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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff

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Speaker 1: I've never told you Protective of iHeartRadio, and as we

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Speaker 1: are approaching the end of the year, we're bringing back

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Speaker 1: some of our favorite things that we've done.

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Speaker 2: Honestly, listeners to be real. Samantha and I don't know

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Speaker 2: what time is anymore.

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Speaker 3: It could have happened in the nineties.

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Speaker 2: Samantha accidentally said it was the nineties more than once.

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Speaker 4: More than once.

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Speaker 2: I'm all over the place with the years, but I

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Speaker 2: believe this did happen this year for me. Oh, go

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Speaker 2: go get Yes, I got to guest on Cool People

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Speaker 2: Who Did Cool Stuff with Market Kiljoy. It was a

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Speaker 2: two part episode and it was on vaccines, which right

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Speaker 2: now feels like a pretty important topic. Yes, yes, and

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Speaker 2: it was really interesting because it was episodes about this

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Speaker 2: guy wasn't great in a lot of ways, but he

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Speaker 2: did do this thing that was really good. And also,

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Speaker 2: as people who know me, especially Samantha knows, I'm shy,

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Speaker 2: so in the first episode, I don't talk that much,

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Speaker 2: and then Sophie and Margaret were like, he really should

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Speaker 2: interject more so if I'm kind of absent in the

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Speaker 2: first bit, that's because I was like, oh, I can't

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Speaker 2: interrupt this amazing story. You had to warm up into

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Speaker 2: it too, Yeah, because I'd never been you'd been on

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Speaker 2: the show before. Yeah, but I wasn't quite sure that

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Speaker 2: when I should interject. Right, you did a great job.

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Speaker 2: I know you did. Always proud of you in advance

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Speaker 2: and after the fact. Thank you, Samantha. I forgiate that.

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Speaker 2: And Margaret was great. Margaret was very supportive. So please

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Speaker 2: enjoy this new episode and go check out Margaret's show

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Speaker 2: if you haven't already.

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Speaker 5: Cool Zone Media, Hello.

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Speaker 4: And welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're a

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Speaker 4: weekly reminder that when there's bad things, there's people trying

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Speaker 4: to do good things. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and

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Speaker 4: this week I have a guest. I guess I usually

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Speaker 4: have a guest, but this week I have a guest

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Speaker 4: named Annie Reese.

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Speaker 2: Hi, how are you? I'm good. I feel like that's

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Speaker 2: a loaded question these days, but yes, I'm good. How

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Speaker 2: are you?

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Speaker 4: I'm also good with air quotes everywhere.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I'm very excited to be here.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. And if people

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Speaker 4: haven't heard of you, which is surprising, you are one

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Speaker 4: of the hosts of Stuff Mom Never Told You, and

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Speaker 4: you're also a host of Savor, which is a food podcast,

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Speaker 4: and I haven't actually heard that one yet, but I

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Speaker 4: am learning more and more about how I care about

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Speaker 4: food in terms of like culture and politics and history

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Speaker 4: and stuff. And I just really appreciate y'all's tagline, there's

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Speaker 4: no you in Savor.

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Speaker 2: Thank you. We Actually the show is big on puns

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Speaker 2: and oh good bad jokes, if you'll allow me to say,

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Speaker 2: but yes, that is a huge part of Savors that

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Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of times people divorce food

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Speaker 2: from politics when they really shouldn't, and history when they

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Speaker 2: really shouldn't. And there's just so much to learn from

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Speaker 2: what you're eating every day. So that's my bitch for Saver.

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Speaker 4: I want to hear it now. I like stuff Mom

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Speaker 4: Never Told You, and I think people will like these

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Speaker 4: things too. And if there's one thing you can say

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Speaker 4: about the current administration, this is not going to be

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Speaker 4: an episode about the current administration. Oh, I have to

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Speaker 4: do the rest of the introductions, including Sophie, who's our producer.

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Speaker 6: Hi, Sophie, Damn, it's just gonna forget me. I got

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Speaker 6: a bright pink.

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Speaker 4: Hat on I never forget you.

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Speaker 2: I would never forget thank you, thank you.

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Speaker 4: And good house plants always, good house plans, Thank you.

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Speaker 6: Pretty bushy behind me today, I'm like, oh, I want

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Speaker 6: to touch it.

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Speaker 4: We also have a new audio engineer who's Eva. Everyone's

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Speaker 4: to say hi to Eva.

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Speaker 2: Hi Eva, Hi Eva, Hiva.

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Speaker 6: Eva's great. He's gonna put that out there.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and actually Eva's been editing our book Club, one

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Speaker 4: of my other shows. They cools on Media book Club

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Speaker 4: for a while.

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Speaker 6: Now, don't worry. We didn't get rid of Rory. Rory's

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Speaker 6: just working on a different project.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, mining coal. Yeah, actually not doing the mining of

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Speaker 4: the coal. But if you hang out in a cage,

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Speaker 4: you can keep track of when there's bad chemicals in

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Speaker 4: the air.

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Speaker 6: I feel like we should make people, at least, you know,

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Speaker 6: say how to Rory one more time? I think, Hello, Rory,

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Speaker 6: Hi Ri Hi riy if you want to say hi

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Speaker 6: Rory Morey. He's editing behind the Bastards now.

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Speaker 4: So oh I am, well, okay, the current administration thing?

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Speaker 6: Yeah, what's going on there? That was like, go really wild,

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Speaker 6: little teaser you did?

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Speaker 4: So I went and did a Have you all ever

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Speaker 4: heard of lavender graduations?

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Speaker 2: No? No, I have not.

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Speaker 4: I hadn't, and I'm kind of embarrassed that I hadn't.

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Speaker 4: It's LGBT groups on college campuses to have a graduation ceremony,

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Speaker 4: and I went and did a talk at one yesterday.

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Speaker 4: As we record this, and I was very like, how

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Speaker 4: is this gonna go? They hired a kind of fiery

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Speaker 4: anarchist to come give them their LGBT speech. I'm going

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Speaker 4: to tell them about gay people who had burned down

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Speaker 4: Nazi records, and then it kind of helped realizing that

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Speaker 4: everyone is really aware that things aren't okay right now.

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Speaker 4: So that was kind of actually promising. So in a

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Speaker 4: weird way, the one nice thing you can say about

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Speaker 4: the current situation is that no one has their head

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Speaker 4: in the sands in the same degree anymore.

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Speaker 2: That's fair. Did it go well?

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Speaker 4: Oh yeah, the event went great. It was really heartwarming. Actually,

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Speaker 4: it was a very like, oh, the kids are all

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Speaker 4: right kind of moment, which is condescending to say because

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Speaker 4: they're not kids. There are like twenty two. I don't

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Speaker 4: know how people are when they graduate college twenty two,

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Speaker 4: who knows twenty two? Yeah, So if there is one

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Speaker 4: thing this does actually relate to what we're gonna talk

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Speaker 4: about this week and a lot in the near future.

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Speaker 4: If there's one thing I can say about the current

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Speaker 4: administration of the United States, it's that it has made

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Speaker 4: us realize that there's an awful lot of stuff we

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Speaker 4: take for granted.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 4: Like, I've never been a big like government person, this

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Speaker 4: is just true about me, right, But I'm a big

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Speaker 4: like social services person. But I'm like, Oh, there's all

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Speaker 4: of these things that are really really good that we

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Speaker 4: try to do as a society, and we like stuff

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Speaker 4: that society tends to do for us, and a lot

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Speaker 4: of that stuff is being taken away. So I've decided

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Speaker 4: to spend some time focusing on these every miracles that

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Speaker 4: we take for granted, things that our parents or grandparents

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Speaker 4: might not have taken for granted, things that we can

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Speaker 4: no longer take for granted. So this week I want

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Speaker 4: to talk about vaccines. Ooh, yes, I like vaccines. Vaccines

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Speaker 4: are cool as hell, easily in the top five best

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Speaker 4: things humans have come up with. I don't know the

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Speaker 4: other four in that list are, but probably burritos. Specifically,

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Speaker 4: I want to talk about the polio vaccines, and I'm

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Speaker 4: going to use the plural here on purpose, because people

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Speaker 4: talk about the polio vaccine as if there's one vaccine,

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Speaker 4: and there is a whole wild history behind polio vaccines,

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Speaker 4: and they have functionally, but not literally, eradicated polio. Have

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Speaker 4: you heard much of this story?

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Speaker 5: No?

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Speaker 2: But I do have a friend who works at the CDC.

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Speaker 2: She has not been fired yet, oh shit, yes, And

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Speaker 2: she is the biggest proponent of vaccines. She like, if

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Speaker 2: you catch her at a party, somehow vaccines will come up.

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Speaker 2: And polio vaccine is one of her favorite stories to tell.

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Speaker 2: So I know it's got a history behind it.

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Speaker 4: And a different history than I thought it did. Because

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Speaker 4: this week's story is going to follow an arc that

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Speaker 4: is familiar to regular listeners of the show, and that

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Speaker 4: Sophie and I spend a lot of our time complaining

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Speaker 4: about in signal chats, which is that I start off researching,

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Speaker 4: usually a guy who is famous for having to accomplished

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Speaker 4: something right, and then I spend a week researching. I

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Speaker 4: read most of a biography, I'd read a whole bunch

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Speaker 4: of other stuff. I get about ninety percent through my research.

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Speaker 4: When I find out something that makes me have to

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Speaker 4: change everything about the story.

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Speaker 2: It happens all too often.

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Speaker 4: It's so annoying. It has happened when I've researched women before,

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Speaker 4: but it happens all the time with men, where you're like, oh,

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Speaker 4: and you're gonna like research this person, and they're like, oh,

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Speaker 4: they I'm a We're a horrible monster to the people

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Speaker 4: closest to them, or actually all of this is myth

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Speaker 4: making and they're a con artist, or just like whatever it.

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Speaker 2: Is, you know, Yeah, taking credit a lot of times.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, speaking of taking credit, you ever heard of a

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Speaker 4: guy named Jonas Salk?

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Speaker 2: Have? Yes, this is.

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Speaker 4: The man, Sophia. You heard of this guy?

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Speaker 5: No?

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Speaker 4: I hadn't. And I think that, like you and I

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Speaker 4: live under a specific rock because like at least everything

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Speaker 4: I've read has been like, ah, yes, the most household

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Speaker 4: name medicine person in the world.

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Speaker 6: And I'm like, I've never heard of this man.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, what have you heard of Jonas Sock? Before I

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Speaker 4: tell you about Jonahs Sock.

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Speaker 2: I just knew he was involved in like medicine. I

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Speaker 2: just have heard his name from my elementary school days.

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Speaker 2: Perhaps that makes sense.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, Jonas Sock, the man who defeated polio. He was

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Speaker 4: a Jewish race poor in New York City from a

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Speaker 4: family of Eastern European immigrants. He worked his entire life

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Speaker 4: to fight disease and make the world a better place,

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Speaker 4: and along the way he became a sort of medical

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Speaker 4: rock star for his work developing a polio vaccine. He

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Speaker 4: is famous for saying he refused to patent this vaccine

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Speaker 4: because the world needed it. He said in an interview quote,

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Speaker 4: how can you patent the sun? And that what I

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Speaker 4: just read you is true? Ish, It is so close

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Speaker 4: to true that it is a massive fuck off.

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Speaker 2: Lie.

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Speaker 4: Is such a lie?

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Speaker 6: Fascinating?

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Speaker 4: And I like, I learned that about seven hours ago.

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Speaker 4: He learned something every day, I know, like the fact

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Speaker 4: that the thing you've been researching for five days nonstuff,

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Speaker 4: isn't it true?

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Speaker 6: It's not even like true kind of it is.

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Speaker 4: It's so true that it becomes a lie.

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Speaker 2: Oh Okay.

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Speaker 4: He did develop a polio vaccine. He developed the first

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Speaker 4: polio vaccine, the first functional one was we'll talk about it.

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Speaker 4: He didn't, Actually, we'll get to it, okay. The first

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Speaker 4: polio vaccine that was widely tested is often called the

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Speaker 4: Salk vaccine, and he worked to do that with a

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Speaker 4: private anti communist foundation, one that claimed that public investment

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Speaker 4: in research was how communism would win in America, so

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Speaker 4: it couldn't be publicly funded. This is not reflecting the

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Speaker 4: politics of Jonah Sauk himself, but this is the organization

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Speaker 4: funded him. His vaccine saved uncountable lives, mostly white, middle

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Speaker 4: and upper class lives in the United States of America.

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Speaker 4: Then another Eastern European Jewish man who also came up

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Speaker 4: in New York City, developed a polio vaccine in partnership

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Speaker 4: between American and Soviet scientists. This vaccine was cheap, more

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Speaker 4: easily administered, and really slightly more dangerous by one context

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Speaker 4: and less dangerous by another context. That vaccine ended polio.

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Speaker 4: After polio is effectively destroyed, the US went back to

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Speaker 4: Salks vaccine because when you have plenty of time and

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Speaker 4: medical facilities and can do booster shots and all that stuff,

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Speaker 4: Salks vaccine edges out a little bit. So it was

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Speaker 4: not Jonas Salko beat polio. It wasn't even Albert Sabin,

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Speaker 4: who was this direct competitor, the one who I just said,

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Speaker 4: Because no one person beat polio. It was an enormous

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Speaker 4: undertaking by thousands of researchers from across the world that

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Speaker 4: beat polio, and the Great Man. Theory of history is

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Speaker 4: once again a bunch of fucking garbage. And I didn't

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Speaker 4: know most of that when I wrote this fucking episode.

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Speaker 4: So consider it a story about how myths are built.

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Speaker 4: But first we're gonna talk about polio. I don't know

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Speaker 4: anyone who's had polio to my knowledge, and that is

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Speaker 4: because I was born after these vaccines. Poliomyelitis is a

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Speaker 4: viral infection. Most infections are either bacterial or viral, and

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Speaker 4: this one's viral. It has been around for kind of forever,

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Speaker 4: at least thousands of years. He was first given a

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Speaker 4: name in eighteenth century, and then it started really fucking

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Speaker 4: people up in the nineteenth century. It actually the places

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Speaker 4: that first really hit was Europe and then the United

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Speaker 4: States in the nineteenth century. In nineteen oh eight or

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Speaker 4: nineteen oh nine, I have read both. A guy actually

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Speaker 4: looked really close and was like, I have seen the

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Speaker 4: actual virus that does this. And that has got to

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Speaker 4: be a strange time to be a scientist where you're like, ah,

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Speaker 4: I am looking through a microscope and seeing the actual object.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I can't imagine back in those days where you

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Speaker 2: were just this looks different. I'm not sure why. Let

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Speaker 2: me try to come up with some reason. Just the

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Speaker 2: way we've understood viruses throughout time and how that's changed

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Speaker 2: is fascinating to me, honestly.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, totally, And I'm kind of excited about all the

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Speaker 4: things that people are going to look back one hundred

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Speaker 4: years from now if they're still alive in the world's

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Speaker 4: and been cooked to death. But otherwise I'm like excited

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Speaker 4: about all the things. I'll be like, remember when people

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Speaker 4: thought the following you know, right, Polio was absolutely terrifying

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Speaker 4: to people. It barely causes any symptoms in most people,

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Speaker 4: so it's easily transmitted. So like adults get it and

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Speaker 4: transmit it, but they don't they're not affected by it,

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Speaker 4: basically not. Most of the time, it is transmitted through

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Speaker 4: the fecal oral route, which is there's just like different

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Speaker 4: ways that you know, is the following thing airborn. This

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Speaker 4: is the kind of fun thing that's fun to talk

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Speaker 4: about at parties. Actually, well with your friend, it probably

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Speaker 4: is fun to talk about a parties.

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Speaker 2: She does love talking about it.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, My favorite thing I like bringing up is that

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Speaker 4: hand sanitizer doesn't do anything for fecal oral routes, diseases,

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Speaker 4: and so you actually need to wash your hands after

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Speaker 4: you go to the bathroom. You can't just like use

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Speaker 4: hand sanitizer. Yeah, makes me real popular.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, these are the fun things in life. You know.

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Speaker 4: This is why I go to so many parties and

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Speaker 4: I'm invited everywhere.

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Speaker 6: That sounds like you, Yeah, totally.

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Speaker 4: It is my goal to be invited to all the parties.

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Speaker 4: It is not my goal to go to all the parties.

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Speaker 6: Oh yeah, co one hundred percent. I want to be invited,

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Speaker 6: but I'm not coming, Like, please keep inviting me, because

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Speaker 6: if you don't, I'll be really sad about it.

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Speaker 3: But I'm not coming, I know, but if you're not reinvited,

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Speaker 3: which is fair but still not okay, no, okay, oh okay.

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Speaker 4: The best is when you have a friend where you

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Speaker 4: can invite each other to things and you know it's

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Speaker 4: safe because you know that both of you are gonna

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Speaker 4: be like, eh, I gotta hang out with my dog today.

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Speaker 2: Sorry, gotta have that like dog back burner. Excuse, Yeah, totally,

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Speaker 2: I am good.

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Speaker 6: My favorite the.

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Speaker 4: Like, Oh, my dog is just kind of needs to

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Speaker 4: get home soon. My dog is training. It gets socially exhausted.

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Speaker 4: My dog has to record some podcasts in the morning.

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Speaker 2: Here you go.

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Speaker 4: So polio almost exclusively affects children, and I'm going to

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Speaker 4: get into it because polio might come back because of

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Speaker 4: the motherfucker in charge of the fucking anyway, whatever, we'll

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Speaker 4: get to that. When you first get polio, you get

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Speaker 4: a runny nose and a sore throat. Then you get

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Speaker 4: a fever, then horrible pain throughout all your muscles or

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Speaker 4: some of your muscles, depending leaving you thrashing and misery

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Speaker 4: in your bed. Then when the fever breaks, it's not over.

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Speaker 4: It means the virus is moved from the blood to

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Speaker 4: the nervous system. Within a few days, your muscles become paralyzed,

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Speaker 4: but your body doesn't go numb. You can still feel

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Speaker 4: all your muscles, you just can't use them. Among people

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Speaker 4: catch it symptomatically like this. I have read a ten

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Speaker 4: percent mortality rate and I have read a twenty five

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Speaker 4: percent mortality rate. I believe the lower number. It kills

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Speaker 4: you by paralyzing essential functions. If it goes up in

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Speaker 4: your brain, you will stop being able to swallow, You'll

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Speaker 4: foam at the mouth and drown.

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Speaker 2: It's bad it's really Yeah, that sounds terrible.

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Speaker 4: You the listener have probably seen if you all seen

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Speaker 4: the pictures of iron lungs. Yes, yes, so they have

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Speaker 4: been used for other things. It's like, if your lungs

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Speaker 4: are paralyzed, this is the object that would help you.

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Speaker 4: Back in the day. Now we use intubation and other

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Speaker 4: things more often, although iron lungs have come back thanks

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Speaker 4: to COVID. Iron lungs are huge metal tubes that you

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Speaker 4: go into with only your head sticking out, and the

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Speaker 4: machine varies the air pressure, so it sort of breathes

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Speaker 4: for you. Your head's not in it, but basically it's

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Speaker 4: a like forces your chest to expand. It brings airs,

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Speaker 4: and it's like manually working a bellows. If your lungs

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Speaker 4: are paralyzed, you need this thing. Most people only spent

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Speaker 4: about two weeks or a couple of months in the

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Speaker 4: iron lung while recovering. But plenty of people, and every

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Speaker 4: time I say people, when I'm talking about polio, I'm

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Speaker 4: talking about children. Plenty of children. Well, I guess in

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Speaker 4: this case people lived their entire lives in iron lungs.

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Speaker 4: There is one woman, Martha Lillard, who got polio nineteen

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Speaker 4: fifty three when she was five years old, who was

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Speaker 4: still alive as of when I looked, and still lives

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Speaker 4: in one, and she's having trouble finding parts to keep

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Speaker 4: her iron lung in good repair because she's the only

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Speaker 4: person living in one. Long term left people often regained

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Speaker 4: some use of their muscles, but generally people were disabled

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Speaker 4: for life, and polio scared the piss out of everyone.

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Speaker 4: It was killing and paralyzing children. The most famous polio

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Speaker 4: survivor is Franklin Roosevelt, the progressively served as president of

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Speaker 4: this country for the longest and could scarcely walk and

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Speaker 4: relied on leg bracesm wheelchairs. So in nineteen sixteen there

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Speaker 4: was this massive polio outbreak in New York City. Basically

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Speaker 4: summertime in major cities was polio's time to shine. Babies

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Speaker 4: were dying of polio at a fantastic and terrible rate,

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Speaker 4: one every two and a half hours. Jesus Christ, Yeah,

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Speaker 4: that's too often. There's I've read so many stories about

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Speaker 4: doctors who were like, I don't know, just like walking

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Speaker 4: through these wards and just being like watching children dying constantly.

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Speaker 4: And there's a lot of emotional stuff I didn't put

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Speaker 4: in this part of it. It's transmission wasn't yet understood.

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Speaker 4: People assumed it was airborne basically, and they tried everything

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Speaker 4: to stop it. Families were quarantined, windows were screened to

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Speaker 4: keep flies away. The trash got picked up extra well.

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Speaker 4: Those two things actually probably helped them. Playgrounds were shut down.

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Speaker 4: Kids had their noses and throats rinsed with salt water daily,

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Speaker 4: which has got to be one of the worst things

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Speaker 4: that I can imagine happening on a daily basis. Most tragically,

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Speaker 4: seventy two thousand stray cats were killed by the city

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Speaker 4: because people thought they spread it and none of it worked.

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Speaker 4: But you know, it did work to save everyone who

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Speaker 4: has polio, and so I think we can promise that

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Speaker 4: all of the following people are capable of curing polio.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, why not.

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Speaker 4: It's our sponsors. They're all legally capable of understanding what

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Speaker 4: parody is and not getting mad about this ad transition.

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Speaker 4: That's what they're capable of doing. Here's a bunch of ads,

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Speaker 4: and we're back. But unfortunately they didn't have the products

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Speaker 4: that support this podcast yet, or they might. I don't

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Speaker 4: know what we got advertised. Some of that stuff has

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Speaker 4: been around for a while, but they didn't have enough

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Speaker 4: of it. They didn't even have podcasts back then. They

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Speaker 4: had to listen to people on soapboxes and radio, and

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Speaker 4: actually we've been doing basically the equivalent of podcasts forever.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, honestly, like, if you're thinking about a

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Speaker 2: lot of this sounds like COVID to me, And I

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Speaker 2: feel like the y whole manisphere thing that happened during

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Speaker 2: COVID where people were isolated and they didn't have real

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Speaker 2: information and they were just like, I don't know, I

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Speaker 2: don't understand that. A lot of negative things around health

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Speaker 2: came out out of that and it's still impacting us

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Speaker 2: to this day, which I'm sure we'll talk about.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot of overlaps between this and like

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Speaker 4: we will talk about some like really early anti vaxxers

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Speaker 4: during this, but there was actually this thing where like

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Speaker 4: it seems like from the reading that more people were

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Speaker 4: willing to trust experts than like currently.

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Speaker 2: That's fun. Yeah, I love that.

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Speaker 4: People started fleeing the city. And to be clear, there's

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Speaker 4: outbreaks everywhere, but New York City is like particularly bad.

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Speaker 4: Twelve hundred kids a day escaped the city with their

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Speaker 4: families for a little while, but then other cities soon

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Speaker 4: stopped letting them come in. Kids and babies were taken

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Speaker 4: to Kingston Avenue Hospital and quarantined for two months away

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Speaker 4: from their families, and then cops would go around and

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Speaker 4: steal children from their families to take them to the hospital.

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Speaker 4: I only got one sentence of that, and I want

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Speaker 4: to know more about what happened there. Was it like

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Speaker 4: you got a runny nose, Now you got to go

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Speaker 4: to the you know, quarantine, the death land.

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Speaker 2: I don't know the police are coming, you know. I

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Speaker 2: have had a couple of instances where I have had

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Speaker 2: something like swine flu, and basically they've been like, you're

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Speaker 2: going to this quarantine zone and I didn't know what

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Speaker 2: was happening, and they just told me where to go.

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Speaker 4: Wait, you've been quarantined by who? What happened?

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Speaker 2: I was quarantined just multiple times. One time when I

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Speaker 2: was flying into the US. That was when I had

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Speaker 2: bird flu. One time at college when I had swine flu,

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Speaker 2: uh huh, and they didn't want to report it because

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Speaker 2: if they had to report it, they would have shut

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Speaker 2: down the university. And then another time where a doctor

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Speaker 2: was just like, please go home and quarantine.

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Speaker 6: I feel really great about that.

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Speaker 2: That made me really confident. Yeah, they basically were like,

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Speaker 2: just don't tell Anyboddy, go back to your door.

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Speaker 6: I feel really confident about the American education system. I

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Speaker 6: feel like we're really setting the priority straight.

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Speaker 2: They did give me a mask and some clothes and

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Speaker 2: the instructions to stay in my room away from people

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Speaker 2: for a couple of days.

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Speaker 4: So college kids are notoriously good at following instruction, definitely socializing.

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Speaker 2: It was also Halloween. I remember very specifically Jesus Christ.

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Speaker 4: My Halloween costume is the person with mask and gloves.

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Speaker 2: I did stay in my room.

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Speaker 4: That's good.

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Speaker 2: I did.

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Speaker 4: Yes, that's good. So if there's ever like a new

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Speaker 4: anim mole named Flu, are you just personally convinced that

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Speaker 4: you are going to get it? Kind of like once

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Speaker 4: there's like a snake flu, I'm like staying away from

436
00:24:08,119 --> 00:24:08,720
Speaker 4: you for a while.

437
00:24:09,040 --> 00:24:11,320
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's fair. I think that's a really

438
00:24:11,440 --> 00:24:12,760
Speaker 2: fair response. Honestly.

439
00:24:13,080 --> 00:24:17,480
Speaker 4: Well, just like the thing that saved you, the epidemic stopped.

440
00:24:17,560 --> 00:24:23,960
Speaker 4: Because summer stopped. Two four hundred people, mostly kids under five,

441
00:24:24,440 --> 00:24:27,240
Speaker 4: died in New York City that summer, and around nine

442
00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:32,840
Speaker 4: thousand were paralyzed. Nationwide, twenty seven thousand kids died or paralyzed,

443
00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:35,080
Speaker 4: and I don't know which because it was confusingly written

444
00:24:35,080 --> 00:24:37,400
Speaker 4: and I tried across reference, but it doesn't always work.

445
00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:42,119
Speaker 4: It was a bad summer. Every summer across the world,

446
00:24:42,160 --> 00:24:48,840
Speaker 4: polio came back, and it mostly slowly got worse. Fifteen

447
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:51,800
Speaker 4: thousand kids a year were disabled by polio in the

448
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:56,560
Speaker 4: United States, and is peaked in nineteen fifty two. In

449
00:24:56,600 --> 00:24:59,960
Speaker 4: the early nineteen fifties, the thing that most Americans were

450
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:04,160
Speaker 4: afraid of was nuclear war, which makes sense. The second

451
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:06,439
Speaker 4: thing after that that they were the most afraid of

452
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:10,120
Speaker 4: was polio. And it's like one of those things where

453
00:25:10,119 --> 00:25:12,400
Speaker 4: it's like Polio's is like an old timey disease. You're like, oh,

454
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:14,879
Speaker 4: that could have been like that bad. We're still around

455
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 4: as a species, and I've never met anyone in polio,

456
00:25:17,680 --> 00:25:20,960
Speaker 4: you know, right, Maybe most people are better at thinking

457
00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:22,120
Speaker 4: things through than I would have been.

458
00:25:22,160 --> 00:25:26,639
Speaker 2: But yeah, it had a huge impact though. I know

459
00:25:26,680 --> 00:25:28,840
Speaker 2: we've talked about it, but in terms of like the

460
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:30,800
Speaker 2: ada and all those kind of things.

461
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:33,359
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, one of the things that we're not going

462
00:25:33,400 --> 00:25:35,439
Speaker 4: to get into too much, but the start of the

463
00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 4: disability rights movement, and also the start of the concept

464
00:25:38,840 --> 00:25:42,679
Speaker 4: of physical therapy. Yeah, comes out of polio, and of

465
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:45,600
Speaker 4: course that was done by a woman and isn't as

466
00:25:45,600 --> 00:25:47,520
Speaker 4: written about as much. And then I'm as guilty as

467
00:25:47,520 --> 00:25:49,680
Speaker 4: anyone else because instead I'm going to complain about a man.

468
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:52,480
Speaker 4: That's the main thing I'm gonna do this episode.

469
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:56,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes you've just got to

470
00:25:56,520 --> 00:25:59,000
Speaker 2: complain about a man. Yeah, understantally, totally.

471
00:26:00,720 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 4: In nineteen fifty five, the polio vaccine, the first one,

472
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:09,879
Speaker 4: was administered, and the way it's usually presented is that

473
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:13,879
Speaker 4: basically overnight polio dropped from disabling fifteen thousand kids a

474
00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:18,800
Speaker 4: year to about one hundred cases a year. This isn't true.

475
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:23,480
Speaker 4: It did start turning the tide dramatically, but it wasn't

476
00:26:23,560 --> 00:26:27,720
Speaker 4: until nineteen sixty two, I think, when the other vaccine

477
00:26:27,720 --> 00:26:31,840
Speaker 4: that we'll talk about later came in that it started

478
00:26:31,880 --> 00:26:33,360
Speaker 4: dropping to one hundred cases a year.

479
00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:36,640
Speaker 2: So was it a kind of marketing thing.

480
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:40,280
Speaker 4: It's that people want a simple history with a hero,

481
00:26:41,359 --> 00:26:44,240
Speaker 4: and Jonas Salk, the guy that we're going to talk about,

482
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 4: mostly was a hero. He stopped polio, you know, by

483
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:54,880
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy nine, Polio is effectively eliminated in the United

484
00:26:54,920 --> 00:27:00,639
Speaker 4: States until the modern anti vax movement, which is basically

485
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:01,560
Speaker 4: a death cult.

486
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:02,640
Speaker 6: Uh huh.

487
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:05,679
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty two, the US got some cases of

488
00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:10,120
Speaker 4: polio for the first time since nineteen seventy nine. Great, yeah,

489
00:27:10,160 --> 00:27:15,160
Speaker 4: with RFK Junior in charge, moving forward, Well, let's let's

490
00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:18,840
Speaker 4: talk about that real quick. RFK Junior soon to be

491
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:23,000
Speaker 4: remembered as one of history's greatest monsters. Yes, he has

492
00:27:23,119 --> 00:27:25,959
Speaker 4: gone on record to say that the polio vaccine has

493
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:31,160
Speaker 4: quote killed many, many, many, many many more people than

494
00:27:31,200 --> 00:27:36,160
Speaker 4: polio ever did. Such an idiot uh huh wow, because

495
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:38,919
Speaker 4: he was like, oh, he like gives people cancer or something.

496
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:43,600
Speaker 4: And also he claims that the vaccine didn't actually reduce

497
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:47,959
Speaker 4: polio cases, that it is quote a mythology and quote

498
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:51,760
Speaker 4: just not true. Studies have shown, of course, that the

499
00:27:51,760 --> 00:27:55,560
Speaker 4: polio vaccine does not cause cancer and that polio has

500
00:27:55,600 --> 00:28:00,520
Speaker 4: been pretty much completely eliminated worldwide because of these vaccines.

501
00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:05,399
Speaker 4: Everyone of every political party who allowed RFK Junior to

502
00:28:05,440 --> 00:28:08,880
Speaker 4: come to power has fucking blood on their hands. Yeah,

503
00:28:08,960 --> 00:28:12,679
Speaker 4: polio is bad and it was real bad. And this

504
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:15,439
Speaker 4: is the story about people developing the vaccine, but it

505
00:28:15,480 --> 00:28:18,880
Speaker 4: actually starts in its way with people fighting against the flu.

506
00:28:19,240 --> 00:28:21,000
Speaker 4: So we're gonna talk about the flu real quick too.

507
00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:26,639
Speaker 4: The flu is way harder to vaccinate against, although we

508
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:29,639
Speaker 4: do it fairly well. Regardless, people should get their flu shots.

509
00:28:30,640 --> 00:28:33,040
Speaker 4: I never bothered because I was like, I'm young and

510
00:28:33,080 --> 00:28:35,760
Speaker 4: can do whatever. And then I like have a doctor

511
00:28:35,800 --> 00:28:39,400
Speaker 4: friend and he's like, that's not the point. The point

512
00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:42,080
Speaker 4: is that if you don't get it, old people die.

513
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:44,840
Speaker 4: I'm also like closer and closer to an honorary old

514
00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 4: person myself, but yeah.

515
00:28:47,840 --> 00:28:49,840
Speaker 2: I had the same thing where it's like I don't

516
00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:52,040
Speaker 2: need it. It just kind of makes me feel a little

517
00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:54,920
Speaker 2: off for a couple days. Why should I get it?

518
00:28:55,440 --> 00:28:58,320
Speaker 2: And then somebody sat me down and was like, it's

519
00:28:58,360 --> 00:29:03,000
Speaker 2: not just about you. Yeah, kind of the point totally.

520
00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:05,600
Speaker 4: And there's like some people who can't get the shot

521
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:09,400
Speaker 4: at all because they're immunocompromised. I think there's seventeen million

522
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:12,520
Speaker 4: people living in the US who have actual medical reasons

523
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:15,240
Speaker 4: that they can't get vaccinated do an immunocompromisation.

524
00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 2: Whatever.

525
00:29:16,600 --> 00:29:19,840
Speaker 4: We still successfully vaccinate against the flu, even though mutates

526
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:23,000
Speaker 4: all the time, which is why it's like less effective.

527
00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 2: Right.

528
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:26,560
Speaker 4: The polio vaccine was like good bye polio, right, and

529
00:29:26,600 --> 00:29:30,000
Speaker 4: we haven't been able to say good bye flu. Polio

530
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:32,560
Speaker 4: doesn't like to mutate all that much, but the flu

531
00:29:32,840 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 4: mutates like it's its full time job. You have the

532
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:38,360
Speaker 4: polio outbreak of nineteen sixteen, and then you have the

533
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:42,000
Speaker 4: Spanish flu, which is the closest covid parallel, especially because

534
00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:45,120
Speaker 4: they wore masks and stuff. And this is a global

535
00:29:45,160 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 4: pandemic from nineteen eighteen to nineteen twenty and this fucking

536
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:51,880
Speaker 4: thing killed like twenty five to fifty million people and

537
00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 4: a lot of people. Yeah, this was during World War One,

538
00:29:56,640 --> 00:29:58,880
Speaker 4: and the Spanish flu was as good at killing soldiers

539
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:03,000
Speaker 4: as a masked charge against machine guns was like World

540
00:30:03,080 --> 00:30:05,320
Speaker 4: War One was like when we were really bad at

541
00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:08,640
Speaker 4: understanding that you can't charge a machine gun, you know,

542
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 4: And so they'd be like, Oh, I'll just send more young,

543
00:30:12,120 --> 00:30:13,800
Speaker 4: poor people in front of that machine gun.

544
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:14,760
Speaker 2: That'll work.

545
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:19,720
Speaker 4: I think for actual soldiers, combat deaths edges out. I

546
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 4: didn't write down the numbers, but they're in the running

547
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:27,840
Speaker 4: with each other. The thing that really scared people about

548
00:30:27,840 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 4: the Spanish flu is that it was affecting healthier people

549
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:33,640
Speaker 4: than the flu usually did, and we didn't have the

550
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:36,640
Speaker 4: flu shot yet, but public health departments did their best.

551
00:30:36,920 --> 00:30:38,960
Speaker 4: I think there's kind of this interesting thing where it's

552
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 4: like people do try, you know, and you're like, oh,

553
00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:45,480
Speaker 4: they did things wrong, and you're like, yeah, yeah, but

554
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:49,760
Speaker 4: they did things they Yeah, they did what was what

555
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:51,080
Speaker 4: they thought they could, you know.

556
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:54,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, going back to my friends who works in the

557
00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:58,760
Speaker 2: health industry, they were trying to learn as much as

558
00:30:58,800 --> 00:31:02,160
Speaker 2: they could about in this case, COVID, but it was

559
00:31:02,200 --> 00:31:04,960
Speaker 2: constantly changing. They were getting new data. It was moving

560
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 2: so quickly. I can only imagine back in nineteen seventeen, yeah,

561
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:14,160
Speaker 2: or nineteen thirteen. But yeah, yeah, in that area in.

562
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 4: Front of me, Yeah, yeah.

563
00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:22,600
Speaker 2: I memorized you know that, Yeah, that wasn't you didn't

564
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 2: have ready access. Actually, that's kind of an interesting juxtaposition

565
00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:31,320
Speaker 2: of like, in some cases, I think that boone is

566
00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:34,360
Speaker 2: having more access than maybe in other cases it's kind

567
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:37,600
Speaker 2: of a detriment, which is what we're seeing today in

568
00:31:37,720 --> 00:31:42,080
Speaker 2: terms of you know, misinformation disformation. But oh yeah, totally,

569
00:31:42,280 --> 00:31:45,920
Speaker 2: but not that that didn't exist before. But yeah, but

570
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 2: she was saying that we were always trying to figure

571
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:52,040
Speaker 2: it out as quickly as we could to get solutions,

572
00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:55,360
Speaker 2: because there are also people who don't want their loved

573
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:56,560
Speaker 2: ones to die, I know.

574
00:31:56,640 --> 00:31:59,360
Speaker 4: And it's like, oh, you said last week it was this,

575
00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:01,040
Speaker 4: and you're like, hey, you were aware that, Like the

576
00:32:01,080 --> 00:32:03,160
Speaker 4: whole point of science is to change your mind as

577
00:32:03,240 --> 00:32:05,920
Speaker 4: new information comes in, but then act on the best

578
00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 4: available information the entire time. Like that doesn't feel like

579
00:32:09,920 --> 00:32:12,080
Speaker 4: a hard concept from my point of view.

580
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, no, that makes total sense that you

581
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:21,680
Speaker 2: would get new information, take that in and then make

582
00:32:21,800 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 2: your informed opinion. Yeah.

583
00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:25,960
Speaker 4: And so in New York City, when the Spanish flu came,

584
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:32,360
Speaker 4: they basically built a social distancing infrastructure. They staggered business

585
00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:35,240
Speaker 4: hours so that not everyone was on public transit at once.

586
00:32:35,760 --> 00:32:38,520
Speaker 4: They got rid of rush hour in order to fight

587
00:32:38,560 --> 00:32:41,280
Speaker 4: the flu. Oh wow, I wish they would just do

588
00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:42,560
Speaker 4: that anyway, What.

589
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:42,920
Speaker 2: Am I saying?

590
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:44,280
Speaker 4: I live in the mountains. I haven't had to deal

591
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 4: with rush hour, and like, I don't remember how many

592
00:32:46,880 --> 00:32:52,480
Speaker 4: years they got. Well it's painful, yeah, yeah, there's no

593
00:32:52,480 --> 00:32:55,000
Speaker 4: one around. Yeah, like you like we have to like

594
00:32:55,040 --> 00:32:58,000
Speaker 4: wait for a tractor. That's the most annoying thing that

595
00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 4: I have to put up with, you know, hilarious but

596
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:02,800
Speaker 4: then when you finally pass them, they're just like, oh, hey,

597
00:33:02,840 --> 00:33:06,040
Speaker 4: how's it going, you know, give the wave.

598
00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:08,440
Speaker 2: Yeah.

599
00:33:08,520 --> 00:33:12,200
Speaker 4: They also got theaters to sell only half their seats

600
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:14,320
Speaker 4: to people, so you have an empty seat next to you,

601
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:19,080
Speaker 4: and people started covering their mouths when coughing, which was

602
00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 4: a new technology at the time.

603
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:25,280
Speaker 2: Wow, I love this. See I do the vampire cough.

604
00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:25,560
Speaker 1: Yeah.

605
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:28,920
Speaker 4: No, yeah, we've moved from hands to the yeah.

606
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:31,040
Speaker 2: Yeah.

607
00:33:31,520 --> 00:33:35,480
Speaker 4: Bodies piled up unburied, and in nineteen eighteen, twenty one

608
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 4: thousand New York City children were orphaned. And that is

609
00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:42,480
Speaker 4: the New York city that our main character of the

610
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:45,720
Speaker 4: week was born into, the one that his competitor would

611
00:33:45,800 --> 00:33:50,360
Speaker 4: move to. Jonas Salk was called a hero, and he

612
00:33:50,480 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 4: seemed to kind of revel in that identity. There's a

613
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:56,479
Speaker 4: lot of like arguments this is a man that there

614
00:33:56,480 --> 00:33:59,040
Speaker 4: are hagiography is about This is a man where they're like,

615
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:02,400
Speaker 4: either he's just a complete piece of garbage, or like

616
00:34:02,440 --> 00:34:04,200
Speaker 4: almost everything you read about it is like he's just

617
00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:07,200
Speaker 4: basically the best. This is Jesus walking amongst us. You know,

618
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:13,160
Speaker 4: much like Jesus. He was Jewish, he was hard working

619
00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 4: as fuck, and he tirelessly worked to make the world better.

620
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 4: He also wasn't the only person doing this work.

621
00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:20,080
Speaker 5: Oh.

622
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:21,719
Speaker 4: Also, we'll get to this at the end. He was

623
00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:24,880
Speaker 4: like a eugenicist and had really wild ideas and it

624
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:28,040
Speaker 4: was a real sketchy.

625
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:30,320
Speaker 2: Oh that's fun, said his wife to horsed.

626
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:33,680
Speaker 4: Him and for pretty solid reasons, and anyway, we'll get

627
00:34:33,680 --> 00:34:33,960
Speaker 4: to that.

628
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 2: There it go, girl, Yeah, you're a eugenicist. I think

629
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:40,400
Speaker 2: I should get out of it.

630
00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:44,239
Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, yeah, And I think there were

631
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 4: a lot of breakups around Trump's election, you know. I

632
00:34:47,239 --> 00:34:49,240
Speaker 4: think that there was a lot of people who are like, oh,

633
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 4: I could put up with my boyfriend until this is

634
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:54,399
Speaker 4: just the step too far. This is too real now.

635
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:58,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure I.

636
00:34:58,200 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 4: Met someone who would that basically have up into and

637
00:35:01,800 --> 00:35:03,920
Speaker 4: I don't feel bad for him at all, but I'm like, oh,

638
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:08,360
Speaker 4: I'm so sorry that you wait, no, never mind. Anyway,

639
00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:14,759
Speaker 4: Jonahsolk wasn't the only person doing this work around vaccines,

640
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:17,759
Speaker 4: and people have complained about him taking credit for more

641
00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:20,560
Speaker 4: than his own work. And he started off his life

642
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:22,880
Speaker 4: as a leftist. He was actually investigated by the FBI

643
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:27,279
Speaker 4: for communist sympathies. Then he moved to a political and

644
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 4: he wound up writing mystical eugenesis shit about how scientists

645
00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:34,240
Speaker 4: should control the human race genetically by introducing viruses into

646
00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:39,800
Speaker 4: people's embryos. That's the big medical hero the twentieth century,

647
00:35:40,160 --> 00:35:48,320
Speaker 4: Jonas Salk. But one thing that Jonas Salk had access to, No,

648
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:51,080
Speaker 4: he didn't. Actually he raised very poor. Well, I bet

649
00:35:51,120 --> 00:35:53,960
Speaker 4: some of our products and services were actually affordable. So

650
00:35:54,520 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 4: probably because some of them are just losing your life

651
00:35:57,680 --> 00:36:00,799
Speaker 4: to Anyway, here's some ads of all of them, and

652
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 4: have no complicated feelings about the nature of my work.

653
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:12,240
Speaker 4: Here they are. We're back, and we're talking about Jonas Salk.

654
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:14,879
Speaker 4: Born with no middle name, but he's going to get

655
00:36:14,920 --> 00:36:16,160
Speaker 4: one in an interesting way.

656
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:17,279
Speaker 2: Can't wait.

657
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:20,840
Speaker 4: That's my teaser. And it's not like me just adding

658
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:23,759
Speaker 4: a eugenicist in quotes. It's the middle name or whatever. No,

659
00:36:23,800 --> 00:36:26,520
Speaker 4: he actually gets an actual middle name. Jonah Salk was

660
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:30,600
Speaker 4: born on October twenty eighth, nineteen fourteen, in East Harlem

661
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:34,239
Speaker 4: in a tenement building. He was the first son of

662
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:37,759
Speaker 4: Dora and Daniel Sulk. His mother was a Russian Jew

663
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 4: from what's now Belarus. Her own parents had owned a

664
00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:44,480
Speaker 4: tavern in Minsk. Dora came over to Manhattan with her

665
00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:47,960
Speaker 4: family when she was thirteen, where she lived with others

666
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:50,680
Speaker 4: in the wildly overcrowded tenements of the Lower East Side

667
00:36:50,719 --> 00:36:53,680
Speaker 4: and worked in the garment industry, which was not known

668
00:36:53,719 --> 00:36:56,480
Speaker 4: for good working conditions. And people who've listened to this

669
00:36:56,600 --> 00:36:58,799
Speaker 4: show and order have much of a grasp know that

670
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:00,960
Speaker 4: the reason that Jews were leaving the Russian Empires that

671
00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:07,520
Speaker 4: the programs were real not nice. The family did fairly

672
00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:12,680
Speaker 4: well for themselves, and Dora became a foreman at the

673
00:37:12,680 --> 00:37:16,840
Speaker 4: tenement the sewing garment industry whatever, I don't know the

674
00:37:16,880 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 4: name of the place she worked, and the family moved

675
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:23,360
Speaker 4: to East Harlem, where like more people had like actual

676
00:37:23,360 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 4: homes but were still kind of crowded into them. This

677
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:29,200
Speaker 4: is a like move from like poverty to lower middle class.

678
00:37:29,200 --> 00:37:33,440
Speaker 4: That's the best I can tell. Okay Jonas's dad, Daniel,

679
00:37:33,560 --> 00:37:36,120
Speaker 4: was a Lithuanian Jews born in the US and a

680
00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:40,160
Speaker 4: lace maker who designed women's neck where he was quiet

681
00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:42,759
Speaker 4: and humble. His mom was driven in loud. I have

682
00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:45,120
Speaker 4: read so many biographies for this work where they just

683
00:37:45,160 --> 00:37:48,480
Speaker 4: like really want to complain about overbearing moms to the

684
00:37:48,480 --> 00:37:51,879
Speaker 4: point where I actually just question everything about the way

685
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:52,880
Speaker 4: the history is presented.

686
00:37:53,840 --> 00:38:00,080
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the history of the overbearing mom, I

687
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:01,759
Speaker 2: always question it every time I see it.

688
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:08,919
Speaker 4: I'm like, yeah, In this case, Jonas likes his mom

689
00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:13,239
Speaker 4: and appreciates that she was a taskmaster.

690
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:15,440
Speaker 2: Okay, okay.

691
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:18,600
Speaker 4: When they wound up with Jonas their eldest kid, mom

692
00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:21,279
Speaker 4: was very active in directing his education and making sure

693
00:38:21,320 --> 00:38:23,920
Speaker 4: he started reading right away. And shit, she became a

694
00:38:23,920 --> 00:38:26,920
Speaker 4: stay at home mom and was apparently kind of domineering

695
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:31,600
Speaker 4: our boy. Jonas skipped a bunch of grades, was very quiet,

696
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:36,439
Speaker 4: ignored sports, and read books. He wasn't a very happy kid.

697
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:39,680
Speaker 4: His mother treated him like an adult pretty much right away.

698
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:42,479
Speaker 4: But he never blamed anything on his mother and said

699
00:38:42,480 --> 00:38:45,400
Speaker 4: that he inherited her work ethic and is very grateful

700
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:48,840
Speaker 4: for it. And it is important to this story that

701
00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:51,240
Speaker 4: he is a Jewish kid, the child of an immigrant.

702
00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:54,560
Speaker 4: His Judaism is important to his work. He's not necessarily

703
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 4: like super observant near the end of his life as

704
00:38:56,600 --> 00:39:00,560
Speaker 4: a kid, he is, but the likeultural and sort of

705
00:39:00,640 --> 00:39:04,279
Speaker 4: theological underpinions remain important to him. I believe his entire

706
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:09,600
Speaker 4: life he consciously accepts the Jewish obligation of takunalum, which

707
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:13,560
Speaker 4: is repairing the world. You have an obligation to make

708
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:16,719
Speaker 4: the world a better place, which is I think cool

709
00:39:16,719 --> 00:39:18,920
Speaker 4: as hell, although obviously people can interpret that to me

710
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 4: and I want to inject viruses and the children to

711
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:27,200
Speaker 4: make them have different, you know, genetic structures. But first

712
00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:29,040
Speaker 4: he just saves millions of lives.

713
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:31,000
Speaker 2: Right, you know, at this level.

714
00:39:31,080 --> 00:39:33,760
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he doesn't do any of the philosophical stuff

715
00:39:33,800 --> 00:39:36,840
Speaker 4: he dreams of later, so the thing he practically does.

716
00:39:36,800 --> 00:39:38,839
Speaker 2: It just seems a dream he has in his head.

717
00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:42,680
Speaker 4: I like went back and forth like four times already.

718
00:39:42,760 --> 00:39:43,759
Speaker 4: I had a moment where I was like, do I

719
00:39:43,760 --> 00:39:46,279
Speaker 4: have to just scrap this and styling, and I'm like,

720
00:39:46,760 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 4: he's just actually complicated and overall not looking great, but

721
00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:55,640
Speaker 4: he's still interesting. Early on, he decides that he wants

722
00:39:55,719 --> 00:39:58,440
Speaker 4: to work relieving the suffering of the sick and the injured.

723
00:39:59,200 --> 00:40:01,960
Speaker 4: And there's so much myth making about this guy, and

724
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:03,480
Speaker 4: like there's like things you'll read where he's like he

725
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:07,480
Speaker 4: saw the nineteen sixteen and nineteen eighteen pandemics, and I'm like, no,

726
00:40:07,600 --> 00:40:12,279
Speaker 4: he didn't. He was like three years old. He did, though,

727
00:40:12,520 --> 00:40:14,640
Speaker 4: grow up in the wake of those crises, and he

728
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:18,120
Speaker 4: absolutely grew up knowing people who were paralyzed and dealing

729
00:40:18,120 --> 00:40:20,440
Speaker 4: with a lot of disability as a result of polio.

730
00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 4: When he was twelve, he went to an all boys

731
00:40:25,680 --> 00:40:30,400
Speaker 4: prep school for City College. This school is free, but

732
00:40:30,440 --> 00:40:33,480
Speaker 4: it's incredibly hard to get into, which means that it's

733
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:36,320
Speaker 4: mostly the children of immigrants who go there, and especially

734
00:40:36,360 --> 00:40:38,920
Speaker 4: Jewish immigrants based on the demographics of New York at

735
00:40:38,920 --> 00:40:42,520
Speaker 4: the time. I like grew up so outside of this concept.

736
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:44,960
Speaker 4: This place is like preppy. I like didn't understand what

737
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:47,400
Speaker 4: a prep school was. This place is as preppy as

738
00:40:47,400 --> 00:40:52,200
Speaker 4: a prep school can prep. Their school newspaper is in Latin.

739
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:59,440
Speaker 2: Oh okay, Yeah.

740
00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:03,160
Speaker 4: It is more of a humanities school than a stem school.

741
00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:06,359
Speaker 4: And once he was there, he did not stand out.

742
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:10,399
Speaker 4: He was class secretary, but not class president. The only

743
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:11,960
Speaker 4: thing that stood out about him was that he was

744
00:41:11,960 --> 00:41:15,840
Speaker 4: a sharp dresser. He was quiet and dedicated and figured

745
00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:18,239
Speaker 4: he'd become a lawyer or a politician to make the

746
00:41:18,280 --> 00:41:22,000
Speaker 4: world better. Once again, politicians famously always making the world better.

747
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:28,840
Speaker 2: Definitely, Also just like, I guess I'll just be a lawyer, yeah,

748
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:30,080
Speaker 2: or a politician.

749
00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 4: Yeah, whatever, ever makes the world better one of those

750
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 4: things I don't know. Yes, he was a prep school nerd.

751
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:41,400
Speaker 4: He was in the Current History Society, and he was

752
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:45,000
Speaker 4: in the Law and Debate Society. Oh wow, the Law

753
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 4: and Debate Society is one society. So that sounds extra miserable.

754
00:41:48,760 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 2: That sounds really intense. Yeah, the law and debate. Yeah,

755
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:56,040
Speaker 2: not just debate. Yeah, we must have the law.

756
00:41:56,040 --> 00:41:58,359
Speaker 4: Whoever wins the debate gets to tell everyone who lives

757
00:41:58,360 --> 00:41:59,880
Speaker 4: and dies, so it's going to be totally normal.

758
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:01,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.

759
00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:05,480
Speaker 4: He was the advertising manager for the yearbook and assistant

760
00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:07,280
Speaker 4: business manager of the school paper.

761
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:08,520
Speaker 6: They get a.

762
00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:10,319
Speaker 4: Picture of this guy, you're just like, he doesn't have

763
00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:12,480
Speaker 4: a lot of friends, Like, no one hates him. He's

764
00:42:12,520 --> 00:42:13,319
Speaker 4: just there, you know.

765
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:16,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was doing a lot, we must say it was.

766
00:42:16,719 --> 00:42:18,440
Speaker 4: You want to guess what year he started college.

767
00:42:19,560 --> 00:42:21,960
Speaker 2: No, heleas, don't make me.

768
00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 4: He was fifteen years old when he started college, because

769
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:26,359
Speaker 4: of course he fucking was.

770
00:42:26,640 --> 00:42:27,920
Speaker 2: Oh gosh.

771
00:42:27,960 --> 00:42:29,759
Speaker 4: He went to City College, which is what it was

772
00:42:29,760 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 4: a prep school for that he went to. And City

773
00:42:32,520 --> 00:42:36,680
Speaker 4: College was prestigious and free, and it was also eighty

774
00:42:36,719 --> 00:42:40,000
Speaker 4: percent Jewish because it was the place that immigrant kids

775
00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:44,239
Speaker 4: can go to. He barely made any friends. He was

776
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:46,520
Speaker 4: going to do pre law, but then his mom was like, Na,

777
00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 4: you'd be terrible as a lawyer. You can't even beat

778
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:52,040
Speaker 4: me in an argument ow because he's not very like assertive,

779
00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:52,360
Speaker 4: you know.

780
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:52,920
Speaker 2: Yeah.

781
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:55,319
Speaker 4: Yeah, So he went into pre med and then his

782
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:58,120
Speaker 4: mom was like, now you're too weak to be a doctor.

783
00:42:58,280 --> 00:43:01,799
Speaker 6: You should be a Teacher's fun and he.

784
00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:04,759
Speaker 4: Stood up for himself. Again he's myth making against his

785
00:43:04,840 --> 00:43:08,319
Speaker 4: overbearon mom, who he actually loved. He was like, no,

786
00:43:08,400 --> 00:43:09,239
Speaker 4: I like medicine.

787
00:43:09,280 --> 00:43:11,160
Speaker 6: He doesn't have a wife to blame at this point.

788
00:43:11,040 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 4: I know, but he will have a wife to blame soon,

789
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:15,680
Speaker 4: don't worry. Yeah, yeah, give it to that.

790
00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:18,960
Speaker 6: Men like this always have some woman where like it

791
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:19,279
Speaker 6: was her.

792
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:25,600
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely. He was like, I'm going to do medicine,

793
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:27,719
Speaker 4: but I don't want to be a doctor. I want

794
00:43:27,760 --> 00:43:30,600
Speaker 4: to do medical science. He had read a book about

795
00:43:30,640 --> 00:43:33,920
Speaker 4: Louis Pasteur, the guy who did want a vaccine or whatever,

796
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:36,600
Speaker 4: and he was like, all right, vaccines and shit, that's

797
00:43:36,600 --> 00:43:41,399
Speaker 4: my fucking thing. The problem with this there's this free

798
00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:44,279
Speaker 4: school and it's full of Jewish immigrant kids, is that

799
00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:48,400
Speaker 4: higher education was anti Semitic and had informal caps on

800
00:43:48,440 --> 00:43:51,600
Speaker 4: the number of Jewish kids admitted. So it was very

801
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:55,360
Speaker 4: hard for the city college kids to get into higher schools,

802
00:43:55,440 --> 00:43:59,520
Speaker 4: like once they finished their undergrad This entire establishment was

803
00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:01,719
Speaker 4: built in funded to help the children of immigrants. But

804
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:04,480
Speaker 4: there's like a serious glass ceiling put into place by

805
00:44:04,520 --> 00:44:10,319
Speaker 4: WASP America. So Jonas Salk applied everywhere, and every place

806
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:13,239
Speaker 4: rejected him except one. So we went to what's now

807
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:17,800
Speaker 4: called the New York University College of Medicine. His interest

808
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:20,200
Speaker 4: was in medical research, and so people were like, just

809
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:22,279
Speaker 4: get a PhD instead of an MD, and he was like, no,

810
00:44:22,320 --> 00:44:24,880
Speaker 4: I'm going to be a doctor, just a research doctor.

811
00:44:26,600 --> 00:44:30,640
Speaker 4: And in this new school he was entirely unremarkable and forgettable.

812
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:34,640
Speaker 4: He barely made any friends. He lived at home with

813
00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:39,400
Speaker 4: his overbearing mom. Sorry anyway, oh god. He had to

814
00:44:39,440 --> 00:44:42,000
Speaker 4: find work to pay for school, so he started working

815
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:45,600
Speaker 4: in research, and he was good at medical research right away.

816
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:48,480
Speaker 4: If you were interested in animal rights, this man is

817
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:48,960
Speaker 4: not a hero.

818
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:52,880
Speaker 2: I was just one of the many maybe categories we

819
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:53,600
Speaker 2: can say.

820
00:44:53,520 --> 00:44:55,439
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that one's like a style at the time

821
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:57,800
Speaker 4: thing and like animal testing is a complicated subject that

822
00:44:57,800 --> 00:44:59,959
Speaker 4: I don't want to get into the morality of anyway whatever.

823
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:03,440
Speaker 4: He starts working in research, and he is good at

824
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:07,200
Speaker 4: this shit right away. His second research project was to

825
00:45:07,239 --> 00:45:10,480
Speaker 4: cultivate scarlet fever, or rather the bacteria that causes it,

826
00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:15,759
Speaker 4: and give rabbits scarlet fever. He improved the process of

827
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:19,120
Speaker 4: cultivating bacteria, speeding it up by a factor of seven,

828
00:45:19,960 --> 00:45:22,760
Speaker 4: and got his first paper published in an academic journal

829
00:45:22,840 --> 00:45:26,399
Speaker 4: when he was twenty two. So this is like kind

830
00:45:26,400 --> 00:45:29,440
Speaker 4: of the first time he's like really like standing out,

831
00:45:29,800 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 4: you know.

832
00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:33,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, is overbearing mom.

833
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:35,680
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're all doing air quotes this whole time. I

834
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:37,360
Speaker 4: think everyone can hear it in our voices.

835
00:45:37,480 --> 00:45:38,920
Speaker 2: I hope you can hear the air quote.

836
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:39,480
Speaker 4: Yeah.

837
00:45:39,760 --> 00:45:41,719
Speaker 2: Has been like you're not good at this, You're not

838
00:45:41,760 --> 00:45:44,239
Speaker 2: good at this. He's been a part of all these

839
00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:51,000
Speaker 2: organizations and now has something that he feels good at.

840
00:45:51,120 --> 00:45:51,440
Speaker 4: Yeah.

841
00:45:51,520 --> 00:45:54,560
Speaker 2: It's really painting a picture of somebody who was trying

842
00:45:54,600 --> 00:45:58,640
Speaker 2: a bunch of things and looking for the one thing

843
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 2: that like they would really excel at.

844
00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:05,120
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally. He's good at this stuff. He might not

845
00:46:05,200 --> 00:46:08,400
Speaker 4: be as groundbreaking as people later paint him, but he

846
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:14,200
Speaker 4: is genuinely good at this stuff. And when he gets

847
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:18,040
Speaker 4: interested in vaccines. There are a few bacterial vaccines and

848
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:23,400
Speaker 4: a few viral vaccines around, and bacterial vaccines can be

849
00:46:23,440 --> 00:46:28,280
Speaker 4: made using dead bacteria, but viral vaccines at the time,

850
00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:33,000
Speaker 4: like for smallpox, rabies, and yellow fever, they had to

851
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 4: be made out of weakened but live viruses. So you

852
00:46:36,680 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 4: isolate a virus, beat it up, tell it that it's

853
00:46:40,239 --> 00:46:43,040
Speaker 4: no good, never going to amount to anything, and then

854
00:46:43,520 --> 00:46:47,279
Speaker 4: you inject that into someone. And this is seen as

855
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:51,440
Speaker 4: an axiom. Viral infections can only be vaccinated against by

856
00:46:51,480 --> 00:46:56,800
Speaker 4: live viruses, and live virus vaccines are inherently a bit riskier.

857
00:46:57,280 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 4: People still use them and actually it's going to be

858
00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:03,440
Speaker 4: a live virus that's going to actually get rid of folio.

859
00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 4: Live vaccines are more likely to provide lifelong immunity. You

860
00:47:09,880 --> 00:47:12,160
Speaker 4: and everyone listening to this has likely had both, and

861
00:47:12,239 --> 00:47:14,680
Speaker 4: if you haven't, then get mad at your parents for

862
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:18,880
Speaker 4: not vaccinating you and go get vaccinated. But live vaccines

863
00:47:18,880 --> 00:47:21,839
Speaker 4: are not always appropriate. The flu shot we use now

864
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 4: is an inactive vaccine. It's a dead virus vaccine. And

865
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:29,600
Speaker 4: Jonah Sulk is part of why we get the flu shot.

866
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:33,600
Speaker 4: He was working for a virologist named Thomas Francis Junior,

867
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:36,280
Speaker 4: who was the first man to isolate the flu virus

868
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 4: and later who developed the flu shot, or led the

869
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:42,200
Speaker 4: research team that developed the flu shot. There's a lot

870
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:45,399
Speaker 4: of I mean, no one's like writing hagiographies about him,

871
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:49,799
Speaker 4: but you know, he's part of a team. Thomas had

872
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:54,440
Speaker 4: Jonas try to stimulate antibodies in mice with that flu virus.

873
00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:57,360
Speaker 4: The basic idea of vaccines, which people probably know, but

874
00:47:57,360 --> 00:47:59,640
Speaker 4: in case you don't, say, either contain antibodies to a

875
00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:03,040
Speaker 4: viral bacterial infection, or they convince your body to make

876
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:07,520
Speaker 4: its own antibodies, which is even better. So Jonas is

877
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:11,440
Speaker 4: working to stimulate antibodies in mice with dead flu viruses

878
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:15,960
Speaker 4: like a normal person who has normal hobbies. Yeah, I'm

879
00:48:16,120 --> 00:48:18,440
Speaker 4: actually gratefully did this. I'm not complaining.

880
00:48:19,600 --> 00:48:19,799
Speaker 2: Yeah.

881
00:48:20,520 --> 00:48:24,759
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, he fell for a woman named Donna Lindsay, who

882
00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:26,839
Speaker 4: was an inch taller than him and from a rich

883
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:31,080
Speaker 4: family and was pursuing her master's in social work at

884
00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:34,480
Speaker 4: this point. They're both leftists and they shared a desire

885
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:37,799
Speaker 4: to make the world better. This does not sound like

886
00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:40,279
Speaker 4: a really great romance. He was completely smitten with her

887
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:43,719
Speaker 4: and she was like, I don't know, and I've read

888
00:48:43,719 --> 00:48:46,040
Speaker 4: it described in multiple places as he basically kind of

889
00:48:46,040 --> 00:48:47,880
Speaker 4: wore her down until she was like final, marry you.

890
00:48:49,280 --> 00:48:54,640
Speaker 2: Yeah. She was like, I don't need you, I'm good.

891
00:48:54,800 --> 00:48:58,239
Speaker 4: But he, yeah, he persisted, which means that she's gonna

892
00:48:58,280 --> 00:49:01,080
Speaker 4: have to like give up her career and like raise

893
00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:04,360
Speaker 4: their kids, and like it was a you know, it

894
00:49:04,400 --> 00:49:05,520
Speaker 4: was the early twentieth century.

895
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:10,560
Speaker 2: It was like the type of romances that we still,

896
00:49:10,680 --> 00:49:14,440
Speaker 2: unfortunately sometimes paint romantically, but at the time was very

897
00:49:14,560 --> 00:49:17,960
Speaker 2: romantic of just a man being like I got her.

898
00:49:17,960 --> 00:49:22,000
Speaker 2: Eventually I wore her dad. Yeah, she saw how smart

899
00:49:22,040 --> 00:49:23,960
Speaker 2: I was. I'm not a nerd.

900
00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:28,319
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally well, and he's like she's so beautiful, and

901
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:34,839
Speaker 4: she's always like he's all right, I don't know. He

902
00:49:34,920 --> 00:49:39,200
Speaker 4: graduated on June eighth, nineteen thirty nine, and he and

903
00:49:39,239 --> 00:49:42,279
Speaker 4: Donna got married on June ninth, nineteen thirty nine, the

904
00:49:42,440 --> 00:49:45,040
Speaker 4: very next day. And the reason it happened in this

905
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:49,360
Speaker 4: order is that she's from this like wealthy Jewish family,

906
00:49:49,600 --> 00:49:52,080
Speaker 4: and his parents don't like that her family isn't really

907
00:49:52,120 --> 00:49:57,200
Speaker 4: practicing Jewish, but her family doesn't like that his family

908
00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:02,719
Speaker 4: is poor. Donna's dad is already pretty mad that his

909
00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:06,000
Speaker 4: daughter is marrying below her station, so he insisted that

910
00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:09,960
Speaker 4: it be done after he graduated, so that the announcement

911
00:50:10,040 --> 00:50:14,719
Speaker 4: could say Jonas Edward Sulk MD. And you might be

912
00:50:14,719 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 4: thinking to yourself, but doesn't he not have a middle name? Well,

913
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:22,440
Speaker 4: Donna's dad was mad that Jonas didn't have a middle

914
00:50:22,520 --> 00:50:27,480
Speaker 4: name had not been properly anglicized, so he insisted that

915
00:50:27,560 --> 00:50:32,520
Speaker 4: Jonas take Edward as a middle name. So he gets

916
00:50:32,520 --> 00:50:34,640
Speaker 4: his middle name from his father in law, who's like,

917
00:50:34,719 --> 00:50:35,520
Speaker 4: you are an Edward.

918
00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:43,080
Speaker 2: Wow, there's also something to be said about you know what,

919
00:50:44,120 --> 00:50:47,560
Speaker 2: the day after you graduate, we're just gonna take out

920
00:50:47,600 --> 00:50:49,400
Speaker 2: all the air out of what you did.

921
00:50:49,400 --> 00:50:53,800
Speaker 4: Yeah and put it here totally, totally.

922
00:50:54,040 --> 00:50:55,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a real move. Okay.

923
00:50:57,040 --> 00:50:59,839
Speaker 4: So he's married now and I think he moves out

924
00:50:59,840 --> 00:51:03,080
Speaker 4: of the house. He has a two year internship at

925
00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:05,919
Speaker 4: a research hospital and he wanted to keep doing virology,

926
00:51:06,360 --> 00:51:08,560
Speaker 4: but he was Jewish and he wasn't from an ivy league,

927
00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:12,440
Speaker 4: so he kept getting turned down everywhere until his former supervisor,

928
00:51:12,600 --> 00:51:14,800
Speaker 4: Thomas Franz and Junior, the guy who had him testing

929
00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:18,480
Speaker 4: dead viruses on mice, brought him out to ann Arbor, Michigan.

930
00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 4: To keep working on influenza. Eventually, Donad's going to be like,

931
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:24,160
Speaker 4: I'm you can't just fucking drag me all over the

932
00:51:24,160 --> 00:51:26,680
Speaker 4: country for your shitty fucking research and then ignore me

933
00:51:26,719 --> 00:51:30,640
Speaker 4: all the time. But that hasn't happened yet, and he

934
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:34,680
Speaker 4: like never talked about her or their relationship, Like, are

935
00:51:34,719 --> 00:51:39,800
Speaker 4: we shocked to know? Anyway? They're out. Ann Arbor, Thomas

936
00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:42,239
Speaker 4: Francis Junior and some others had developed a vaccine ready

937
00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:45,040
Speaker 4: for human trials for the first time for the flu shot,

938
00:51:45,840 --> 00:51:48,600
Speaker 4: and the lab rats that they were going to use

939
00:51:48,600 --> 00:51:52,560
Speaker 4: for this were patients at state hospitals for people with

940
00:51:52,600 --> 00:51:55,040
Speaker 4: severe mental illnesses who were not in any way able

941
00:51:55,080 --> 00:51:56,320
Speaker 4: to provide meaningful consent.

942
00:51:57,160 --> 00:52:06,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that nightmare Land. Yes it is okay.

943
00:52:07,080 --> 00:52:09,640
Speaker 4: Jonas Salk spoke at the end of his life about

944
00:52:09,640 --> 00:52:13,160
Speaker 4: the importance of taking calculated risks in order to advance science.

945
00:52:14,080 --> 00:52:17,680
Speaker 4: He seemed to genuinely consider the human costs of those risks,

946
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:22,560
Speaker 4: but he sure took a lot of them. He oversaw

947
00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:25,880
Speaker 4: eight thousand patients who got the vaccine or a placebo.

948
00:52:27,000 --> 00:52:29,920
Speaker 4: Antibodies went up, but there was no flu that season,

949
00:52:30,000 --> 00:52:34,239
Speaker 4: so they couldn't really prove anything. So they were like, ah,

950
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:36,600
Speaker 4: the problem is that none of these people got the flu.

951
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:39,879
Speaker 4: Option A, oh, no way to hear.

952
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:41,799
Speaker 3: Option B.

953
00:52:43,360 --> 00:52:46,240
Speaker 4: Take infected mouse lung tissue and spray it into people's

954
00:52:46,239 --> 00:52:48,160
Speaker 4: noses who are not able to consent because they have

955
00:52:48,200 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 4: severe mental illnesses and rewards of the state. He goes

956
00:52:51,560 --> 00:52:52,359
Speaker 4: for Option B.

957
00:52:53,200 --> 00:52:56,040
Speaker 2: Yep, that's what I was afraid of.

958
00:52:56,800 --> 00:53:00,000
Speaker 4: Yeah, this kind of thing did not fall out of

959
00:53:00,120 --> 00:53:04,200
Speaker 4: style until the Nuremberg Trials of nineteen forty seven, when

960
00:53:04,239 --> 00:53:07,480
Speaker 4: people were like, maybe there should be ethical standards for

961
00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:08,520
Speaker 4: testing on people.

962
00:53:09,239 --> 00:53:12,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe there's a lot.

963
00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:14,160
Speaker 4: Of stuff that the Nazis did that was kind of

964
00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:16,600
Speaker 4: just what everyone in the West was doing, but cranked

965
00:53:16,680 --> 00:53:20,160
Speaker 4: up like three notches, you know, yeah, and it made

966
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:23,600
Speaker 4: everyone feel like, oh, were we doing.

967
00:53:23,560 --> 00:53:26,319
Speaker 2: Let's really go for it. Yeah, if we're gonna do it,

968
00:53:26,440 --> 00:53:29,880
Speaker 2: let's just go yeah, and made everybody else be like

969
00:53:30,760 --> 00:53:32,640
Speaker 2: oh yeah, yeah.

970
00:53:33,360 --> 00:53:35,239
Speaker 4: You'd think they'd be like, maybe this eugenics thing is

971
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:37,560
Speaker 4: no good, but it actually took decades before the West

972
00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:41,319
Speaker 4: got over their obsession with eugenics. Some people like Sock

973
00:53:41,400 --> 00:53:43,920
Speaker 4: died obsessed with I don't know if he defined what

974
00:53:43,960 --> 00:53:46,240
Speaker 4: he did as eugenics. I couldn't actually find the answer

975
00:53:46,280 --> 00:53:49,440
Speaker 4: to that, but we'll talk about that later. This worked,

976
00:53:49,520 --> 00:53:51,919
Speaker 4: the flu shots and the giving people the flu without

977
00:53:51,960 --> 00:53:54,719
Speaker 4: their permission. The control group got the flu at about

978
00:53:54,719 --> 00:53:58,520
Speaker 4: fifty percent, while the vaccinated folks got it at sixteen percent,

979
00:53:58,920 --> 00:54:01,839
Speaker 4: So it's a very effective at stopping the flu. That year.

980
00:54:03,200 --> 00:54:05,120
Speaker 4: In nineteen forty three, they got to show the world

981
00:54:05,160 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 4: that they'd done good as a flu epidemic spread. Twelve

982
00:54:09,120 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 4: five hundred soldiers were put into a trial. No need

983
00:54:12,040 --> 00:54:14,640
Speaker 4: to spray infected mouse lungs into their noses because there's

984
00:54:14,680 --> 00:54:18,279
Speaker 4: actually a flu this year, and only two percent of

985
00:54:18,320 --> 00:54:22,080
Speaker 4: the inoculated folks got sick, and the mental patients who

986
00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:25,040
Speaker 4: had been tested on the year before were still immune.

987
00:54:25,960 --> 00:54:30,040
Speaker 4: So dead viruses can work. And that's where we're going

988
00:54:30,120 --> 00:54:35,080
Speaker 4: to leave it today. Our hero is doing great things.

989
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:37,480
Speaker 4: It's just messy. This is just like like he's not

990
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:41,680
Speaker 4: in any way acting abnormally to what he does for

991
00:54:41,760 --> 00:54:45,399
Speaker 4: work at this point, and that's just an indictment of

992
00:54:46,120 --> 00:54:48,120
Speaker 4: people refusing to think about ethics.

993
00:54:48,640 --> 00:54:53,040
Speaker 2: Wow, well, I'm very eager to see the downfall of

994
00:54:53,120 --> 00:54:56,360
Speaker 2: this year. Oh that doesn't happen like the keys of

995
00:54:56,400 --> 00:54:57,680
Speaker 2: the downfall.

996
00:54:57,320 --> 00:54:59,359
Speaker 4: No, he die as a hero.

997
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:01,240
Speaker 2: Ah Okay.

998
00:55:02,080 --> 00:55:04,800
Speaker 4: I started researching him because people painted a real pretty

999
00:55:04,800 --> 00:55:06,160
Speaker 4: picture of him, and I was like, he's going to

1000
00:55:06,239 --> 00:55:08,800
Speaker 4: win to cover because you can paint a real pretty

1001
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:12,200
Speaker 4: picture of this man, And like, maybe this is just

1002
00:55:12,200 --> 00:55:15,440
Speaker 4: like a no Heroes moment right where you're like, well, yeah,

1003
00:55:15,560 --> 00:55:18,839
Speaker 4: whoever does this kind of work is going to have

1004
00:55:20,040 --> 00:55:23,279
Speaker 4: a willingness to hurt people to help people in a

1005
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:29,120
Speaker 4: way that is like morally messy. But I still kind

1006
00:55:29,120 --> 00:55:32,640
Speaker 4: of come down on this particular guy not so great.

1007
00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:33,200
Speaker 4: In the end.

1008
00:55:34,200 --> 00:55:37,680
Speaker 2: I think taking in the complexities of anybody is good. Yeah,

1009
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:43,480
Speaker 2: and then like science, weighing the information you get and

1010
00:55:43,680 --> 00:55:44,600
Speaker 2: forming your opinion.

1011
00:55:45,320 --> 00:55:48,440
Speaker 4: Ah, all right, Well instead of telling the listener what

1012
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:50,080
Speaker 4: to think about this man, you mean, I should just

1013
00:55:50,560 --> 00:55:55,760
Speaker 4: continue to explain this story and then interesting es. Although

1014
00:55:55,760 --> 00:55:57,440
Speaker 4: I didn't name this cool, people did cool stuff, so

1015
00:55:57,440 --> 00:55:59,160
Speaker 4: I always feel like I got to kind of specifically

1016
00:55:59,160 --> 00:56:02,680
Speaker 4: be like, this man is not worthy of the title,

1017
00:56:03,200 --> 00:56:06,240
Speaker 4: but the thing that happened, the creation of a polio

1018
00:56:06,320 --> 00:56:07,839
Speaker 4: vaccine is.

1019
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:11,520
Speaker 2: Well, that's also complicated. You know, this show is just

1020
00:56:11,560 --> 00:56:12,719
Speaker 2: called cool stuff too.

1021
00:56:12,680 --> 00:56:17,000
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally, it's just cool stuff. Well, if people are

1022
00:56:17,040 --> 00:56:19,799
Speaker 4: like but I want to hear you any Reese on

1023
00:56:19,880 --> 00:56:21,960
Speaker 4: the podcast more, but I don't want to wait till Wednesday.

1024
00:56:22,400 --> 00:56:23,040
Speaker 4: What can they do?

1025
00:56:23,600 --> 00:56:26,279
Speaker 2: Well, you can find me on stuff when I never

1026
00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:30,400
Speaker 2: told you, or Savor wherever you get your podcast, and

1027
00:56:30,480 --> 00:56:33,000
Speaker 2: I'm out and about but not really yeah, fair enough.

1028
00:56:33,200 --> 00:56:35,319
Speaker 2: I don't even know why say yeah, but yes, you

1029
00:56:35,320 --> 00:56:36,240
Speaker 2: can find me there.

1030
00:56:36,719 --> 00:56:39,600
Speaker 4: I finally post on Instagram like yesterday, being like, I'm

1031
00:56:39,640 --> 00:56:42,520
Speaker 4: not checking Dmazon here anymore. I am so tired of

1032
00:56:42,560 --> 00:56:44,200
Speaker 4: meta with a company.

1033
00:56:44,280 --> 00:56:47,839
Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah, pretty much that's where I am.

1034
00:56:48,440 --> 00:56:50,640
Speaker 4: Still on Blue Sky you can find me there. I'm

1035
00:56:50,680 --> 00:56:57,920
Speaker 4: on Substack find me there. And podcasts and also what

1036
00:56:58,000 --> 00:56:59,520
Speaker 4: podcast I listened to this week that I was like,

1037
00:56:59,600 --> 00:57:02,640
Speaker 4: I can't wait to plug this one on air now.

1038
00:57:02,640 --> 00:57:06,319
Speaker 2: I don't remember what it was, dudeude, I don't know.

1039
00:57:06,560 --> 00:57:08,960
Speaker 4: Sorry, it was probably sixteenth minute, but I don't even

1040
00:57:08,960 --> 00:57:10,680
Speaker 4: remember what the most recent sixteenth minute was.

1041
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:13,920
Speaker 6: So it's about the Hawk Tua SEC scandal.

1042
00:57:14,239 --> 00:57:16,960
Speaker 4: Oh, I mean I did listen to that, but I.

1043
00:57:16,960 --> 00:57:19,000
Speaker 6: Was like, that doesn't seem like something you'd be like wow,

1044
00:57:19,000 --> 00:57:21,240
Speaker 6: wow wow about really great episode by the way, she.

1045
00:57:21,200 --> 00:57:22,920
Speaker 4: Listened, it is a good episode. Good Yeah, And it

1046
00:57:22,960 --> 00:57:23,800
Speaker 4: was a good update to it.

1047
00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:27,600
Speaker 6: I don't know, but like financial scandal, not really your What.

1048
00:57:27,680 --> 00:57:29,000
Speaker 4: Was the most recent Hood Politics?

1049
00:57:29,000 --> 00:57:29,240
Speaker 5: Maybe?

1050
00:57:29,360 --> 00:57:32,760
Speaker 2: Is that Politics? A great show? Yeah?

1051
00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:35,560
Speaker 4: Well, listen to Hood Politics with prop and sixteenth minute

1052
00:57:35,720 --> 00:57:38,520
Speaker 4: and everything else from cool Zone Media and everything else

1053
00:57:38,600 --> 00:57:41,360
Speaker 4: that Annie Reese does and listen to all of it

1054
00:57:41,400 --> 00:57:43,360
Speaker 4: before Wednesday, because I will be quizzing you.

1055
00:57:44,080 --> 00:57:47,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Hi everyone, Bye.

1056
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:51,920
Speaker 5: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

1057
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:55,080
Speaker 5: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,

1058
00:57:55,240 --> 00:57:58,480
Speaker 5: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out

1059
00:57:58,600 --> 00:58:02,160
Speaker 5: on the iHeartRadio appts.

1060
00:58:01,000 --> 00:58:04,520
Speaker 6: Or wherever you get your podcasts.

1061
00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:11,720
Speaker 2: That brings us to the end of this episode that

1062
00:58:12,120 --> 00:58:14,480
Speaker 2: I guessed on of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

1063
00:58:14,480 --> 00:58:19,000
Speaker 2: with Margaret Kiljoy. Shout out to Sophie who is also

1064
00:58:19,040 --> 00:58:22,080
Speaker 2: on the show and contacted me and Ian the producer,

1065
00:58:22,280 --> 00:58:25,960
Speaker 2: who is great. Uh and yeah, it was just a

1066
00:58:25,960 --> 00:58:31,280
Speaker 2: wonderful experience. We love them and go go check them

1067
00:58:31,280 --> 00:58:33,920
Speaker 2: out again if you have not already. We will bring

1068
00:58:34,440 --> 00:58:39,480
Speaker 2: part two of this two parter about vaccines soon, but

1069
00:58:39,520 --> 00:58:42,280
Speaker 2: in the meantime, if you would like to contact us,

1070
00:58:42,320 --> 00:58:44,520
Speaker 2: you can You can email us at Hello at stuff

1071
00:58:44,520 --> 00:58:46,240
Speaker 2: Whenever Told You dot com. You can find us on

1072
00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:48,360
Speaker 2: Blue skuy at mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram and

1073
00:58:48,440 --> 00:58:51,720
Speaker 2: TikTok at stuff When Never Told You. We're also on YouTube.

1074
00:58:51,840 --> 00:58:54,240
Speaker 2: We have new merchandise at compurerou and we have a

1075
00:58:54,240 --> 00:58:56,160
Speaker 2: book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks

1076
00:58:56,200 --> 00:59:00,120
Speaker 2: as always to our super producer Christina, executive Prusumya, and

1077
00:59:00,200 --> 00:59:03,280
Speaker 2: contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks to you for listening

1078
00:59:03,480 --> 00:59:05,360
Speaker 2: Stefan Never Told You Struction of My Heart Radio. For

1079
00:59:05,400 --> 00:59:06,960
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can check out

1080
00:59:06,960 --> 00:59:08,880
Speaker 2: the heart Radio app, Apple podcast or if you listen

1081
00:59:08,960 --> 00:59:09,840
Speaker 2: to your favorite shows