Chainsaw History - The Value of Marie Curie

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

Join podcasting siblings Bambi and Jamie Chambers as they venture further into the ValueTales series from the 1980s with The Value of Learning: The Story of Marie Curie. In this episode they dissect the peculiar storytelling of an extraordinary scientist's life—the only person to ever win a Nobel Prize in both physics and chemistry. She's also one of the few people in history entombed in lead because her incredible discovery also killed her dead and left behind a corpse that would startle a geiger counter. Marie Curie is given much respect while the children's book about her ... not so much. But at least we learn the private concerns of an imaginary friend named "Fizz." Check out their candid thoughts and insights on this unusual take on a scientific legend's life story.Stay tuned with us on social media and discover more on our website: http://www.chainsawhistory.com

Welcome to the bonus episode of Chainsaw History, you guys. I am sitting here, Jamie Chambers, with my sister, Bambi. And she has brought another of these adorable children's books that we suffered through as kids back in the 1980s. Oh, yeah. I'm excited about this one. This is one that I actually really cherished as a child, and we are going with the value of learning the story of Marie Curie, and written by the incredibly shitty Antonica

Johnson. The one who wrote the vast majority of these books. Yes. I've got three of them sitting at home that I was looking at, and all of them are written by her. Mm-hmm. Yeah, she wrote a ton of these, and a lot of the ones that involved women specifically. Right.

Yeah, and I'm worried, though, that because you're burning through your feminist icons fast, which is going to leave us with the rest. I mean, I'm good with the rest. It's fine. I mean, that's why I started with Columbus. It's like, let's just start with a monster, because it's only going to, you know, get better from here. I know, but I love my feminist icons.

And the one great thing about these books, in fact, the only good thing about these books was, I actually learned about really fucking badass women that we don't learn about in school. Yeah. No, this, I mean, this series. It's like, you know, we learned about Christopher Columbus in school. Granted, like those books, we learned a bunch of bullshit. Yeah.

Now, like I said, as we said a long time ago, of these, even though we give these, this whole series a lot of shit, I think their heart was in the right place. Oh, absolutely. It's just, it was, for one thing, it was through this very, you know, patriotic lens. And this very, we're trying to instill these specific values, just like an 80s cartoon would have its moral at the end. This tries to shove this thing. And sometimes the value, the value we're supposed to be learning barely seems to like

match. No. And they always want to talk about their, like, more about their young lives instead of their achievements. I mean, I assume this to make it more relatable to children, children, but it's like, but it's also written in such a language that it's like, have you met a child? Yeah. Do you know what they're like?

Because it's, it's like the tone of the books is for very young children while the actual content of the book is for older children. So let's see. I don't remember Marie Curie too well. So she was bitten by a radioactive book and that's how she became a super learner. No. No. Okay.

Okay. Then lace of knowledge on me. All right. Well, and like all of these true biographies, we're going to start with. It was a dark and stormy night. Once upon a time. That was close. Yeah.

Do you want to describe the cover? It has got a strung out looking lady in a purple dress with kind of frizzled hair up high and she's like standing in front of what is apparently like a laboratory table or work bench and she is holding a large beaker filled with green liquid that is apparently sentient and alive and is smiling up at her in adoration. Yeah. Which funny enough, we'll get to it, but yeah, there's a lot wrong. We'll come back.

So this is like the adventures of a clearly this woman has not slept in like a month and is having like incredible hallucinations on the cover of this book. Yep. So here we go. We're going to start with once upon a time in the city of Warsaw and far away country called Poland, there lived a little girl named Mariah and Polish Mariah means Mary checks out. Yeah.

Although I have to just say that on her Wikipedia page, it was not Mariah. It was something else. Was it something more Polish? Yeah. Well, I mean, they just didn't mention it almost at all. Yeah. Here we go. Okay.

So they never give her last name in here, like her maiden name, which sort of sucks because she actually went by both. I mean, she basically like I do, I have, you know, my name and then my surname and then my married name. So she did the same thing on all of her work. So the fact that they only call her Marie Curie is kind of, well, I mean, that's how she's known to history. So once again, I'm not going to give them too much shit for this in the, especially in

the kids book section. It's the thing though that they should put in the, in the supposedly accurate, like actual adult biography page at the end, but they probably totally don't. Yeah. We'll get there. All right. So we'll start again with once upon a time in the city of Warsaw. In a faraway country called Poland, there lived a little girl named Mariah and Polish

Mariah means Mary. Mariah was very much like other girls in the evening. She and her brothers and sisters liked to sit around the fire and listen while their mother or father read stories to them. Mariah liked the stories, but what she really wanted was an iPad. Oh, was to learn to read by herself. Again, I was close to family's spending all this wholesome time together. It is.

I mean, you see the family and they're sitting around and dad's in a chair and you've got a girl like just right there ready to listen to story time. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Well, I mean, so far so good. So she wants to learn to read.

She wants to learn to read. So her older sister who they only refer to by her nickname, which is Bronja Bronja Bronja Strong name and her real name was something that I really can't pronounce makes sense why they didn't put it in the children's book. It makes sense. So we're going to forgive them because she went she went by Bronja and they could have called her Jill and no one back then would have called them out on it pretty much. So her older sister starts teaching her how to read and then while her sister learned

to read, it seems like little Marie kind of surpassed her. And she's four years old and she's learning to read and now she learned she reads better than her older sister. And then now they're like, oh, we got a super genius in the house. Yeah. We got a Sheldon Cooper type. So we'll read this short little passage. One evening when she was reading with her father and Mariah, Bronja had so much trouble

with the words that she wanted to stop. Don't worry, Bronja said her father, take your time, read slowly, the words will come. Mariah was bright and curious. She was also very impatient. She grabbed Bronja's book and began to read. Mariah, I can't believe it, cried Bronja. Did I teach you to do that with the simple cardboard cutouts? Mariah laughed.

I guess you must have. She said, isn't this fun? Now I can read by myself. Isn't it fun that I'm smarter than you and I can dominate you simpletons? Oh, great. No, I take it back. She's the stewie. So Mariah's father was a scientist and since they were in Poland, he was a professor, but

he was poor as shit because they were being suppressed by Russia. Right. Like, that is a huge part of who this woman is and who she becomes. There's a whole thing about how Russia treats Poland and. Yeah, and it only gets worse throughout poor little Marie's lifetime. So her father, for the most part, had his lab at the house. So she started learning about science and really, really wanted to learn about science. When Mariah laughed, I love to find out about things.

She said, maybe one day I can be a scientist, too. And everybody's like, you're a girl, don't you know anything about what scientists are? So now this is when she gets weird. Well, naturally. Yeah, because she was fiddling in her father's laboratory and one of the test tubes just popped up and came to life. An unholy creation of science. Burn it with fire.

Oh, yes. So. Okay. So the test tube is fizz, and I'll read this passage. Of course, Mariah knew the test tubes didn't come to life, but she decided to pretend that fizz was real. She knew that if she talked with fizz, she would really be talking to herself. Just the same, she thought it would be fun to have a make-believe friend who was a test

tube. So it indulged this little hallucination for the rest of my life. Exactly. And here's the funny thing. In the beginning, he's this little test tube, but I say on the cover, he grows up to be a big old beaker. Yeah. And it's like, that doesn't actually happen in the book ever.

Oh. This is what her imaginary friend looks like. Oh, so that's fizz, and the guy on the cover is the one who murdered fizz and took his place. Pretty much. I am fizz, too. Don't ask what happened to fizz one. So she starts talking to and playing with her test tube.

Perfectly healthy. And playing with her test tube. Oh, never mind. Moving right along. And the test tube tells her that, you know, even girls can be scientists. So she was telling herself, it's like, even though the whole world was like, mm. The test tube didn't know Jack about the 19th century. Okay.

So this is when the story kind of takes a dark turn. What? No way can things take a dark turn at this point in Polish history. Yeah. So Russia ruled Poland in those days. And the Russians insisted that the Polish people learn Russian history. They ordered all the Poles should speak Russian. They sent Russian soldiers to the schools to make sure the children did not study Polish

history. You will learn the glory of the Tsar. Yeah. Russia sucks, and she grew up thinking that Russia sucks. And her teacher, and she was correct, especially if you're Polish. Mm-hmm. Well, her teacher was like, fuck that. We're going to still teach Polish history and speak Polish history of how Russia has

really dicked us over. Yep. Yep. Yep. So one day they had a lookout, like when they were having studies, one of the little girls would have a lookout for the soldiers. And one day the soldiers came and they are all scrambling to hide their books. Oh shit.

The history of Polish sausage is right out there in the open. They hurry, hurry, hurry. And then so, but when they came in. Oh my god. Okay. I can see that from here. I love it that it's this fur hat. Yes.

That is like a walking stereotype. It's pretty great. And then all these innocent looking children, like they weren't doing anything wrong. And they were doing needlepoint instead. Like I really wanted to stand some kids up against the wall and shoot them. Yep. But he was like, no, everything's fine here. And so she gets older and she graduates and isn't that great.

And then she went into the country. With her test tube. And she rode horses and she went to dances and parties. All the stuff that history has told us about Marie Curie. Yeah. I mean, what she was doing when she was like 16 and 17. Great. Going to sock hops, dodging, you know, Russian.

No, there were no sock hops yet. I don't think. I'm not the fifties. Yeah. I'm just throwing shit out there. Throwing shit out there. See what sticks. I mean, this book is.

Yeah, exactly. I might as well. She comes home from the country and her sister is very sad because her sister really wants to go to college to be a doctor. She can't afford to go to college because her dad is poor as shit and they're Polish. So because she wanted to also go to school, she makes a pact with her sister that, you know, she'll work and send money to her so she can go to college. And then when she graduates and becomes a doctor, then she would support Mariah.

They'll put each other. They will put each other through school. That's a pretty cool sisterly pact. Yeah. I mean, the only the other thing they don't tell you in this book is their mother died when she was 10 and her dad was an atheist and her mom was a Catholic after her mom dies, her sister dies, and then she was like, I'm an agnostic. I don't, I don't know what I believe anymore.

That was kind of part of who she was. Right. Let's face it. A lot of the more notable scientists are not also notable for being overly religious people. Yeah. It's weird how when you learn more that seems to happen, but again, moving right along. So her and her sister make this beautiful little pack to support each other through school.

And so she gets a job as a governess and they have this really kind of just long, boring Marie Curie famous, famous governess founder of the babysitters club. That's really, we're really knocking out the greatest hits. So whatever, more lame bullshit that nobody cares about, lame bullshit nobody cares about. And then her dad got a better job so she could go home. She was still working through this time, although they don't actually mention that in this book. She was still working and supporting her sister. However, but she didn't have to pay rent.

But she didn't have to. Well, I mean, you don't pay rent as a governess either. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, that's, that is fair. She starts making friends. And even though she's, you know, they're having to hide their studies from the Russians. You found like kind of an underground book club for lack of a better term. So I'll read from the book.

Renegade book club. Mariah found friends who were interested in learning. And in the evenings, they would meet at one another's homes. They studied together and exchanged information, but they had to keep changing their meeting place. So as not to attract attention, it would have been dangerous if they had been caught. The Russians would shoot them in the fucking head. They would.

Like the Russians were mean as shit. So moving along, Mariah studied for several months. And then finally she was able to go to Paris to go to medical school. And so Mariah studied in this way for several months. Then one day, a letter came from Paris. It's from Bronya, cried Mariah. She finished medical school and she wants me to come and stay with her and her new husband, Kashmir.

So we can go to the university at last. Okay. And just for the record, they spelled his name wrong. They spelled it in here more like, I guess, how it would be pronounced, but not how it actually be spelled. Right. So they're just going for semi-fanetic. Yeah.

Which is weird. Like I said, I'm assuming their guiding star was what could children like maybe nine, ten years old possibly get out of these foreign names. Yeah. So they just totally fucking change it. So she gets her letter and she's going to go and she goes to Paris and they have this whole page about her packing. Devoting the space to the important stuff.

Yeah. And she was like, how many suitcases did she pack, Bambi? I'm on the edge of my seat over here. Yeah. No, it's like it was hard work is fun when you're learning things. And if I become a great scientist and discover something important, it could help people. Even if I die of all the cancers. So she finally is getting on a train and she's all sad and she's crying.

She's leaving her beloved Poland behind. She's leaving leaving her Poland behind and her father. Oh, yeah. She's a daddy's girl. She's a daddy's girl. I mean, she's literally following in her father's footsteps. Although the one thing I do like about this is like he's dad said she's sad and for whatever reason, Fizz looks impatient.

It's like, it's like, no, get on the train, bitch. He's like, I want to be drinking absinthe with Bohemians in Paris by midnight. Yeah. Paris is more fun than Poland for sure. I am assuming this point. I have never been to either Warsaw or Paris, but I am working on the assumption that Paris is more fun. Yeah.

Especially. Right. Yeah. In this period of fucking time, do you want to be in Warsaw or Paris? I think it's a new fucking brainer because yeah, I mean, she was born in 1867. So she's really excited and Paris has got a little bit more time before it royally sucks. So yeah, she arrives in Paris and she's happy to see her sister and her husband. But what she really wants to do is immediately go to the Sorbonne and she did.

Cool. Yep. It was everything she dreamed of. The Sorbonne was one of the best universities in the world and it was one of the few that accepted women in the science department in those days. Mariah couldn't wait to see it. And when she registered for her classes, she decided not to use the name Mariah any longer. Now I'm in Paris.

I shall use the French name for Mariah, which is Marie. Marie? All right. Well, so she is going native. And from that day on, she was called Marie. She is wearing chapeau. She is eating baguettes and soft cheeses and French kissing strangers. She's just all about it.

Yeah. And she lives in, pretty much, she lives in Paris for the rest of her life. She lives in France, at least. Like that's... She decides, you know what, I cried leaving, but that's because I didn't know where I was going. Fuck off. Warsaw.

See you later, Poland. Yeah. Well, but she still really loved Poland. That was another thing, because she was really into both... Just not enough to ever move back. Yeah. She visited. Yeah.

She visited a lot. It's a nice place to visit. Mm-hmm. It was fine to visit, but yeah, she wanted to live in Paris. So she's living with her sister and her brother-in-law, and apparently they have a wild life, because their friends come to visit and play the piano, and she can't work. She wanted to go someplace where she could just focus on her studies. Stupid people in Paris wanting to have fun?

Yeah. Don't you know there's science to be done? Yeah. So she goes, and she decides that she's gonna live by herself. But as time went on, Fizz wasn't so sure. Marie wanted to save coal and oil, so she studied in the evening at the library. When the library closed at 10 o'clock, she came back to a chilly room. She often studied into the night.

At last, when her hands were too cold to hold a pen and her eyes could no longer stay open, she would go to bed. That sounds like a completely miserable life. Yeah. And again, what they don't say in this book is that she truly, she had suffered from large amounts of depression, and she would also do the thing where she would like almost have psychosis because she'd get too into her work. Right.

I mean, she's clearly obsessive. I mean, that's like, this is not the behavior of a healthy person. It's like, my sister's having fun and going to parties and drinking wine and shit, and she's like, no, I must study and work until I'm freezing to death and going insane talking to my test tube. Yeah. But the test tube gets concerned. Oh, you know what?

You're in trouble when you're an imaginary friend, stages, and intervention. It's like, lady, crazy bitch, okay, lady, let's talk. Marie, you must get more rest, worn fizz. You are not, and you're not eating enough. You'll be sick if you don't watch out. And she laughed and she was like, whatever, there's so much to learn. I don't have time for this. So eventually she works herself.

Fuck off, pigment of my imagination. She literally works herself nearly to death and collapses. Great. Yep. Inspiring women everywhere to follow in her footsteps. Keep going. So she collapses and then her brother-in-law comes and you can't keep doing this to yourself. So she goes home with them and she starts.

And is forced to eat and sleep. She's forced to eat and sleep. So yeah, and she was like, yeah, I guess eating and sleeping is better. I can- She has to learn there's some important work-life balance lessons. And again, for whatever reason, this bitch always laughs, so we're going to start out. Marie laughed. I had almost forgotten how good food tasted, she said.

You're right, fizz. It was silly of me to make myself sick. It won't do me any good to learn things if I don't have my health. Turns out if I'm worm food in a mass grave, I can't really contribute to the sciences so much. Yeah. So she recovered and she went back to school and she did all the things. And so she started working at the university and she loved it there.

That's suddenly I can finally relate. I went to college and never wanted to leave. Yep. It was the silence when people were intent on what they were doing. She loved the wonderful instruments and the gleaming test tubes and the beakers. In other words, none of the things that the rest of the world likes about college. So I like it, the people that no one is talking and that there's shiny glass. Okay.

Sure. Sure, Marie. Yep, yep. So they have a lot more passages about the university and learning and all of the things because that's really what they want to instill in this book is she learned all the time. She worked and learned and that is all this bitch did. So finally, her work pays out. So she's a sad loner working and getting ready through school and she gets an A plus.

Yep, from her imaginary friend. Or at least that's what she's like, see, look, imaginary friend, I can do it. You're the only person I talked to. So I'm going to show you this A that I got since I have ostracized all other human contact. Pretty much. So soon people were asking Marie to do scientific work for them. One day, a friend who was a professor dropped by to visit her in her little laboratory at the university.

Marie was looking worried and upset. What's the matter, Marie asked her friend. I'm not getting much interesting work to do, Marie told him. But I don't have the right equipment. And even if I had the equipment, I didn't have the space in this laboratory to use it. Hmm. Said the professor. You do see a little crowded.

He thought for a moment, then he said, I know someone who might be able to help you. You do said, Marie, that would be wonderful. Groovy. Groovy. So I said, we're setting up the entrance of an important person onto the stage. Very important person. This book is telegraphing its punches a little bit. Yup, yup.

It does that. Soon after that, Marie was invited to the professor's house to meet a well-known scientist, Pierre Curie. Perhaps Marie felt a little shy when she first met this famous man. But she liked him very much. And Pierre was very impressed with Marie. He admired her knowledge and her charm. She finally found a non-imaginary person that she actually could tolerate.

Yes. And he was absolutely smitten and mesmerized by her. You, you like the science and you have the boobs? Yes. Allure. She meets this guy and she starts working with him. In fact. And he thinks that she's the greatest thing since Jerry Lewis and Can Pee's.

Oh, he is smitten kitten. And he could not do enough for her. In fact, some of the things that he would actually drop some of his work because he'd discovered that some of hers was more interesting. Oh. So. So he is an actual non-sexist piece of shit. He's like, hey, she's smarter than me.

Yeah. This girl's the shit. Pretty cool. Marie had known Pierre for only a few months when he asked her to marry him. I love you very much. She told her, I want to be with you always. Marie felt very happy, but she was troubled. I love you too.

She told Pierre and I want to be with you, but sometimes I think I should return to my native Poland. And so anyway, he was like, his reaction to this is his reaction to this is, which they kind of almost gloss over in this book was he was like, I would move to Poland for you. So he's that guy. I would walk 500 miles. Got it. Okay.

And he was like, but do you really want to go to Poland because you can't do your work there? You see, Monchéri, Poland le sucks. Yep. So he basically agreed that he would move to Poland, but convinced her that would be terrible. It's like the problem with your plan is that it's Poland. Yeah, the problem with the plan is Poland really sucks right now.

It's not its fault. So she agrees to marry him and they are very happy. They're going to be a very sexy science couple. They are and they have this beautiful picture of them getting married and for whatever reason her imaginary friend is still there. Well, yeah. And then you see them like on their honeymoon and they like to ride bicycles. And that was actually one of like, they're documented things.

They really enjoyed like long bicycles. Bicycles were a relatively new ish thing at least within decades at this point and bicycling was like a really big like hobby for a lot of people who could afford it and had the luxury to go riding. Yeah. And they did that in the Paris countryside. So, you know, I hope it was one of those ridiculous bicycles you see in the illustrations with like the huge like five foot tall wheel.

Well, no, you get an illustration. Look, you don't know that's there. That's the illustration. I call that. I mean, the illustration has the sun smiling at them. So I call bullshit in my head. He's on a unicycle. Well, what's funny is they're on a tandem bike, which they're doing the threes company,

which is probably not how that happened either. Because, you know, after their honeymoon, guess what happens? They get pregnant and have a baby girl. Oh, they scientifically figured out where babies come from. Yup. Yup. So they had a little baby and they called her Irene. And now Irene, she and they never mention it here in the story, but eventually she also

has another daughter. And but Irene is really the one that like follows in her mom's footsteps, writes a book about her. That other chick is the Tiffany Trump of the family. And you know, who knows, maybe she was a daddy's girl. Marie enjoyed being a mother and she enjoyed being a scientist. She did a wonderful job of each. She's like, you know what I can do?

I can do experiments on my baby. It's called two birds with one stone. What do you think, mo husband? And so they start talking about her work with photographic paper. It's good to know that Marie got a few babies out before she sterilizes herself. Yeah. Cause she starts working with X-rays. I wonder what the substance could be in those rocks that give off such rays.

She was really impressed with like shiny rocks. But here look at. And again, this is in her imagination, in her imagination, X-rays are powered by little purple blobby superheroes wearing sunglasses, sunglasses and have like the something sort of like the radiation symbol on their chest. It's it's like the radioactive super friends. It's very weird. It's weird.

I don't know why it's there. And so they start talking about her work with pitch blend. Again, for whatever reason, they were like, they go on and on about this. And it's like the rocks that give off the invisible rays and they're like, she, but it's like she boiled it down and yeah, this is one of those things. However, I mean, they may go into it a lot, but yeah, to be fair, I do know a little bit about this part of the story. And it's like, yeah, she and her husband were just sitting there over these barrels of shit

stirring and dealing and breathing in fucking toxic fumes for months at a time just to get this tiny, tiny little bit of radium out of it. Yeah. There must be some substance in this rock. We don't know about said Marie. One rock has very little of the substance that give off the rays. If I could get a lot of pitch pitch blend rocks and boil them down, perhaps I could produce enough of whatever substance so that I could actually see the rays.

And so she does this a lot. Also enlist the help of her husband and this grueling miserable work. Yes. So her and Pierre are stirring pots. They're stirring vats of this nasty shit. Pretty much killing brain cells every moment as they're breathing in this crap. Then one night, two years after they first began boiling down the pitch blend, Pierre and Marie went into their laboratory to check on their experiment.

Pierre, look, cried Marie. What she saw was a beautiful, shimmering, radiant blue glow coming from the pot. They had finally boiled enough pitch blend to be able to see the rays they were looking for. Yep. And it's really safe when they're visible to the naked eye like that. Oh, yeah. So now our little super friends team are literally bursting out of the pot, ready to cancer-fy

all of Paris. It's very funny. And so they were really happy. Yes, this is a very important scientific breakthrough, not, I mean, yeah. Wonderful, said Pierre. Now the entire world will be able to see the rays, rays that we thought existed, but that no one had ever seen before. Marie later decided to call the substance inside the pitch blend produced by the blue

rays, radium. Yep. They all have a nice radioactive substance concentrated and giving off rays. Great. Marie and Pierre discovered the radium and they were awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. There you go. Important. And then hilariously and unrelated, a different guy we're going to cover later, Thomas Edison

stupidly like exposes his naked eyes to all these x-rays, trying to start this nearly drives himself blind. And again, they don't mention this in the book, but Marie and Pierre, they didn't patent any of their findings. So for the most part, they didn't make any money. Their discoveries were for the world. Their discoveries for the world and they did not really like profit off of it very much. And that is like, especially, you know, maybe not as much these days, but in the best days

of pioneering science, that's what you hear over and over again. It's like, this is too important for this to belong to someone and they will just release their stuff to the world. Yeah. And then other people make fucking tons of money off of it. Yes. So that's, you know. Yep.

So moving along, while the prizes pleased them, there were much, much more pleased when they found out about the rays radium could be used. With the help of rays from this element, scientists could see through things, even through people. Radium could be used to test diamonds to see if they were real. Most important, radium could cure certain types of cancer. Because of Marie's discovery, many lives have been saved. This is true. It also, you probably didn't mention all of the many kinds of cancer exposure to radium

can cause. Oh, yeah. And again. I think it skips over a little significant thing that happened to Marie. Yeah. And it's like, and I'll give you the, oh my God. So here we have, we have our X-ray, our little superhero guy with the goggles, is punching what I assume is cancer.

Some hideous demon. So it's hot. And he's got a diamond behind him, too. It's like, I am so fucking awesome. Me and my diamond pal are going to beat you cancer. But it's like, but reality, it's like, we can also be best friends, radium is guess what we're going to do to Marie and her husband. So we finally get to the last page.

So because she loved learning, Marie Curie reached her goal. She became a famous scientist and she was able to help many people. If you want to be one to decide what you will do with your life, maybe learning will help you discover what you want to do and help you reach your goal. But don't learn what happened to Marie Curie after we cut this story off because it makes it, it makes it sound a lot less cool. Yeah. Cause poor, poor Marie, you know, she died from like a plastic anemia.

Yeah. No, no, no. From all the radium. She just droid, she gave herself like the kind of radiation exposure that bone marrow transplant patients have to undergo. That's not good. Yeah. But I mean, you know, she had no way of knowing and like I said, she was doing this thing.

So it's not her fault. It's just sort of tragic that she had to die horribly. She did. And what's really like, and again, even in the historic, we've reached the historical facts page. Now we're on the true shit. Yum. We had a black and white illustration of her that looks like a person and no sign of fizz.

No sign of fizz anywhere. And I didn't have as much like problems with the historical facts, although I did find some interesting because she was actually buried and then her and her husband were buried and then they were actually exhumed later and put in a place of like real importance in Paris, but they also had to entomb them in the lead. Yes, because of the radioactive, radioactive, radioactive corpses would give all of the respectful mourners cancer pretty much. And it's what's also, I mean, because again, she didn't know how dangerous this fucking

substance was. Well, no one would until she, until she, yeah, figured it out, figured it out and then died from it. So, but yeah, she would, she'd carry it around in her pocket. She had a test tube of it in her. She constantly had radium on her. The moment she had it, she kept it with her and she just gave herself as a much exposure to this shit.

She could poor, poor lady. And so to the point where even when after she was gone, like all of her papers have to be, they all had to be like encased, like all of her shit because everything was coded with it. Yeah. Everything in her lab. Life was radioactive. Pretty fucking much.

Damn woman. But she didn't know any better. So, yeah, I mean, the truth is there's, there's a whole list of scientists who did stuff with radioactive materials who died horribly. I mean, she didn't even, she's not even nearly the worst case. So. See, and we, they give it in the historical facts, but eventually her husband was killed on the street in like a cart accident.

And after that, she did, she was working and got a Nobel Prize in chemistry. So she actually was one of the twice. Yeah. She is the only person to get a Nobel Prize in physics and in chemistry. And there's only one other person who has two Nobel Prize in different things. Nice. So. Yeah.

She's a badass. It's a shame. Shame. She had to die that way. Super badass. And I mean, her accolades, like, it's like, it's almost really fucking sad because it's like, they give you all this like early life stuff and it's like, but she did so much more. And like she, when the French were having to fight in World War One, she actually figured

out how to like set up mobile x-ray units so they could do battlefield x-rays and not have to amputate. So she saved like a zillion lives doing that. I mean, when you actually think about the, what the discovery of how to use x-rays is meant to, to modern life and medicine, I mean, it's like, it is, you know, a hundred percent she deserves her place in the history of science. It's like I said, it's just a shame that she paid a miserable price. And that's like, my only question would be like, is she lay there dying?

Did she was still like, yep, totally worth it? No regrets? Or was she like, fuck this? God, I hate this shit. No, I don't know idea. Well, and I mean, pretty much she just worked until she died. Because she was, you know, that's who she was, that's who she was as a person. And um, oh, Lord, like, what's really funny is like, she has a bazillion accolades.

Like when you just see her awards scrolling through on the Wikipedia, winner of several awards. Yeah, yeah, she won all the awards and she was like really, um, celebrated in different countries except for fucking France, who she did the most for. It was like almost after she was dead when they were like almost embarrassed because they had nothing named after her. So they had to start giving her the accolades too, because everybody had to jump on it. Yeah.

She fucked because she saved their fucking asses during World War One. And there you go. Well, yet another feminist hero explored in a bizarrely written children's book. So yeah, learn the lessons of Marie Curie. Yeah, I mean obsessively work yourself until your imaginary friend is ready to stage an intervention and you end up passed out on the floor. Yep. And what's funny is like, even when they in the book, look, she looks so bright-eyed

and young and little fizz is there and that does not match the cover at all. Like the cover is like. It's a completely different person. Yeah. It's really weird. It's like, that's, well, that's like right before she died. Like, I mean, she even looks like sleepy eyed. This is, this is the point where I'm about to fall over because my green glow in the

dark mutant beakers killed me. I mean, really, it's like, it's so weird that this is the one they picked for the cover. Wow. But. But good for you, Marie Curie. Thank you for your sacrifice. Yes. Thank you for your.

I broke my wrist when I was 13. You're the reason my hand didn't get cut off. Yep. So you're cool in my book. Yeah. I'm very cool and, uh, and I was excited to learn about her as a child. And even though this book is weird as shit, I'm still glad that I read it. And you know who else is cool?

Our listeners, the ones who subscribe to us or go to chainsawhistory.com and. And subscribe. Cause if you get the $5 or level higher over there, you get not only all of this series where we read each other, the value tales series, but you will also hear the full run of no time for love, Dr. Jones or Indiana Jones versus history podcast. So thank you for listening and sticking with us. We're going to have a more prime episodes coming soon, including a former college professor of mine and a dirty magazine mogul.

And a big thank you to our sound engineer, Kevin and love for Raven sound studios. Yes. Our sweet setup. We continue to enjoy. If you like the way we surround, that's all him. So till next time. Bye. Bye bye.