You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild

from Erin Manky.

Listener discretion advised.

It's beautiful, she told her husband.

It was Christmas time in Paris, 1898.

But Marie and Pierre weren't looking at the glow of Paris City lights and soft snowfall.

The couple were inside a dilapidated brick building that purchased as a makeshift laboratory.

Sitting on well-worn chairs and odd wooden work table littered with an array of flimsy wires,

scopes and cheap instruments.

A radiant, almost magical light broke the darkness surrounding them.

And Marie found the luminescent glow captivating.

Having married just three years earlier when Marie was 27 and Pierre was 36,

the two didn't have a lot of money.

Yet, despite the tottering chairs, odd work tables and the isolation chamber

made out of wooden grocery crates, the couple couldn't be happier.

Science had brought them together, and their love of it had become an intimate bond between them.

So Marie looked on, the beautiful, gleaming object still nestled deep within one of her pockets.

The shimmering glow bright enough to allow Pierre to jot down a single word in their notebook.

They chose a name for it after the Latin word, for Rey.

They called it, Radium.

Before long though, this new discovery would enchant more than just the curries.

The whole world was about to encounter a scientific miracle,

...