Radium: A toxic love affair

We Are History

Angela Barnes and John O'Farrell

History

4.9 • 802 Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2023

⏱️ 59 minutes

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Summary

NEW SERIES! The not-so-serious podcast unravelling fascinating and down-right bizarre historical events. Angela Barnes and John O’Farrell celebrate the return of We Are History by plunging into the luminous but lethal history of Radium. They reveal how its discovery led to a craze for radio-active health and beauty treatments, which had the slight drawback of eventually killing you. Angela and John share our predecessors ill-advised fascination with radium; its myriad ‘miracle’ uses include a radium jock strap and the pair wonder whether to name their next pub-rock band Liquid Sunshine or The Radium Runners… Get all episodes a week early – when you support We Are History on Patreon: https://patreon.com/WeAreHistory “I should say, we’re not scientists.” – Angela Barnes “To be fair we’re not historians either and that’s never stopped us.” – John O’Farrell “When I was a kid it was completely normal to have your feet x-rayed in the shoe shop. That’s why my hair fell out.” – John O’Farrell Reading List: Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium by Lucy Jane Santos We Are History is written and presented by Angela Barnes and John O’Farrell. Audio production by Simon Williams and artwork by James Parrett. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor is Andrew Harrison. We Are History is a Podmasters Production. https://twitter.com/wearehistorypod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, you're listening to We Are History. I'm Angela Barnes.
0:07.0	And I'm John O'Farrell.
0:08.1	And we are back, like back, back, proper back.
0:11.4	And John, we're in an actual studio.
0:13.1	How good is this?
0:14.0	We've had to put trousers on and everything.
0:15.8	Speak for yourself, Barnsey.
0:17.2	Yes, this is the first episode we've recorded in a room together since before COVID.
0:24.3	So let's hope that Angela don't find out that we don't get on anymore. And of course, right, it's
0:31.6	so exciting because we are now being properly whipped into shape. This is like a proper legit podcast
0:35.9	now because we've got the lovely people at
0:38.4	Podmasters UK as our new overlords. We've got an actual producer, the glorious Anne-Marie
0:43.7	Love. And look at these microphones, John, right? They're not stuck to the table with blue
0:46.9	tat like that. Mine is in my house. So, for the first episode in our new home, Angela, you are
0:53.9	leading on this one. It's something close to your
0:55.3	heart. It is. I am indeed leading on this one, John. And can I start by saying you look absolutely
1:00.6	radiant? Little clue there, listeners. So can I ask, did you have a radium bath this morning, John?
1:06.4	No, my hair falls out perfectly naturally. Thank you very much. Actually, funny to say that,
1:29.4	because I have a shower in the morning and I had this sort of soapy shower wash, but it's luminous green and it's like quite sort of tingly. Is it Ray Docks? It might be. We might find out why Ray Dox is Ray Dox. That's very interesting. So I ask because today we are talking about the early 20th century craze for the apparent health and beauty benefits of the naturally occurring radioactive metal radium.
1:35.1	Oh, now you see, we've learned things since then, haven't we?
1:37.5	We have a few.
1:38.4	We'll come to that.
	...

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