Hello and

welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, October 5th, 1982, Johnson and Johnson, Tylenol's parent company, recalls all

Tylenol capsules in the United States.

This was the first mass recall in US history involving more than 31 million

bottles costing the company an estimated $100 million. This was all in response to a bizarre

and pretty terrifying set of incidents in which seven people that fall in the Chicago area had ingested cyanide pills which had been inserted into Tylenol bottles that were then put back on grocery store shelves, people

bought them, people took them thinking they were taking medicine and in fact were being poisoned.

No surprise, this set off a major panic, a police investigation, a huge hunt for who is responsible, and then

there's this cryptic ransom letter sent to Tylenol from someone claiming to be the person behind

these poisonings. So let's talk about the 1982 Tylenol panic,

what we know and still don't know about who did this and why, and then these larger questions

about food safety corporate responsibility

corporate crisis management and Towlenol's response and all of this.

Let's dive in here as always Nicole Hemmer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter

Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.

Hello Jody.

Hey there.

All this was a little early for us, right?

None of us have memories of this, but I feel like I have memories of this because

part of this story is just how it fits into this

...