How the Radium Girls Fought Back

Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

Pushkin Industries

History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cautionary Book Club: Mollie Maggia's dentist planned to remove a painful abscess from her mouth. But to his horror, her jawbone disintegrated at his touch, crumbling and splintering until it resembled ash. Like hundreds of her colleagues, Mollie had been slowly poisoned by her work with glowing radium dust. Eight months after her first toothache, she was dead.

In the previous episode, Cautionary Tales told the story of the "Radium Girls". Their employers ignored the horrific side effects of these women's work, resorting to obfuscation and even outright lies to deny their claims that they were getting sick.

In this follow-up interview, Tim Harford sits down with Kate Moore, author of The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. Tim and Kate discuss how the women banded together and worked out what was happening to them, as well as how they fought back against their powerful bosses and their monumental legacy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin.
0:07.0	This is a follow-up to our previous episode about two disturbing yet quite different cases of mass radiation poisoning.
0:19.0	If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I suggest you do.
0:24.6	Last time we heard about the Goyanya incident,
0:27.4	how a highly radioactive substance was left unattended,
0:31.2	discovered by gray market scrap dealers, and wreaked havoc on a neighborhood of people
0:35.9	who had no idea what they were dealing with, and no reason that they should know.
0:40.8	It was a story about critical thinking, but about the brilliant heroic detective work of a woman
0:46.2	who figured out the source of the suffering, but, alas, didn't survive her encounter with it. In the end everyone pulled together to try to diagnose
0:56.4	and solve the problem. But we also heard about a different case, one in which the risks of
1:01.9	radiation poison were known, or at least widely suspected, and people
1:07.1	weren't pulling together at all. Instead, powerful businessmen resorted to obfuscation,
1:13.4	and outright lies, leading to the painful deaths of their employees.
1:19.2	And there's much, much more to say about that. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to a special book club
1:27.8	edition of Cautionary tales. The I'm going to be. So, That second story, the story of the Radium Girls is our subject today. I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak with
2:15.0	Kate Moore, the author of numerous books across a range of genres, in particular
2:20.1	the New York Times Best Seller The Radium Girls, which is a powerful heartbreaking
2:25.9	account of their experiences and their fight for justice. Kate Moore, welcome to
2:31.6	cautionary tales.
2:33.0	Thank you so much, Tim.
2:35.0	Well, I'm delighted that you could join us.
2:37.0	How did you first come across this story?
	...

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