The World's Worst Sales Pitch

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Peter Safer is known as the father of CPR. He sedates and paralyzes a volunteer in an operating room to test his technique. An 11-year-old boy, who's significantly smaller than the man on the floor, can't get oxygen into him. The child repositions the head and deep breath breathes in and you see the chest rise. All of a sudden they're back up in the upper 90s.

As recently as 1965, if you had a medical emergency, the people who showed up at your door would be volunteer firefighters, police officers, or undertakers with a hearse. Today, the story of how a group of Black men from Pittsburgh changed that.

Kevin Hazzard’s book is American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics.

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Artwork by Julienne Alexander.

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