Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

Strange Country


Sometimes you need to have a glass of wine, cuppa whatever and listen to a good old weird story. Musical score Resting Place by A Cast of Thousands.

Mar 29, 2018

Radium was beautiful to Marie Curie even though it killed her, and radium made the teens and young women employed at United States Radium Corp. shine in the night. They put their radium coated paintbrushes in their mouths like they'd been trained, and ingested the deadly substance. Strange Country Co-hosts Beth and Kelly talk about the ramifications, the workers' struggle and their plans to open a different type of food truck in ep. 34.

Theme music: Resting Place by A Cast of Thousands

Cite Your Sources:

“All Radium Plants in Federal Inquiry.” The New York Times, 21 June 1925, pp. 18–18, www.nytimes.com/1925/06/21/archives/all-radium-plants-in-federal-inquiry-labor-department-starts-search.html.

“Begin Wide Inquiry into Radium Deaths.” The New York Times, 20 June 1925, timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1925/06/20/101669830.html?pageNumber=1.

Blum, Deborah. “The Radium Girls.” Wired, Conde Nast, 3 June 2017, www.wired.com/2011/03/the-radium-girls/.

The Case of the Living Dead Women - The Radium Dial Case in the newspapers - The Case of the Living Dead Women - The Radium Dial Case in the newspapers, www.lgrossman.com/pics/radium/index.html.

Fergusson, Maggie. “The Radium Girls - still glowing in their coffins.” The Spectator, 8 May 2017, www.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/the-radium-girls-still-glowing-in-their-coffins/.

Hersher, Rebecca. “Mae Keane, One Of The Last 'Radium Girls,' Dies At 107.” NPR, NPR, 28 Dec. 2014, www.npr.org/2014/12/28/373510029/saved-by-a-bad-taste-one-of-the-last-radium-girls-dies-at-107.

Kang, Lydia, and Nate Pedersen. Quackery: a brief history of the worst ways to cure everything. Workman Publishing, 2017.

Moore, Kate. The radium girls: the dark story of Americas shining women. Sourcebooks, 2017.

“The Radium Girls.” Medical Bag, 15 June 2016, www.medicalbag.com/profile-in-rare-diseases/the-radium-girls/article/472385/.

“They paid with their lives.” THE GIRLS - theradiumgirls, www.theradiumgirls.com/the-girls/4593781028.

Zhang, Sarah. “A Century Later, the Factory that Poisoned the 'Radium Girls' Still a Superfund Site.” The Atlantic, 15 Mar. 2017, www.theatlantic.com/notes/2017/03/radium-superfund-legacy/519408/.

Zhang, Sarah. “The Girls With Radioactive Bones.” The Atlantic, 1 Mar. 2017, www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/radium-girls-kate-moore/515685/.