National Park After Dark - DDT - So Safe You Can Eat It! Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Today, more than 1 billion people around the world celebrate Earth Day—but decades before this global movement began, one woman laid the foundation. When aerial pesticide programs drenched the Northeast in chemicals like DDT, devastating ecosystems and killing thousands of wildlife species, marine biologist and writer Rachel Carson sounded the alarm. Her groundbreaking book, Silent Spring, ignited a nationwide reckoning with the hidden environmental costs of modern life.For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodesListen to Watch Her Cook on Apple and Spotify! Follow us on Instagram For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Harvest Hosts: For 20% off your order, head to HarvestHosts.com and use code NPAD.Lume Deodorant: Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with@lumedeodorant and get 15% off with promo code NPAD at LumeDeodorant.com! #lumepodIQBAR: Text PARK to 64000 to get 20% off all IQBAR products and free shipping. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Limitless. Now open your eyes. Go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally. Breathe. Girl, winter is so last season. And now spring's got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders.

That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope? It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. Hey everyone, it's Cassie.

And I'm Danielle. You might know us from National Park After Dark, but we're launching something completely new, and we're so excited to share it with you. Welcome to Watch Her Cook, a podcast about women proving they belong in whatever role they want to be in. From inventors and activists to outlaws and criminal masterminds, we're diving into the stories of women who defied expectations, sometimes in groundbreaking ways, sometimes in chilling ones. Some of them fought for justice.

Some of them shocked the world, but all of them made sure that they wouldn't be forgotten. Whether they're making history or making headlines, join us every Wednesday to hear the stories of women who have proved their power exceeds far beyond the kitchen. Just a reminder, empowered women empower the world. Now let's go cook. Imagine your whole life waking up to the sounds of songbirds. White-throated sparrows, American goldfinches, black cap chickadees, and northern cardinals that have been nesting in the trees around your house for generations. As dusk falls, the sound of crickets chirping fills the air.

This natural soundtrack is such a reliable part of the ebb and flow of the day, like sunrise and sunset, that you almost take it for granted, until one day you wake up to the sound of silence. You look out the kitchen window and there are no birds on the tree branches, no wings in the sky, and your lawn is vacant of robin searching for worms in the dirt. It is very quiet and still, like something isn't quite right. When you go outside to investigate, you discover lifeless bodies of birds strewn across your yard. At night, no cricket song arrives and you are left with nothing but a haunting silence.

That apocalyptic scene was a reality for many people in the Northeast United States in the spring of 1957. And it coincided with something else. the rollout of aerial pesticide spraying programs by local and state governments. It's hard to imagine today, but in 1957, a chemical insecticide called DDT was sprayed out of airplanes over millions of acres of land. The goal was to combat a widespread invasion of gypsy moth caterpillars, but as a bonus, it was advertised to rid yards of pesky mosquitoes and other insects as well. Government officials and chemical companies assured the public that DDT, was safe to humans. To reinforce that legitimacy of their claims, they ran ads showing a scientist spraying DDT into his porridge and then eating it and used the slogan, DDT so safe you can eat it.

They even advertised DDT being sprayed on children playing outside. The campaigns were effective. In the mainstream, DDT was viewed as a miracle chemical. But not everyone was convinced. To some, the link between pesticide spraying programs and the death of birds and other wildlife was undeniable. But how could they turn the tide of public opinion? And could the damage of DDT ever be undone? Welcome to National Park After Dark. Welcome back, everyone, to National Park After Dark. I'm Danielle. And I'm Cassie. And it is almost Earth Day. It is. Actually, when this comes out, this is coming out on Monday, April 21st, and Earth Day is April 22nd. We needed to talk about the environment for this episode because it's just so fitting for Earth Day. Do you have any plans?

I, every Earth Day, I don't, I haven't gone to celebrations or anything and I don't have anything planned quite yet. But every Earth Day, I always go for a hike and I'll grab like a bag or just in my backpack and pick up trash along the way on my hike. So probably something like that. Cool. I do something similar, but I take trash bags on the road side. Oh, cool. Like I don't go on to a high. hike or anything. I just go. It's needed there for sure. Like literally right outside of my driveway.

It's awful. Like the more you really look at the side of on the road sides and stuff, it's disgusting. So that's my plan to do a little cleanup there and see how far I make it. And yeah, try not to get hit by a car. Cool. Yeah. Do you guys, does Maine do, or not Earth Day? Of course they do Earth Day. Do they do Green Up Day? I haven't been here long enough. to know what Mainers do. So I'm not sure, actually. Vermont does something is called Green Up Day, and I forget that I think it's May 5th this year, or May 6th.

And it's each spring, it's kind of similar to what you're saying is going out and picking up trash along the roadside, but it's called Green Up Day. And it's very similar to Earth Day. Everyone celebrates that it's finally not gray and disgusting out anymore. And everyone gets outside and does some activity that has to do with helping the environment, whether that's picking up trash or it is like starting to garden and like clearing out your space. It's just cleaning up sticks off of trails, trail maintenance, stuff like that. It's just everyone is outside on Green Up Day and they have all these farmers markets and farm stands around to

feed people while they're doing it. Oh nice. It encourages people to get outside. Like tidying up. Yeah. Yeah. You'll see people in town just picking up like branches and sticks that have fallen into local parks and people just really tending to their flower. gardens that are in the front of, I don't know, even like grocery stores or in the front of their

house on Main Street, stuff like that, people really take care of things. I'll keep an eye out because I don't, I have no idea. I bet if I Googled like Green Up Day, Maine, it would pop up. Yeah, I have a feeling Maine does. That feels like a main thing. I think it's so too. I would be surprised. It might be called something else, but I bet they do something like that.

Yeah. Cool. Well, okay. So we know that your episode is linked to Earth Day in some way. Oh my God. Okay. So during your intro, when you were talking about the robins out in your yard and things like that, like tis the season right now, you know, April. The other day, I counted how many robins were out in my backyard because it was bizarre. It was like, what are you all doing here? I was like, what's happening? There was over 35 of them. Oh, my. Wow. That is. It was like I was taken aback. I had like three in my yard today and I thought that was exciting. No, there was like a whole, I don't know what a group of Robbins is called, you know, like a murder of crows or whatever, but very clearly I knew what they were doing, but I have just never seen so many Robbins in one spot before that it was startling. But, so I kind of smiled during that because I'm like, oh, my God. But yeah, DDT, man, I learned about that. I remember learning about that in college in an environmental studies class. Oh, cool. I don't remember why I learned about DDT, but I do remember.

remember watching the doc did you watch the documentary on it? I watched a documentary on Agent Orange. Okay. So no, I don't think so. But my minor was environmental science in school. So we did like a big unit on DDT. But I don't recall a documentary, no. I remember watching the first time I ever heard of DDT was through this documentary and I don't know what it's called. And maybe I should have looked it up, but has nothing to do with the episode that I'm covering for research wise. But it was, but it was, was a documentary on the bald eagles and how all of their eggshells were getting a lot thinner. So we were losing populations of bald eagles in the United States and how it eventually led to the banning of DDT. And that was the first time I had ever heard of it. And since then, I've understood

what it was new. But after this episode that we're going to dive into, I wanted to really dive into DDT and what was happening because something I did not know was the advertisements that they were putting out and like I alluded to and I'll get more into into this episode is they I was looking it up you can look it up on YouTube they have actual videos of them taking these like pesticide sprayers like you went to your garden or whatever and they are hosing down children with that and you are literally spraying children with pesticides right now what what in the world and there's like happy music behind it they're like DDT is safe for everywhere everyone put it everywhere and then they're like spraying it in children's mouths and I'm like

what is going on I get that similar feeling though with commercials for medication here yeah where it's like somebody skipping slow-mo through a sun-drenched field while they're talking about suicidal ideations and I don't know rectal hemorrhaging and whatever the hell else you know so I'm just like It's like take this medication and it'll make you better. But and then it says really, really fast all the side effects like, May cause death, internal bleeding and death. So I don't know. It kind of, it draws a parallel in my mind at least, just kind of.

But anyway, yeah, I want to hear all about it. Cool. Well, I was excited for this one. So today I'm diving into some scary history of the use of pesticides. I'm also going to be talking about one woman's book who opened the eyes to the world of their harm. and the global movement that ensued because of it that created what is now Earth Day. Oh, origin story of Earth Day. Origin story of Earth Day, yeah.

Okay. With a mix of their, I'm centering it around one woman, Rachel Carson, who was a writer and author of the book Silent Spring, which was an ode to really telling the world what DDT was and what it was doing and bringing all the scientific research to life. And through that book and through her research, eventually the environmental movement was created and thus Earth Day was created and now that's why we're here today. So we're going to dive into her story. We're going to dive into Earth Day and we're going to dive into its history. First going into Earth Day. The diversity of cultures and religions across the globe means that few celebrations are truly worldwide.

One of those few is Earth Day. Every year on April 22nd, more than one billion of us around the world, celebrate Earth Day in some type of way. The tradition dates back to 1970. A number of different people can be credited for establishing Earth Day, like Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin, who had the original idea for organizing a nationwide event to raise awareness of environmental issues among college students, and of course, activist Dennis Hayes, who scaled up Nelson's idea to the broader public, but setting the stage for Nelson and Hayes was another person whose influence is even greater and who is often credited for creating the concept of environmentalism itself.

And of course, her name is Rachel Carson. Rachel Carson was a biologist and author whose book Silent Spring published in 1962 had a transformative impact on both environmental policy and public consciousness. So today, in honor of Earth Day, I will be telling how Rachel Carson has changed the world. And I couldn't pass up a story that had a bookwreck tied to it. So if you are interested in learning more about this and Silent Spring and her work on that, check out that book. So we'll start her story in January of 1958.

Rachel Carson was living in a one-story brick home in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she received a letter addressed to her from Massachusetts. Carson didn't know it at the time, but this letter would catalyze the project that became her legacy, which was the writing of Silent Spring. The letter was written by a housewife and bird enthusiast named Olga Huckins, who was part of citizens group called the Committee Against Mass Poisoning. This group had come together to raise alarm bells about the danger of the new aerial pesticide spraying programs. These programs allowed planes and helicopters to spray pesticides from above and were largely used for areas of farmland.

They weren't scientists, but it was obvious to them that DDT was killing more than just the insects. The practice is actually still used today and is still fought against. In 2021, 120,000 drones because now we have drones, not in the 70s and 60s, 120,000 drones were used to spray pesticides over 175.5 million acres of farmland across the United States. In Olga's letter to Rachel, she described with emotional intensity and devastating detail how she witnessed aerial spraying firsthand.

The bird bath in her backyard became littered with the bodies of dead songbirds after her property in Cape Cod was sprayed with pesticides. In part, her letter read, The mosquito control plane flew over our small town last summer. Since we lived close to the marshes, we were treated to several lethal doses as a pilot crisscrossed our path. And we considered the spraying of the active poison over private land to be a serious aerial intrusion. The quote-unquote harmless shower bath killed seven of our lovely songbirds outright. We picked up three deadly bodies the next morning right by the door.

They were birds that had lived close to us, trusted us, built their nests in our trees year after year. The next day, three were scattered around the bird bath. I had emptied it and scrubbed it after the spraying, but you can never kill DDT. On the following day, one robin dropped suddenly from a branch in our woods. We were too heart sick to hunt for the other corpses. All of the birds died horribly and in the same way. Their bills were gaping open, and their splayed claws were drawn up to their breasts in agony. Olga Huckins and Rachel Carson were actually old friends, but in 1958, Rachel was also already

a biologist and a best-selling author. That's the real reason that Ola wrote to her. Her letter was a heartfelt call to action asking Rachel to help raise awareness of this issue by writing about it, and it worked. The letter struck accord with Rachel, who had been a devoted student and champion of the natural world for as long as she could remember. She had also seen the advertisements on television about the uses of DDT. One in particular used the slogan, DDT, let's put it everywhere. It showed DDT in different forms. powder, spray, and even paint. The video showed people painting their windowsills, their doorways, and their food pantries. As it was advertised, it would keep the bugs away and kill

them. Okay, so that is the only, that's what they're saying, it's uses. Like, there is no multi-use, right? Yeah, so, and I'll get into it more throughout the episode two of what the uses of DDT were, but it was originally advertised for this moth invasion that they were claiming. But then it was also, saying that it was great for all insects, that it would get rid of mosquitoes, beetles, any bugs, ants, things that were getting into your pantries, things like that. They were really advocating to have it everywhere in your house. But just for the sole purpose of an insect deterrent? Yes. Okay. Or yeah. All right. Yes. So there's these different forms in this advertisement of powder spray and paint and they're putting it on their windowsills for bugs to kill them. It showed putting

powder in between couch cushions inside musical instruments in the home and even on the family dog to rid it of lice and other insects. Yeah, there's a video and there's this cute lab and there's this woman just pouring powder of DDT on its back and like rubbing it in. Yikes. I mean, that's the least surprising of all the other things. Like, why do you need it in between your couch cushions? Do you really have that big of an insect problem? Yeah. Are there insects just everywhere in your house? And every corner on your child. And this is happening in New England. Like, I know we have mosquitoes and bugs, but we're not a tropics. Like, we're not the tropics. There's not all these huge insects and bugs everywhere carrying a ton of diseases. And I don't know. It's just, it's weird.

The way that they're, I mean, I know advertisements have a way of kind of catastrophizing everything, you know, like making it. Yeah. Offering you a solution that they're building up this big problem to be, you know. That you didn't even know you had. Right. But now you believe that you have it. Right. But yeah.

It's not like there's plagues of it. I mean, there's way more bugs here than I would prefer compared to the Rockies. You know, I can. In the summer, my biggest. They serve a purpose though. Yeah. My biggest gripe is like, you know, having to wear insect repellent here. Whereas in the Rockies, that's not as big of a concern.

Right. But it's not like I'm looking to douse my couch with it. Yeah. You're not putting it on. every surface I own. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, go on. Sorry. Just. Well, the advertisements get worse. So there was even a Times Magazine article that featured a cartoon of a dog, cow, chicken, a woman, and some fruit and vegetables dancing below a title that read, DDT is good for me, like a singing. DDT is good for me. And the piece, the article that came with it called it, quote, an amazing insecticide.

even had a drawing of a mother nursing a newborn baby beside it. Mm. Another advertisement in June of 1947 from Parents Magazine was selling DDT children's room wallpaper. It wrote about diseases insects carried like malaria, yellow fever, and typhoid. It urged parents to protect their children with their DDT-filled, easy-to-use, peel, peel-and-stick wallpaper. It stated, non-hazardous to children or adults to pets or clothing,

certified to be absolutely safe for home use. This is striking something very deep in me. And it's the whole like seeing through the malarkey that is advertising. And of course we kind of talked about the medication thing, which everyone is kind of like, isn't that banned in most countries in the world? Like you can't do that. It used to be banned in the U.S. I think it wasn't until the 70s or 80s, maybe even 90s that it was allowed back.

So. A lot of people see through that, right? But I, every time I go to the grocery store and I've been doing a lot more shopping locally, I'm very fortunate that there are several farms within a 10-minute driving distance. It's the honor system. You go, it's like farm store open, you go in, you unlatched the thing. They have like a little square set up, you know, so you can pay in cash with your credit card. And they have everything from meat, eggs, produce, yogurt, like.

Honey, you know, just some staple things. Yeah. So I try and do that when I can. But if I'm at a grocery store and especially the meat section where, you know, in environmental science classes I took in college, like I had a, my, the door's blown open in my mind as far as like animal welfare and treatment, especially in factory farming and how bad it is for the environment and et cetera, et cetera. but they really honed in on big companies like Tyson and Purdue and things like that and how they can label certain things.

They put, you know, sunshine and grass on the packaging and say, make these claims that are just so either completely untrue or very far from the truth. And it's like a huge stretch. But to the, to, you know, the average person's eye, like, it looks nice. It's in earthy tones. It has really nice wording. The marketing is flawless. It's just trickery, you know. And it's just now knowing that and applying that to everything, it's like you can trust nothing.

Well, I think of that where you're talking about meats and stuff. My first thought with that goes specifically to eggs because there's cage-free and there's free range. Pasture. And there's pasture-raged. But the thing is, is that you have to know. about cage-free, it sounds nice, but cage-free still means that they could just be in a facility inside that is way too small for the amount of chickens that are in there. They could never see sunlight.

They could never see sunlight. They could still be toppling each other. Like, just because it says cage-free does not mean that they're treated well. Yeah. There's like cage-free, pasture-raised, like, to your point, organic, antibiotic-free. It's like you have to decipher. It's a whole secondary language that you need to understand and become proficient in when it comes to different advertisement lingo stuff. And it's just it's super depressing.

Depressing that as I mean, I think everyone as a consumer of anything should be educated to some point. But it's also like, okay, so I can't trust anybody. I can't trust any of your claims. It's like, why can't I trust my food? Right. Like I need to do all of this research on my own just to make sure I'm not being misled. or poisoned in this case, literally poisoned? Yeah, literally poisoned in this story.

But I read something the other day that was like, what's the health food section in the grocery store? It's like, what does that mean nothing else in the grocery store is healthy? What about everything else that's there? Yeah. Why is there health food section? Why isn't everything in the store edible? And I mean, everything's edible, I guess, but why isn't everything healthy for you?

Why is there's so much bad stuff in all of our food? I've always, I've been taught to shop the perimeter if you're shopping at a typical grocery store. Like no matter that if it's Shaw's Hanifords, King Supers, whatever, like your best bet is to completely ignore everything in the aisles and shop the perimeter because that's usually where like the quote unquote best stuff for you is that like the least processed foods are hang out. And then of course, Because that's where the vegetables are. You have to do your own digging and deciphering still. But like, yeah, everything in the middle, like Lucky Charms. Oh, my God.

I'm sad because I did like Lucky Charms. Reese's Puffs. Captain Crunch. Captain Crunch. I did love Captain Crunch. The Barry Captain Crunch. I was. I wasn't a Barry.

I was a true peanut butter fan. Okay. I was a berry girl. But still, man, it's like the more you know, the more things are. awful. Yeah. Okay, let's, sorry, getting into awful things. Back to DDT. So, and spraying it on walls and spraying it on walls and all these advertisements on the topic of really bad shit and bad advertising and things that are going on. One thing that I did want to mention is that DDT was not only found to be really, really bad for the environment, but it had a really bad effect on people that wasn't being

advertised, which is also why, in hindsight, looking back at these advertisements of it being sprayed on children on people's dogs, things like that, make it really, really concerning. And that's because it was found after studies were done that people who were exposed to the pesticide of DDT had a much higher risk of developing liver cancer. Not only that, but the study also discovered that dogs exposed to DDT were found to have high rates of liver cancer. In addition to that as well, it was found to be linked particularly to women who had been exposed during infancy or in utero to have higher risk of breast cancer later on in life. So even, I mean, babies, you didn't have a chance. If you were exposed as a literal baby or a fetus, you were already like set for failure

going into life you were a high risk of getting breast cancer. Also, to add to the list of things that DDT caused in people, it was later linked to diabetes, decreased semen quality, loss of pregnancy, and impaired neurodevelopment in children. Meanwhile, we're getting all these ads that are saying, it's safe. DDT, put it everywhere, so safe you can eat it. Yeah. God. Like, not quite true.

And do you get into at all, but like where those claims? like where are their receipts like where are their studies that have proved that they can make these sorts of claims or was it just straight up false advertising it was false advertisement basically what it was from my understanding was lack of studies they found something that worked was killing what they wanted and I'll get into the origin story of DDT and why it was used and then how it like transferred into what it became but going back into Rachel a little bit she gets this letter. She was already concerned about DDT in her personal life anyway. She had these theories that it wasn't great. But after Olga's letter, she was really inspired to do something

about it. And she decided to help. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off camp. L. Every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Now before we get into the advocacy that later became Silent Spring, I did want to talk about her life a little bit leading up to that point. She was born in May of 1907 and rural Western Pennsylvania. Rachel grew up on 64 acres of farmland along the Allegheny River in a town called

Springdale. She lived there with her mother, father, two older siblings, a pig, a horse, some sheep, and some chickens. Rachel and her siblings spent their childhood exploring the field and hills, which included an orchard of apple and pear trees and a beautiful rose garden. But Rachel's love of nature didn't just come from her stunning natural environment. It's something her mother, Maria McLean, actively fostered. Maria was a curious, intelligent, passionate woman who clearly passed on those traits to her daughter. She taught Rachel how to identify local plants and recognize the call of local songbirds. As a child, Rachel was also an avid reader, particularly of books that related to the natural world, like The Wind and the Willows and the Tale of Peter Rabbit.

Rachel Carson was not only an avid reader as a child, but also an avid writer from a very young age. She wrote several short stories featuring animal characters, one of which was published in a children's magazine when she was just 10 years old. Later in life, she was quoted saying, I can remember no time, even in earliest childhood, when I didn't assume that I was going to be a writer. In 1925 at the age of 18, Rachel followed that passion for writing to Pennsylvania College for Women to study English. During this time, she stayed exceptionally close with her mother Maria.

To pay for Rachel's tuition, Maria sold apples and chickens for their farm and even some of their family China. She would also visit Rachel at the college every weekend to type out her handwritten papers. During Rachel's junior year, she took a required biology course with a professor who was named Mary Scott Skinner. Rachel was so captivated by both the material and Professor Skinner's passion for it that she decided to switch her major from English to biology, though she never let go of her love of writing. Professor Skinner is credited with being Rachel Carson's earliest and most important scientific mentor. After graduating in 1929, Rachel went with Professor Skinner to the

marine biology laboratories at Woods Hole in Falmouth, Massachusetts to conduct a summer research project. And this summer was hugely influential on Rachel's life because it was the first time that she ever saw the ocean. And she fell madly in love with it. While her later work on pesticides became her greatest legacy, the vast majority of Rachel's scientific and literary career actually focused on the sea. She went on to get her master's degree in zoology from John Hopkins University before pursuing a PhD. Unfortunately, it was during the Great Depression and because she was working to support her family at the time, she eventually had to drop out of school to accept a better paying job. She never completed her PhD, but at the time, especially in those years, to get a master's

as a woman was very rare. The better paying job that Rachel landed was with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, which five years later merged with the Bureau of Biologic Survey to become what we know today as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. At the Bureau of Fisheries, Rachel was able to combine her scientific expertise with her talent for writing in the public education department. There, she wrote educational brochures and radio programs to communicate scientific information to the general public.

After just one year on the job, she was promoted to editor-in-chief for all publications. And at this point, she was just 29 years old. God, she's done a lot. Yeah. She's getting, she's taking care of her family, which was something she was supporting. At the time, she was the only one working in her family. She's got her bachelor's, her master's. She's working for this incredible program.

She's following her dreams. It's just, it's, she's done a lot at 29 years old. The amount of stuff you can do without TikTok, you know. I know. Before scrolling, we were so productive. Imagine all that time. Yeah. All that time wasted.

One day we'll get rid of it. I re-downloaded it when I was in Argentina and I still have not gotten on it. It's just like not a thing. I never really got into it. I'm not into it either. Yeah. I do do scroll on reels on Instagram though. Same.

Same. It's like one's enough. I don't need more than that. We have a TikTok. Yeah. Do we use it? we use it occasionally i'm not great of posting up there i don't even know our logins i think we should be using it for this yeah we'll post this on tic talk for sure maybe you don't have to go

go tell us if it's there go tell us if it's there yeah uh well anyway she's doing all the stuff because she doesn't have tic talk right this was also around 29 years old was also the time that rachel carson's writing career really started to take off. She wrote an 11-page essay, like most of her work, was about life under the ocean. Her boss at the Bureau of Fisheries told her that it was, quote, too good for a government brochure and suggested that instead she sent it to the Atlantic magazine, which Rachel took that advice and the essay was published in the Atlantic under the title Under the Sea in 37. Rachel wrote her first book Under the Sea Wind and published it in 1941. Unfortunately, just a few weeks before, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, it was when she published it, and likely due to that, bad timing, the book did not sell well.

From there, Rachel continued working for the Fish and Wildlife Service in writing freelance articles. Most of her work continued to be about the ocean, but in 1945, after the end of World War II, there's an interesting moment of foreshadowing in her story. Rachel Carson actually picked up an article. Rachel Carson actually pitched an article to Reader's Digest about the harm. harmful effects of DDT, which is exactly what Silent Spring is about. Chemical companies had originally sold DDT to the military to stop the spread of typhus among soldiers by killing lice. When the war ended, those chemical companies began selling DDT to civilians to use in farms and gardens. In her letter to Reader's Digest, proposing the article, Rachel wrote that she wanted to investigate, quote,

whether it may upset the whole delicate balance of nature if unwisely used. Again, this is 15 years before she would start writing Silent Spring and before all these concerns were brought to her attention via other people. But Reader's Digest rejected her proposal. And there was really nothing she could do from there. So she went back to her writings about the ocean. Yeah, they were like, haven't you seen the commercials? It's fine.

It's safe to use everywhere. They used it in the war. It's like, I don't need to hear your. use it opinion on it we don't even have to investigate yeah and at this time too it wasn't she wasn't even saying ddt is bad she was saying hey shouldn't we just make sure it's not bad shouldn't we check to a temperature check here and see if yeah spraying chem if snorting chemicals is legit or not i mean i know people like to snort chemicals in other ways which also is not good arguably maybe safer because dd t was not something you should be snorting

But yeah, it's And for the record was not advertised that way They said safe to use anywhere That's true I did not see any advertisements of people Snorting Storning lines Yeah

Off mirrors I don't know though Because you know like in the whole age of like suit Like what is it Sue happy or Whatever when it's like you said it was safe anywhere So I did this You know what I mean It's like when they had to put a warning on tidepods

It's like, do not eat tid pods? And it's like, who is eating? Somebody did. Okay. And now we have to do that. And I know there's a whole story behind the whole McDonald's lid, like caution drink is hot or something. Oh, really?

Yeah, there's a whole thing on that. Like it should be a caution on their food in general. It gave someone third degree burns because it spilled on their lap. And their coffee was so scorching hot. And it didn't have a warning. But it's like you shouldn't be serving somebody coffee that will. give you third degree burnt. I don't know. It's a whole thing. Yeah. Why was it so hot? Yeah. But anyway. There's a reason there's like very obvious seeming messaging. And it's because people

have unfortunately done it. Yes. Intentionally or unintentionally. But right. Anyway, okay. Right. So she's basically like, hey, why don't we just investigate this? But gets rejected. So she goes back to other writings. And she writes a second book. She titles at The Sea Around Us and it's published in 1951. While her first book had flopped 10 years earlier, the sea around us was a huge hit. It won the National Book Award for nonfiction and broke a record by staying on the New York Times bestseller list for 86 weeks. In fact, it was so popular that Rachel's publisher decided to republish her first book under the sea wind and that one also became a bestseller. Oh, cool. So it's just really bad timing before. Yeah. Or maybe the second book gave her the recognition. People are like, oh, I'll read anything

she writes. Yeah, they're like, wow, this is beautiful. Let's try her other book. And smart on her publishers then when she had all of this attention. With her breakout success, she decided to resign from the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1951 after 15 years to focus on her writing. With some of the money coming from her book sales, she was able to make one of her lifelong dreams come true of owning a home by the seashore. She purchased a small piece of waterfront land on a little island in the Booth Bay Harbor of Maine called Southport and built a small cottage. Booth Bay Harbor is north of Portland, Maine, and a popular tourist destination, but at the time the area was barely developed. It was there in Southport that Rachel met her lifelong best friend in the summer of 1953. Her name was

Dorothy Freeman and she would later be a huge support to Rachel while she wrote Silent Spring. While Dorothy was married with a son, many have speculated that her and Rachel were more than just friends. From that summer until Rachel's death, the two women maintained an intimate correspondence with over 900 letters to each other. Rachel kept her favorite letters from Dorothy under her pillow, and they would often write to each other two letters at a time, one to be shared with family and the other totally private to be burned after reading. The letters that remained were later published by Dorothy's granddaughter in 1995, and in them, the two women write poetically about how much they loved each other. And I read a couple excerpts. I didn't add them in here. And I read a couple

excerpts. I didn't add them in here, but I read a couple just expert excerpts online of it. And it's really kind. Like some of the stuff was just really, I wouldn't even, not even just a lover standpoint, but just as a friend standpoint, the things that they would say to each other was just like, my life is so much better because you're here. It's so great to have someone in my life that sees me for who I am. And it was just so kind and beautiful that I totally understand why it was published as a book. And many have speculated since that there was a lot more to that because they had this lifelong friendship. This continued throughout their entire lives. During Rachel's summer in Southport, she was inspired to write another bestselling book, The Edge of the Sea, which she

published in 1955 before moving back to Silver Spring, Maryland in 1957 to care for her mother who had been struggling with her health. And this brings us back to where we started, because it's here that Rachel received the impassioned letter from Olga Huckins about DDT pesticides killing songbirds in January 1958. As I mentioned, the topic of how DDT impacts wildlife had already been on Rachel's radar, nearly 15 years prior, when the pesticides first started being sold to civilians after World War II, now DDT was so widespread that it was literally being sprayed out of airplanes across millions of acres of land. And this is where people are starting to get really concerned. And I've spoken a lot about DDT during this episode already,

but I want to explain a little bit about exactly what DDT is and how it was used. DDT stands for dichloral diphenyl triathlon. Developed in 1939, it was one of humanity's first synthetic insecticides. DDT became very useful for American troops during World War II because as I mentioned earlier, it was used to kill lice among soldiers in Europe, which helped to stop the spread of typhus. It was also used in South Pacific Islands to kill mosquitoes and other insects that carried malaria. Part of what made it so special is that it killed hundreds of different kinds of insects at once.

It was viewed as this miracle chemical. In fact, it was so effective that the inventor, a Swiss chemist named Paul Herman Mueller, won a noble prize for it. And when you think about it, when you're advertising something and you actually have something that kills mosquitoes that are carrying malaria and malaria is killing thousands of people, it actually does feel like this miracle drug, a miracle chemical at the time. But then in hindsight, when you learn more about it, it's like what are we sacrificing? Yeah, very easily see the shiny bits of that initially, you know, like who wouldn't want that benefit. Yeah. Especially when it's your family members and things like that who are getting malaria. And when you live somewhere where there are so many mosquitoes and it's hard to avoid, I mean, we've been to countries with malaria and we're taking anti-malarials and we're covering ourselves and bugnets.

but a lot of people don't have access to that. And as somebody who contracted dengue fever, I can say. You know how bad it is to get an illness from a mosquito-borne illness, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not great. No, don't recommend. So people were obviously very excited for it.

However, the story of DDT took a dark turn from there as its usage became way more widespread after the end of the war in 1945. For one, a lot of insects like mosquitoes began developing a resistance to DDT, so it became way less effective than an actual pesticide. But of course, there are bigger environmental problems with the widespread of DDT. One is that not all insects are bad. In fact, some are vitally important to ecosystems. And two, we discover that DDT is toxic to a lot more than just insects. These problems were exacerbated by the fact that DDT persists in the environment for a long time.

It also persists in individual animals for a long time and moves through the food chain because it accumulates in fatty tissues. And if that weren't bad enough, when you spray DDT in one area, it can travel a really far distance through the atmosphere. All of this means that the impact of spraying DDT is really long lasting and it's very hard to contain. And I'll get into it a little bit more later, but they found that DDT actually you can't just wash it out of the environment. it actually stays for and is still impacting wildlife today from something that was sprayed, I mean, 50 years ago. Most infamously, DDT caused the population of bald eagles and other birds of prey in the U.S. to plummet in the mid-20th century, and this is because exposure to DDT caused their eggshells

to thin, but this link wasn't recognized by many mainstream scientists at the time. Rachel Carson was among a handful of observers who had concerns about the environmental impact of DDT on her radar way back in 1945. By 1958, the impacts were undemiable to birdwatchers like Olga Huckins and other members of the Committee Against Mass Poisoning. In addition to writing to Rachel, they wrote letters to newspapers across the Northeast and filed a lawsuit in New York City. But even then, the view that sprang DDT was good for humanity was so entrenched in the mainstream. It was considered this miracle chemical. It was a sign of progress that man was finally conquering nature and could handle whatever these diseases were and all these insects and they had a

control of it. And Rachel, once again, after this letter that she gets, she tries pitching to other magazines about writing an article that DDT is bad and the potential effects of it. But despite all of her success and her being this very famous author who's won a lot of prizes and bestselling and all of that, article said no, a magazine said, no, we're not publishing that, we're not interested. Is that because of just kind of like the behemoth of the production, whoever's producing DDT? You know, like a lot of people are, you know, publications or whatever, no matter what it is, are really hesitant to go up against, like, to publish anything that's voicing, like, any sort of whistleblowing or voicing any sort of concern against, like, big foreign. or anything like that.

Is that kind of why? For sure. That was definitely part of it. I think a lot of them didn't want to get in the bad graces of these big chemical companies that were supposedly had made this miracle chemical that people really were relying on and they were making millions of dollars off of. But also I think that there was this added part to it where people didn't believe it. Right.

They thought, why would we, we're not going to public. something that's so preposterous. That's crazy. This is this great, what you're saying has no substance behind it. We're not. Because it was kind of like the first of the, like, again, I'm going back to my environmental science courses and a big thing that, a big unit that we did was on Roundup and the Coke brothers and how like awful that whole thing is and just how detrimental the whole roundup thing is. And a lot, even then, you know, this is after this point in time, there has been case studies of how harmful different insecticides and pesticides and herbicides has on the environment. And as a byproduct, people and wildlife, like that was already known. But now what you're saying is that this is like really kind of a pioneer in that world as far as like.

Yeah, there were these small groups that were coming together and were voicing. Like I said, this one group, they filed a lawsuit with New York City. People were starting to advocate for it, but it was still very much under the radar. They were making millions of dollars off of this. And no one really at this point was willing to stick their neck out, I'm sure. Yeah, to stick their neck out. It was a huge risk. And even, I'll get into it a little bit, but people didn't want to work with race. because of it. People didn't believe her. Yeah. People were like, this, this is a crazy idea. We're not on your side here. Or even if it's not crazy and you might have legit concerns that are founded, I don't want to be associated with you when they come after you. Right. That was it too. It's because they knew that she was going to get a lot of backlash if she tried to go forward with this. So after Rachel gets denied all of these articles that she's trying to put out, she's trying to put out the word, she just says, you know what, if no one's going to publish, my work, I'm going to do it myself. And she decides to start her next book. And that would be Silent Spring and she took four years to write it. She used the years in 1958 to 1962 to do all of her research and to really compile what she wanted to say because she knew from the get-go that it would be

very controversial. As she developed the book, she reached out to several other prominent authors and scientists to contribute and a number of them declined because they were afraid to be associated with controversy. Her best friend Dorothy Freeman feared that the powerful chemical companies who profited massively from these sales would attack Rachel for this work. And Rachel knew that that was likely, but she didn't back down. She wrote in a letter to Dorothy saying, knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent. In anticipation for those attacks, Rachel not only did years of meticulous research, she opted to include 55 pages of notes in the back of her book, citing all of her resources.

She also consulted a wide network of scientific experts throughout the writing process, many of whom reviewed the manuscript and confirmed the accuracy of her claims. But despite being as rigorous and informally dense as a piece of academic literature, the book was written like a story. It was written in plain English in a way that anyone could understand you didn't have to have some degree and some scientific degree to understand what she was trying to convey. That's really cool because especially coming from a degree that, and I'm sure you have had a very similar experience with your

psychology degree, like the amount of scientific journals and different articles and publications and studies that we had to read for different projects and research and things like that from like academia was, I understand, like, important and the message was really critical to know and it was great that it was published like that. but for the average person, like, you're not going to catch the attention of the general public like that. To read. Yeah. It's very dry. It's hard to follow. It's very usually numbers dense, statistics dense, and like your eyes glaze over type of thing. Even if it's really important stuff. So to have this approach is so smart. Because you're conveying the same information. You're just doing it in a way. that more people can understand and apply to their own life. Right.

And she's working with scientists. She knows the scientific community that she's speaking to understands what she's saying. But now how does she get this out to the public in a way that they're going to second guess what they've been hearing and they're going to look at these advertisements where it's spraying children and they're going to think twice and say, wait a second. And it's in an accessible format. Like, not everyone has a subscription to wherever, you know, the journal of. Yeah, some scientific journal.

Right. Let alone wants to read something like that. Sorry for everyone who like, you know, spends a decade of their life. I mean, they are interesting. I mean, they are interesting. And I think like in the scientific community and things like that, it is important to have. Definitely. And it has its place.

But if I'm going to sit down leisurely and read something that I'm interested, I'm not going to pick up a scientific journal. Yeah. And read the data charts that they support. ply in it. You know, it's just like, it's different. And she, she knew that she needed to make it more exciting to read. Shortly after Rachel started writing the book, her mother, Maria suffered a stroke. And a few months later, in December 1958, Maria passed away at the age of 89. Rachel was grieving. And then in April of 1960, Rachel started having serious health problems of her own. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy of her left breast. Unfortunately,

the operation was too late, the cancer had already started to spread. By November of 1960, Rachel discovered lumps on her ribs and began undergoing radiation therapy. The progression of the cancer was rapid and it was ruthless. She underwent more surgeries and more treatments, but nothing stopped the cancer from spreading. And other illnesses followed. The flu, staff infections, rheumatoid arthritis, and eye infections. By early 1961, Rachel was using wheelchair on and off. In her letters with Dorothy Freeman, she wrote that she was afraid she might die before she finished her book. But despite how terrible the cancer was, Rachel was determined to keep it a secret.

Dorothy was one of the only people who knew about it, not even Rachel's editor was clued in on what she was doing. This was partly because Rachel wanted to maintain some privacy, but also again, in anticipation of backlash from big chemical companies, she didn't want them to dismiss her as having written the book for personal revenge, as if she was blaming the pesticides for giving her cancer. answer, which wasn't the point at all, although, as I mentioned earlier, DDT is now classified as a human carcinogen in the U.S. government. Rachel did manage to finish the book in early 1962. The title

Silent Spring was originally the title of just one chapter in which she examined how DDT was killing birds. Oh, my God, I just got it. Silent Spring. Yeah. For some reason, my mind was going to like a spring of water. Oh, no. I kind of wanted to... Oh, in your intro. In my intro where... Brilliant. Silent Spring. Congrats. Well, in that chapter, she wrote, Over increasingly large areas of the United States,

Spring now comes unhurtled by the return of the birds and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of birdsong. Her editor, after reading it, suggested making Silent Spring the title of her whole book, which she agreed with. Silent Spring was slated to be published first as a series of three excerpts in the New York Magazine that June, 1962, and then as a standalone book that September.

Leading up to publication, Rachel and her editors took additional steps to prepare for the blowback from chemical companies. Their strategy was to develop relationships with the people in charge, and they went all the way to the most influential people in the entire country. Rachel attended the May 1962 White House Conference on Conservation organized by President John F. Kennedy himself. President Kennedy was known to be an environmentalist, and Rachel wanted to be. wanted him specifically to be her ally. Kennedy's unofficial advisor when it came to matters of conservation was a Supreme Court justice named William O. Douglas, who had been delivered a pre-print copy of Silent Spring by Rachel's editor shortly before the White House Conference. During the event, Rachel went out of her way to speak with the Secretary of Interior, Stuart Udall, and the director

of the Sierra Club, David Brower. Two days later, on May 27, 1962, Rachel met with a close advisor to the Interior Secretary to strategize about how she and the Kennedy administration could work together to maximize the impact of her book. And it was official. She finally had the most powerful people in the entire country on her side, Silent Spring. President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy were among some of the first readers of Silent Spring. When the book was released in September, it was an instant bestseller. And as I mentioned before, a couple excerpts were planned to be published in The New Yorker, which were, and that created this huge craze over people wanting to read it. The book was dark and captivating with chapter titles that included Alexers of Death, Rivers of

Death, and The Human Price. Citing extensive research, Rachel showed clearly how DDT was not only killing insects and birds, but also entering the food chain and accumulating in the bodies of human beings, causing cancer and genetic damage. She wrote, quote, a who's who of pesticides is therefore a concern to us all. If we're going to live so intimately with these chemicals, eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones, we had better know something about their nature and their power. Notably, Rachel didn't call for an outright ban on all pesticides,

or even on DDT specifically. What she called for was restraint, transparency, and science-based decision-making. But she made a compelling case that DDT in particular was being misused on a dangerous scale and that its consequences for ecosystems, wildlife, and human health were far more serious than the industry wanted to admit. And one quote from her book that really stuck with me and with a lot of her readers at the time was, quote, for the first time in history of the world, every human is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals from the moment of conception until death. An unfortunate reality. Yeah. That still is very present.

If not more. If not more. I would argue more. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you could dive into that in so many ways, but it's very concerning what. And also is probably why there's so much disease and everything's going up and there's much more high cancer rates. I mean, as someone who has kidney disease, the amount of people with kidney disease is, it's staggering.

I think it's, yeah, it's like one in seven people. Yeah. I was joke. Like, if you're in a room with. me, you're lucky, you're safe. But are you? But are you? It's getting worse.

I don't know. I read the other day that there was this new study that was just released regarding microplastics in particular, not. Is it with Alzheimer's? No. Well, the part that I was going to talk about or just give you a little fact about is that after doing dissection of a bunch of different cadavers and things like that, the average person has two cap, like two caps worth of plastic in their brains.

Like two bottle caps. Yeah. In their brains. Yeah. Yeah. I saw something about that. And I was talking about how Alzheimer's is being linked to the microplastics that are being held in your brain because your body can't get rid of them.

And then after seeing that, I really started noticing how much stuff is in plastic at grocery stores. Specifically, I go to get vegetables and I want tomatoes and they're wrapped in plastic. You want a, I want a zucchini or a cucumber. It's wrapped in plastic. Shrink wrapped in plastic. Yeah. What is the- Yeah. Like, why? What is the point? Don't do that. Yeah. And that's just so frustrating. It's just, it's so frustrating. Things with natural casing has shrink wrap on it. I don't know. Yeah. And it's just like things you wouldn't even think of. Like obviously you're like, oh, I should not use single use plastic water bottles because it's bad because then, you know, they like at first you think of the landfills and recycling and how it,

when you recycle something, is it really going to recycling? Because then that's a whole other conversation. So it's like, okay, let's use usable water bottles or try to unless you lose them on planes every time you take a plane like you do. but your heart's in the right place. You're trying, you know? But you're not thinking of the microplastics that you're ingesting from that or like Tupperware. Like swap it out if you can for glass or, you know, when you're going to get your tomatoes,

you can't help that they're shrink wrapped in plastic, but you can help by not putting them in those plastic bags. Like go get a reusable netting and just bring it to the grocery store yourself. Yeah, Vermont doesn't even have plastic bags anymore. Yeah, they're being slowly phased out, I feel like, in a lot of, states but I don't know it's just it's like okay great you don't have plastic bags but everything is still else is plastic yeah I saw this really it was this locally made rice and it was in this really it was in this pouch at the grocery store and I was like this is really cute and it's not

in plastic it was like in this hand woven pouch and I pick it up to look at it and the inside the rice is in plastic it was just the outside the pouch oh it's like large It's like, yeah. No, like the actual rice was in a plastic container and then the pouch covered the plastic. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. It's like, what are we doing? Why? Why? I've been using, um, instead of plastic wrap. I use beeswax wrap. Oh, I've seen that. I have some of that too. And it kind of smells a little weird, but it's fine. It's better, though. It is better. No microplastics. I'm like, okay, it's not as easy, but it's worth it. I guess. Yeah. Save your brain. We're screwed, aren't we? Don't use plastics?

Yeah, our generation. I think that our generation and like the ones younger than us are going to really see repercussions for these as we get older because a lot of these single use plastics are a lot newer to our generations. and our parents' generations haven't had to live through as long of plastic use as we have. So I think that we're going to really. And screen time. I think years and years of screen time, it's really going to, because cell phones are relatively new in our lifetime. I think also, though, it's good that we're doing a lot of self-correcting or self-realization

of, like, yes, we're enduring these problems. And yes, they're as bad as they have ever. been, but there's also recognition of that. Yeah. And I think that we're also in this phase of life where a lot of people are a lot more health conscious. And people know that exercising is important. People know that smoking cigarettes is really bad for you. People know that, of course, now there's the vaping that's going on, which is also coming out. It's very bad for you as well. But I think that we are a lot more conscious about what is healthy and what is not. Vaping has always blown my mind. When people are like, it's not as bad.

I'm like, you're inhaling something into your lungs that isn't natural air and oxygen. And then it's like the flavors and stuff. I'm like, just because it doesn't smell bad. I don't know. That actually feels worse to me. Like, what is that flavor made out of that you're putting in your lungs? I don't know. I don't really get it.

I mean, maybe if you have them side by side, like, would you rather vape or rip a cigarette? And I feel like I would have to say vape. If I was forced I would smoke a cigarette over a vape any day Would you? I've never vaped before and I have had a cigarette before. So I just I don't know.

I do. I don't know. I feel like something about the vapor getting into your lungs. Have you seen what a cigarette's due to your lungs though? It's just one though, right? We're just picking one. Oh, like one? We're vaping once or we're smoking one cigarette. Yeah, yes.

Yeah, yeah. Wait, is it one puff of a bit? I don't know. Because if it's one pop of a bait, then I'd choose a vape. But if I have to like fully vape for a day or smoke a cigarette, I would pick a cigarette. Well, cigarette's going to last not as long. Yeah. I can also fake smoke smoke cigarette. No, there's no faking. You just put the smoke in your mouth. In this scenario. It doesn't actually get to your last. Is that what happened when you smoked a cigarette that one time? Did you inhale? Yeah. I've definitely inhaled before and I thought so gross story and is not cool but I thought I was cool because I bought when I was like 18 I bought camel number nines and they come in a pink cigarette case oh and that's why I

thought they were cool so I would had them but I didn't actually like smoking so I only did it in front of like my friends who smoked and then I I did inhale sometimes but for the most part I just practice trying to blow circle rings oh okay yeah and then I never like it was very short lived and it was really gross and I had them in my purse and then my purse smelled really bad. And so it was a very short lived experience. But the packaging, man, I thought pink was cute. Here we are with the advertisements. It's all. Yeah, it was the advertisement. They got me. And it had a cute little camel on it. Yeah. They got you. It was messed up. Yeah. And then there was just a really, really tiny cancer warning. But I'm like, I'm 18. Yeah. In other countries, you know how it's like the whole

carton is a cancer warning and it shows somebody with a no teeth and just a cancerous full of cancer lesions. Even when we were in Argentina, totally different. But when we were in Argentina, we would buy candy and there would be these big labels on it that said excess sugar, excess calorie, excess whatever. And it was on M&Ms. Yeah, it's like, you sure you want to do this? I was not on U.S. M&Ms. Yeah. There was literally so many signs that are like, are you sure, are you sure. And I was like, I am actually very sure. I need this. Actually, thank you. Yeah. I don't know. I've never. been a cigarette like I've never been tempted ever and I have you ever smoked a cigarette I had a puff of one of my dad's once when he wasn't looking and my so my dad was an avid smoker like I'm talking

multiple packs a day and that's ultimately what killed him so I think which is really common in our parents generation specifically so I'm pretty sure that's why I was immediately like I'm good not because he died but even leading up to that like you saw him doing it yeah and just like he was just so like he couldn't take a deep breath he was always hacking shit up out of his chest everything's about like when I would go to his house and then come back because I shuffled between my parents house growing houses growing up like all of my things I would have to just like throw immediately into the wash because everything smelled like cigarette smoke like I just saw the things that I did not want to do. And so it's so funny, my mom will remember this. Sorry, we're going on so many tangents day.

But one time, one time I came back, I had gotten my license, so I was starting to drive myself down to my dad's instead of being like shuffled and dropped off. And I came back, or I drove my, I had a pathfinder. It was my, one of my first cars. And he would drive it around when I was down there. And I came back. And my mom was looking for something in my car or some, I don't know, something but he had taken so you know the clear plastic the plastic the plastic that's around a carton of cigarettes yeah so he had taken that off and put the butts in that plastic and put it under the driver's seat and forgotten about it and i didn't know it was there and whatever so when my mom she found it and she like ripped me a new ass i'm like

like, okay, first of all, hello, that's fresh. Me? Me? But like I was in high school, you know, it looks like, you were of the age. Yeah, it looks like I was sneaking it, you know, like whatever. I'm like, I see why. Okay, first of all, relax, take it down. That was, I was just the dad. You know, your ex-husband, who is a avid smoker, okay? And she was like, oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm like, okay, yes, thank you. But anyway, yeah, what were you? plastic or cigarettes or vaping or Rachel Carson. Rachel Carson, all of the above, I think. Okay, I'm still taking the vape is my final answer.

For a day. I think it's for a day. If you were to smoke for a day, would you smoke cigarettes or vape? So many people are like, I do that. I don't know. It's not that big of a deal. It's just my lungs are so sensitive. I feel like a vape, like a juicy berry.

I hate the smell of it, to be honest. More than a cigarette? I've been in cars with people who vape. I've been in cars with. people who vape and they keep the windows up because they think that because it smells good that it's good but I instantly start coughing like as soon as my I literally can't handle it so I don't know cigarette smoke makes me sneeze me too isn't that strange it's like I'm allergic I don't think so yeah I'm allergic I can't okay well if you're gonna smoke six for a day we can't be together because

well if you're gonna smoke if you're gonna vape for a day we also can okay anyway that's because anyway if you smoke cigarettes Don't. Please stop. It's really bad for you and don't do it. We care about you. And vaping. Also don't do that. No. And when people they do it, they like take it out and they're like, they look like crazy. I know. And you're inside. You're inside. You look crazy. Yeah. You're like pulling it out of your jacket. You're hiding. And then you like blow a puff of smoke away like no one's going to see it. Or smell a fucking. Or smell it. We know. We know. Just stop. doing it. It's just embarrassing. It's so embarrassing. It's so embarrassing. You should be shamed because we want you to stop. Because we care about you. Because we care about you. We're shaming you. And we want you to be able to do outdoor adventures. You're not going to be able to hike or do anything if you're doing that stuff. So cut the shit. Yeah, cut it out. I feel like

moms. We're moming people. Okay. Anyway, we talked about it. Anyway, what is happening? We're going back. Um, so she published. is Silent Spring, and she's not calling for a ban on it. She's just asking that we really recognize and start regulating it better. And as expected, she publishes it. It's a big hit, but there's a huge backlash from the chemical industry. They tried and failed to sue Rachel, her book publisher, and the New Yorker magazine who published the excerpts of the book. Then they spent hundreds and thousands of dollars on attack ads and supposedly informational pamphlets in order to discredit Rachel's work in the public eye.

An executive from the American cinnamon company said... American cinnamon. It's cinamid. Cinamid. Okay, I'm like... Not cinnamon is coming out. Not cinnamon. Is nothing sacred?

Wait. But they said, quote, if man were to faithfully follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the dark ages. and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth. Okay, drama king. Drama king for sure would once again inherit the earth. The dark ages.

Isn't the dark ages of the 1400s? Yeah, when people were being like executed publicly. Yeah, it's like, okay, that's dramatic, but it's like, it's a mosquito. Relax. Oh, God. An agro company called Monsanto distributed 5,000 copies of this pamphlet and a pamphlet parody of Silent Springs, which depicted a world where famine, disease, and insects were widespread because chemical pesticides had been banned. Rachel Carson had prepared for these kind of attacks on her work, but the chemical companies also attacked her personally in a really vicious and gendered way. At a meeting of the Federal Pest Control Review Board, a man named Ezra Taff Benson,

who had been the Secretary of Agriculture under President Dwight Eisenhower, mocked Rachel for being childless, saying, quote, I thought she was a spinster, what she's so worried about genetics for. The rest of the room laughed in response, and in Time Magazine, a review of Silent Spring described Rachel Carson as being, quote, hysterically over emphatic and called her argument a, quote, emotional and inaccurate outburst. Though notably, it didn't call out any specific inaccuracies. An industry magazine called Farm Chemicals depicted Rachel as a witch on a brimstick and a cover

illustration as well. Those are such. She's being called a witch. She's over exaggerating. A witch, a spinster. She's having outbursts. Like, it's just such a tired and pathetic and baseless. It's like an empty insult. It's like, okay, that has nothing to do with my work. It's like, okay, that has nothing to do with my work. You're not, you're attacking, you're trying to attack me as a person. Let's focus on the work. Oh, there's nothing that you can discredit here. Okay. That's what I'm not. So you're just going to call me names. Yeah. It's like, it's a very, uh, elementary type of. Yeah. That's an outburst. Yeah. And when I was looking into Rachel too, I will say she publicly said she said something along the lines and this is an exact, but she said something along the lines of I'm not a feminist. I don't care where this work is coming from.

if it's a guy or a girl, male or female, it doesn't matter that these are facts. Right. And that was in response to these like really gendered things that were coming out to her. It's like, it doesn't matter that I'm a woman. This is, these are facts. But these attacks were rivaled by a groundswell of support. Many readers, including many outdoorsy men, wrote into the New Yorker saying that they had witnessed the dead birds and dead rivers that Carson was describing firsthand.

While some scientists at the time were definitely in the pockets of. big chemical companies at the time, many other prominent scientists defended Rachel. And her work to make alliances with the government ahead of publication really paid off. At a press conference in August 1962, President Kennedy was asked whether government scientists were going to do more to investigate the impacts of DDT. He responded by saying, quote, yes, I know that they already are, I think particularly of course, since Ms. Carson's book. Silent Spring ignited a national conversation not only about the use of DDT pesticides, but more broadly about the relationship between human industry and the environment. One particularly interesting historical document that captures the two

sides of this national conversation is an hour-long CBS special feature. It cuts together footage of Rachel Carson with footage of spokesmen from the pesticide industry, effectively putting the two in conversation even though they were filmed separately. Rachel also reads excerpts from Silent Spring. It was her only TV appearance after the publication of the book. And there are some striking gender dynamics at play. Rachel was filmed sitting on the porch of her cottage in Maine, wearing a skirt and cardigan, while the industry spokesmen were shown in a lab

surrounded by scientific equipment, wearing white coats and dark rim glasses. It was clearly meant to make the men look more official and smart, but in practice, Rachel's calm, thoughtful delivery came across as far more credible than the defensive, even combative tones of the critics. Another striking detail about the CBS report is that Rachel appears wearing a wig and remains seated throughout. By that point, her cancer had advanced significantly. It had spread to her spine, making it difficult for her to stand, and she had lost her hair from radiation treatments.

She was just 55, but she looked and felt like she was much older. The CBS special aired on April 3rd, 1963. It reached an estimated 10 to 15 million viewers and marked a pivotal moment when public opinion really began to shift in Rachel's favor. In the following month in May, 1963, she testified before the Senate Committee of Commerce, despite her continually worsening illness. She called for common sense regulations on pesticide use, such as requiring manufacturers to include warnings about environmental harm on product labels, which is not crazy to ask. Rachel was physically frail, but her testimony was powerful and unwavering. She knew that she didn't have much time left, and she also understood that Silent Spring would define her life. In fact, in letters to Dorothy Freeman, she confessed a little sadness that her lifetime of writings about the ocean would be forgotten.

She also lamented that she herself would never see the ocean again. A trip to Maine was no longer possible in her condition. Almost exactly a year later on April 14th, 1964, the breast cancer finally took Rachel's life. At that point, more than a million copies of Silent Spring had been sold. Wait a second. What? It's April 14th right now. Oh my God, it is April 14th.

right now when we're recording this. Yeah. Wow. Synchronicities. Okay, sorry to interrupt. Rachel, we're talking about you. No, that's a really interesting coincidence. Yeah. I hope you're listening, Rachel. So at that point, more than a million copies of Silent Spring had been sold. She died at the age of 56 in her house in Silver Spring, Maryland, which is now a national historic landmark. Dorothy Freeman brought Rachel's ashes to Southport Island in Maine and scattered them into the sea, letting her become one with the shoreline she had studied and written about so beautifully. Two years later in 1966, Rachel's connection to the shoreland was further immortalized when the state of Maine established the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge along 50 miles

of coastline between the towns of Kittery and Cape Elizabeth. Yeah, I knew. I knew it. That I'm, kiddery is not even 25 minutes for me. So close you can visit. This refuge is 5,600 acres. and consists of salt marshes and estuaries that are vitally important for migratory birds. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service website, it contains, quote, a composition of plants and animals not found elsewhere in Maine. Many of those animals are endangered or at risk,

such as the eastern small-footed bats and piping plovers. The wildlife refuge also contains hiking trails. There are around 300,000 people who visit every year, and this is a beautiful and fitting tribute to a woman who dedicated her life to protecting the fragile coastal ecosystems just like this one. Rachel Carson is also honored with a memorial statue at the original location that sparked her lifelong love of the ocean, the Woods Hole Laboratories in Massachusetts. The statue shows Rachel looking out over the ocean with a smile on her face.

Long after her death in 1980, President Jimmy Carter awarded Rachel Carson the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest civilian honor. Rachel Carson's fight against DDT ultimately led to real change. In response to Silent Spring, President Kennedy tasked his scientific advisory committee with investigating her claims and their findings supported her conclusions. In 1972, a decade after the book was published, the U.S. government banned the production of DDT and its use in agriculture. The UK and several other countries would follow suit over the next few years. In the years since then, populations of bald eagles and other birds of prey in the U.S. have slowly recovered. But the story doesn't end there. One of Rachel's

major warnings was about how persistent DDT is in the environment, and she was right. Decades after it was last sprayed, DDT still lingers in ecosystems. The chemicals have washed from soils into rivers and streams where they continue to impact in marine life. In Sarasota Bay, Florida, for example, about 70% of first-born dolphin calves die within the first year, and scientists believe one major factor is the transfer of fat soluble pollutants like DDT through their mother's milk. If this is the damage we're still seeing more than 50 years after the ban, you can just imagine what would have happened if Rachel had not stepped in. Rachel's influence on environmental policy extended far beyond the banning of DDT.

Silent Spring helped launch the modern environmental movement as a whole, introducing into the mainstream the idea that industrial activity should be regulated, not just to protect nature, but to safeguard human health. The book sparked a wave of landmark conservation laws, including the Clean Air Act of 1963, the Wilderness Act in 1964, the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969, the Clean Water Act in 1972, and the Endangered Species Act in 1973. It also directly inspired the founding of major environmental organizations like Greenpeace and Friends of Earth and contributed to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.

Not bad for a childless spinster. Yeah, not bad. Fur witch. Yep. Never thought the term which is bad thing. The birth of environmentalism and founding of the EPA in 1970 also brings us back to the very first Earth Day celebration, which took place that same year. As I mentioned at the very beginning of the episode, Earth Day was created in the spirit of the movement that Rachel Carson helped ignite by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson and activist Dennis Hayes. The idea came to Senator Nelson after he witnessed a destructive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in January of 19.

His original concept was to organize teachings about environmentalism on college campuses, hoping to tap into the energy of the anti-war student movement spreading across the country at the time. Senator Nelson's co-chair was a Republican congressman named Pete McCloskey. Together with activist Dennis Hayes, they picked April 22nd as the date for the event. It fell between spring break and final exams, making it ideal for student turnout. They assembled an 85-person organizing team across the country, and the vision quickly expanded beyond college campuses. The name Earth Day caught media attention.

By the time April 22nd, 1970 rolled around, the event had grown into something much bigger than anyone had anticipated. That day, an estimated 20 million people, nearly 10% of the U.S. population, took to the streets and rallies and demonstrations nationwide in what continues to be, to this day, the world's largest day of protest. According to the official Earth Day website,

more than 1 billion people around the world now take part in Earth Day celebrations each year. Starting in 1971, each Earth Day has featured a designated global theme, like a short slogan that captures the spirit of the movement. In 1990, it was think globally, act locally. In 2020, it was simply climate action. This year, the Earth Day's theme is Our Power, Our Planet, a call for collective action around renewable energy. One of the most notable Earth Day celebrations each year takes place in Tokyo where more than 100,000 visitors gather for a festival, which features eco-friendly food, art, and music. In London, the annual celebration is called Earthfest. It spans multiple days and includes inspiring talks, live music, eco-fashioned, green kitchen workshops, and more. There is also an

annual Earth Day celebration at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Maine. Last year, this included a volunteer effort to pick up storm-washed trash from the marshes. Today, as the climate crisis accelerates and resistance to those fighting it grows louder, Rachel Carson's message feels more urgent than ever. She taught us that all life is interconnected. More than 60 years after her death, she's still inspiring people to connect with nature and confront the damage we've done. One line in particular from Silent Spring stays with me, not just as a warning, but as a call to action and a source of hope. The earth's vegetation is part of a web of life in which there are intimate and essential relations between plants and the earth, between plants and other plants, between plants and animals.

Sometimes we have no choice but to disturb these relationships, but we should do so thoughtfully with full awareness that what we do may have consequences remote and time and place. And that is my story of Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the history surrounding Earth Day. Wow. I loved it. I'm not saying that I'm going to be at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge on April 22nd. but I might be. It's so close to you. I wonder what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah.

Do we have anything? It would be really cool. I know I was just that I was going to pick up trash on the road. Oh, and we have our live stream that night. How would be fun? You can tell us on our live stream on Patreon. Oh, yeah. On Patreon, we're doing, we pick a different theme every month for our live stream.

And this month we're doing good earth news because we're kind of inundated with some not so great news all the time. So we decided to celebrate positive developments around the world that have to do with the planet and wildlife and things like that. So we're going to kind of hone in on that that night. But yeah, maybe I'll go. I don't know. We'll see. I don't want to say that. And then everyone be like, she wasn't there. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe. But cool. I really enjoyed that story. And I've seen her name around, especially just growing up in New England and between, you know, Maine and Woods Hole and just like her, the imprint she left around here. Like, we're. We've grown up kind of seeing her name around, but I just didn't know the entirety of her story before. So that was a really cool one. Thank you. Yeah, she just felt so fitting for Earth Day and just going back into DDT and what was really being perpetuated to people. I thought was just really important, especially when we look at Earth Day. And I think even today, there's a lot of stuff going on, of course, in the environment that we can look at, even if it's being advertised and being like, hey, that's not.

Let's question this a little bit. Let's question that a little more. I mean, small things I think of right off the bat are where people are leaf blowing their yards. First thing in the spring. When we know that there are tons of bees that are laying dormant underneath these leaves and you are killing them and you're ruining the pollinators as soon as, and they don't even have a chance in the spring. There's a movement, right? That it's like called something of kind of, it's not totally anti-landscaping, but it's more of like give them a chance. Like give. It's trying to do more. It's like an anti-grass movement where people are encouraging. I don't know what it's called. But it's basically grass is detrimental to the environment and pollinators. Let wildflowers grow.

Plant wildflowers. Wildflowers are prettier than green grass. Like this perfect green lawn that looks fake is not in anymore. I think that's why I really, I have always felt like completely perfectly manicured lawns give me the ick and it's not always because I was like that's not good for pollinators it's just always gave me a really creepy weird like stepford wives type of like artificial like artificial look to it i i don't know it's just always kind of rubbed me the wrong way so i haven't had a deep feeling towards green lawns like i see them i'm like wow their lawns really green you know like i've

definitely thought that and there's something i mean when you step onto a real lawn that has been manicured in your barefoot, it does feel nice on your feet versus my lawn, which is prickers and wildflowers and wildness of it. But, you know, like, I get the hype around it for a while, but I think it's just outdated now, and we've learned that it's actually harmful. And my house has so many wildflowers, and I get so many butterflies and hummingbirds. And my house is just brimming with wildlife in the summer that I would never. Rip that away.

Yeah. Rip that away. No. And if you have a really green lawn, just try it for a year. If you hate it, go back to what you were doing. Or just doing a little section. Yeah, or pick a section. Yeah. And just put some wildflowers. See the difference of what your small corner of the world is going to look like when you allow nature to flourish and let it do it. And let it do it. Yeah. I feel like, yeah, we've done a lot of like soapbox things this episode. So I, we're momming. I know. I'm like, I have so. much to say, but I don't... We just love the environment. Yeah, okay, well, great. Thank you so much for sharing. Next week, I also have an environment focused episode that I've been working on, but it's a little bit more morbid. I wouldn't expect anything less. Thank you. I know this was definitely, I mean, not that... It doesn't have to be morbid. It's great. I mean, it was kind of morbid. People were telling you it's okay to spray your kids with chemicals, so... Yeah, it was pretty.

saddened parts. Yeah, I don't know. Mine has like a mysterious disappearance and like that type of morbid feel, but it does still have to do with, because Arbor Day is also this month. Okay. So I'm going to touch on that a little bit. Sweet. Well, I'm very excited to hear it. Great. All right. Well, thank you everyone for hanging out. We would love, oh, please tag us in your Earth Day celebrations. Yeah, we'd love to see it. Whatever that may be, whether you're picking up trash or recycling or reading Silent Spring or whatever you decide to do, we would love to see how you honor this day and how you partake in it. So please tag us and we'll share. Yeah. And enjoy the view. But watch you back. Bye everyone. Bye. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you love

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