Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Speaker 4: Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here.
Speaker 4: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to
Speaker 4: know now for all of us tuning in on Netflix,
Speaker 4: fellow conspiracy realist, you may notice a couple of things
Speaker 4: different in this episode. We've got some different backgrounds. I
Speaker 4: am aware that there is a band aid on my face.
Speaker 4: We're not going to address it.
Speaker 3: Passed it.
Speaker 5: Was who was it? There was some like dirty South
Speaker 5: rapper Nellie Nellie? Sorry, I know it was one of
Speaker 5: the why the why guys.
Speaker 2: Therefore the weekend had a bloody nose there for a while.
Speaker 3: That's sure.
Speaker 5: That was an escalation of the band aid as a
Speaker 5: as a fashion statement. But I support you, Ben, I
Speaker 5: hope you're okay.
Speaker 3: Oh man, right, thank you to get punched.
Speaker 1: Stop.
Speaker 2: Did you have some lead exposure as a kid.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: I like about that segue there, Uh, band aid to
Speaker 4: a nosebleed. We're talking about an escalation tonight. We're recording
Speaker 4: on Monday, April sixth. It is time to get the
Speaker 4: lead out.
Speaker 3: Seriously.
Speaker 4: Let's start with a ps A. Don't hang out with
Speaker 4: or around lead if you can help it. It was
Speaker 4: once a miracle substance are treated as such in the
Speaker 4: days of old, and it eventually became linked to all
Speaker 4: sorts of horrific stuff, even before modern science could prove
Speaker 4: it is massively bad for you. I think today it's
Speaker 4: fair for us to say that most everybody accepts the
Speaker 4: reality of lead exposure and knows that it can lead
Speaker 4: to a range of lifelong debilitating conditions. You know, on
Speaker 4: our sister show, Ridiculous History, we actually teased this episode
Speaker 4: because we entered into the raging debate about whether or
Speaker 4: not lead exposure caused the fall of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 3: We did.
Speaker 5: And y'all, if you're worried about those paint chips used
Speaker 5: to eat as a kid, as I was, but you
Speaker 5: haven't done any serial killing yet, you're probably in the clear.
Speaker 3: Depending on your age. So right, yes, A healthy ya
Speaker 3: for all of us. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think in this episode where we're not getting into
Speaker 2: like does lead make you a serial killer? Right, we're
Speaker 2: getting into is led related in some way to serial killing?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, let's go awry to it.
Speaker 4: There's another debate at play to what we call the
Speaker 4: leg crime hypothesis. It's one that's perhaps even more controversial.
Speaker 4: It's the subject of tonight's investigation. Did lead exposure is
Speaker 4: a way read the headline did lead exposure create America's
Speaker 4: serial killer epidemic? We're going to try to keep this
Speaker 4: one Pg. Thirteen, but no promises, so listen closely. Here
Speaker 4: are the facts. All right, lead, what is it good for?
Speaker 4: Absolutely several things to dabble?
Speaker 3: Do you?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: Lead is a soft, silvery white, grayish metal number eighty
Speaker 5: two on the periodic table. Is it peb yes, yes,
Speaker 5: one of those weird ones. Mm hmm, yeah, I guess
Speaker 5: what is it like?
Speaker 4: It's Latin yeah, plubium, So it has a low melting point.
Speaker 4: This miss serious miracle substance. It's easy to find and
Speaker 4: it is extremely malleable. It's also very easy to get
Speaker 4: lead out of the ground and into a useful form.
Speaker 5: Right, and thus the prevalence of lead throughout history. It
Speaker 5: was just it was like one of those miracle substances
Speaker 5: like asbestos h yeah, yeah, or plastic as future historians
Speaker 5: will describe our age.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's so common and humans have been
Speaker 4: familiar with it for such a long time that lead
Speaker 4: is even mentioned in the Bible as a reality, not
Speaker 4: as like a metaphor.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And one thing we found on that ridiculous history episode
Speaker 5: you mentioned, Ben, is that the Romans actually even used it,
Speaker 5: like as a flavoring agent for their wine because it
Speaker 5: made it sweet.
Speaker 3: Sweet sweet lead.
Speaker 4: Babylonians used it to create plates that they would put
Speaker 4: inscriptions on. The Romans, to your point, no, used it
Speaker 4: for everything coins, water pipes for their brilliant aqueduct systems, tablets,
Speaker 4: cooking utensils, and as you said why there were also
Speaker 4: decorative pigment compounds derived from white lead that were used
Speaker 4: as early as two hundred BCE. This has been around
Speaker 4: for a while. By the time we get to ancient Rome,
Speaker 4: lead is everywhere, and this is where the problem begins because,
Speaker 4: in addition to being highly useful, lead is also cartoonishly toxic.
Speaker 4: We don't mean toxic in like a wo woo, pseudoscience,
Speaker 4: bad vibes.
Speaker 5: Way, we mean Britney spears kind of right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 5: we meet it as a neurotoxic.
Speaker 4: If you're exposed to it, you will have serious health issues,
Speaker 4: especially if you're exposed to it as a child during
Speaker 4: your formative years, causing developmental delays, learning difficulties, a particular
Speaker 4: kind of brain damage, damage to the frontal cortex that
Speaker 4: can lead to aggression, especially in males, damage to the
Speaker 4: nervous system as well.
Speaker 2: And with these toxic effects, it is really unfortunate that
Speaker 2: humans decided to make a lot of pipes with lead
Speaker 2: pipes that send things like water through them.
Speaker 5: Shout out Flint, Michigan, shout out to our episode Beyond Flint,
Speaker 5: the Looming Lead Crisis.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and that is one city in the United
Speaker 2: States that used lead pipes. Lead pipes were ubiquitous everywhere,
Speaker 2: especially in the US and in other places where if
Speaker 2: you were drinking water, it was probably going through lead.
Speaker 5: And I mean, now we have tests, you know, if
Speaker 5: a house is going to be demolished or there's going
Speaker 5: to be renovations or whatever, they test for things like
Speaker 5: lead and paint. Because that was also mega mega common.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's so.
Speaker 5: Crazy that you know, we know all of this horrible
Speaker 5: stuff now that you think we would have figured out
Speaker 5: long before it was used in so many things in
Speaker 5: our modern era. I mean, we're talking about this stuff
Speaker 5: being used in the Roman Empire, Like, why didn't they
Speaker 5: get the memo?
Speaker 2: Well, my only argument would be teflon the invention of
Speaker 2: that and how great that was for so long until
Speaker 2: we realized what the hell was happening.
Speaker 5: Yeah again, Ben, You're absolutely right, and that's something that's
Speaker 5: still everywhere despite what we know about it. So kind
Speaker 5: of answered the question. I mean, we're just not that
Speaker 5: great at forward thinking when it comes to toxic substances.
Speaker 2: Well, lead pipes were making money, bait, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: As long as they're making that money, then you know,
Speaker 5: we'll worry about it down the line.
Speaker 4: And as we are going down the line to the
Speaker 4: United States, fellow conspiracy realist, let's continue setting the scene
Speaker 4: in Rome.
Speaker 3: So we posit to you.
Speaker 4: That there is a circular pattern here, a bit of
Speaker 4: an ru bruce. If not a history repeating case, this
Speaker 4: is history rhyming. The dilemma of usefulness versus public health
Speaker 4: created what I think is fair to call an ancient
Speaker 4: proto conspiracy. People are not dumb throughout history or there
Speaker 4: I should say, people are no more smarter than they
Speaker 4: were in ancient times. So people way back when suspected
Speaker 4: lead was pretty bad news. Early on Romans were aware
Speaker 4: of it. There were physicians like Dioskorides who literally wrote
Speaker 4: lead makes the mind give way. But lead was economically vital,
Speaker 4: so they minimized the downsides. They covered it up. The
Speaker 4: Romans many other cultures that followed started reasoning that limited
Speaker 4: lead exposure couldn't be that bad. They were thinking of
Speaker 4: it as have a little lead as a treat. You know,
Speaker 4: a little bit of one cigarette won't kill you. A
Speaker 4: little bit of lead in your wine is just good party.
Speaker 4: You guys, dabble, do you right?
Speaker 2: I wonder if there is something to that that people
Speaker 2: in the upper echelons, the folks that were making money
Speaker 2: off of producing lead products back then, saw the effects
Speaker 2: of it and then realized, oh, well, if we make
Speaker 2: sure the palaces don't have some much lead, and let's say,
Speaker 2: the things we're using, we make sure, you know, the
Speaker 2: churches or the places of worship, the places where the
Speaker 2: elite are going to be hanging out. We won't use
Speaker 2: the lead. But if the populace has their mind giving
Speaker 2: way a little bit, maybe that's not such a bad thing.
Speaker 4: That's interesting because what we found in Ridiculous History was
Speaker 4: that the upper echelons of the socioeconomic pyramid of ancient
Speaker 4: Rome were actually more exposed to lead, just simply in
Speaker 4: subtle ways that they didn't realize. They were more likely
Speaker 4: to have indoor plumbing, they were more likely to use
Speaker 4: cutlery that was lead base. They were more likely to
Speaker 4: have the fancy wine with lead and decorative artifacts.
Speaker 5: But where whereas yeah, people you know might be using
Speaker 5: pottery or riding utensils and things like that.
Speaker 4: But the issue here is they did not differentiate. They
Speaker 4: thought lead exposure was one thing, when actually there are
Speaker 4: a couple levels. The people they saw getting clearly from
Speaker 4: lead were miners, people in smelting operations as posre Pax Murana.
Speaker 3: That's us. That's fine, as we'll keep it that.
Speaker 4: As Pax Romana kicked in and the empire had to
Speaker 4: create more and more coins, they were smelting like on
Speaker 4: a gad Zooke's scale.
Speaker 5: Well, and what better way to get that really really
Speaker 5: serious lead exposure than just inhaling the fumes.
Speaker 2: You know, was lead in the coins.
Speaker 4: Yeah, It's used in smelting operations for silver, So they
Speaker 4: were making silver coins and as a result of the
Speaker 4: smelting operations, the miners were getting acute exposure to lead.
Speaker 3: And this was something that the wealthy could look at.
Speaker 4: They would look down from their socioeconomic pyramid and they
Speaker 4: would say, oh, it's hurting the poors, but we're fine,
Speaker 4: without understanding that the entire time lead was accumulating in
Speaker 4: their bodies as well. There wasn't an OSHA, there wasn't
Speaker 4: an EPA. Nobody was stopping this.
Speaker 5: Well, that goes back to Matt's previous question, I think too,
Speaker 5: where they did know, The upper crust did know, but
Speaker 5: they just thought they were safer than the folks being
Speaker 5: directly exposed to it who were making the stuff in
Speaker 5: the mines. But little did they know various other transmission methods,
Speaker 5: you know, other than the fumes, you know, for actually
Speaker 5: taking lead into the body.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like we were saying earlier, the upper crust
Speaker 4: was probably exposed to more lead anyway. Check out our
Speaker 4: series on Ridiculous History. Fast forward to the Middle Ages,
Speaker 4: lead is still huge, even though people know it's a problem.
Speaker 4: Lead is massive in alchemy, which leads to chemistry. Leaded
Speaker 4: type is a huge engine in the emergence of mass printing.
Speaker 4: You got the Borgias and the Medici's of the Renaissance.
Speaker 4: They loved lead as an effective poison. Actually, we found
Speaker 4: in our research that the frame bench had a street
Speaker 4: name for lead.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, Benny talking about Poudre de la soon succession powder.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's funny.
Speaker 2: But dark leaders kill the person that's that's inconvenient for
Speaker 2: your particular version of politics.
Speaker 3: Right, and this is.
Speaker 4: Versatile in its applications led and again and again. This
Speaker 4: is the argument we're making in this episode. Throughout history,
Speaker 4: different civilizations have made the same devil's bargain, industrial progress
Speaker 4: at an astonishing level at the price of public health.
Speaker 4: The American colonies, the United States, they were no different.
Speaker 4: Now we're getting closer to the modern day. If you
Speaker 4: go to Jack Lewis, who was writing for the epa
Speaker 4: way back in the nineteen eighties, you'll see that lead
Speaker 4: mining and smelting started in the American colonies. As soon
Speaker 4: as the first colonists settled. People were mining and forging
Speaker 4: lead by sixteen twenty one in Virginia. The lead industry
Speaker 4: in the United States predates the United States. That's pretty
Speaker 4: trippy to think about.
Speaker 2: We needed things to work the land. Why not have
Speaker 2: your leaden tools. They'll do you right until they do
Speaker 2: your own.
Speaker 5: Not to mention our leaded gasolines, which we will all
Speaker 5: knock knock.
Speaker 3: Yeah, shout out to oh.
Speaker 4: I forgot the inventor's name, but yeah, he ruined a
Speaker 4: lot of stuff accidentally, and he died by one of
Speaker 4: his other inventions. Thomas Midgeley Junior, that's his name, the
Speaker 4: guy who made a lead a lead product that would
Speaker 4: prevent knocking in automotive engines.
Speaker 3: He died.
Speaker 4: This is such an aside, but folks, he died when
Speaker 4: he invented a rope pulleye system to help him get
Speaker 4: out of bed, and he got caught in it.
Speaker 5: It was like a horrible mishap, you know, literally, invention's
Speaker 5: gone wild.
Speaker 3: What a mouse trap? Way to go? And then Goldberg guest, yes.
Speaker 2: Just so.
Speaker 4: And by the early twentieth centuries, now we're in the
Speaker 4: nineteen hundreds, the United States has becolled the world's leading
Speaker 4: producer and consumer of refined lead. Uncle Samuel loves his stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not only am I president, I'm also a client.
Speaker 4: By nineteen eighty, the US was using one point three
Speaker 4: million tons of lead every year. That was an estimated
Speaker 4: forty percent of the entire world's supply. And we don't
Speaker 4: have to get into the weeds too much, but if
Speaker 4: you do a little bit of cocktail math, what you'll
Speaker 4: see is this equates to a usage rate of over
Speaker 4: five thousand grams of lead per American per year. That
Speaker 4: is a rate almost ten times that of ancient Rome.
Speaker 4: And as we're recording right now, the effects are still
Speaker 4: with this country. Over one hundred and seventy million people
Speaker 4: alive today are estimated to have been exposed to dangerously
Speaker 4: high lead levels in early childhood.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, let's talk about one of the primary things.
Speaker 2: Lead was used in toys. Lead toys were a big
Speaker 2: deal because it was so malleable. You could just make
Speaker 2: these easily produced, cheaply produced lead products that came out
Speaker 2: as toys.
Speaker 5: We're talking about little figurines, little windup guys and stuff
Speaker 5: like that. Like maybe what would have been used ten
Speaker 5: might have been used for but this is cheaper than
Speaker 5: ten and much more available and.
Speaker 2: You know, we're talking about the difference between having lead
Speaker 2: products versus ceramics or pottery and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: The US decided, let's cover the the ceramics in this
Speaker 2: lead glaze stuff, so you're eating out of it.
Speaker 5: One thing that lead is still used for today is
Speaker 5: in sowder, you know, And a dear friend of mine
Speaker 5: who is a stained glass artist uses lead sowder because
Speaker 5: it is apparently the most malleable and the best version
Speaker 5: of that product that you can use. And so you
Speaker 5: do have to be very very careful when you're handling
Speaker 5: that stuff, and definitely don't lick your stained glass windows.
Speaker 4: I remember, I remember your friend Thal and I remember
Speaker 4: having fascinating conversations about the art of stained glass, and
Speaker 4: the lead thing was a.
Speaker 3: Surprise to me as well.
Speaker 4: No, we do have good news for anybody who's feeling
Speaker 4: a bit of a bummer about their childhood nostalgia. You know,
Speaker 4: I particularly remember toys that smelled awesome, But they smelled
Speaker 4: awesome because they were VOCs volatile organic compounds and also
Speaker 4: hot plastic exposed to heat off, gassing. All that, all
Speaker 4: the good stuff, all the slow jazz.
Speaker 6: Dude, even going fishing, the little sinkers they used to
Speaker 6: use for fishing, was so cheap to make them out
Speaker 6: of lead. All right, Yeah, so you're just going out there,
Speaker 6: just setting your line and everything and.
Speaker 2: Then just playing with lead, and then every time you
Speaker 2: open up your tackle box, just lead in there is.
Speaker 4: And the good news is because we want to have
Speaker 4: some good news at the top. Eventually Uncle Sam gets
Speaker 4: his stuff together and passes wide ranging regulations to lessen
Speaker 4: lead exposure, and today everybody acknowledges that lead exposure, especially
Speaker 4: in childhood, connects to serious cognitive hazards lower IQ, aggression, psychopathy.
Speaker 3: And so on.
Speaker 4: There's a great interview we'll get to a little bit
Speaker 4: later from a place called The Grist, where they point
Speaker 4: out that in kids, specifically in human children, lead can
Speaker 4: lead to behavior that's been described as cruel, impulsive, or
Speaker 4: crazy like. It's also been linked to a loss in
Speaker 4: brain volume as someone becomes an adult, particularly in men.
Speaker 4: But these realizations that Uncle Sam finally acknowledges, because they
Speaker 4: knew about it for decades. When they finally acknowledge it,
Speaker 4: it comes far after reparable intergenerational damage has already occurred.
Speaker 4: That takes us to tonight's theory. It's tough to Just
Speaker 4: like antient rome, it's tough to figure out the exact
Speaker 4: moments this kind of exposure manifest in a given society
Speaker 4: or civilization. Because there's so many people in communities evolved,
Speaker 4: it's even more difficult to figure out the ramifications. But
Speaker 4: just last year twenty twenty five, a Pulitzer Prize winning
Speaker 4: author named Caroline Fraser rocked the world when she claimed
Speaker 4: that widespread lead poisoning in the United States didn't just
Speaker 4: cause medical issues. She asked, what if all the leaded gas,
Speaker 4: and the smelting plants and all these other vectors weren't
Speaker 4: just making industry possible. What if led exposure also created
Speaker 4: serial killers.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4: It sounds nuts, right, but I think we can agree
Speaker 4: after we've all looked into this, there is some persuasive
Speaker 4: sand to this argument. Again, people in the ancient past
Speaker 4: biologically identical to people of the modern day, minus the microplastics.
Speaker 4: No population has at this point evolved any sort of
Speaker 4: immunity to the effects of lead poisoning. So the gist
Speaker 4: of the theory is, what if notorious serial killers who
Speaker 4: spent time in areas of contamination, specifically the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 4: were made into killers because of environmental contamination. That's what
Speaker 4: Fraser is writing about in her book Murderland and Bloodlust
Speaker 4: in the Time of serial Killers.
Speaker 5: Because we certainly do, at least to my memory, have
Speaker 5: a concentration of these high profile serial killer cases in
Speaker 5: that region.
Speaker 3: Oh one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the book, which is a must read, by the way,
Speaker 4: check it out, folks. The book focuses a lot or
Speaker 4: spends a lot of time on the serial murderer Ted Bundy.
Speaker 4: But Bundy, to your point, there was one of at
Speaker 4: least like six or more serial killers active in Washington
Speaker 4: in nineteen seventy four alone. Also in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 4: Washington's murder rate rose by thirty percent. That's more than
Speaker 4: thrice the rate of the rest of the country.
Speaker 3: Something was happening.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And Fraser takes a scientific approach to this concept
Speaker 5: and really digs deep, and she found a pattern through
Speaker 5: her research, a pattern showing that a lot of the
Speaker 5: folks who later became serial killers grew up near these
Speaker 5: toxic plumes that were generated by industrial operations. We are
Speaker 5: specifically talking about these substances sulfur dioxide, arsenic and daint
Speaker 5: ding dang lead emanating from the smoke stacks of smelting factories,
Speaker 5: specifically one in Rustin outside of Tacoma there in Washington State.
Speaker 4: Let, which is part of why locals in the area
Speaker 4: at the time had a phrase describing the smell. They
Speaker 4: called it the aroma of Tacoma.
Speaker 2: That's cut.
Speaker 5: That's good branding. Maybe not for the best you know, product,
Speaker 5: but yeah.
Speaker 2: There's an aroma of like the coming Georgia area and
Speaker 2: some of these northern towns just paper mills just north well, no,
Speaker 2: it wasn't paper mills, plant farms there you go, chicken processingham,
Speaker 2: shaking farms, excrement, and then the blood and inns and
Speaker 2: all the nastiness of all those Yeah, paper mills smell.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you go south of Atlanta, you'll also run into
Speaker 4: dog food factories, which have a very particular smell that
Speaker 4: insists upon itself.
Speaker 2: The travel through the Midwest, and it's just Kalman Kalman.
Speaker 4: I don't think kalmanure smells that bad. That quote's going
Speaker 4: to be fraying out of context.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, put that on the book.
Speaker 4: Jack April twenty six, kalmaneure I don't think it smells
Speaker 4: that bad.
Speaker 2: I don't know what you're all talking about.
Speaker 3: Okay, horse maneure. Not all manure is terrible anyway. Uh
Speaker 3: there is a oh.
Speaker 4: We should do an episode on fertilizer too, anyway. Uh
Speaker 4: there is a yeah, yes, sir, there it's hot. There
Speaker 4: is a smelting company a particular interest to Fraser in
Speaker 4: this book. It is called the American Smelting and Refining Company,
Speaker 4: or a SARCO for short sa r COO. Shout out
Speaker 4: to the google.
Speaker 3: Heims, the Guggenheim, Guggenheims. Yeah, the gougendtheim Gougendtheims.
Speaker 4: This is part of how they made so much money.
Speaker 4: They acquired a SARCO or controlling shares of it. So
Speaker 4: going back to the point we made at the top
Speaker 4: about the profit motive, right, this devilish bargain. We know
Speaker 4: that in nineteen seventy four the officials kind of the
Speaker 4: c suite of a sarco's Bunker Hill smelter over in Kellogg, Idaho,
Speaker 4: they did a little bit of a calculation internally and
Speaker 4: they said, Okay, if we accidentally, not on purpose, somehow
Speaker 4: poisons say five hundred children with lead, then we will
Speaker 4: have a legal liability of six to seven million dollars.
Speaker 5: This reminds me of the calculation that Edward Norton's character
Speaker 5: makes and Fight Club when he's talking about like if
Speaker 5: X and Y add up to something is more than
Speaker 5: the price of a recall, like talking about people literally
Speaker 5: getting burned alive in you know, automotive accidents, then we
Speaker 5: don't do a recall, right, cost of doing business.
Speaker 2: So if they're legal liabilities six to seven million, how
Speaker 2: much are they going to make?
Speaker 4: That's the pickle of it, right, that's the badger in
Speaker 4: the bag, because the other side of the equation is
Speaker 4: they said, if we increase lead production, we're going to
Speaker 4: make ten to eleven million dollars. So in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 4: money when a million was way more impressive than it
Speaker 4: is now. So they definitely had the same profit motive
Speaker 4: as the plutocrats of ancient Rome. These are the modern plutocrats,
Speaker 4: the modern oligarchs. Arguably. At the same year, though, guys, folks,
Speaker 4: friends and neighbors. The same year, researchers found that that
Speaker 4: rust and smelter you mentioned earlier, NOL was pumping twenty
Speaker 4: five pounds of lead dust and fifty eight pounds of
Speaker 4: arsenic into the air every single so times that by
Speaker 4: twenty four times that, by all the days in the year, Well,
Speaker 4: that's a lot of lead. Might say it's too much
Speaker 4: lead because it's in the air another devil's bargain.
Speaker 2: Still sitting here wondering about that. Yeah, I'm I'm thinking
Speaker 2: about what that equates to in parts per billion or something.
Speaker 2: You know, when we think about stuff that gets dumped
Speaker 2: into the ocean, and then you know, even environmental regulators
Speaker 2: are like, oh, it's only like zero point oh four
Speaker 2: parts per billion, or it's only one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: parts per billion, so it's not a big deal. Just
Speaker 2: what that equates to, and then how much that can
Speaker 2: actually affect a human being and even the animals in
Speaker 2: the surrounding area.
Speaker 5: Guys, I'm so sorry, I got a phone call about
Speaker 5: a doctor's appointment thing. But are we talking about like
Speaker 5: allowable limits like as they exist today, Like is there.
Speaker 3: An easy and cereal That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I gotta wonder because we certainly know and talking
Speaker 5: about this, that no amount of lead exposure is quote
Speaker 5: unquote good, but it being such a part of our
Speaker 5: history and existing, you know, and as part of infrastructure
Speaker 5: and old things, there must be some official record or
Speaker 5: number that we are okay with.
Speaker 4: It has shifted over time, and thankfully it is usually
Speaker 4: trended downward. So scientists and researchers who don't get bought
Speaker 4: out by the conspiracy inevitably come back and say, at
Speaker 4: previous levels a little too high, it's a little too
Speaker 4: much lead. But here's why we're mentioning conspiracies because Fraser
Speaker 4: in her book, along with other researchers, they have discovered
Speaker 4: what does appear to be a series of very genuine
Speaker 4: industrial conspiracies. Time and time again, big companies and corporations
Speaker 4: practice regulatory capture. They downplay, they explain away, they rationalize,
Speaker 4: or they street cover up the environmental consequences of lead
Speaker 4: in the environment. And of course, you know see United States,
Speaker 4: we're to roll the dice nation. Public health cover ups
Speaker 4: are nothing new and they're not uncommon. Shout out to
Speaker 4: his bestos, as we said earlier. But the question then becomes,
Speaker 4: is it a bit of a leap cognitively to go
Speaker 4: from industrial conspiracy to a serial killer Golden age? I'd
Speaker 4: say to understand that connection, we have to explore more
Speaker 4: of the science, and we have to look at the
Speaker 4: patterns that Fraser herself discovered. And to be clear, Fraser
Speaker 4: is not arguing that LED exposure alone creates serial killers.
Speaker 4: She explicitly says she is not equating correlation to causation,
Speaker 4: but she is saying there may be a link.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because one thing we've learned through all these true
Speaker 2: crime shows we've done over the years is that each
Speaker 2: one of these especially highly notable serial killers that have
Speaker 2: been studied have a very specific set of societal circumstances.
Speaker 2: You know, not just chemicals that they're exposed to or
Speaker 2: anything like that. We know that family stuff, stuff they
Speaker 2: went through as children especially, ends up working heavily into
Speaker 2: the things that they end up being into. They like
Speaker 2: that really nasty stuff. So it must be some combination, right.
Speaker 4: If we go to the author herself, she sums it
Speaker 4: up this way, so we'll share a bit of her writing.
Speaker 4: Recipes for making a serial killer may vary, including such
Speaker 4: ingredients as poverty, crude forceps, deliveries, poor diet, physical and
Speaker 4: sexual abuse, brain damage, and neglect. Many horrors play a
Speaker 4: role in warping these tortured souls. But what happens if
Speaker 4: we had a light dusting from the periodic table on
Speaker 4: top of all that.
Speaker 5: Trauma, just a sprinkle, just a little topper, just a
Speaker 5: little top as a tree.
Speaker 2: Well, the thought here then is that that would cause
Speaker 2: brain trauma. And we know down the lad line that
Speaker 2: having what is it chronic encephalopathy and some of these ctees,
Speaker 2: some of these other things can lead to changes in
Speaker 2: impulse control and some of the things that we associate
Speaker 2: with serial killers and activity of just losing it and
Speaker 2: killing somebody, or even having the ability, you know, in
Speaker 2: mentally to just take somebody out like that rather than
Speaker 2: consider all of the consequences and you know that another
Speaker 2: human is alive. Mm hmm. I can imagine those four steps,
Speaker 2: being as crude as that method was, could lead to
Speaker 2: a brain a version of brain damage that could lead
Speaker 2: to that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, traumatic brain injury. If you want to, if you
Speaker 4: want an extreme case of how messing with the brain
Speaker 4: can alter personality, look no further than the real life
Speaker 4: parable of Phineas Gage.
Speaker 3: Remember that guy.
Speaker 5: As the guy that got the spike through the head
Speaker 5: right m.
Speaker 4: Hm, complete and survived and it completely changed him as
Speaker 4: a person. We also know there are many cases documented
Speaker 4: proven of children who received traumatic brain injuries during a
Speaker 4: formative period and later became serial murderers. So the forceps
Speaker 4: can cause brain damage, but also multiple other knocks to
Speaker 4: the head can create the same effects. What we're saying is,
Speaker 4: and I love this point, there are so many other
Speaker 4: factors at play. So Fraser is not saying that lead
Speaker 4: is the only thing that matters. Fraser is pointing out
Speaker 4: that it should be a factor in the conversation.
Speaker 2: What are we saying or what does the author say
Speaker 2: the lead exposure? Like, what effect does it have if
Speaker 2: it was just another contributing factor?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Again, it would go back to the proven science that
Speaker 4: we have regarding lead exposure and children in general and
Speaker 4: human children in general, specifically the prefrontal cortex damage, and
Speaker 4: also a strong link between crime in general and lead.
Speaker 4: This is something we can't wait to introduce to you folks.
Speaker 4: As a matter of fact, why don't we expose everybody
Speaker 4: to some ads and then get into it. We're back,
Speaker 4: all right, We're gonna get into this deeper, all right,
Speaker 4: murder Land. The book mainly focuses on events in Washington State. Now,
Speaker 4: we do know that Fraser grew up in the area
Speaker 4: near Tacoma. But that is not This is not an
Speaker 4: author making a thing about themselves. This is a very
Speaker 4: well researched book. She looks at the Washington Department of
Speaker 4: a Cology's map of lead and arsenic contamination, and there
Speaker 4: she sees four plumes, the fallout from the Tacoma smelter
Speaker 4: we mentioned earlier, another smelter plume in Everett, these orchard
Speaker 4: lands in central Washington, they weren't smelt operations, but all
Speaker 4: those orchards were sprayed with lead arsenate or arsenate as
Speaker 4: a pesticide. And then the fourth wind that she focuses
Speaker 4: on is an isolated cleanup site on the Upper Columbia River.
Speaker 2: Interesting, so we're saying, like with that, with the orchard area,
Speaker 2: pesticize or sprayed on, let's say those apples whatever they're
Speaker 2: you know, creating their growing there. Then people consumed those
Speaker 2: in the surrounding area. Possibly I think she was groundwater continuely, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think she's more talking about lead's tremendous ability to
Speaker 2: leach into things and the people who lived around the orchard,
Speaker 2: would you know, because pesticide knows no fence, right, it
Speaker 2: knows no real borders, so it drifted around the surrounding area.
Speaker 2: She also, okay, so she's got these fore plumes, and
Speaker 2: then she says, all of these areas quote hosted the
Speaker 2: activities of one or more cereal assaulters or murderers. And
Speaker 2: this is where we get to things like the Pacific
Speaker 2: Northwest Cluster. She talks about Bundy and Gary Ridgeway. Both
Speaker 2: of these guys grew up in or around Washington State,
Speaker 2: which was heavily polluted by that smelter and Ta Coma
Speaker 2: at the time. But then to what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: She looks at all possible vectors of lead exposure and
Speaker 2: she sees people like Richard Ramirez or i should say
Speaker 2: monsters like Ramirez the Nights Talker. He grew up next
Speaker 2: to a smoke stack also from Asarco in El Paso, Texas.
Speaker 2: Or David Berkowitz. To know your point about paint chips,
Speaker 2: this guy lived at a house with peeling lead paint.
Speaker 2: You don't have to eat the chips. Spoiler, folks, if
Speaker 2: the lead paint is peeling, you're still getting your lead.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm just I'm imagining how many
Speaker 2: people didn't become serial killers that were directly exposed to
Speaker 2: these smoke stacks and stuff.
Speaker 5: That's the interesting part, right is this core? Is this
Speaker 5: causation or is this just kind of correlate. I don't know,
Speaker 5: like it's we're gonna get to that. I mean, this
Speaker 5: is definitely something that you know, the the research here considered, right.
Speaker 2: Well, for sure, it's feeling more like some kind of
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, not a full on reason
Speaker 2: for it to occur, But like that, I'm trying to imagine,
Speaker 2: like a key, if you've experienced some of these other things,
Speaker 2: especially as a child, that would lead towards serial killing,
Speaker 2: then you've also got this one little extra piece that
Speaker 2: just fits perfectly in there to help you along the way.
Speaker 4: I favor that comparison. I also like to think of
Speaker 4: it similar to asking what makes a car?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: You can't say that tires are the reason cars exist,
Speaker 4: But you can't say that steering wheels, or headlights or
Speaker 4: even an engine alone makes a car. So it's a
Speaker 4: combination of factors, you know. And Freezer is also quick
Speaker 4: to point out that this speculation is not arriving out
Speaker 4: of the blue like our Palell Zoe was saying about
Speaker 4: different NLP techniques. It's not a story of a sudden
Speaker 4: revelation with somebody walking by the beach and thinking, why
Speaker 4: do my eyes move that way? Instead, this is a
Speaker 4: natural extension of something called the lead crime hypothesis. If
Speaker 4: you're a longtime listener of conspiracy stuff, then you have
Speaker 4: probably heard this idea before. It's the suggestion that widespread
Speaker 4: environmental lead exposure, particularly in the United States from let
Speaker 4: a gas, caused a surge in violent crime and crime
Speaker 4: rates later declined as lead was phased out. So imagine
Speaker 4: increased lead exposure from the nineteen forties to the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 4: when everybody was still really hot about lead. Imagine if
Speaker 4: you did a timeline, which these researchers have, and you
Speaker 4: looked at how people exposed to lead in childhood, how
Speaker 4: they behaved when they grew up. And these researchers have
Speaker 4: found a sharp rise in violent crime and murder rates
Speaker 4: in the nineteen seventies, the eighties, and early nineteen nineties,
Speaker 4: because again Uncle Sam didn't start getting the lead out
Speaker 4: of the gas until nineteen seventy five, and that process
Speaker 4: was only finalized in the mid nineteen nineties. History is
Speaker 4: so much closer than it looks in the rear view mirror.
Speaker 2: I blame Nixon and Reaganomics, but you know, I guess
Speaker 2: it could be lead.
Speaker 3: Yeh.
Speaker 4: I thought you were saying you blamed them for taking
Speaker 4: the lead out of gas.
Speaker 3: Sorry. Man, the party got so much labor.
Speaker 5: I mean it made it taste so much better.
Speaker 3: That's rue, right, could.
Speaker 2: Blame them for the crime wave because they made things
Speaker 2: so terrible for lower class human beings.
Speaker 4: It's cool there's a drug there's a war on drugs, right,
Speaker 4: and we can militarize the police.
Speaker 3: I mean that didn't poll well.
Speaker 4: We didn't pull well, which was a to me too, nol.
Speaker 4: I mean we we saw lower blood levels in children
Speaker 4: as these regulations kicked in, and we also saw two
Speaker 4: decades later a significant drop in crime rates. So causation,
Speaker 4: I don't know. Correlation definitely, it seems like a very
Speaker 4: if not conclusive. It seems like a very meaty red string.
Speaker 4: You know that's a weird phrase out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it does like line up with just these
Speaker 2: periods of deregulation and corporate interests become the most powerful
Speaker 2: and important thing, you know, in Congress and the EPA
Speaker 2: kind of takes a back seat when we go through
Speaker 2: these waves that we're going through right now, like heavy
Speaker 2: right now, and we're gonna have these crazy health effects
Speaker 2: because it makes more sense for the company, like we
Speaker 2: talked about in the very first segment of this, the
Speaker 2: company that's they're only going to make what three to
Speaker 2: five million dollars more than they have to pay and
Speaker 2: they know that.
Speaker 5: Well, and that de regislation to do it, combined with
Speaker 5: lack of access to good healthcare, really does make it
Speaker 5: a tax on the poor in terms of like the
Speaker 5: health effects and very similar to what we were talking
Speaker 5: about back in the Roman Empire. And how how crazy
Speaker 5: it is This lad stuck around for so long because
Speaker 5: the calculation was about allowable limits that would mainly affect
Speaker 5: people of less means.
Speaker 4: Yeah, an attack and attacks at the same time. This
Speaker 4: we also should mention this theory so far is largely
Speaker 4: focusing on the United States. It's a very United States
Speaker 4: thing to do, but data from multiple other countries appears
Speaker 4: to indicate a similar relationship between led consumption and violent crimes.
Speaker 4: So really, Frasier and other proponents are proposing an addendum
Speaker 4: to this long standing concept and they're focusing on a
Speaker 4: specific genre of crime. It's chilling in its plausibility. It's
Speaker 4: also we have to be fair. It's not to say
Speaker 4: there are not some issues with the theory, and these
Speaker 4: are issues we should acknowledge.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 4: The main one that always makes me sound like a
Speaker 4: broken record is the great pickle of any investigation, of
Speaker 4: research or study of serial killers. We only know the
Speaker 4: ones who get caught right.
Speaker 2: Right, True, we have no idea where the Zodiac grew up,
Speaker 2: and maybe he was in Tacoma and then just moved
Speaker 2: to San Francisco later.
Speaker 5: On, but still, I mean regional. It definitely was in
Speaker 5: the zone.
Speaker 4: We also know that our sample size therefore is limited.
Speaker 4: As a result, it's possibly not as accurate as we
Speaker 4: would like to think. I mean, they're definitely serial killers
Speaker 4: who got away. Check out our three episodes series on that. Secondly,
Speaker 4: you know the Freezer, by necessity is focusing on specific
Speaker 4: regions and specific murderers all in the US, not every
Speaker 4: documented serial killer case across the planet. That's I think
Speaker 4: that is more than reasonable. But we also have to
Speaker 4: have some space here and acknowledge that further research across
Speaker 4: larger data sets might uncover other factors or other variables.
Speaker 3: So it's quite possible.
Speaker 4: That there is some other environmental contaminant that could twist
Speaker 4: your brain and put you on the path towards serial murder,
Speaker 4: and it just hasn't been researched the same way that
Speaker 4: lead was, maybe because it's not as ubiquitous.
Speaker 2: What if it's putting raisins in your brand cereal?
Speaker 5: Stop it, don't even get me started out there.
Speaker 2: But let's see if there's a correlation.
Speaker 4: Let's see, well, I mean, raisin brand number one, cereal
Speaker 4: number one, breakfast, breakfast treat for serial killers.
Speaker 2: Also, it's still my favorite.
Speaker 5: It's too hard, but the ridiculous history episode and a
Speaker 5: lot of the research around the Roman Empire collapsed. At
Speaker 5: the end of the day, it was just another factor.
Speaker 5: But it wasn't like the only factor. You know, there
Speaker 5: were a lot of other elements at play, as there
Speaker 5: are in human developments. You know, there's nature, there's nurture,
Speaker 5: there's so many things. It's difficult to blame lead entirely
Speaker 5: on the quote unquote serial killer epidemic.
Speaker 4: That being said, we did have a lot of fun
Speaker 4: speculating that that room fell because the leaders were exposed
Speaker 4: to more lead than the public, and they were getting
Speaker 4: dumber and dumber and dumber every generation as a result.
Speaker 4: So eventually no one was at the wheel or no
Speaker 4: one qualified.
Speaker 2: Guys, that's graze. Nineteen twenty five, Skinner's manufacturing company starts
Speaker 2: Raisin brand. It isn't until the nineteen forties that Kellogg's
Speaker 2: gets in the game with their raisin brand. Kids grown
Speaker 2: up in the nineteen forties, because talking about like nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: right with the serial killers, like thirty years old after
Speaker 2: starting to eat raisin bran as a kid.
Speaker 5: I think it's more rape nuts issue, Matt. I think
Speaker 5: it's more of a grape nuts issue.
Speaker 3: I do think that that's We're not kidding Kellogg's.
Speaker 4: We know what you do, and you do too, kellogg
Speaker 4: you know, so we also we look. I gotta pause
Speaker 4: there because I love that. I love that. Aside, it
Speaker 4: shows us the danger of correlation and confusing it with causation.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: You could also say, I mean, war is a terrible example,
Speaker 4: but you could pick any industrial product and you could
Speaker 4: build a timeline around it to argue whatever you want
Speaker 4: it if you're arguing in bad faith. But here, unlike
Speaker 4: cereal jokes here. The thing with lead is.
Speaker 3: That we know the science. We know it's bad.
Speaker 4: We also, despite our limitations and conveats, we know a
Speaker 4: bit about what leads to serial murderers and s r
Speaker 4: il as these do check it, please do check out
Speaker 4: our previous episodes.
Speaker 3: And it's weird because.
Speaker 4: Since there are so many unique combinations or ways for
Speaker 4: these various factors to combine and the creation of these monsters,
Speaker 4: there are tons of possibilities, and not every factor is
Speaker 4: applicable to every case. So childhood abuse is not always
Speaker 4: a factor for a serial murderer, So let exposure may
Speaker 4: not be a factor for every single documented serial killer.
Speaker 4: And the other thing about this and we're not criticizing
Speaker 4: or deriding this theory at all, We're just pointing out
Speaker 4: the issues. Another big thing that we have talked about
Speaker 4: at length on this show and other shows is the
Speaker 4: projected decline in serial killers. Is a very strong argument
Speaker 4: that the decline is not necessarily due to environmental regulation.
Speaker 4: It might just primarily be due to the fact that
Speaker 4: technology is way better at tracking people and stopping folks.
Speaker 4: Law enforcement, due to the War on drugs, and due
Speaker 4: to you know, things like nine to eleven. They have
Speaker 4: more resources in funding than ever before, and surveillance is
Speaker 4: way more sophisticated. Just like how cell phones would wreck
Speaker 4: most episodes of Seinfeld, cell phones and mobile technology have
Speaker 4: absolutely wrecked the plans of a lot of criminals. You're
Speaker 4: easier to track, it's tougher to get away.
Speaker 2: And we're all more easily stupefied. Right, so we don't
Speaker 2: even care about serial killing anymore. We've got things to
Speaker 2: do on our phone.
Speaker 3: Gosh, yeah, darn it. I know the moon is right
Speaker 3: and it's time for me to feed, but I've got it.
Speaker 3: Keep scrolling Reddit.
Speaker 2: These YouTube videos keep coming.
Speaker 3: Dang it, this was the perfect night, all right, I'll
Speaker 3: wait for this.
Speaker 2: What should I do? What?
Speaker 3: What is that?
Speaker 2: A new season of Top Chef? Let's go, guys.
Speaker 4: If it was just regular Saturday Night Live in the US,
Speaker 4: I'd be out there doing my murderous job that the
Speaker 4: devil gave me. However, now there's snl UK and it's
Speaker 4: like who has the time, So.
Speaker 2: It's a it's weird, but I do feel like that
Speaker 2: kind of distraction and like immersion into digital life probably
Speaker 2: has taken some people out or out of the realm
Speaker 2: of doing things in the in the physical yes, and
Speaker 2: now just doing them in a digital way, and they're
Speaker 2: probably just as messed up and crazy. It's just you're
Speaker 2: not doing it to a real person in real time.
Speaker 2: Now there's this muddled version of it that occurs, you know,
Speaker 2: through a computer and over your internet.
Speaker 4: Right, And the question is, on a on a very
Speaker 4: basic level, does your brain know the difference?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: And that's that's an episode for another day. That's a
Speaker 4: that's a badger that scientist as still trying to figure out.
Speaker 4: But as an aside, you know what that reminds me of.
Speaker 4: I've been recently replaying a video game called Boulder's Gate
Speaker 4: and it made me think of the evolution of these
Speaker 4: sorts of simulated realities, which is all a game ever,
Speaker 4: is uh? There was something that happened with video games
Speaker 4: far before Bolder's Gate three, which is awesome, wherein the
Speaker 4: player got the agency to be a bad guy, and
Speaker 4: I realized this might cause a little bit of a
Speaker 4: shift in behavior for formative minds playing these games, Like
Speaker 4: if you can choose to be the absolute evil villain
Speaker 4: of a thing and be put in these simulated scenarios
Speaker 4: where you do absolutely beat me here villain is then
Speaker 4: does that affect the way you see the rest of
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's why people were so up in arms when Grand
Speaker 2: Theft Auto three came out, Like seriously, it was such
Speaker 2: a big deal because, at least to my experience, for
Speaker 2: the first time, you're you are playing this role of
Speaker 2: somebody who was just in the underworld doing anything you
Speaker 2: want to do, and a lot of it was nefarious stuff,
Speaker 2: mostly killing people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a bit of a moral panic around that.
Speaker 5: I mean, the fact, especially that it was something that
Speaker 5: kids had access to, not to mention the larger debate
Speaker 5: around you know, video games and violent movies.
Speaker 3: And heavy metal dog exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess for me it's it's the question is
Speaker 4: should we reassess that outside of the bout or the
Speaker 4: hyperbole and reactive stuff like a moral panic, should we
Speaker 4: re assess that as these simulated realities grow more complex,
Speaker 4: as they grow more sophisticated and cleave ever closer to
Speaker 4: the analogue world. The story for another day, humanity in
Speaker 4: society is not ready for the technology it has created
Speaker 4: or is creating. But I think we can acknowledge right
Speaker 4: now that it is all things being equal, it is
Speaker 4: tougher for criminals to get away, and it's plausible to
Speaker 4: imagine that as a result, at least a few would
Speaker 4: be serial murderers were apprehended well before their pattern escalated, because, guys,
Speaker 4: as we know from other shows and investigations we've done
Speaker 4: outside of stuff they don't want you to know, a
Speaker 4: lot of times people who are serial killers were people
Speaker 4: who are on the way to that kind of escalating pattern.
Speaker 4: A lot of times when they get apprehended, it's for
Speaker 4: something else, and then the pieces start to come together. Right,
Speaker 4: got caught shoplifting right now, you're Leonard Lake and Charles
Speaker 4: ng You got caught with a bad parking ticket, et cetera,
Speaker 4: et cetera.
Speaker 2: Do you, guys notice that most caught serial killers aren't
Speaker 2: very wealthy? Yes, you ever noticed that?
Speaker 3: And not super intelligent outside of Kemper.
Speaker 2: Do you wonder if maybe there are some super wealthy
Speaker 2: serial killers out there didn't get.
Speaker 3: Caught because they had the cover. I think about it
Speaker 3: all the time.
Speaker 2: Also got a huge property somewhere Zora ranch, Yeah, big
Speaker 2: ass basements nobody around.
Speaker 3: You've also got a staff, right, or you've got a
Speaker 3: trusted cadre you have resources and infrastructure to help you.
Speaker 3: I think about that all the time.
Speaker 4: We're talking about that, and are serial killers that got away?
Speaker 3: Series two?
Speaker 4: You know, like, it's not implausible, even now in a
Speaker 4: great surveillance state, it's not implausible for someone to say.
Speaker 3: What's the example used.
Speaker 4: I don't have to kill every time the moon is
Speaker 4: in a certain phase. All I have to do is
Speaker 4: travel a lot for work, and once or twice a year,
Speaker 4: not every convention, but once or twice a year during
Speaker 4: a convention in a big crowded city, I find a
Speaker 4: homeless person that can happen, that probably has happened, that
Speaker 4: probably is happening.
Speaker 5: There's a pretty excellent or you know whatever, access may
Speaker 5: be the wrong word depiction of this in a later
Speaker 5: season of the British TV series Luther, about like an
Speaker 5: incredibly wealthy surgeon who is an incredibly.
Speaker 2: Efficient and diabological serial killer. It's two of my favorite actors.
Speaker 2: I think that you're talking about there and all that
Speaker 2: doctor and then interest.
Speaker 4: You griselba, Yeah, I got robbed? Should have been James
Speaker 4: Bond I said it.
Speaker 3: Also.
Speaker 4: I want to point out the excellent television adaptation of Hannibal.
Speaker 4: Do check that out. If you want to see different
Speaker 4: and imagined varieties of serial killers, still go back to
Speaker 4: Fraser and the thesis or the argument of tonight's episode.
Speaker 4: We see that despite the caveats we have enumerated, this
Speaker 4: theory of lead and crime is built on pretty solid science.
Speaker 4: It is inarguable that lead has dangerous cognitive effects. That
Speaker 4: takes us to the next point hashtag no Dennis Reynolds
Speaker 4: think about the implication. You know, it's pretty far reaching.
Speaker 4: If exposure to lead and other toxic chemicals really does
Speaker 4: contribute to the creation of serial killers, then researchers have
Speaker 4: another crucial data point in the toolkit to understanding more about.
Speaker 3: Them well, and also is an interesting thing to think about.
Speaker 5: As you know, things like lead have more or less
Speaker 5: been removed at least far lessened in our environments. Is
Speaker 5: there any coincidence that we haven't really seen any high
Speaker 5: profile serial killers like new Onesking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, that's well put in. Secondly, more chilling. As
Speaker 4: we alluded to earlier, this also indicates that there could
Speaker 4: be other forms of environmental contamination that have similar wide
Speaker 4: ranging effects on public health, so we might not yet
Speaker 4: know the full intergenerational consequences of exposure to certain microplastics,
Speaker 4: but speculation like this regarding lead exposure gives us a
Speaker 4: powerful tool for imagining and detecting those effects. We started
Speaker 4: with some good news, and we'll wrap it up with
Speaker 4: some good news. A lot of these plants are being closed.
Speaker 4: There are, or there were up until recently, some big
Speaker 4: deal clean up initiatives, you know, super fun sites, stuff
Speaker 4: like that. So the public good is getting back into
Speaker 4: the narrative and back in the story. And you know,
Speaker 4: better late than never, right said Realm.
Speaker 2: That's gonna say as we deregulate everything and we throw
Speaker 2: out rules that we're supposed to prevent us from doing
Speaker 2: certain offshore drilling, you know, to prevent the mass die
Speaker 2: offs of more species. But that's happening right now, and
Speaker 2: those regulations are being shredded, as as well as just
Speaker 2: horrific other things about chemicals and the exposures we're going
Speaker 2: to have in the next decade because of changes to
Speaker 2: the laws that are happening right now. I am sorry
Speaker 2: to be a downer again, Ben, that is good news
Speaker 2: what you're saying. I am just I'm just seeing that
Speaker 2: we're in the midst of another one of these things
Speaker 2: like the nineteen.
Speaker 4: Seventies, and do check out our Ridiculous History episode. Check
Speaker 4: out our series on Uncaught serial Killers. Also check out
Speaker 4: Beyond Flint the Looming Led Crisis, which we did a
Speaker 4: little while back and still holds up on a re listen.
Speaker 4: We want to hear your thoughts on this, fellow conspiracy.
Speaker 4: Is this Led serial killer theory overblown? We don't think so,
Speaker 4: and I want to applaud Caroline Fraser for taking pains
Speaker 4: to explicitly state that just as Led was not the
Speaker 4: sole reason for the fall of Rome, it isn't the
Speaker 4: sole factor in the creation of killers, but it does
Speaker 4: appear to be a factor in crime. It's definitely a
Speaker 4: huge factor in public health crises, and for decades and
Speaker 4: decades that was the stuff those big corporations didn't want
Speaker 4: you to know. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank
Speaker 4: you for tuning in. Join us for upcoming episodes in
Speaker 4: the future. In the meanwhile, you can hit us up
Speaker 4: right now on the lines. Should thou sip the social meds,
Speaker 4: you can give us a phone call, and you can
Speaker 4: always send us an email m hmm.
Speaker 5: If you do find yourself on the lines, you can
Speaker 5: reach out to us at the handles Conspiracy Stuff or
Speaker 5: Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on which social mead flavor is
Speaker 5: your favorite. And there's also another way.
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