakers, And I know some Quakers and have
2:05
Speaker 2: known some Quakers. They hate shwing, they do, but you
2:09
Speaker 2: know what they love what being awesome?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean for sure this I get
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Speaker 1: the impression that her entire family is a pretty good
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Speaker 1: example of like a like a Quaker family.
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Speaker 3: Quaker.
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Speaker 2: Every Quaker I've known has just had it like had
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Speaker 2: it all figured out. It seems like they're like the
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Speaker 2: the Buddhists of the West.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, pretty much. They also I think they also
2:37
Speaker 1: go by the Society of Friends, which says a lot too. Yeah,
2:42
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. And then, if you remember correctly, Charles
2:45
Speaker 1: are Pacifist episode focused heavily on the Quakers because they're
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Speaker 1: big time pacifists too. So Elizabeth Blackwell, just by virtue
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Speaker 1: of having been a Quaker, was a pretty interesting, like
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Speaker 1: upstanding up, bright person with a good head on her shoulders.
3:03
Speaker 1: But she also, like individually personally, was a very amazing person.
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Speaker 1: And not just the fact that she was the first
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Speaker 1: licensed woman physician in America. Yeah, but to get there
3:18
Speaker 1: she really had to blaze her own path and put
3:21
Speaker 1: up with a lot of bs, you might put it,
3:27
Speaker 1: and so much so that even in her autobiography, which
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Speaker 1: was published in eighteen ninety five when she was in
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Speaker 1: her seventies, I think she called it pioneering work, and
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Speaker 1: that there's really no better way to put it. She
3:41
Speaker 1: was absolutely a pioneer, and not just getting herself established
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Speaker 1: as a woman physician in America, but in making it
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Speaker 1: so that there could be more women physician in America, physicians.
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Speaker 3: And more and more, much more. So.
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Speaker 2: Let's start with, oh, I don't know, February eighteen twenty one.
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Speaker 1: What's significant about that date.
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Speaker 2: She was born as a little bebe near Bristol, England.
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Speaker 2: She was the third of nine children. Her mom was
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Speaker 2: Hannah Lane, who came from a family of merchants who
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Speaker 2: had some dough and her pops was Samuel Blackwell.
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Speaker 3: He was a sugar refiner and also prosperous.
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Speaker 2: And like we said, they were Quakers, which means that
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Speaker 2: they were very cool, and this was eighteen twenty one.
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Speaker 2: They were not down with slavery. They were activists against slavery.
4:32
Speaker 2: They were abolitionists. They supported women's suffrage. Her brother Henry
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Speaker 2: married Lucy Stone, who was very famous women's rights activist.
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Speaker 2: Her little sister Emily followed in her footsteps in medicine.
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Speaker 2: Her sister in law Antoinette Brown Blackwell, first female ordained
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Speaker 2: minister in Protestant the Protestant denomination. Yeah, they were way
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Speaker 2: ahead of their time.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can trace I mean, both of her
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Speaker 1: parents seem to be pretty cool, and you can trace
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Speaker 1: there the roots of their sensibilities back to their parents.
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Speaker 1: Like Samuel was a dissenter, like he was a Quaker,
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Speaker 1: which is I guess a form of Protestantism, but he
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Speaker 1: was definitely he didn't recognize like the sole religious authority
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Speaker 1: of say, like the Church of England or anything like that.
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Speaker 1: And so as a result his children could not go
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Speaker 1: to public school. He said, fine, I've got some money
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Speaker 1: I'm a prosperous sugar merchant. I'm going to hire the
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Speaker 1: best tutors I can find. And not only that, I'm
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Speaker 1: going to defy the conventions of England and have these
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Speaker 1: tutors teach my daughters the same stuff that they're going
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Speaker 1: to teach my sons, which is unheard of. But that
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Speaker 1: really formed the basis for especially Elizabeth's progression and education
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Speaker 1: that she came to expect to be taught just like
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Speaker 1: she was a boy because of how she was raised.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, by all accounts, her parents were
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Speaker 2: both pretty great. Her dad was a very caring individual.
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Speaker 2: He thought that all kids of any gender should reach
6:11
Speaker 2: their full potential. Sure, he didn't physically punish his kids,
6:14
Speaker 2: which was weird.
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Speaker 3: At the time. People are like, why ain't you hitting
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Speaker 3: your kids? Yeah, and he said, I don't believe in it.
6:20
Speaker 1: I've got a switch right here you can borrow. Well, yeah, really,
6:24
Speaker 1: do we.
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Speaker 2: Not have a switch? That's what the deal is. He
6:26
Speaker 2: doesn't have a switch or a paddles. Let's get him
6:29
Speaker 2: a switch so he you know, they would had sort
6:32
Speaker 2: of like a demerit system in their house, and if
6:35
Speaker 2: you add it up to too many demerits. You would
6:38
Speaker 2: have to do something like eat by yourself in the
6:41
Speaker 2: attic or something that sounds horrific, also like sticking a
6:45
Speaker 2: kid in a closet. But I think it was just
6:47
Speaker 2: a room removed from the family dinner.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just you have to go away from
6:51
Speaker 1: the family. We can't even bear to look at you. You
6:53
Speaker 1: make us want a puke.
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Speaker 3: That's right. But everything changed when he lost his sugar
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Speaker 3: refinery in a fire and said, you know what, let's
7:01
Speaker 3: pack our bags and let's move to New York City.
7:06
Speaker 1: New York City.
7:07
Speaker 3: That's right, New York City.
7:09
Speaker 1: Do you remember back in I don't know, like around
7:12
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven eight. I feel like it was
7:14
Speaker 1: right when we both started working around how stuff works,
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Speaker 1: that is sugar refinery and Savannah blew up.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember that.
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Speaker 1: I wrote an article about that. It's like that sugar
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Speaker 1: dust is volatile it they can catch fire, and I
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Speaker 1: wondering if that's what happened to his sugar refinery.
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Speaker 3: I bet you.
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Speaker 1: Okay, So they moved to New York. They lived in
7:32
Speaker 1: New York and New Jersey for six years, as you do. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: And one of the cool things that I liked about him.
7:39
Speaker 1: He was a little paradoxical. So he was a sugar
7:42
Speaker 1: refinery made his money off of sugar refining. But the
7:45
Speaker 1: sugar industry was based almost entirely on slave labor around
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Speaker 1: the world how sugarcane was grown. That's how he didn't
7:55
Speaker 1: use slaves, I can tell you that. But he still
7:57
Speaker 1: made his money in an industry that was heavy, heavy
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Speaker 1: on slavery. And in fact, his children were such staunch abolitionists.
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Speaker 1: Even as young children, they refused to eat sugar because
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Speaker 1: they knew that slaves had had a hand in producing it,
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Speaker 1: so they would they wouldn't even eat it as kids.
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Speaker 1: Little kids wouldn't need sugar because of the slavery involved.
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Speaker 1: But he still made his money off of that. But
8:23
Speaker 1: when he got to America, one of the first things
8:25
Speaker 1: he tried was to introduce sugar beets, which don't require
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Speaker 1: slave labor. There's a much less labor intensive process of
8:34
Speaker 1: extracting sugar from sugar beets, and this was really revolutionary
8:40
Speaker 1: at the time. They think they first isolated sugar from
8:43
Speaker 1: beats in eighteen hundred, like thirty years before, and they
8:47
Speaker 1: had been introduced to America just like two years before.
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Speaker 1: He took this up, so he was on the cutting
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Speaker 1: edge of sugar beat production. But it didn't actually work
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Speaker 1: out very well.
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Speaker 2: No, his original sugar refinery went went south in eighteen
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Speaker 2: thirty seven, so he said, let me move to Cincinnata
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Speaker 2: and I'll get in on the sugar beat thing. But
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Speaker 2: just a few weeks after they got to Cincinnati, in
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Speaker 2: August of eighteen thirty eight, he died of a fever.
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Speaker 2: And because he had lost that sugar refinery and didn't
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Speaker 2: have the next sugar beat operation up and going, they
9:21
Speaker 2: didn't have a lot of dough. His family was left
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Speaker 2: without a lot of money.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, which I mean, that's kind of be really tough
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Speaker 1: to go from wealthy to not, you know, in just
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Speaker 1: one fell swoop. But that's kind of what happened with
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Speaker 1: Elizabeth's family. And a few years later she resolved, and
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Speaker 1: she was twenty one that she would not be dependent
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Speaker 1: on any man, that she was going to be self sufficient,
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Speaker 1: and she was never going to marry, and she wanted
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Speaker 1: to make her own way. And I mean, it's pretty
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Speaker 1: tough not to trace that line directly back to you
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Speaker 1: to state that her father left his family and not
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Speaker 1: in any way that you know, that was his own
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Speaker 1: doing or his own fault, but that was just the
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Speaker 1: conventions of the time. And so for a woman to
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Speaker 1: resolve that she would make her own way in life
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Speaker 1: was very unconventional. But if Elizabeth Blackwell was anything, she
10:13
Speaker 1: was very unconventional.
10:15
Speaker 3: That's right.
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Speaker 2: So she and her mom and a couple of her sisters,
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Speaker 2: they were teachers for a little while, and she eventually
10:23
Speaker 2: and this is kind of jumping ahead a bit, but
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Speaker 2: she did adopt a girl, a seven year old Irish
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Speaker 2: immigrant orphan that she named Kitty. Her name was Catherine
10:31
Speaker 2: Barry and went by Kitty, and she was with her
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Speaker 2: for the duration of her life. But she never got married,
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Speaker 2: and she decided to become a doctor when she had
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Speaker 2: a really close friend who was dying, said you know what,
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Speaker 2: I think that I might have lived if I might
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Speaker 2: have had a woman as a doctor, because they're more
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Speaker 2: compassionate and I might have gotten better treatment. And Elizabeth
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Speaker 2: Blackwell was like, WHOA, that really speaks to me.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, they think that the woman was probably dying of
11:03
Speaker 1: uterine cancer, and she thinks that she would have she
11:07
Speaker 1: would have disclosed more of her condition possible sooner and
11:10
Speaker 1: at the very least she would have been more comfortable
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Speaker 1: in her dying days being treated by a woman rather
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Speaker 1: than poked and prodded by some man who seemed to
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Speaker 1: be less compassionate than she believed a woman would be.
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Speaker 1: The thing about Elizabeth Blackwell is she, first of all,
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Speaker 1: she was struck by this, and she was so struck
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Speaker 1: struck by it that she it moved her to want
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Speaker 1: to become a doctor. But not only that, she had
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Speaker 1: to overcome a natural, deep seated aversion to the idea
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Speaker 1: of the body or anatomy or medicine. Like she was
11:45
Speaker 1: not at all interested in this to begin with, and
11:48
Speaker 1: in fact, she had an aversion to it, but she
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Speaker 1: was so moved by that woman and her experience that
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Speaker 1: she resolved to overcome her disgust in her aversion at
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Speaker 1: bodily functions an anatomy and become a doctor herself.
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Speaker 3: It's pretty I mean, that's a really key detail.
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Speaker 1: It is a huge league. I mean that's enormous. Like
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Speaker 1: not only she like she just wasn't a kid who
12:10
Speaker 1: wanted to be a doctor.
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Speaker 2: Right, Like, I love the side of blood and internal organs,
12:14
Speaker 2: so this kind of fits anyway.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, she had to overcome an aversion to it on
12:18
Speaker 1: top of overcoming the aversion that society had against a
12:23
Speaker 1: woman becoming a doctor, because at the time it was
12:26
Speaker 1: it was considered that a woman couldn't know enough about
12:30
Speaker 1: the human body to be a physician and still be
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Speaker 1: considered a morally upright woman, that her morals were at
12:37
Speaker 1: risk of being corrupted just by knowing everything there is
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Speaker 1: to know about the human body.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, let's be honest. They would have to
12:46
Speaker 2: see a male penis as part of their training.
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Speaker 1: Sure, a pp.
12:52
Speaker 3: So, man, we're.
12:54
Speaker 2: Such children, we are. So she said, all right, I'm
12:58
Speaker 2: gonna do this. I'm gonna get over this. I'm going
12:59
Speaker 2: to be a doctor. How do I do this? I'll
13:01
Speaker 2: just go to medical school. Medical school said no, no, no, no, no.
13:05
Speaker 2: Women can't go to medical school. There are a few
13:08
Speaker 2: ladies around the country that are unlicensed physicians that worked
13:12
Speaker 2: as apprentices and learn their trade, but.
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Speaker 3: You're not going to go this traditional route.
13:17
Speaker 2: And medical school at the time was just weird anyway,
13:20
Speaker 2: which we'll get into a little bit later.
13:22
Speaker 1: But we I mean, we also got into it in
13:24
Speaker 1: our grave robbing episode. Yees was similar to that time.
13:27
Speaker 3: Around that time, it was crazy. It wasn't like it
13:31
Speaker 3: wasn't the I don't think doctors were as respected back then.
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Speaker 1: Even No, they I know, because they were the ones
13:39
Speaker 1: we who were cutting open bodies and just kind of
13:42
Speaker 1: figuring stuff out as they went along. And if you
13:44
Speaker 1: went to a doctor, there was like an eighty percent
13:46
Speaker 1: chance you were walking out one limb short.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
13:51
Speaker 2: So she while she was a teacher, she boarded with families,
13:56
Speaker 2: and that she did a lot of this stuff in
13:57
Speaker 2: the South, which we'll get to as well. But two
14:00
Speaker 2: Southern physicians mentored her. She still could not get into
14:05
Speaker 2: medical school. Of course, she had some physician friends who
14:08
Speaker 2: were Quakers. She asked them about it. They said, that's
14:11
Speaker 2: a great idea, but no, it costs too much. You're
14:14
Speaker 2: never going to be able to get in. What you
14:17
Speaker 2: should do is disguise yourself as a man and go
14:19
Speaker 2: to France. And she was like, not a bad idea.
14:22
Speaker 1: If that's the best advice somebody's giving you, you need
14:25
Speaker 1: to rethink the people who you take advice from.
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Speaker 2: It sounds like she was game, though, but she decided
14:31
Speaker 2: to save money instead and apply to medical school in
14:35
Speaker 2: the United States.
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Speaker 3: So in today dollars that did the.
14:41
Speaker 2: Old inflation calculator three grand back then, it would be
14:45
Speaker 2: about eighty five thousand dollars today, So that's a.
14:48
Speaker 3: Lot of money.
14:49
Speaker 2: And she between I think, for a period of two
14:52
Speaker 2: or three years, went south and taught school and slave states,
14:56
Speaker 2: which was very hard for her to do in order
14:58
Speaker 2: to save money for medical school. Yeah, she didn't know
15:01
Speaker 2: what she could get into anyway.
15:02
Speaker 1: Right exactly. In the first place she taught in Kentucky,
15:05
Speaker 1: she only lasted a year. She's just found the social
15:08
Speaker 1: climate so intolerable. Yeah, she was really you know, she
15:13
Speaker 1: couldn't put up with it. And I don't know how
15:15
Speaker 1: she was able to better in North and South Carolina,
15:18
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean she managed in two years to
15:22
Speaker 1: raise eighty three grand from teaching I guess rich kids
15:25
Speaker 1: in North and South Carolina. But she also while she
15:30
Speaker 1: was there, she's like, well, I want to teach the
15:32
Speaker 1: slave kids too. I'll do it pro bono. And they said, well,
15:35
Speaker 1: it's against the law for you to teach slave kids.
15:38
Speaker 1: And they said, but you can teach them Sunday school.
15:41
Speaker 1: And she said, fine, I'll do that. And there was
15:43
Speaker 1: a great quote that came from her in a letter
15:47
Speaker 1: to her family in eighteen forty five, and I'm not
15:50
Speaker 1: sure what state she was in, maybe even Kentucky, but
15:54
Speaker 1: she said, I assure you I felt a little odd
15:57
Speaker 1: sitting down before those degraded little beings, saying they were
16:00
Speaker 1: naturally degraded, that they had been degraded by other people.
16:03
Speaker 1: I believe to teach them a religion which the owners
16:07
Speaker 1: profess to follow whilst violating its very first principles. It
16:12
Speaker 1: really does. She was like, you know, these people are
16:16
Speaker 1: profess to be Christians, but do not treat other people
16:19
Speaker 1: like Christians. And that's just such a Quaker thing to do.
16:22
Speaker 3: Huh, that is a very Quaker thing to do.
16:24
Speaker 1: You want to take a little break, Yeah, let's do it. Okay,
16:27
Speaker 1: We're going to take a break, everybody, and we'll be
16:29
Speaker 1: back to tell you more about Elizabeth Blackwell's progress towards
16:32
Speaker 1: med school. So, Chuck, like you said, she was mentored
16:54
Speaker 1: by a couple of doctors who she stayed with while
16:57
Speaker 1: she was teaching in North and South Carolina, one of
17:00
Speaker 1: whom was actually a professor of medicine, so he had
17:03
Speaker 1: all the books. He was very encouraging to her. He
17:07
Speaker 1: taught her everything he could. And that was, like you said,
17:10
Speaker 1: a way that a woman could become a physician, but
17:13
Speaker 1: an unlicensed physician certainly not one that was in any
17:18
Speaker 1: way established as an actual legitimate physician. And that was
17:22
Speaker 1: ultimately her goal.
17:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like she continued to get sort of tutored by
17:27
Speaker 2: different people in the South that she knew who were physicians,
17:31
Speaker 2: and it was great that these.
17:33
Speaker 3: Men encouraged her and tutored her. Said, here, used my books.
17:37
Speaker 2: But again, like you said, she wanted to do the
17:39
Speaker 2: real deal and forge a path and not just kind
17:43
Speaker 2: of go the back door route. So she applied to
17:47
Speaker 2: all the medical schools in New York and Philly. She
17:50
Speaker 2: applied to twelve more in the Northeast. She was rejected
17:54
Speaker 2: by all of them, and on the thirtieth application to
17:58
Speaker 2: Geneva Medical College in Western New York in eighteen forty seven,
18:03
Speaker 2: she was accepted. And I raised my voice because she
18:08
Speaker 2: got accepted. Because it was a joke that well everyone
18:14
Speaker 2: thought it was a practical joke. The professor there, the
18:16
Speaker 2: dean of the medical med school, basically said.
18:19
Speaker 3: Hey, let's take a vote here.
18:21
Speaker 2: We'll have all the men here that go here vote
18:24
Speaker 2: on whether or not a woman can come to school here.
18:28
Speaker 2: And if every single person says yes, she can come here,
18:31
Speaker 2: and if one person says no.
18:33
Speaker 3: She won't.
18:33
Speaker 2: They all thought it was a prank from I guess
18:36
Speaker 2: the neighboring rival medical school, say West Geneva. Yeah, they said, sure,
18:42
Speaker 2: let her in and it wasn't a joke. And they
18:44
Speaker 2: did let her in.
18:45
Speaker 1: They did, and apparently they were all very surprised. Like
18:50
Speaker 1: this almost sounds like an urban legend, but from what
18:52
Speaker 1: I saw, like this is across the board. What happened
18:55
Speaker 1: that they thought it was a practical joke and it
18:58
Speaker 1: turned out to be real. And that is how she
19:00
Speaker 1: up going to medical school.
19:01
Speaker 3: Unbelievable.
19:02
Speaker 1: So when she showed up, she was taking this quite seriously.
19:06
Speaker 1: She was twenty six already, she'd spent some time like
19:08
Speaker 1: living around, seeing the country. Just she was twenty six,
19:13
Speaker 1: Like that says a lot about a person over say
19:15
Speaker 1: like twenty or nineteen or something like that. And so
19:19
Speaker 1: she when she showed up, not only was she a
19:21
Speaker 1: little more mature, probably than some of her contemporaries, she
19:24
Speaker 1: also was she was well aware of the convention she
19:30
Speaker 1: was breaking, of the challenges and the obstacles that laid
19:33
Speaker 1: ahead of her. And there's a pretty good report like
19:37
Speaker 1: the fact that she showed up at medical school made
19:40
Speaker 1: the papers, and in fact, the Boston Medical Journal even
19:43
Speaker 1: wrote up something about the fact that she was Yeah,
19:46
Speaker 1: that she was there taking medical classes. The Boston Medical
19:49
Speaker 1: Journal said that she comes into the class with great composure,
19:53
Speaker 1: takes off her bonnet and puts it under the seat,
19:56
Speaker 1: exposing a fine phrenology.
19:58
Speaker 3: Are you kidding me? You're talking about the shape of
20:01
Speaker 3: her head.
20:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but this is the Boston Medical Journal at
20:05
Speaker 1: the time. Hopefully the BMJ has officially stopped using phrenology, yeah,
20:12
Speaker 1: in any way, shape or form. But we'll have to
20:14
Speaker 1: We'll have to get a subscription and find out.
20:17
Speaker 2: So we talked earlier about the fact that medical school
20:20
Speaker 2: at the time was really different. It sounds like animal
20:23
Speaker 2: house or something. It was very raucous. Apparently when there
20:28
Speaker 2: were lecturers, you would make crude jokes out loud, and
20:32
Speaker 2: no matter what you're talking about. It sounds like a
20:34
Speaker 2: bunch of children taking sex at or something. Yeah, in
20:37
Speaker 2: like the sixth grade. But apparently Blackwell's effect on the whole,
20:42
Speaker 2: like every class she went into was everyone took it
20:45
Speaker 2: a lot more seriously because she was there.
20:48
Speaker 1: Yeah. Because again, like if you were a man, you
20:51
Speaker 1: acted far, far, far differently around a woman at the time,
20:55
Speaker 1: where you were just much more genteel. It was just
20:57
Speaker 1: the social convention, and so you had to bite your tongue.
21:01
Speaker 1: In medical school if Elizabeth Blackwell is in your class,
21:06
Speaker 1: so you just did. That was just kind of the
21:07
Speaker 1: effect that she had on class just by being a woman.
21:10
Speaker 1: But even beyond that, there was this whole view that
21:15
Speaker 1: these guys were somehow contributing to this woman's moral corruption
21:21
Speaker 1: by even being in the same class with her, let
21:24
Speaker 1: alone being the instructor teaching her. And so one of
21:27
Speaker 1: the things she ran into in med school was she
21:29
Speaker 1: would sometimes be asked to go step outside because this
21:33
Speaker 1: particular lecture is a little rough, and Elizabeth Blackwell did
21:37
Speaker 1: not truck to that at all. She was very adamant that. Remember,
21:41
Speaker 1: she was educated like a boy by the tutors her
21:43
Speaker 1: father hired. She had a full expectation to be left
21:47
Speaker 1: out of absolutely nothing. At med school. She was to
21:50
Speaker 1: be a full physician, and so she was to learn
21:52
Speaker 1: everything that any physician would learn. And eventually, over time
21:56
Speaker 1: she kind of overcame this genteel opposition to her presence
22:01
Speaker 1: by her professors, in male classmates.
22:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think in no small part due to
22:06
Speaker 2: her serious take in her fastidiousness, in her the fact
22:12
Speaker 2: that in the end she graduated first in her class.
22:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, this says a lot.
22:16
Speaker 2: She was the best student in eighteen forty nine. She
22:18
Speaker 2: graduated first, ultimately earned the respect of her fellow students.
22:25
Speaker 2: Not to say that it was a it was a cakewalk.
22:29
Speaker 2: There were still plenty of jerks there, and you know,
22:32
Speaker 2: a lot of them had animosity toward her.
22:34
Speaker 1: Remember a cakewalk is racist?
22:37
Speaker 3: Is it really?
22:37
Speaker 1: Yeah? I remember we did a show on what was it?
22:42
Speaker 1: I can't remember. The words that have different origins than
22:47
Speaker 1: you would think, are different meanings than you would think.
22:49
Speaker 3: You remember, Yeah, I think I do remember that.
22:52
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, everybody, I'm sorry for interrupting you.
22:56
Speaker 3: That's okay.
22:57
Speaker 1: So it was no pie walk, good save chuck.
23:02
Speaker 3: Still plenty of jerks.
23:04
Speaker 2: There were some men there that would would laugh at her,
23:09
Speaker 2: some in there that would support her, some men that
23:11
Speaker 2: would jeer at her, some men that would help her out.
23:14
Speaker 2: But like I said, in the end, she got that
23:16
Speaker 2: degree first in her class. Apparently, and I don't know
23:19
Speaker 2: if this is the movie version, but the medical School's
23:22
Speaker 2: Dean bowed to her when she accepted her diploma, and
23:26
Speaker 2: everyone busted out in applause.
23:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what a newspaper account said from the correspondent
23:32
Speaker 1: who was there. And they also added and brother Bluto
23:36
Speaker 1: became Senator Blue Tarski. Nice. That wrapped everything up.
23:41
Speaker 3: Do you think that movie age as well? We're talking
23:43
Speaker 3: about Animal House again.
23:44
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it in a wive should say sorry
23:48
Speaker 1: in a while. I'm not sure. Okay, I have seen
23:52
Speaker 1: it plenty of times, but I haven't seen it in
23:53
Speaker 1: a while. I'm sure it doesn't it can't. Uh.
23:58
Speaker 3: I don't know, man, I think it's kind of timeless.
24:00
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
24:03
Speaker 2: However, I've heard certain people that I won't name say
24:06
Speaker 2: it doesn't age well nol Oh yeah, yeah, Noel didn't
24:11
Speaker 2: think you think there's a there's a raft of comedies
24:14
Speaker 2: from that era that just are not funny.
24:16
Speaker 1: Now wait, not funny or politically?
24:19
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, not funny.
24:21
Speaker 2: Oh gotcha, Yeah, it doesn't age wells in like, why
24:24
Speaker 2: is this? Why do people think this is a comedy classic?
24:26
Speaker 2: It's not even that good?
24:27
Speaker 1: Gotcha? Gotcha? Okay, Yeah, I'll have to watch it again.
24:29
Speaker 1: I haven't I haven't seen it.
24:31
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, I think it's kind of timeless
24:32
Speaker 2: in its comedy, Okay, I mean sure there are parts
24:35
Speaker 2: that don't age well in every other respect, like any
24:38
Speaker 2: comedy made before like four years ago.
24:40
Speaker 1: Sure, that's what I or know, Like like the last
24:42
Speaker 1: five minutes, I thought that's what you were talking about. No,
24:45
Speaker 1: I mean it's entirely possible, because I've seen some comedies
24:48
Speaker 1: where I'm like, this is this is not at all funny,
24:50
Speaker 1: like spies like us give me a break?
24:52
Speaker 3: Not good. No, I haven't seen it in a long time.
24:56
Speaker 1: It's not good.
24:57
Speaker 2: See now, I'm afraid to watch some of those oldies. Yeah,
25:02
Speaker 2: I do.
25:02
Speaker 1: My dad taught me well. But if you if, if
25:06
Speaker 1: you want to continue to cherish any movie that you
25:08
Speaker 1: used to love, I would not risk it.
25:11
Speaker 3: No, we'll see.
25:12
Speaker 1: Unless it's Ghostbusters. It definitely holds up. Friend.
25:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, that new one looks good too. Was the new
25:18
Speaker 3: one the sequel sort of?
25:23
Speaker 1: So it's technically Ghostbusters three?
25:26
Speaker 3: Yeah? Or four? I mean we or wait? Was there
25:30
Speaker 3: a third or was just the first two? Yeah? The
25:32
Speaker 3: second one?
25:32
Speaker 1: It was the first two and then the third one
25:35
Speaker 1: had like Kate, I think Kate McKinnon. Different universe, didn't it.
25:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was That was just a reboot, which
25:43
Speaker 2: was great, I thought. But this new one is a
25:46
Speaker 2: sequel many years later. And I think it's one of
25:49
Speaker 2: their grandkids. You know, stuff starts happening.
25:53
Speaker 1: It looks good. Okay, And what's his name's kid?
25:57
Speaker 3: Rightman's kid is directing it.
25:59
Speaker 1: It's a oh, he's great Jason.
26:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a Jason, rightman, jam So.
26:02
Speaker 1: That's good stuff. That might he might be a little
26:04
Speaker 1: too high high brow for a Ghostbusters man.
26:08
Speaker 3: Man.
26:09
Speaker 1: Well, hey, I can tell you you know who's spinning
26:11
Speaker 1: in her grave right now about a thousand RPMs? Who
26:14
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Blackwell?
26:15
Speaker 3: I know.
26:15
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry, doctor Blackwell. Should we take a break.
26:18
Speaker 1: I don't know who knows anymore?
26:20
Speaker 2: All right, let's take a break and we'll stop talking
26:22
Speaker 2: about dumb old movies right for this.
26:41
Speaker 1: All right, So, Chuck, I think where we officially left off,
26:46
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Blackwell received her diploma. The dean of the medical
26:51
Speaker 1: school stood up and bowed, and the auditorium broke out
26:54
Speaker 1: into applause, which is pretty awesome. Apparently, she when she
27:00
Speaker 1: although she won over her classmates, there were still like
27:03
Speaker 1: a lot of women actually of the time who were
27:05
Speaker 1: not very happy with what she'd done. But she said,
27:08
Speaker 1: nuts to you guys, that's right. I'm going to move
27:10
Speaker 1: to Paris and London and I'm going to pursue my
27:16
Speaker 1: practice there to start.
27:17
Speaker 2: That's right, which is a great idea. And when she
27:20
Speaker 2: got there, they said, wow, you were a real deal
27:22
Speaker 2: doctor and you have a medical degree. Here be a midwife.
27:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, a woman Zachabu.
27:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was led into midwife rein nursing. But she's
27:35
Speaker 2: like really sort of trying to be revolutionary here because
27:39
Speaker 2: all she sees are these men walking around not washing
27:43
Speaker 2: their hands at all, and she's like, you know, what
27:46
Speaker 2: is probably super important is personal hygiene and preventive care.
27:51
Speaker 3: And they're like, what's that.
27:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, well they literally were what's that? Because this was
27:57
Speaker 1: early eighteen fifties and remember our great stink episode.
28:01
Speaker 3: Oh man, that was so good.
28:03
Speaker 1: So they were still operating under the miasma theory that
28:06
Speaker 1: it was like bad vapors and smells that made you sick.
28:09
Speaker 3: Crazy.
28:10
Speaker 1: So her idea that it was like that hand washing
28:13
Speaker 1: was part of this preventative medicine was really ahead of
28:17
Speaker 1: its time. And so in addition, to being a woman,
28:21
Speaker 1: who they were just discrediting out of hand anyway, just
28:23
Speaker 1: for being a woman. They were also saying, like, you're
28:26
Speaker 1: talking kooky stuff. Everybody knows it smells that make you sick.
28:29
Speaker 1: Your nut job, go over there and deliver a baby.
28:32
Speaker 2: And she's like, but I haven't washed my hands, Like
28:35
Speaker 2: we just told you. It doesn't matter. Babies are dirty.
28:38
Speaker 1: As long as your hands don't stink, it's fine.
28:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should also mention it's right about here where
28:44
Speaker 2: she lost sight in her left eye from an accident
28:48
Speaker 2: that I can barely even talk about.
28:50
Speaker 1: Oh, I want to can I please? So she contracted
28:55
Speaker 1: purulent ophthalmia, which is an which is an of the eye,
29:01
Speaker 1: and her I became infected because she was tending to
29:04
Speaker 1: an infant who I guess had some sort of wound
29:07
Speaker 1: that was infected, and Puss squirted in her left eye
29:11
Speaker 1: from the infection and infected her left eye to such
29:14
Speaker 1: a terrible degree that she became blind in her left eye.
29:18
Speaker 3: Yes, and that is Puss.
29:19
Speaker 2: That is sad, but really sad because she was not
29:23
Speaker 2: able to become a surgeon, which is what she really
29:25
Speaker 2: wanted to do.
29:26
Speaker 1: It's also said that there was a baby with an infection. Well, sure,
29:30
Speaker 1: a pussy infection.
29:31
Speaker 3: Let's not forget about that baby.
29:32
Speaker 1: Sure that baby grew up to be Roy Kohane.
29:39
Speaker 3: She moved to the that's really good.
29:43
Speaker 2: She moved to the UK then from Paris, and this
29:46
Speaker 2: is where she hooked up with a little buddy named
29:49
Speaker 2: Florence Nightingale.
29:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, who deserves her own episode too.
29:52
Speaker 2: Oh sure, totally. They became good friends. They were like,
29:54
Speaker 2: you like to wash your hands? I do too, isn't
29:57
Speaker 2: it awesome?
29:59
Speaker 1: Look, go do it together.
30:01
Speaker 3: That's kind of the long and short of it.
30:02
Speaker 2: They sat around and saying ABC's or I don't want
30:04
Speaker 2: no scrubs wash their hands. And they were both like,
30:09
Speaker 2: why are none of these men doctors ever washing their hands?
30:12
Speaker 2: And they were both like, because they're dummies.
30:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, just give them a few years in germ theory
30:16
Speaker 1: will be developed and then they'll listen to Louis past
30:18
Speaker 1: year or not. Yeah exactly, But I think that's pretty awesome.
30:22
Speaker 1: It's almost like I don't know, Einstein and somebody else meeting,
30:28
Speaker 1: you know, like, just it's cool to know that these
30:30
Speaker 1: these two like legendary figures met and were friends at
30:34
Speaker 1: one point in time.
30:35
Speaker 3: Oh, totally.
30:36
Speaker 1: It's almost like a movie. You know what I'm saying,
30:38
Speaker 1: This totally should be a movie. I'm surprised it's not
30:41
Speaker 1: yet agreed. Maybe Jason Rightman could direct it.
30:46
Speaker 2: That's right, and maybe uh uh no, who's the guy
30:52
Speaker 2: that Wolverine pretty Jackman?
30:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe Hugh Jackman can be in it.
30:57
Speaker 1: He would play doctor Elizabeth Blackwell.
31:00
Speaker 3: That's right. And Jared from Subway can played the pus baby.
31:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, everything would come full circle and the universe would
31:07
Speaker 1: collapse in on.
31:08
Speaker 3: It, and then the Sharknado would kill them all.
31:10
Speaker 1: Yeh.
31:12
Speaker 2: So she is pals with Laurence Nightingale. She decides, you
31:16
Speaker 2: know what, I'm going to go back to New York.
31:18
Speaker 2: It's eighteen fifty one and I really want to get
31:21
Speaker 2: a practice going there. She got back, and of course
31:25
Speaker 2: discrimination against women in the doctoring industry was still there,
31:30
Speaker 2: so she didn't have a lot of opportunities. She didn't
31:32
Speaker 2: have a lot of patience, she didn't have a lot
31:35
Speaker 2: of other doctors that she could even exchange ideas with,
31:39
Speaker 2: and so she started applying for jobs instead of starting
31:43
Speaker 2: her own practice at the women's department in a big
31:47
Speaker 2: city dispensary.
31:48
Speaker 3: But she was not.
31:51
Speaker 1: She was not hired. No, and I had to look
31:53
Speaker 1: up a dispensary. Is it like a charity or public clinic.
31:56
Speaker 1: So this ambition, yeah, woman's ambition, this first woman doctor
32:02
Speaker 1: in the United States. Now, her ambition was to help
32:07
Speaker 1: the poor. That was what she wanted to do. Her
32:11
Speaker 1: missions in life were to help the poor, help women
32:15
Speaker 1: retain their chastity and purity in the hopes of having
32:21
Speaker 1: a good moral impact on the world around them, and
32:25
Speaker 1: then to make it so that more women could become doctors.
32:29
Speaker 1: And she was like a tireless fighter and champion of
32:32
Speaker 1: all of these things. And so, in typical Elizabeth Blackwell fashion,
32:37
Speaker 1: when she was turned down for a job at a dispensary,
32:41
Speaker 1: she just opened her own dispensary.
32:43
Speaker 2: That's right, in a little single rented room. She saw
32:46
Speaker 2: patients a few afternoons each week. It was incorporated in
32:50
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty four, where they moved to a small house
32:53
Speaker 2: there on the lower east Side East Village area of
32:55
Speaker 2: Tompkins Square. Her sister, we mentioned that she followed. I
32:59
Speaker 2: believe at the very beginning she followed in her sister's footsteps.
33:02
Speaker 2: By this point she was doctor Emily Blackwell. She got
33:06
Speaker 2: her degree at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and she
33:09
Speaker 2: joined her in eighteen fifty six with another doctor, doctor Marie.
33:14
Speaker 3: Ooh, zach.
33:18
Speaker 1: Zak Zuska. Wow, that's the doctor Seuss pronunciation.
33:23
Speaker 3: That's a tough one.
33:24
Speaker 1: I would say, zach Vrevska. Okay, Zakrevska, all right.
33:29
Speaker 2: And they all opened the New York Infirmary for Women
33:32
Speaker 2: and Children on Bleeker Street there in the West Village
33:35
Speaker 2: in eighteen fifty seven.
33:37
Speaker 1: Yep. And now you can go left out of the
33:40
Speaker 1: doorway and hit a Swatch store. I know you're going
33:42
Speaker 1: to say it the street and see and go get
33:45
Speaker 1: a sandwich at La pan Quotidien.
33:47
Speaker 2: I saw this watch joke coming because I did the
33:50
Speaker 2: old Google Earth too, and I was like, I guarantee
33:52
Speaker 2: you that poked out to Josh.
33:53
Speaker 1: But what's crazy? So sixty four, at least as far
33:56
Speaker 1: as the Google company is concerned, the sixty four Bleaker
33:59
Speaker 1: Street doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, but that means that it
34:02
Speaker 1: was subsumed by either the Kith Clothing or the Swatch store.
34:09
Speaker 1: Somebody took over this. But there's a I.
34:11
Speaker 3: Think the Swatch store did in eighteen fifty.
34:12
Speaker 1: Eight, there's Yeah, they were all on chains, right, but
34:18
Speaker 1: there's a there's a physical structure that's still there. That
34:23
Speaker 1: was the first women run infirmary or clinic, i should say,
34:30
Speaker 1: in New York and what became one of the first
34:34
Speaker 1: women's medical schools, amazing in the country. Not the first,
34:39
Speaker 1: but one of the first. And there's no plaque, there's
34:42
Speaker 1: no sign, there's no nothing really but the building is
34:44
Speaker 1: not that I could see, but the building is still there.
34:47
Speaker 1: You can still visit the spot where poor people went
34:49
Speaker 1: and doctor Elizabeth Blackwell treated them.
34:51
Speaker 3: Wow.
34:52
Speaker 1: Yeah with one eye.
34:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's not forget that.
34:55
Speaker 1: Of sight in one eye, I should say.
34:57
Speaker 2: So she starts going, she's like to do this in
35:00
Speaker 2: England too, in my home country. I'm gonna go back
35:04
Speaker 2: and forth. I'm going to try and raise some money
35:06
Speaker 2: to do the same thing over there. At the same time,
35:09
Speaker 2: she's also taking on and it's amazing what you can
35:12
Speaker 2: do when you don't get married and have to be
35:15
Speaker 2: subservient to a man. Right, Like she was living singles,
35:18
Speaker 2: so she had nothing but time. You know, she had
35:21
Speaker 2: this adopted daughter. But I imagine as she grew she helped
35:25
Speaker 2: her mom out with this stuff.
35:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in their off time, they would watch Living
35:28
Speaker 1: Single Together.
35:31
Speaker 2: So she was getting on other social reform movements, all
35:35
Speaker 2: kinds of things to do with women's rights, family planning,
35:38
Speaker 2: even way back then hygiene. Always did we mention eugenics
35:44
Speaker 2: and how deep she got in that?
35:45
Speaker 3: Do we even know?
35:47
Speaker 1: I looked, and I could not see, because you would
35:50
Speaker 1: think there'd be people that would say, like, oh, Elizabeth
35:53
Speaker 1: Blackwell her, but listen to this eugenic stuff she's into.
35:57
Speaker 1: I saw basically one of those things where it was
36:00
Speaker 1: this list was repeated basically in the same order across
36:04
Speaker 1: the right net. So I have no idea how much
36:07
Speaker 1: she was into eugenics, but I do know I did
36:10
Speaker 1: get an impression of her as far as women's rights
36:15
Speaker 1: were concerned. She was a feminist through and through. Oh sure,
36:21
Speaker 1: absolutely a feminist. But she was also a moralist and
36:25
Speaker 1: a prude that died in the wool prude, and so
36:29
Speaker 1: she was really concerned with.
36:31
Speaker 3: The moral purity.
36:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess the moral purity of women, because her
36:37
Speaker 1: her whole thing was if a woman has basically had
36:42
Speaker 1: sex out of wedlock, she has corrupted her morals, she's
36:46
Speaker 1: traded in her morals, and now she's going to be
36:48
Speaker 1: interested in men, She's going to think about other men
36:50
Speaker 1: rather than her husband. She's not going to be able
36:53
Speaker 1: to focus on her home, and so the home will
36:57
Speaker 1: start to come apart because this woman had sex out
37:00
Speaker 1: of wedlock before she got married or whatever, and so
37:04
Speaker 1: that's one home broken. And if more and more women
37:06
Speaker 1: do this, then all of a sudden, the whole country's
37:09
Speaker 1: morals are corrupt and there's nothing but crime and drinking
37:14
Speaker 1: and all sorts of horrible things that come out of it.
37:16
Speaker 1: And she definitely identified men as a aggressor in this
37:20
Speaker 1: that it was definitely men who came along and like
37:23
Speaker 1: persuaded girls to have sex out of wedlock because these
37:27
Speaker 1: girls were too naive to know the ramifications and consequences.
37:31
Speaker 1: So she tried to in books and pamphlets and lectures
37:35
Speaker 1: and all this Warren mothers to warn their daughters away
37:39
Speaker 1: from men like this and also teach them about the
37:41
Speaker 1: consequences of having like pre marital sex and also basically
37:45
Speaker 1: identifying as you know, men as the aggressors the wolves
37:49
Speaker 1: in this situation. But so she was super into that,
37:52
Speaker 1: and she was very widely and well received because her
37:56
Speaker 1: line of thinking was very in line with Victorian suit
38:00
Speaker 1: rigid morals. But at the same time, I mean, it's
38:06
Speaker 1: it's difficult to reconcile with just straight ahead feminism that
38:11
Speaker 1: you know, of the type that we're used to today.
38:14
Speaker 1: But there's really no one who could discredit her as
38:17
Speaker 1: a feminist. No, I mean a feminist in a Victorian way.
38:20
Speaker 3: Exactly.
38:21
Speaker 2: It was a time where you can be like girl,
38:23
Speaker 2: own your sexuality and like you asked the man to
38:26
Speaker 2: marry you, like that just didn't happen at all.
38:28
Speaker 1: So this was the opposite of that. When she was
38:31
Speaker 1: touting she was also what would be known today as
38:33
Speaker 1: a feminist for life, a staunch anti abortion feminist. As
38:38
Speaker 1: a matter of fact that if you read her diary
38:39
Speaker 1: in a certain way, you can make the case that
38:42
Speaker 1: one of the reasons she became a doctor is because
38:44
Speaker 1: she read an article about a woman who was an
38:47
Speaker 1: abortionist at the time, who was termed a female physician,
38:51
Speaker 1: which I guess was code for women abortionists. That's interesting
38:54
Speaker 1: back then, and she was so appalled by this that
38:57
Speaker 1: she wanted to reform the term female physician to mean
39:02
Speaker 1: an actual like just a woman doctor, a general doctor.
39:06
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that drove her too. So, yeah,
39:09
Speaker 1: she was a very complicated character. It reminds us, right,
39:13
Speaker 1: But I think she reminds us that over time, when
39:16
Speaker 1: you become a legend, you know, a legend grows up
39:20
Speaker 1: around you and you know, the different edges get you know,
39:23
Speaker 1: smoothed over or overlooked or whatever, and people are complicated
39:28
Speaker 1: and complex and that's the way that it should be
39:30
Speaker 1: and they should be understood as such, you know. Yeah,
39:32
Speaker 1: But none of that underminds her, depending on your way
39:38
Speaker 1: of thinking. I don't think anything undermines her that she
39:41
Speaker 1: did or thought undermines the work that she did and
39:44
Speaker 1: the good that she did.
39:45
Speaker 3: Oh, of course not.
39:46
Speaker 2: And I think maybe people should try to remember what
39:48
Speaker 2: it might be like to be a trailblazing feminist in
39:52
Speaker 2: the eighteen forties through the eighties, you know.
39:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So the Silvil War that was very nicely said,
39:58
Speaker 1: good job, hope, so oh gotcha?
40:03
Speaker 3: Civil War rolls around.
40:05
Speaker 2: She and her sisters trained nurses for the Union for
40:08
Speaker 2: their hospitals. She said, you know what we really need
40:11
Speaker 2: is a medical school for women. And so she continued
40:16
Speaker 2: to try and get support from Britain. She finally raised
40:19
Speaker 2: enough backing in America to add that medical school to
40:23
Speaker 2: her women's hospital in New York. In eighteen sixty eight,
40:26
Speaker 2: this was this one you were talking about. The New
40:30
Speaker 2: York Infirmary was finally established with fifteen students, nine faculty,
40:35
Speaker 2: and she was the professor of hygiene and her sister,
40:40
Speaker 2: Emily was taught was the outwel taught obstetrics and diseases
40:47
Speaker 2: of women.
40:48
Speaker 1: Yep, she handled all of the surgery too at the clinic.
40:51
Speaker 3: Oh Emily did, yeah, because her sister couldn't rite.
40:55
Speaker 1: But so think about this, like, she established not just
40:59
Speaker 1: this this clinic, this dispensary, but also a college to
41:04
Speaker 1: teach women doctors. Right, And not only did she do
41:08
Speaker 1: that in New York, she did it in London too.
41:12
Speaker 1: After she had managed to establish this, she said, okay, Emily,
41:15
Speaker 1: you got this, I'm moving back to England and I'm
41:19
Speaker 1: going to do this over here. Yeah.
41:20
Speaker 2: And what it did was it provided about a thirty
41:23
Speaker 2: two year stopgap until eighteen ninety nine when medical schools
41:28
Speaker 2: Cornell University finally began accepting women into their program. So
41:34
Speaker 2: for thirty two years she was running the show and
41:37
Speaker 2: she was providing that almost aid service.
41:41
Speaker 3: But it kind of is in a way.
41:43
Speaker 2: You know, until medical until mainstream medical schools began catching on.
41:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, for sure. And the fact that she was
41:53
Speaker 1: establishing this college like that this was one of her
41:57
Speaker 1: big dreams and focuses and drives. It just kind of
42:01
Speaker 1: goes to underscore the fact that she was trying to
42:04
Speaker 1: make it so that more women could become doctors. Yeah,
42:08
Speaker 1: it's as easy to overlook when you're like, oh, well,
42:10
Speaker 1: she went and became a doctor herself and then she
42:11
Speaker 1: did doctoring. She also simultaneously was trying to expand access
42:16
Speaker 1: to medical training for women as well to become a
42:20
Speaker 1: licensed physician.
42:21
Speaker 2: And she did in a big way in eighteen sixty
42:24
Speaker 2: nine when she was in her late forties. This is
42:27
Speaker 2: when she established the London practice. She had passed on
42:31
Speaker 2: the New York Medical College to her sister at that point,
42:34
Speaker 2: and founded the National Health Society in eighteen seventy one
42:38
Speaker 2: and was one of the first champions of prevention is
42:41
Speaker 2: better than cure, which is a very obviously important thing
42:45
Speaker 2: today in all of medicine, but at the time it
42:48
Speaker 2: was kind of a revolutionary kind of way.
42:50
Speaker 3: To go about things.
42:51
Speaker 2: They were all about cures, and she was one of
42:53
Speaker 2: the first people standing up and be like, Hey, let's
42:56
Speaker 2: not get to the point where we need to cure
42:58
Speaker 2: by preventing things with handwhish and lifestyle and hygiene.
43:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, wash your hands, Yeah, what's your problem?
43:05
Speaker 2: In eighteen seventy she finally set up a private practice
43:08
Speaker 2: in London. In eighteen seventy four, along with physicians Sophia
43:15
Speaker 2: Jex Blake and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson established that London School
43:19
Speaker 2: of Medicine for Women.
43:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again she did this in New York. She
43:24
Speaker 1: also did it in London. She agitated for legislation to
43:27
Speaker 1: be passed in eighteen seventy six to allow women to
43:30
Speaker 1: get medical degrees. She was the first woman added to
43:34
Speaker 1: the medical register in England. So she did this in
43:40
Speaker 1: two continents. She opened up the door for women to
43:43
Speaker 1: become doctors on two different continents at about the same time.
43:48
Speaker 1: And ultimately she stopped had to stop practicing. She had
43:52
Speaker 1: to stop seeing patients because she had something called billiary colic,
43:57
Speaker 1: which is where a gallstone blocks the bile ducked, which
44:01
Speaker 1: is not good for you and it apparently it is
44:04
Speaker 1: a very painful condition. And especially back then before they
44:08
Speaker 1: could do a lot with it or so you can
44:09
Speaker 1: break it up with lasers or something. It could knock
44:12
Speaker 1: you out of your career, and it did for decades.
44:16
Speaker 1: I think she had billiary colic twenty or thirty years
44:21
Speaker 1: before she died.
44:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, she basically didn't practice for the last twenty years,
44:27
Speaker 2: and very sadly. In nineteen oh seven, at the ripe
44:30
Speaker 2: old age of eighty six, which is great, she.
44:33
Speaker 3: Had an accident.
44:34
Speaker 2: She fell down a flight of stairs and was mentally
44:37
Speaker 2: and physically disabled after that. Lived a few more years
44:40
Speaker 2: after that, and then eventually died of stroke in nineteen ten.
44:46
Speaker 1: Yeap, that was it.
44:48
Speaker 3: Great, great lady.
44:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's this statistic here in eighteen eighty one, so
44:54
Speaker 1: she'd moved to the UK permanently in eighteen sixty nine.
45:00
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty one there are only twenty five registered
45:04
Speaker 1: women doctors in England and Wales, but thirty years later,
45:08
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, it was up to four hundred and ninety five.
45:11
Speaker 3: There you have it.
45:12
Speaker 1: Now, I would guess that there's at least double that, probably.
45:16
Speaker 3: More probably so.
45:18
Speaker 1: So hats off to doctor Elizabeth Blackwell. Way to go.
45:22
Speaker 3: My bonnet is off and under my seat.
45:25
Speaker 1: Oh that's a fine phrenology. You've just exposed there, Charne.
45:27
Speaker 3: Thank you.
45:29
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about doctor Elizabeth Blackwell,
45:31
Speaker 1: there's a lot of good stuff on the Internet, including
45:34
Speaker 1: a site that we used, among others, famous scientists dot
45:37
Speaker 1: org check them out, and scientists is plural. I just
45:41
Speaker 1: have a thick tongue, so sometimes it's tough to add
45:43
Speaker 1: that extra asset in. And since I said I have
45:46
Speaker 1: a thick tongue, it's time for listener male.
45:52
Speaker 3: This is from Isaac.
45:53
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, I am on day two of six weeks
45:56
Speaker 2: of staying home in quarantine. I live in Seattle, Washington,
46:00
Speaker 2: which was the place where the first North American coronavirus
46:02
Speaker 2: case was. There have been rumors at my school I'm
46:04
Speaker 2: in the seventh grade that would close for cleaning. But
46:07
Speaker 2: six weeks is nearly all of third quarter. Yeah, I've
46:10
Speaker 2: got a long stretch of time ahead of me, and
46:12
Speaker 2: I've spent most of that time playing video games great,
46:17
Speaker 2: reading great.
46:19
Speaker 3: And listening to stuff you should know.
46:21
Speaker 1: Nice.
46:22
Speaker 3: It's a nice three pronged.
46:23
Speaker 2: Approach, a little fun, little knowledge, and little goofy knowledge.
46:27
Speaker 1: Sure.
46:28
Speaker 2: I listened to nearly ten episodes today alone. Wow, it
46:31
Speaker 2: will be plenty more rushing through my ear holes. So
46:34
Speaker 2: I wanted to say thank you for helping me through
46:36
Speaker 2: a worry sometime. I loved the Seattle Show that is
46:39
Speaker 2: from Isaac. Isaac, buddy, glad, We're there for you. Hang
46:43
Speaker 2: in there, be safe, wash your hands.
46:47
Speaker 1: Yeah.
46:47
Speaker 2: And the fact that you use the word ear holes
46:49
Speaker 2: means that you're the coolest kid.
46:51
Speaker 3: I know.
46:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're pretty cool, Isaac. We appreciate that. I wonder
46:54
Speaker 1: what video game he's playing, Chuck, I don't know.
46:57
Speaker 2: I just finished Red Dead Redemption and now I'm onto
46:59
Speaker 2: a new and I've been gaming a bit lately.
47:01
Speaker 1: I heard that Red Dead Redemption is like one of
47:03
Speaker 1: the most amazing games ever. But it's just so good
47:07
Speaker 1: in highbrow like a Jason Rightman film, that it's it's boring,
47:12
Speaker 1: unlike a Jason Rightman film. Have you heard that?
47:16
Speaker 3: Well? I played part two. I did not get the
47:18
Speaker 3: first one, although I might go.
47:19
Speaker 1: I think it was Part two that I'm talking about.
47:21
Speaker 3: I enjoyed it.
47:22
Speaker 1: Okay, good good. I'm glad to hear that, because I
47:25
Speaker 1: like to think that things that are well done aren't boring.
47:27
Speaker 1: You know.
47:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had to learn to shoot animals, and which
47:30
Speaker 2: was not fun, but no, hunting.
47:32
Speaker 3: Is a part of it.
47:33
Speaker 1: Really.
47:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, I never shot up funny though.
47:35
Speaker 1: Maybe you had to like put them out of the
47:37
Speaker 1: misery or something because they were rabid.
47:38
Speaker 3: Oh that too. If you have a you crash your horse,
47:41
Speaker 3: you might have to do the right thing. You know
47:42
Speaker 3: what I mean?
47:43
Speaker 1: Is that right? You have to strangle it.
47:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very sad because you get very attached to
47:46
Speaker 3: these horses.
47:47
Speaker 1: I'll bet. Do you name them?
47:49
Speaker 3: Yeah?
47:50
Speaker 1: You name them like you'd actually name them for fun
47:53
Speaker 1: or like they come with names or they like the
47:54
Speaker 1: game makes you name your horse.
47:56
Speaker 3: When you go to a stable.
47:57
Speaker 2: You can upgrade your horse in a lot of ways
47:59
Speaker 2: with the saddles and stuff, and then you can also
48:02
Speaker 2: you can also name your horse when you go to
48:04
Speaker 2: a stable and type it in and then your horse
48:06
Speaker 2: name is up there.
48:07
Speaker 1: Did you name any Josh?
48:09
Speaker 3: I did not. I feel bad now.
48:11
Speaker 2: I had three or four horses, and the name them
48:12
Speaker 2: all variations of my wife and daughter's names.
48:15
Speaker 3: But oh that's you what, budd It's fine, you'll be next.
48:17
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. But you'll be like, oh yeah, Josh
48:20
Speaker 1: turned lame. I guess I have to put him out
48:22
Speaker 1: of his misery.
48:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, Josh got run over by a train.
48:26
Speaker 1: Let me know how Josh turns out. Okay? And video
48:28
Speaker 1: game I will okay. And Isaac thanks again for writing
48:32
Speaker 1: in and like Chuck said, stay safe, stay smart, and
48:35
Speaker 1: wash your hands and don't panic. Doesn't sound like you are.
48:38
Speaker 1: If you're like Isaac and you're hanging out listening to
48:41
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know, we want to hear from you.
48:43
Speaker 1: You can send us an email, wrap it up, spank
48:45
Speaker 1: it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff
48:47
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48:53
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
48:56
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49:08
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