4.6 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2020
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
With Miltown sweeping the nation, pharmaceutical companies around the country want in on the action and vie to create their own versions. At Hoffman La Roche, a brilliant scientist by the name of Leo Sternbach leads the charge.
While Roche executives want him to create a copycat drug, Sternbach has bigger ambitions: he wants to invent an entirely new class of tranquilizer. After Roche loses faith in his vision, Sternbach continues his work in secret – and lays the foundation for Valium, soon to become the most commonly prescribed drug in the United States.
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0:00.0 | Hey, prime members, you can listen to American innovations, add free on Amazon music, download |
0:06.0 | the app today. |
0:15.1 | It's 1940, and 32-year-old Leo Sternbach and his new wife, Hertha, are on a train bound |
0:21.1 | for Portugal. |
0:22.4 | From there, they will board a ship to America. |
0:25.1 | The Swiss company that Sternbach works for, Hoffman LaRouche, has obtained US visas |
0:29.9 | for all its Jewish employees, but right now, they are stopped in Nazi-occupied France. |
0:36.0 | Hertha looks over at Sternbach, her eyes wide. |
0:38.9 | Why are we stopping? |
0:40.5 | I don't know. |
0:42.0 | The door opens, and two soldiers dressed in German uniforms board. |
0:46.0 | They're young, but they carry themselves with authority. |
0:49.4 | They march up to an old woman sitting in the first row. |
0:52.4 | Papers |
0:53.5 | The woman hurries to hand over her papers to the soldiers. |
0:56.8 | Hertha discreetly wipes her brow. |
0:59.5 | Sternbach gets the hint and takes his handkerchief to her forehead, rubbing away the sweat |
1:03.6 | that has beaded there. |
1:05.0 | They knew it was likely they would be stopped, but that doesn't make it any less stressful. |
1:09.7 | Sternbach is a Jewish Polish citizen, and that makes him vulnerable to harassment or |
1:14.4 | detention by these soldiers. |
1:17.0 | Sternbach takes deep breath and tries to steady his nerves. |
... |
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