45: Superseded Science, why is TB Still a Thing, and the Radium Girls
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Discovering Radium and the Legacy of Mary Curie
A discussion on the properties of Radium, its discovery by Mary Curie and Pierre Curie, and the dangers associated with working with the element, including Mary Curie's tragic death from cancer.
What previous scientific theories would turn into the ones we know today, and what can they teach us? Why is Tuberculosis still a thing in the modern age? And who were the Radium girls, and what did they give us?
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We also learn about:
Oh Fuck Tom and Ella and Caroline, theory vs pseudoscience, scientific glow up, the LLE game show theme, any time Tom isn’t talking he’s doing a little dance, preformationism, tiny growing dinosaur gametes, miasma, spontaneous generation, the amber effect, Darwin couldn’t sleep thinking about geology, what a nerd, the expanding earth, every theory can be explained by little expanding dinosaurs, Marie Tharp’s “Girl Talk, revisiting Vulcan, planet mnemonics, Ella snipes the answer, an actual Einstein name drop, Einstein was so excited to think he could solve the mercury problem, my topic superseded yours, what is Tuberculosis, TB is at least 9,000 years old, when TB was romanticized (by the wealthy), “how interesting he looks in dying”, TOM STOP DANCING!, people think this is a disease of old but it’s not, antibacterial resistance could be as big a threat as climate change, 1 Billion people have latent TB, the real enemy once again is capitalism, novel’s rapid test, there’s no Return on Investment with TB research, unless you patent the cure, J&J COULD SELL IT FOR A QUARTER AND STILL MAKE A PROFIT, only 40,000 people have received bedaquiline in 11 years, evergreening a patent is Sinister, amnesty period of science in the misc topic, even with nobel prizes scientists didn't realize how dangerous this stuff was, the Curies are buried in led coffins, Curie’s legacy is “literally untouchable”, Will It Radium? Radium Schokolade, it’s rejuvenating! radium quackery, radium silk, the government said it MUST have radium if you’re advertising it does, alpha radiation mostly hurts when ingested, glowing radium dust dresses, surely THIS is how they got poisoned right?? touching the brush to the lips was a cost saving measure, radiation poisoning sucks, the US radium corp claimed the women were just suffering from syphilis, hiding scientific investigations, the radium girls fight against capitalism and make labor history, radium girls lead to an international nuclear treaty, but they still sold radium tonics! Byers’ photograph helped ban radithol, the podcast make you old.
Sources:
Wikipedias list of Superseded Theories
Miasma
Spontaneous Generation
Thomas Browne's Origins of Electricity
Excerpt on Amber from Yamamoto's "The Pull Of History"
Scientific American on Darwin's Geology
Cathy Barton on Expanding Earth Theory
Marie Tharp
How Le Verrier came to Believe in Vulcan
Royal Society: The Eclipse that Verified Einstein
Nat Geo & Thomas Levenson on Vulcan and Einstein
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TB Pathology
Tuberculosis: A Fashionable Disease?
9000 Year Old TB
The Other Pandemic
Treating TB
Diagnosing TB
Novel Chegou
Bedaquiline Approval
Bedaquiline Efficacy
Bedaquiline Cost
Bedaquiline patent
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Science Museum Group: The Radium Girls
Britannica: Radium
Britannica: Marie Curie
Nobel Prize: Marie Curie Physics awards
Nobel Prize: Marie Curie- Overview
The Atlantic: How We Realized Putting Radium in Everything Was Not the Answer
Nature Chemistry: The Realities of Radium
CNN: When Beauty Products Were Radioactive
Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity: Radithor
Britannica: Radium Girls
Library of Congress Blogs: Radium Girls
The Radium Girls Websit
Inside Hook: Radium Girls Legacy
NPR: Radium Girls Legacy
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