The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Coffee or Death, Radioactive Slippers, Literally Blinding Beauty

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

This week, No Such Thing As A Fish's James Harkin joins Rachel and Jess as a guest-host! The weirdest things we learned ranged from painting glowing, radioactive messages on your teeth to how Queen Nefertiti was the original influencer. Whose story will be voted "The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week"? The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories!  If you want to see us in your town, click here to take our listener survey! Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ Edited by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton.com. Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and heck stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors

of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feltman. I'm Jess Bodie. And I'm James Harkin. James, thank you for joining us. Oh, thanks for having me. For our listeners who don't know, though I'm sure most of them do, James is one of the researchers behind QI and the podcast No Such Thing as a Fish. Yes. Which is another wonderful show about bizarre factoid and information.

Well, thank you very much. And as is your show. Thank you. Thank you. We're flattered. A lot of weirdest thing fans love No Such Thing as a Fish. So when we were buying our own tickets for their American tour, I figured, why not ask? I'll shoot my shot. And the lovely folks over there were

super gracious. Yeah, we're so happy to be on this show. It's really awesome. And amazing to be in New York as well. We can't believe that anyone listens to it over here. Oh my gosh. So many of us do. I know. Well, thank you again. And let's get into it. On the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of factor story that we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, et cetera, and decide which one we just have to learn more about first. Then once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Jess, would you start with your teas, please?

I would love to start with my teas. I decided to go with a tagline approach for this tease, and the tagline is, if looks could kill the story of deadly mascara. That's my tease. Wow. Okay. All right. My tease is the story of a man who hated coffee so much. He may have been willing to kill in cold blood to see it banned. Wow. Wow. How could anyone hate coffee? My fiancé Oliver hates coffee. Oh, he is wrong.

I thought we were cool. Yes, he is incorrect, but I have somehow managed to tolerate it. Anyway, he is not the person willing to kill in cold blood or for coffee, I hope. TBD. And James? Okay, well, mine is about killer slippers. Oh, my God. So you might wear slippers while you're drinking your coffee, right? And also you had your killer thing over there. So it's kind of the two match together. And it's about how Americans used to make their slippers very, very dangerous.

There's so much death on this episode. I'm here for it. What should we start with? I'm interested about coffee. All right, all right. Yeah, we can start with coffee. A great way to start any day. Cheers. Cheers.

So this is a story about the kind of contentious history of coffee in several European countries, but particularly in Sweden. So in 1746, Adolf Frederick, who was king of Sweden at the time, he put a very high tax on coffee, allegedly because it discouraged beer consumption. Also, caffeine was like basically a new thing. So sorry, why did he want people to drink beer? So that was just such a... He was just a fun guy. He was a fun king. He was a cool, cool dad.

But no, I think it was just that it was taken for granted that that was the beverage that people would purchase, especially if they were, like, leaving their homes to purchase a beverage. And it was something that could be made in Sweden with things grown in Sweden. And it had just kind of never occurred to them that some other beverage would come in and become more popular. So it was just like it was shocking. And it had only been introduced in that area in like the late 1600s, I believe. So by 1746 it had become popular enough that the king was like, uh-oh. So the tax was to prevent the misuse of tea and coffee drinking. And they would actually confiscate your coffee and tea paraphernalia if you didn't pay the tax.

So they would like come and take your cups and saucers. That's how you're on the espresso machine up to you. Exactly. Yeah. This was actually then followed by several complete bans because the taxes didn't work. Rich people still were drinking coffee. And in fact, like, the fact that it cost so much to get it and keep it made it kind of bougie, you know, in that way. So there are a few reasons for this anti-coffee sentiment. For one thing, coffee houses became kind of like the places where intellectuals and radicals hang out. Right. So it kind of got this association with people who weren't necessarily of ill-repeer. cute, but people who the monarchy were not super big fans of.

So, you know, you had all these like men and women hanging together and getting philosophical ideas and maybe some anti-monarchy ideas. Beer didn't have those associations because everybody drank beer. So, like, yes, there were taverns and bars where nefarious things happened. But that wasn't the beer's fault. Children drank beer. And then there was also this sense, not just in Sweden, but in some other European countries as well, that leisurely coffee drinking was like a dangerously foreign activity. It had become very popular in France, where they had at first been not into it as well.

But that's a separate issue. By now it was popular in France. And so, as was so often the case in not French European countries, Parisian trends were like shorthand for like those layabouts and, you know, dandies and just those fancy people, you know, not getting anything done. So they were like, coffee is not a Swedish beverage. It's not grown here. It's not from here. The act of drinking it is not Swedish. Not their vibe.

Yeah, just not our vibe. They also wanted to discourage foreign imports. At one point, they were encouraging people to instead drink something made from the seeds of this plant called Astrologis boeticus, which they called Swedish coffee, which could be grown in Sweden. So it was okay. But then it was too easy to pretend that real coffee was Swedish coffee. So they also banned that. They were like anything that's coffee. Control freaks.

And then there was also a bit of a xenophobic and racist element. Definitely. There was very much associated with Turkish and Arabic culture. So some people really liked that, sometimes in kind of like a gross orientalism way. But other people really did not like that. And we're like, we're civilized Swedish people. We don't drink the coffee. Again, they were not alone.

Initially in Italy, it was thought to be a satanic beverage. I love that. There's this long-standing rumor that Pope Clement the 8th loved coffee so much that he baptized it so that it could be considered not a beverage of the devil anymore. There's no evidence that he literally baptized the coffee. But there are a lot of anecdotes about him being like, well, let me try it and saying like, I don't think we should let the infidels have this. Yeah. It does seem pretty likely that he personally liked coffee and that that played a big part in the church ceasing to call it a beverage of Satan. Sure, sure.

The French thought it threatened wine consumption, which probably did because now people had something else that could sit outside drinking at cafes, looking all cool. Big time. And Prussia, similar to Sweden, thought it opposed to beer and that it was like a foolish and empty. tea drink. It had no nutrition. Unlike beer, which like made strong children, literally the king of Prussia was like, I was erased on beer. Don't drink coffee. So again, all these sentiments were pretty common, but Sweden was holding out after several countries had already adopted coffee. And so during different periods in these various European countries, when they were anti-coffee, they often would get medical professionals into the trends.

of saying coffee was dangerous. And, you know, maybe there were some doctors who genuinely, like, saw the stimulating effects of coffee and were like, ugh, that's crazy. That's a drug. Right. But a lot of them, it was just kind of like, you know, big wine. Yeah. All the doctors were in their pocket.

So there's this possibly apocryphal story. I really tried to find, like, a primary source on it, and I could not find one. But I did find a lot of secondary sources about King Gustav III. So it was his father who in 1746 implemented this super high tax on coffee. And King Gustav III, he wanted to like make this band stick for good. You know, it's years later he's king and he's grown up watching his father, you know, try to keep coffee from ruining Sweden. Yeah.

So he allegedly decided to stay the death sentence of a. prisoner under the agreement that he would stay in prison and drink lots of coffee every day. And he then had another murderer drink a comparable quantity of tea. Initially, coffee and tea were lumped together. But by now, Swedes were okay with tea. I found a lot of historical literature really dunking on the quality of Swedish tea. Apparently, it was basically just hot water. So that's probably why they were okay with it compared to coffee.

They realized they could make tea extremely not stimulating. Definitely, right. So by now tea is considered okay. And so, yeah, the story goes that there were these two men who were going to be put to death, possibly murderers, who it was just like you're the subject, you're the control, drink a bunch of coffee, drink a bunch of tea. And he wanted to prove, according to these stories, that coffee was so dangerous that this prisoner would surely die. It's pretty cool, isn't it? He had a control group, like so long ago and he's a king, not a scientist. Yeah, totally. And, you know, some of the versions of the story actually say that they were identical twins, but I find that very suspicious. First of all, because no one was doing scientific studies that good at the time. And also, like, what a horrible family. Right.

So if this story is true, I suspect they were not actually identical twins that was probably added after the fact. But the story goes that the first of the two men didn't die until he was 83. Wow. And that it was the tea drinker. Oh. Definitely it was the tea then. In the 80s, though, that is, that's a long experiment. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, and the doctors performing it also died first. And in any case, the coffee drinker definitely outlived Gustav, who was shot by assassins at a masked ball in 1792. At a masked ball probably when he was drinking beer. Right? True. Yes. And wearing a magnificent hat, which is still on display in museums.

Seriously? You're going to get assassinated somewhere in full costume and a masterball seems like the way to go. His last words were, I feel sleepy. A few moments rest would do me good. Or a coffee would do him good. Yeah. Would have done him better. So, yeah, then Sweden switched back and forth from bans to high taxes until the 1820s.

There were periods when it was legal after Adolf's first high tax. But it was always like an effort to get rid of coffee until the 1820s. And it's really interesting looking at like record. of from foreign travelers during that period when it was periodically illegal because there were some people who were like proudly served coffee by Swedes even when it was illegal because it was like a sign of status and also like it was really good coffee everybody talked about how great they were making coffee but then other people write about how their Swedish hosts were like patriotic about refusing to have it in the home they were like you know real real Swedes don't drink coffee I found

this one article by this historian, Victoria Martinez, who lives in Sweden. And she found what she called coffee band poetry. And she found one written in 1766 that was a ban was being enacted yet again. And someone said, farewell, our dear coffee, you sweet drink that make me think witty. Oh. But as anyone who's ever been to Sweden knows they're extremely serious about coffee now. Sure. It is a huge part of their culture. They have this thing called FICA, which is both a noun and a verb for your twice daily coffee break. It's leisurely and social, just like those darn French people back in the day. Fun fact, the word is an example of back slang that was really popular in Sweden in the 19th century.

So it comes from the Swedish word coffee for coffee. Oh, yes. Fika. Oh. I did not know that. That's really good. They just like taking the second syllable and putting it. Yeah.

Yeah. That's cute. It was how the, I guess, how the teens kept their parents from knowing what was that. Yeah. Now Sweden is very close to being the top coffee consumer per capita. Finland takes the lead at about 26 pounds per person per year. Wow. How many cups do you reckon that is?

I don't know. It feels like a lot, doesn't it? Yeah. But there's not much else to do in Finland, I don't think. Yeah. Well, then Norway, Iceland, Denmark, the next. Netherlands and Sweden are all very close. Wow, that's interesting. And Sweden is about 18 pounds of coffee per person a year. And so, yeah, Scandinavian countries, a lot of them railed against

coffee because it wasn't beer. And now they've realized it's a great way to perk you up when it's like dark for half the year. And cold. And beer's very expensive in Scandinavia. Yes, it is. It is very expensive. As we learned on our last tour. Yeah. And, you know, like I said, I really tried to find some, like, primary sources on Gustav's experiment. And there are a couple of books that write about it really matter-of-factly, and they're the sources everybody cites. But they don't have any sources. Yeah. Which is a thing to remember when you're reading a book is a lot of books aren't fact-checked. I was just going to say, there are so many books that are just not fact-checked at all. Yeah. So I'm very curious to see if maybe one day I'll be able to.

find a more precise source for this story. But we do know that Gustav and his father fought hard against the rising tide of coffee in Sweden, which is now basically their national beverage. Totally. I think that's great. Also, as for the health effects of coffee, we now know it's like fine. There's some evidence that some of it is good for you. People hear about caffeine overdoses a lot, but those are like powdered caffeine, usually your energy drinks. are dangerous just because there's so much easier to drink fast than coffee. Cold brew is also dangerous for that reason. So it's like, you know, remember it's a stimulant.

Yeah. Drink it in moderation. But unfortunately, for Gustav, it is way less likely to kill you than someone with a pistol at a mask call. I am. That's my story about coffee. I love it. Thank you. All right.

We'll take a quick break and then we'll be back with more facts. Listen to the world around you. What can you hear right now? A co-worker chatting on the phone? A car driving past on the street? The hiss of steam pipes heating a building? Now think about all the sounds that happen on Earth every day. Bat screech overhead, howler monkeys, well, howl, and blue whales bellow below the ocean.

Thunder claps while sand dunes sing and rockets launch to planets where our own voices would sound different. Meanwhile, we're detecting a mysterious radio brain. around the globe, inventing languages of gibberish, creating sound effects with animal noises, playing 300-year-old instrument, listening to music, trying to calm, crying babies, and looking for that one place of complete silence. The world is a symphony and a cacophony of oral experiences. Read and hear, all about it, in the noise issue of popular science. Available on newsstands now and at popsai.com slash listen.

Okay, we're back. And Jess, tell me about some deadly mascara, please. Okay, so to get to the deadly mask. part, I think we should start at the beginning, which goes back to ancient Egypt. And like today, when you think of eye makeup, like I personally think of Sephora and YouTube tutorials and like get ready with me's and Glossier. One of my favorite brands just released a new eyeliner this week, which is very exciting. We are so far out of my comfort zone. Yes, let's do this. But like I said, this goes back to ancient Egypt and even perhaps to the Greeks, we don't have as much evidence

of that. But we do have direct evidence of an eyeliner-like substance called Coal, K-O-H-L, from 3100 BC during ancient Egypt. And if you wear makeup, the word coal might be familiar to you. Like Lankombe has an eye pencil called Le Crayon Cole. I won't do it in the French accent. But they have a product called that and a lot of colors of makeup products that are dark gray or black do have the name Cole, even though it's not the same substance. But back in the day, real coal was actually made from lead sulfide. Great. Yeah.

It was found in this dark colored mineral called Galena. And people would mix it with a bunch of stuff like oils and animal fats to get the kind of like paintable or spreadable consistency that they wanted. And back then, pretty much everybody like rich or poor, man or woman, everybody wore coal around their eyes in an eyeliner-like fashion. If you were poor, though, you usually made yours out of like soot or other minerals. so you could kind of tell it wasn't as shiny or pristine as the rich people's coal eyeliner. It's a dupe. Yeah, it is it. Oh, my God, I was the original dupe.

I love that. So, yeah, wealthy Egyptians definitely had the good stuff. And Queen Nefertiti was somewhat credited with, like, really popularizing it. Some might say she's the original influencer because she was, like, so, so beautiful, apparently. She was, like, iconic, like a super long neck and high cheekbones. and she loved her coal eyeliner. And she was like, that was a very iconic look for her and for many others. And so a lot of people wore it, and it's all over the papyrus texts.

And in a lot of tombs, they found little pots with traces of coal, like, you know, because you want to look good for God when you meet him. So, yeah. And it did more than just look good. Just like the football players under eye black or like the cheetah stripes under their eyes, it reflected the sun. So it made it easier to see. And there was also a study in 2010.

that found coal has antibacterial properties. So it's also like hygienic, which is fascinating. And some places still use coal or like similarly formulated coal, like in India, Pakistan, Africa and the Middle East, like modern, in modern days like today. But it is outlawed in the U.S. because it does have dangerous levels of lead. Like you can get lead poisoning. But the United States didn't always regulate its cosmetics. I mean, they barely do today. But it used to be so much worse. So basically, eye makeup really didn't even become popular in America until the 1920s, because in the Victorian era, which frequently comes up on this podcast. A weird era.

Yes, very weird. Makeup was seen as kind of like a sign of prostitution. It was very, like, looked down upon, like, you were a hussy or something. And, you know, during that time, people would, like, maybe darken their eyelashes with coal or, like, elderberry plants. But they would do it in secret because it's, you know, very stigmatized. But then when in 1912 a German egyptologist unearthed Nefertiti's bust for the first time, being the greatest influencer of all time, she captivated Americans in many spheres. The following decade or so was called Tutmania, which was like, is this the same era when King Tut's Tum.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of fashion, architecture, design, all of that all had Egyptian influences. And I have this image with an ad. It's very art deco. They're like flapper ladies. Totally. It definitely informed flapperd fashion and stuff. Amazing.

Yeah, so that was a big thing. And while all of that was going down, Hollywood was also like ramping up all its movie production because we finally had the tech to do that. And movie stars actually wore a lot of smoky eye makeup to appear more expressive on screen because it's not like it was 4K definition. It was very smudgy, black and white, seven films.

So here's one example. This is Clara Bow. She's wearing her big, smoky, dark eye makeup, yeah. So basically all of this kind of destigmatized eye makeup. And in the 1930s, it became the norm to wear makeup. And the cosmetics industry was actually one of the only industries that saw growth during the Great Depression, which I thought was really interesting. And so now makeup was totally mainstream, but it was also totally unregulated. So sometimes things were fine, but there were a few really scary cases where people got really sick from a product.

So one product was a hair removal cream called Keremlu, I think is how you say it. And it was marketed as, quote, safe and quote, permanent. And only one of those descriptors was true. Wow. So Koremlu was made with thallium acetate, which is rat poison. Wow. And in fact, that rat poison is actually now illegal in the States because it's so deadly to people and to... Not even for rats.

Yeah, right. Totally. Like it's, you know, it would kill your pets. It would be harmful to you if you had it out. So it's totally illegal now. And so back then, women would apply it to their upper lips and, you know, to like get rid of their moustaches. And some women just lost hair all over their bodies. And some had eye damage and some actually became paralyzed. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was really bad. And JAMA published a study in 1932, declaring it unsafe. And then a bunch of women sued the company and bankrupted them. But still the FDA, didn't regulate it. They refused to regulate it because it was a cosmetic and it wasn't a drug. And then there was another cream that had calomel in it, which is a mercury compound. And it was supposed to be a, quote, magic beautifier. But some women did get mercury poisoning. And they developed dark rings around their eyes and neck, followed by bluish black gums and loose teeth. Sexy. Yeah. Very magically beautified. It's not had the desired effect there, has it?

Nope. And then the final straw was this thing called lash lure. And it was this kind of mascara, but it was really more like an eyelash dye. And so it contained this toxic chemical that was responsible for the actual dying effect called paraphenylene diamine. So one study published back then said it, quote, caused horrific blisters, abscesses and ulcers on the face, eyelids and eyes of lash lure users. And it led to blindness in some. In one case, the ulcers were so severe that a woman developed a bacterial infection and died. Whoa. So it killed someone. These things can't have been sold for long, right? Because surely the word of mouth. Right, right. And you would think that.

But, I mean, they were on shelves and they still, you know, they still sold. But the incident, which occurred at 1933, it was later highlighted in the World's Fair in Chicago that year in an exhibit called the Chamber of Horrors. I have another image. It said, the new and improved eyebrow and eyelash die. Lash lore radiates personality. But then it shows the before and after of a woman who was blinded. Yikes. A true chamber of horrors.

So as a direct result of this lash lore incident, Congress passed the federal food, drug, and cosmetic act in 1938, authorizing them to regulate cosmetics finally. And so lash lure was very. quickly pulled from the shelves. Later, they would also make coal illegal. So we've come full circle. And so, yeah, basically after things were regulated, there were way fewer atrocities.

Makeup evolved alongside fashion trends, decade after decade. You know, there was like Rosie the Riveter where she had her red lip and her cat eyeliner. And there's Twiggy who, like, very much experimented with eyeliner, and she, like, you know, aligned her, the crease of her eyelid and was very dramatic.

And then, you know, there was glam rock when men like Mick Jagger and David Bowie and Prince all were eyeliner. And so then, you know, all the way up till the 2000s, which like was an iconic time for fashion. And for eyeliner. Yeah, big times. So like, you know, Paris Hilton, Ever Levine like always lined their, like the water line, like the inside of your eyelid that touches your eyeball. When I was a middle schooler, that's, I. Yeah.

That was my look. Yeah, I definitely did that too. And I actually found a study that said there's a small study, but it said there's a chance of contaminating your eyeball with makeup particles if you line your waterline. I mean, yeah, duh. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, now we're here in 2019.

And I guess the trend now is kind of like no makeup makeup, like natural makeup or like the really like extravagant and intricate cut crease tutorials on YouTube and stuff. But then isn't it like people use Botox and that's like the most poisonous thing on the planet, isn't it? I mean, I don't know the specifics of Botox. It's the botulism bacteria or something, isn't it? I think it's really.

I think so. It's really poisonous. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's literally just like cow, cow poison. I had no idea. In the past, people have put like Bella Donna in their eyes and lead on their faces. What is it about putting poisonous things on your face? I don't know.

I think it's, yeah, you know, the patriarchy, man. I don't know. But, yeah, you know, even now that cosmetics are regulated way more than they were at the time of Lashler. Yeah. It's still, I mean, we write articles all the time. about how the onus is still on the consumer to report problems. Yeah. And cosmetics aren't regulated in the same way that drugs are.

So, like, yes, there are, like, lists of things that aren't supposed to be in cosmetics. And if it's found that you're using them, you get in trouble. And if it's found that a certain number of people are being harmed by your product, you can get in trouble. But, like, no one is making sure that the stuff has what it says it has. I mean, there's been all this controversy about, like, hair products that have formaldehyde, which was banned in the U.S., but then there are all these hair products that now have compounds that turn into formaldehyde when they activate. Those sneaky bastards. Yeah, there's just, it's really. It's still a dangerous place.

It is. It's a dangerous place. Buyers must be aware. Indeed. Look what Nefertiti started. Absolutely. Okay. We're going to take a quick break.

And then we'll be back with one more fact. All right, we're back. And James, it's time for your fact. Yes, I have to tell you about my dangerous slippers, don't I? So this is a fact. I'll just read out the fact as it is, and that Americans used to make their slippers radioactive so they could find them in the dark.

Oh, my God. Okay. And this is a fact that I found, having found another fact, and that fact was that you could buy radioactive condoms. And they would be condoms with radium in the dark. You're kidding me. Okay. Now, I sent this round to my colleagues for our podcast, and we were going to do it on our show,

and then we realized, or Ravele and my colleague, realized that actually they didn't contain radium. They were called radium condoms, but it was just like a marketing thing because in those days, it was like the trendy new thing, and you just said things had radium when they didn't really have radium in them. So we had to cancel that, but everyone had already done their radium research. So we had to find a new fact. So this is the one I found And where it came from is there is an advert Which is it was printed in magazines in the 30s and 20s and 30s

And it's now on the internet And it's for a product called Undark And Un Dark was a little radium paint That you could paint on things So that when it was dark you would be able to find them And they said that you could use it on watches, on clocks, On push buttons, on the buckles of bedroom slippers house numbers, flashlights, compasses, and loads of other things.

And so it does seem that people were using this thing to put it on the things that you needed to find in the dark so that they would glow in the dark and then you could find them at night. And the advert says, and just so I know that this definitely did have radium in it, the advert said, does undark really contain radium? Most assuredly, it does. So there's no doubt that this definitely had radium in it. And of course, radium is just radioactive and it does not. do you very much good.

No, right. It's really bad for you. But, of course, at the time, they didn't really know that the studies were coming out, that people were finding that out, but these companies didn't really care in those days. Sure. And so there was all sorts of things that you could get with radium on them, not just you could buy radium water, which you could just drink and it's supposed to make you feel better. And actually, it would make you feel better.

For a small amount of time, it would make you feel better. Because if you think about it, you've got this radioactivity coming into your body, and your body then attacks it. And how does it attack it? It fires out white blood cells and red blood cells and stuff like that. So for a little while, you feel awesome because you've got all this blood pumping around your body. So you think it's good for you.

But then, of course, in the long term, it's very much not good for you. Totally. And we know this. There's lots of stories of people who had problems with radium over the years. Most famously, probably the radium girls. Right. I'm sure you guys know in America. So this is a really sad story.

There were quite a few factories, one especially in New Jersey, just down the road. The women there would be painting the watch faces with radium. And the way they did it was with little paintbrushes. And of course, when you're painting, you want it to be really fine. So you might lick the paintbrushes to make a really fine line. And so they were licking this stuff which had radium on it. And they all got very, very, very sick. And it wasn't just that.

They were, because it was this new wonder thing, it wasn't just that job. They would take it home with them. they would paint their teeth sometimes with little messages in radium so that when they got home, they could smile in front of their partners and, like, do a little message to them. That is pretty cute. Yeah. Like, I get it. Yeah, no, I do see it, but yeah, it didn't work in the long term.

Sure. You had people, they would, for instance, paint their nails, glow in the dark. The clothes that they used to wear for the factory, you wouldn't usually wear your work clothes to go out at night. but if they glowed in the dark, you definitely might do. So if you went to a party in the evenings, then they would wear these work clothes so that they could stand out in the parties. And then, unfortunately,

they all started to get really, really, really sick. And basically, there was a lawyer called Leonard Grossman, and he saw everything that was happening, and he decided that he needed to get something for these ladies. So he worked pro bono, and they had a massive load of lawsuits against the companies who were making these radium watches. and after eight appeals, they finally got victory and fortunately managed, well, it was a lot

too late for a lot of them, but some of the people managed to get something back from these companies and they were prosecuted. But the very last one actually died when she was 107 years old. Oh, wow. Only about 10 or 20 years ago, I think it was, maybe less. And she was called Mrs. Keene. And she was really lucky because she didn't like the taste of radium. And so she worked in there in this company, but then she didn't really like to use it.

So after only a few weeks she left. Wow. But she still got really sick, but she at least lived a bit like King Gustav managed to outlive them all in the end. So, yeah, this is Radium. It was found in, when was it found in the early 20th century by the Curies? Maricuri actually, when Pierre died, she wanted to carry on with her work. But they didn't really, she kind of fell a little bit on hard times. And there were a few very, I don't know if you know about.

There was some scandals. Yeah, scandals. with married men and what have you. What? Yeah. I didn't know that. There were also a bunch of rumors that she was secretly a Jew, which I love that that got to be part of the scandal.

Like she's sleeping with married men, and what if she's Jewish? There's a famous letter, I think, from Einstein to Marie Curie just before she got her, one of her, she got two Nobel Prizes, didn't she? Did she? Well, just before she got a Nobel Prize. And he's saying, don't worry about all these scandals. You've won a Nobel Prize. Don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it. But she had fallen on hard times, and she did an interview with someone called Marie Maloney in America, a reporter. And she told them that she didn't have any money to get any more radium. Because at the time, radium was the most expensive thing on earth. It was so expensive. And so there was a fundraising campaign led by American women who got a load of money together. And Marie Curie traveled to the United States, and she was presented with one gram of radium by President Warren Harding in 19, 21, a single gram.

And you might think that's not very much, but actually one gram of radium in 1920 or 1921 would cost you about $100,000 in those days. And to put that into context, that was about the budget of your average Hollywood movie. Oh, my God. For a single gram of radium. That's wild.

Because this was the best thing in the world. People just thought it was amazing. They thought this was a cure-all. They thought they wanted everything to go in the dark. It was really, really popular. And then, of course, they realized that it was making people sick. And then companies kind of carried on selling radium things for a little while until probably the Second World War when the atomic age really kicked in.

And people realized that perhaps it's not something you want to put on your teeth. Yeah. Yikes. I remember, I mean, I've heard that the Curie's notes are still too radioactive to handle. Yeah, I believe that is true. Because it does like, it's got such a long half-life radium. It's like, I don't know, 1,600 years or something like that. It's going to keep being radioactive.

And when the radium girls had this lawsuit, they needed to find out who had been affected, and they exhumed some of the bodies, and they were still glowing in the dark when they assumed the bodies. That's so eerie. Isn't it just, yeah, as if it wasn't eerie enough. Totally, right, right. Yeah.

The thing is, everything's kind of slightly radioactive, right? So you're always going to have some radioactivity. And you, if you just walk down the street, if you go in an airplane, no matter where you are, some places which have a lot of certain rocks in the ground will be more radioactive than others. And actually it's not, you know, it's fine. It's just part of life, right? But it's just when it goes above certain levels and it can be a real problem. And radium is like hot. Yeah.

Yeah, radium is a bad one. Not even once. So like for instance, I was saying you could get this radium water. The worst thing about that is it was in jugs that had radium oil in them as well. So these weren't the uranium ones, they were radiant ones. But the ore also had arsenic and lead in it. And so when you put the water in it, all leached into the water. So not only were you getting radium poisoning, you were also getting lead poisoning and also getting arsenic poisoning.

Mineral water. Yeah. It wasn't good for you. But people thought it was, like I said, because it gave you a short-term boost. So in Austria, where the curies originally got their radium ore in a place called St. Joachimstahl, and they had the Radium Palace Hotel which sold radium beer and I couldn't quite tell whether that had actual radium in it

because the water there did so it feels like they might have brewed it with that kind of stuff I couldn't tell whether it did or not but they had 2,500 customers a year and one person who went there was Robert Oppenheimer so it might have helped him to get into that kind of idea but yeah loads of things had radium in them you could buy radium golf balls

we supposedly would go further than other golf balls because they had radium in them. A little super powered. It doesn't seem like it would work. At least you might be able to find them if you lose it in the trees or something. I don't know. But yeah. So that's my fact, really, that in the olden days, they put stuff in stuff that you really

shouldn't have. Yeah. Totally. A classic tale. Indeed. Exactly. But it's exactly like, isn't it, all the stuff that they had in the makeup and the things like that.

And, you know, people don't always realize at the time that it's really bad before you do they, but then the problem is that when they do realize they just tend to, like, push it a little bit too far. Yeah. Yeah. I always get a little creeped out wondering, like, what are the things that we're using today? I was just thinking that. So the one thing that I think is that maybe like microplastics, right? Oh, sure. Yeah. If you think about these tea bags, like silk tea bags, which have got nanoplastics in them, and humans are ingesting some, I read one fact, I don't know if this is true, but I did read it that said, like, you're ingesting about a credit card's work. of plastic every year or something like. I'd believe it because there are traces of it in so many things.

So many, I mean, so many fibers that are meant to be more sustainable because they have recycled plastic in them. They shed all that plastic all the time. And it's so easy to believe that that is not good for you. I mean, I don't want to start any kind of like panic or anything like that, but it does feel bad for you, doesn't it? Yeah. Maybe maybe one day they'll be like, those idiots. Or maybe it'll just be something that we haven't thought of. Maybe it's just, you know, I don't know, podcasts are bad for you. Oh, yeah. We didn't realize all that time.

It'll definitely be us. All that dangerous audio content. Honestly, like, it's optimistic to think about what people will call us idiots for because that means that they'll be there and they'll be fine. That's true. That's dark, Rachel. Oh, it's dark, but it's quite positive at the same time. I look forward to there being humans long enough for us to be silly idiots one day.

Yeah. And on that note, what was the weirdest thing we learned this week? Oh, good question. I really liked the towing and froing of coffee. I think it's so strange that it could be really, really popular, then really unpopular, then really unpopular, then really unpopular, within such a short amount of time. Oh, and actually the best fact that I learned was the FICA being back so.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's also my favorite fact so far. Well, definitely stay with me that fact. I think I vote for the uranium because I love the painting of the teeth. Mm-hmm. Or radium. Sorry, the radium, yes.

Painting teeth, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it cures me out because I can totally imagine painting my fingernails with a glowing substance. Totally. Yeah. Like, if I was a teenager working at a factory instead of sitting in a high school in South Jersey. Totally.

And I had radium instead of white out. But that's the, that is a scary thing, isn't it? Because every single one of us can imagine being in there and just messing around and thinking, oh, I'm going to put radium on myself because everyone, you know, of course, they wouldn't let you do it if it wasn't, if it was dangerous, would they? Well, of course they would. A lot to think about. We didn't pick who won. Oh.

Oh, is this a competitive? Can we not just say we all won? Okay, I'm down. Well, you're the guest, so you get to pick, so yes, we all win. James, thank you so much for being on. Thank you so much for having me. The weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. We're available on all major podcast platforms, so subscribe wherever you're listening now.

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