Hello and welcome to this day an esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day January 24th, 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan becomes the first city in the US to

add fluoride to their water as part of a controlled study to prevent tooth decay. And guess what? The fluoride? It worked. It did just that. Within 10 years, studies had shown a 65% reduction in tooth decay in Grand Rapids and fluoridation became standard in the water throughout

this country. There's fluoride in the water that you drink today and hopefully your teeth are doing well

as a result. All of this though was not without controversy.

Fluoride in the water was a huge source of skepticism and conspiracy theories and the

fluoride as mind control theory has all sorts of parallels for a bunch of the

conspiracy theories that we see poisoning the well of our politics today.

So, Mickey, do you like my water metaphor there? The poisoned well, the fluoride, conspiracy theories.

Look, it was even better after you spend some time explaining it.

Yes, exactly.

That of course is Nicole Hammer of Columbia.

Hello Nicki.

Hello Jody.

And with us as always is Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello, Kelly.

Hey guys.

So I want to give a shout out first to a listener,

Cath who suggested this topic.

And Cath is from Grand Rapids and wrote us that on the 50th anniversary of this in 1995 the city put up a monument and Cath writes it looked exactly as corny as you would imagine and it had a built-in drinking fountain that always seemed to be broken

Nicky Kelly did you happen to go into that link that was in our dock and see this monument to Floridation?

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