Speaker 1: It's the podcast that it is. This is the podcast
Speaker 1: that it is, not the one it's not. I'm Robert
Speaker 1: Evans Behind the Bastards Part two an intro, But are
Speaker 1: you I'll never do that again? Um, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: I like it. No, I feel like I'm getting all
Speaker 1: of the treats right now between the appropriate intro and
Speaker 1: then to see an intro. Would you say you're going
Speaker 1: to do neither one of these again? No? Never. Next
Speaker 1: episode I'm going to introduce by just shouting out the
Speaker 1: name of a famous ethnic cleansing and then uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be very bad. But this time you've got
Speaker 1: a song. Of course. Our guest today in part two
Speaker 1: of our Population Control episode, as in part one, is
Speaker 1: Samantha McVeigh of stuff your mom never told you, Samantha,
Speaker 1: mom never told you stuff mom never told you yet?
Speaker 1: Know you and my mom specifically, Yeah to how are
Speaker 1: you doing, Samantha? Has has life changed dratically for you
Speaker 1: since part one? Well? I did go visit my dog,
Speaker 1: who I do put her away during recordings because she
Speaker 1: is a very loud barker. But h yeah, so you
Speaker 1: know that always makes me a little happier. That's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always good to see dogs. I don't remove Anderson
Speaker 1: because I have separation anxiety. Yeah, but I feel like
Speaker 1: Anderson so much better behaved than Peaches. Peaches is just
Speaker 1: kind of allowed just wait for somebody to get a
Speaker 1: package delivered. She hates the package delivery pieces, like she's like,
Speaker 1: is it for me? No? Fuck you? Right? Anderson has
Speaker 1: that in common with Jeff Bezos. There you go. Wait,
Speaker 1: is Anderson making just as much money for every package
Speaker 1: being delivered to two thousand dollars a second son of
Speaker 1: a bit? Yeah, and she does not share a dime
Speaker 1: of it. It's very frustrating, very rudy dog I have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she has so many jet skis that she can't even use.
Speaker 1: Got to make that bank? You you do? You? Anderson
Speaker 1: speaking of making that bank, not at all, speaking of
Speaker 1: making that bank, speaking of population control. When we left
Speaker 1: off our long winding story about the Dalkon Shield and
Speaker 1: the population control movement, we had gotten to Margaret Sanger.
Speaker 1: Have you heard Does that name ring a bell to you? Samantha? Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course we have kind of mentioned her previous previous
Speaker 1: episodes with previous Yeah, yeah, she's you know again kind
Speaker 1: of seen as the founder of planned parenthood, at least
Speaker 1: the organizations that became it, and popularizer of the term
Speaker 1: birth control. And in many ways, Margaret was a bridge
Speaker 1: between the eugenics movement, which was fundamentally racist, and the
Speaker 1: population control movement, which was usually racist but not necessarily racist.
Speaker 1: It's actually a much more complicated kind of terrible. Um.
Speaker 1: Margaret was not a eugenicist in the Nazi way. She
Speaker 1: supported birth control access for everybody, including the kind of
Speaker 1: white people that you kind of assumed she felt were
Speaker 1: a superior race. She was comfortable talking to fascists. In
Speaker 1: her nineteen thirty autobiography, she wrote, always, to me, any
Speaker 1: aroused group was a good group, and therefore I accepted
Speaker 1: an invitation to talk to the women's branch of the
Speaker 1: ku Klux Klan at Silver Lake, New Jersey, one of
Speaker 1: the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing. So she did
Speaker 1: talk to the KKK. There are pictures that will claim
Speaker 1: to be her with the KKK. They're not her. Um.
Speaker 1: There's no picture of that meeting. But she did give
Speaker 1: a speech to a women's KKK group. UM. And you
Speaker 1: can find a lot online about Singer's racism. It's a
Speaker 1: very frustrating subject to research because she definitely was problematic,
Speaker 1: but also her her status as founding mother of the
Speaker 1: safe contraception movement in the US has made her the
Speaker 1: target of a bunch of disingenuous right wingers who want
Speaker 1: to paint planned parenthood and birth control as part of
Speaker 1: a racist plot to wipe out black people. And that
Speaker 1: is not true. It wasn't true of Margaret Sanger, to
Speaker 1: be honest. Um, she did embark on something called the
Speaker 1: Negro Project, and that is a not a great thing
Speaker 1: to call anything. Yeah, but it was not what you
Speaker 1: might assume it was. It was an effort to spread
Speaker 1: education and access to birth control in black communities, particularly
Speaker 1: throughout the South. The reality of the project is complex.
Speaker 1: Singer and her colleagues did deliberately appeal to white racists
Speaker 1: in their attempts to get funding for the project. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from a right up by New York University here, Sanger,
Speaker 1: Ryan Art, and Sanger secretary Florence Rose drafted a report
Speaker 1: on birth control and the Negro skillfully using language that
Speaker 1: appealed to both eugenicists fearful of unchecked black fertility and
Speaker 1: progressives committed to shepherding African Americans into middle class culture.
Speaker 1: The reports stated that Negroes present the great problem of
Speaker 1: the South, as they are the group with the greatest economic,
Speaker 1: health and social problems, and outlined a practical birth control
Speaker 1: program geared toward a population characterized as largely illiterate and
Speaker 1: that still breed carelessly and disastrously, a line borrowed from
Speaker 1: a June nineteen thirty two Birth Control Review article by W. E. B. Dubois.
Speaker 1: So again very problematic, also quoting W. B. D b
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, and it's it was not. Again this is
Speaker 1: framed modern and modern times by usually like right wing
Speaker 1: anti birth control people as like evidence of her racism.
Speaker 1: The Negro Project was very popular with black community leaders
Speaker 1: at the time, and it would be unfair to frame
Speaker 1: it as an act of genocide. Sanger wrote repeatedly of
Speaker 1: the importance of bringing in black doctors, stating at one point,
Speaker 1: I do not believe that this project should be directed
Speaker 1: or run by white medical men, which is good if
Speaker 1: you're going to do a healthcare project like focused on
Speaker 1: the black community like that, that that shows like she
Speaker 1: she was not, like she was capable of understanding like
Speaker 1: what was necessary in order to actually reach people. Yeah yeah, nine.
Speaker 1: She argued in a letter that black ministers needed to
Speaker 1: be heavily involved in the project in order to gain
Speaker 1: the trust of their communities. We do not want word
Speaker 1: to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population,
Speaker 1: and the minister is the man who can straighten out
Speaker 1: that idea if it ever occurs to any of their
Speaker 1: more rebellious members. Again, it's a problematic language there. But
Speaker 1: also like, there's no evidence she was actually going in
Speaker 1: for genocide because she was again doing the same thing
Speaker 1: with white people. She was a birth control across the
Speaker 1: board advocate, right, she wanted everyone to have more access
Speaker 1: to contraceptives. Um, there are people on the right like
Speaker 1: Denisia Suza who will spread wildly untrue claims about Singer,
Speaker 1: like that she called black people human weeds and a
Speaker 1: minis to civilization, and there is no evidence of this.
Speaker 1: Singer's own legacy contains enough problematic facts without making up lies.
Speaker 1: She was a eugenicist, and she wrote in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: three that birth control does not mean contraception indiscriminately practiced.
Speaker 1: It means the release and cultivation of the better elements
Speaker 1: in our society and the gradual suppression, elimination, and eventual
Speaker 1: extinction of defective stocks, those human weeds who threatened the
Speaker 1: blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization. So she
Speaker 1: did call people human weeds, but she wasn't referring to
Speaker 1: black people. She was referring more to mentally challenged people,
Speaker 1: more to people with like who are prone to diseases.
Speaker 1: And that's bad, Like, that's really bad. But she was
Speaker 1: not like a for exterminating everything but white people. She
Speaker 1: was for exterminating people she considered unhealthy, or at least
Speaker 1: exterminating them from the gene pool, which is again bad.
Speaker 1: But let's be accurate about the kind of bad it is,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, we don't need to make it anymore. Yeah, criminal.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I would say, because it's not
Speaker 1: flower either. It's bad. It's already bad. She didn't want
Speaker 1: to make that humanity better by wiping out black people.
Speaker 1: She wanted to make black people and white people better
Speaker 1: by wiping out folks who had what she considered to
Speaker 1: be like bad qualities through selective breeding. And that's really terrible.
Speaker 1: Also to classify for herself what those bad qualities are
Speaker 1: like Yeah, that is bad, but like it's not the
Speaker 1: kind of bad like again, because they tried a friend
Speaker 1: that Like, no, the progressives always been trying to wipe
Speaker 1: out black people. Like, that's not what she was doing. Um, information,
Speaker 1: she was just a bad person. She was she was
Speaker 1: There's plenty that's bad about her. Yeah, let's be actually
Speaker 1: honest when we condemn someone. She also stated during another speech,
Speaker 1: I believe now immediately there should be national sterilization for
Speaker 1: certain dysgenic types of our population who are being encouraged
Speaker 1: to breed and would die out where the government not
Speaker 1: feeding them. Um, you know that's bad, But again it's
Speaker 1: the kind of like. Part of why they like to
Speaker 1: try to frame her badness as something different is because
Speaker 1: if you're accurate about it, you can find a funk
Speaker 1: load of Republicans who say that the poor should starve, right,
Speaker 1: like the people who can't work on their own in
Speaker 1: find Jordan Peterson talking about like how terrifying it is
Speaker 1: that some people aren't intelligent enough to be in the military,
Speaker 1: and like say, like, because so what do we do
Speaker 1: with those people? Like that's a really like what Margaret
Speaker 1: Sanger was saying back then is still common today. Um,
Speaker 1: people dress it up a little bit more. I mean
Speaker 1: it kind of relates to the COVID things like that's fine,
Speaker 1: they're already they're already problems if they die, so's they're unproductive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're unproductive, they're on the government. Actually, Um, yeah, she
Speaker 1: just she was bad. She just was not the kind
Speaker 1: of bad people liked SUSA like to paint her as.
Speaker 1: And in fact, a lot of progressive black leaders at
Speaker 1: the time liked Margaret Sanger and what she was trying
Speaker 1: to do. Uh. In one nine letter to Dr C. J.
Speaker 1: Gamble of Procter and Gamble fame, she urged him to
Speaker 1: get over his resistance to hiring a full time negro physician,
Speaker 1: as quote, the colored negroes can get closer to their
Speaker 1: own members and more or less lay their cards on
Speaker 1: the table, which means they're ignorant, superstitions and doubt. Um.
Speaker 1: And again she's also she's number one saying that black
Speaker 1: people are ignorant and superstitious, which is bad, but also
Speaker 1: saying that like, no, you get educated black people to
Speaker 1: talk to them about birth control. So again, she's a
Speaker 1: problematic person, but not what do SUSA likes to paint
Speaker 1: her as. She was very paternalistic in her dealings with
Speaker 1: black people. Obviously that is extremely clear for reading anything
Speaker 1: about her um, But her own letters and correspondence don't
Speaker 1: show she wanted to eliminate groups of people, um other
Speaker 1: than like she wanted to eliminate groups of people, I guess,
Speaker 1: but not that the way that is portrayed um. In
Speaker 1: she wrote that quote, the Negro race has reached a
Speaker 1: place in history when every possible effort should be made
Speaker 1: to have every Negro child count as a valuable contribution
Speaker 1: to the future of America. Negro parents, like all parents,
Speaker 1: must create the next generation from strength, not from weakness,
Speaker 1: from health, not from despair. See it's complicated here, especially
Speaker 1: since one of the things historians who are honest will
Speaker 1: point out is that if you're judging people by the
Speaker 1: standards of the time, Margaret Sanger was woke for her
Speaker 1: period of time. Like she she had enlightened views on
Speaker 1: race relations for the time, right, Yeah, and she got
Speaker 1: some kind of equality and understanding that the the way
Speaker 1: to talk to people is not by telling them what
Speaker 1: to do, but to actually include the I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly, to include them and to include their community,
Speaker 1: and to like yeah, again, everything is bad back there.
Speaker 1: It's still bad now. It was even worse than I
Speaker 1: guess in that standard and that time standards, she was
Speaker 1: seen as progressive, that leer as again like the eighties
Speaker 1: when they stopped saying yeah things as well. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: was better on race relations than most white people of
Speaker 1: her social class in that time. Um, because her actual
Speaker 1: thing wasn't race as much as it was eliminating people
Speaker 1: she thought weren't intelligent enough, people who were poor and
Speaker 1: thus unintelligent, Like that was the kind of people that
Speaker 1: Margaret Sanger wanted to wipe out. Um, yeah, he just wanted,
Speaker 1: you know, because to kill all of a certain other groups.
Speaker 1: It's fine, fine, Yeah, it's it's fine. Yeah. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's yeah. I'm gonna quote now from a write up
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Past and Present that kind of
Speaker 1: points out the the actual kind of eugenicist Margaret Singer was.
Speaker 1: She argued that contraception was not merely a personal choice,
Speaker 1: but a public good, indeed a pantasa for social problems
Speaker 1: for the unfit. It was a duty, and Sanger became
Speaker 1: convinced that states had to intervene when necessary to prevent
Speaker 1: their propagation. Her movement would thus court government repression to
Speaker 1: gain visibility and sympathy for the cause of liberating individuals
Speaker 1: from unwanted birth, while striving to win state support for
Speaker 1: top down programs to shape populations. Sanger herself felt that
Speaker 1: she never had a country and instead devoted her life
Speaker 1: to the movement. For her, birth control was a secular
Speaker 1: faith that would advance peace between people's by reducing Malthusian
Speaker 1: pressures and depriving militant nationalists of cannon fodder. So that
Speaker 1: is interesting to me, um, because that's why she's kind
Speaker 1: of the founder of the population control movement. And that's
Speaker 1: where it splits from eugenics, because she's not talking about like,
Speaker 1: I want the white race to succeed. She's talking about,
Speaker 1: I want to engineer humanity, and birth control is the
Speaker 1: way to do that. And I'm you know, she above
Speaker 1: all else frightened of overpopulation, and particularly overpopulation of poor people, Right,
Speaker 1: that's kind of her thing. So yeah, in the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties and forties, obviously, eugenics was still very big. Various
Speaker 1: fascist states adopted hardcore racist eugenicist policies. Hitler's policies were
Speaker 1: based heavily on a different state, and federal policies in
Speaker 1: the United States that had been named it breeding and
Speaker 1: immigration restrictions of certain groups of people. Uh Hitler described
Speaker 1: the invasion of Eastern Europe and its subsequent genocides as
Speaker 1: the planned control of population movements to restore the numbers
Speaker 1: and qualities of the Aryan race. Japan's imperial government, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, set itself to the task of purifying
Speaker 1: what they called the Yamato race. Now, when all of
Speaker 1: the dust had settled from World War Two, the horrors
Speaker 1: of the death camps proved to be the nail in
Speaker 1: the coffin for eugenics as a worldwide movement. Obviously, remnants
Speaker 1: of eugenics policies remain in the US for a frightening
Speaker 1: long time, and one can argue even into today in
Speaker 1: some ways. But no longer was eugenic thinking something you
Speaker 1: could advocate openly without drawing nasty comparisons to Nazis. So
Speaker 1: the Nazis kind of kill eugenics as a respectable movement
Speaker 1: because of you know, the death caffs. Like people see
Speaker 1: where that leads. But population control, like this is part
Speaker 1: of why what's kind of like brilliant about what Sanger
Speaker 1: and other population control advocates do when they split from
Speaker 1: the eugenics movement. Population control only gets more popular after
Speaker 1: World War Two. Margaret Sanger herself even pointed to Nazi
Speaker 1: extermi nation centers as evidence of the quote widespread devaluation
Speaker 1: of human lives that was caused when people didn't have
Speaker 1: birth control. Um like, because basically there were so many
Speaker 1: useless people that it made everyone's life worth lesson that's
Speaker 1: what made these these massacres possible. And instead, if we
Speaker 1: had just sterilized people with quote dysgenic qualities of body
Speaker 1: and mind, these death camps would never have become a thing.
Speaker 1: That's the whole reach. Like that's yeahs like you had
Speaker 1: to play in order to justify why your cause could
Speaker 1: be better than this bad cause. But because it wasn't happening,
Speaker 1: it happened. M Yeah, yeah, it's and it's like that's
Speaker 1: a bad way to explain. It's it's all bad. It's
Speaker 1: very bad. Um. Yeah. So Sanger and her fellow travelers
Speaker 1: believed that intelligence was the most important qualities to select
Speaker 1: forth idiots they felt should be discouraged from breeding. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of problems with this, but the chief
Speaker 1: one is that dumb and poor were synonyms for people
Speaker 1: like Margaret Singer, and they always have been. For the
Speaker 1: population control mo When they talk about wanting to like,
Speaker 1: you know, stop unintelligent people from breeding, they're talking about
Speaker 1: poor people, right. What they really mean is uneducated or
Speaker 1: not educated to my standards. Aldous Huxley cited research that
Speaker 1: suggested an inverse correlation between intelligence and fertility. Basically, Huxley
Speaker 1: was pointing out that like intelligent people have less children
Speaker 1: and he called for a world population policy. And in
Speaker 1: this Huxley was making the same argument that Mike Judge
Speaker 1: did in the movie Idiocracy, which is why I find
Speaker 1: that movie problematic because the whole the fundamental idea like
Speaker 1: idiocracy is everything Margaret Singer was talking about, if we
Speaker 1: let dumb people breed, the world will become stupid, which
Speaker 1: isn't how genetics works. But yeah, it's it's bad. Um,
Speaker 1: it's frustrated to me, Like the degree to which people
Speaker 1: like right now is just like idiocracy, and it's like, no,
Speaker 1: it's not like these people are anyway. Very first, the
Speaker 1: whole concept of who is an idiot who isn't as
Speaker 1: a um problematic in itself. Like, yeah, and it's part
Speaker 1: of you know, honestly, like the fact that there's so
Speaker 1: many folks who were like you know, quote unquote coastal
Speaker 1: elites who like to clare folks in the Deep South
Speaker 1: to be dumb because of like the way they talk
Speaker 1: or the differences in their education is part of what
Speaker 1: like has makes those people easier to recruit by folks
Speaker 1: who are trying to take advantage of them. Um, it's
Speaker 1: very it's all very frustrating. It's it's very frustrating. But
Speaker 1: you know what's not frustrating. This is frustrating. It's not
Speaker 1: time for an ad pivot. I'm just going to keep
Speaker 1: popping about racism. Yeah, sorry in the late night that
Speaker 1: that was a little bit of a fake out there
Speaker 1: and you see that that was good. Okay, what are
Speaker 1: we doing here? You're like, is there a second part
Speaker 1: of the segment that I didn't know? Right back into
Speaker 1: bigot Aldous Huxley. So, in the late nineteen forties and
Speaker 1: early fifties, thinkers like Huxley began to panic over the
Speaker 1: thought of a population explosion, which they considered to be
Speaker 1: an existential threat on the level of a nuclear war
Speaker 1: because the poorest nations on Earth, the global South, had
Speaker 1: the highest populations and most rapid rates of population growth.
Speaker 1: This is where population control advocates focus their efforts. So again,
Speaker 1: we're not racist. We're not trying to call certain races.
Speaker 1: But the poor are having the most babies and we
Speaker 1: want to stop that. And also all of the poor
Speaker 1: live in these specific countries, and they're not white, right right,
Speaker 1: It's not about race. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: Dwight D. Eisenhower called a meeting of his National Security
Speaker 1: Council to discuss foreign aid. He told them they neglected
Speaker 1: what he viewed as the biggest threat to their future,
Speaker 1: even more dire than the Cold War. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from historian Matthew Connolly here, who's quoting someone who
Speaker 1: is in that NSC meeting with Eisenhower. In all our
Speaker 1: discussions of the problem of underdeveloped countries and the kind
Speaker 1: of assistance which we could effectively provide them, we had
Speaker 1: not yet faced up to what was really the most
Speaker 1: serious problem, namely that of exploding population growths. As far
Speaker 1: as he could see, continued the President, the only solution
Speaker 1: to this problem throughout the world was finding an effective
Speaker 1: two cent contraceptive. Eisenhower thought that something drastic had to
Speaker 1: be done to solve this problem, though he certainly did
Speaker 1: not know how to get started on this solution, and
Speaker 1: he furthermore could not himself get it started. So Eisenhower
Speaker 1: did form a Presidential Commission on US fourign aid and
Speaker 1: test them with the goal of finding ways for the
Speaker 1: US to help poorer nations reduced fertility rates. In an
Speaker 1: NSC meeting, he confided to his men that overpopulation was
Speaker 1: quote a constant worry to him and from time to
Speaker 1: time reduced him to despair. So he is the basics
Speaker 1: I've been trying to put him in basis for Thanos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for this character. Okay, yeah, I'm waving get in now.
Speaker 1: I will say though, Eisenhower also doesn't think that the
Speaker 1: president can do anything about this. He thinks that that's
Speaker 1: like not the job of the federal government to provide contraceptives. Um.
Speaker 1: So he thinks it's critical and import but he also
Speaker 1: thinks that like, I can't do this or have the
Speaker 1: government do this because that would be wrong, which I
Speaker 1: don't know, it seems weird to me. Um. Yeah. Around
Speaker 1: the same time, population control advocates had started pushing the
Speaker 1: u in, which was new at the time, and US
Speaker 1: government to distribute contraceptives in poor countries as a way
Speaker 1: to curb birthrates, but Ike refused to consider this, stating
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine anything more emphatically a subject that is
Speaker 1: not a proper political or government activity or function or responsibility.
Speaker 1: Once he left office, Eisenhower became the honorary co chair
Speaker 1: of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, right alongside Harry Truman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I meant she didn't know that Harry Truman and Eisenhower
Speaker 1: were like chairman of the Plan Parnet. I'm having so
Speaker 1: many questions right now, like that Republicans used to be
Speaker 1: very different. I mean again, we talked about this in
Speaker 1: episode we just recorded. But like Barry Goldwater, who was
Speaker 1: like seen as the first Trump like was a pro
Speaker 1: abortion access advocate at the end of his life. So
Speaker 1: Republicans have really gone off the deep ense recently. But
Speaker 1: it is worth pointing out how recent they're like antipathy
Speaker 1: to birth control and stuff is right, I mean, to
Speaker 1: be fair, the difference today seems to be that they're
Speaker 1: more worried about, you know, people being born as to
Speaker 1: whether or not they die later, They're okay, they're dying later.
Speaker 1: Part now they have always been because Dwight Eisenhower was
Speaker 1: a big murdering people advocate. Yeah, I mean, and in
Speaker 1: fairness to most of the people he murdered were Nazis,
Speaker 1: so like you got to give him some credit, but
Speaker 1: he killed a lot of people who weren't Nazis. We
Speaker 1: can talk about the Congo and ship. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that was under him, And like, you know Korea,
Speaker 1: well that was Truman, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of the Cold Wars started. Yeah, I mean Eisenhower's
Speaker 1: complex Korean was under Truman. Um. Yeah, Eisenhower was complicated
Speaker 1: because he is one of the only presidents, maybe the
Speaker 1: only whoever like directly did ounce the military industrial complex,
Speaker 1: and he did it right when it was like starting off.
Speaker 1: He was like, this is happening, and it's bad and
Speaker 1: it's going to destroy our entire country if we let it.
Speaker 1: But also he's who it got started under Um and
Speaker 1: he let it happen and then kind of on his way,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, by the way, I left you
Speaker 1: all with a big old problem. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: complicated figure Eisenhower still is one of the best presidents
Speaker 1: we ever had. But all of our presidents are criminals,
Speaker 1: so you know, yeah, quotation marks around best. So um yeah.
Speaker 1: Once he left office, Ike winds up as the honorary
Speaker 1: co chair of Planned Parenthood, and in this position he
Speaker 1: turned his focus to lambasting welfare programs, including federally funded
Speaker 1: birth control, which it just started to be a thing.
Speaker 1: His issue was that the United States was spending money
Speaker 1: with one hand to slow up population growth among responsible families,
Speaker 1: and with the other providing financial incentives for increasing production
Speaker 1: by the ignorant, feeble minded or lazy. Oh now that's fun,
Speaker 1: not racial talk at all. No, No, what's fun about
Speaker 1: that is like, obviously White was not a Nazi because
Speaker 1: he helped the story of the Nazis, but also feeble
Speaker 1: minded is almost directly the translation of one of the
Speaker 1: terms that the Germans used to justify the eugenics programs
Speaker 1: that turned into the Holocaust, right, you know, uh, useless
Speaker 1: eaters was a less polite term the Germans had for Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was so the Holocaust started not with the extermination
Speaker 1: of the Jews or of other races, but with the
Speaker 1: extermination of Again, what we're called useless eaters. And this
Speaker 1: a lot has its roots a lot in so like
Speaker 1: a million Germans start to death during World War One
Speaker 1: because the British blockade them in Germany cannot feed itself um,
Speaker 1: which is like one of the things that it's why
Speaker 1: Hitler invaded Eastern Europe, why he wanted to get Ukraine
Speaker 1: in particular, UM. And so one of the things Hitler
Speaker 1: wanted to do when the Nazi thinkers wanted to do,
Speaker 1: was get rid of all these quote unquote useless eaters
Speaker 1: because they were afraid that when Germany was blockaded again
Speaker 1: in the inevitable next war, these people would use up
Speaker 1: like precious food stores that working people could be And
Speaker 1: so the Holocaust star did with the gassing of um
Speaker 1: physically handicapped people who were seen as again useless eaters.
Speaker 1: Like that's where it got started. Before they gass people
Speaker 1: at a racial level, they were gassing the disabled. So wow,
Speaker 1: cool stuff. And again Eisenhower's rhetoric directly mirrors what the
Speaker 1: Nazis were saying in the early period of their time
Speaker 1: and power, which is cool, very cool and good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a delight is a delight, you know what doesn't advocate
Speaker 1: for the extermination of large segments of the population. Uh,
Speaker 1: perhaps the products and services that sponsor this very podcast.
Speaker 1: That's true. They do not, they absolutely don't. Every time
Speaker 1: we get a new sponsor, we send them an email
Speaker 1: that says genocide with a question mark, and they always
Speaker 1: respond to no, and then we're good to go. I
Speaker 1: felt like, it's like, shrug no, no, we only accept
Speaker 1: a hard no. We are that's one of our lines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, that's that's why we are not sponsored by
Speaker 1: Procter and Gamble, because they gave us the shrug emoji
Speaker 1: and we were like, that's not enough, that's not enough.
Speaker 1: I G. Farben had the same response, which you know,
Speaker 1: shocking from the makers of zion B. Anyway, here's the ads.
Speaker 1: Oh we're back. So Dwight D. Eisenhower Again, it was
Speaker 1: not a Nazi, but his rhetoric echoed Nazi rhetoric, which
Speaker 1: is a recurring problem for what we call population control
Speaker 1: advocates like Raven Holt, the guy who just say, just
Speaker 1: because you're not a Nazi doesn't mean you're not a racist, asshole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Nazis were mostly the Nazis were mostly destroyed by
Speaker 1: other racists, just less racists. Yeah, it was a bunch
Speaker 1: of the men who landed at Normandy were like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't like the Jews either, but what you're doing
Speaker 1: isn't okay like that, Like, let's let's be honest about it, right,
Speaker 1: Really you read some of the ship George Patton wrote
Speaker 1: about Jewish people while he was beating the Nazis, and
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, he was pretty fucking racist. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah, Matthew. Anyway, the point I'm getting to
Speaker 1: here is that population control advocates, while not Nazis, often
Speaker 1: said ship that sounded like Nazi rhetoric. Matthew Connelly, great historian, writes, quote,
Speaker 1: all population control movements tended to diagnose social and political
Speaker 1: problems as pathologies with a biological basis. All shared the
Speaker 1: idea that society should reproduce themselves by design, even if
Speaker 1: that meant controlling how people disposed of their own bodies.
Speaker 1: And all looked at human beings not as individuals, but
Speaker 1: as populations which could be shaped through a combined force
Speaker 1: of politics and science. Not great thing to look at
Speaker 1: human beings as yeah, we're all these things just coming
Speaker 1: into a combination of pretty much people are not people
Speaker 1: humanity does not exist, and people are just people aren't
Speaker 1: people except for me and the people that I and
Speaker 1: sixty years ago the people like me were white. But
Speaker 1: now people who aren't white can be people like me
Speaker 1: as long as they're the kind of smart that I
Speaker 1: recognize as smart. And also they can acknowledge and all
Speaker 1: acknowledged that I am the supreme superior form of that
Speaker 1: human being. If you can acknowledge that, then yes, then
Speaker 1: we can all be white together. Perfect been waiting for
Speaker 1: someone to tell me that. Oh my god. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, population control advocates began to lobby the
Speaker 1: World Bank of the US Agency for International Development us AID,
Speaker 1: asking them for birth control programs in the global South.
Speaker 1: They held out against this at first, largely out of
Speaker 1: fear of the political consequences, mainly because they were scared
Speaker 1: they would anger the Catholic Church, which was then is
Speaker 1: now very against contraception. UM. Now this started a change
Speaker 1: under LBJ, who complained that he was quote not going
Speaker 1: to piss away foreign aid in nations where they refus
Speaker 1: used to deal with their own population problems. One of
Speaker 1: the nice things about l b J is he never
Speaker 1: really pulled us punches. I was gonna say, that's fairly direct. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: all right now, near the end of the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: U s A, which made up more than half of
Speaker 1: all foreign aid from the United States, began providing large
Speaker 1: scale assistance for birth control around the world in Bolivia, Bangladesh,
Speaker 1: South Korea, Pakistan, Thailand, and Tunisia. More than two thirds
Speaker 1: of national family planning budget came from foreign aid, maybe
Speaker 1: mainly U s A. And again at this point, because
Speaker 1: you know, South Korea is today one of the wealthier
Speaker 1: nations on the planet. At this point, it's a war
Speaker 1: racked country that's like barely getting out of a devastating
Speaker 1: conflict like they are. It is considered, in the words
Speaker 1: of the white popol time, third world at that point
Speaker 1: in time, um, which is why it's it's getting aid
Speaker 1: in that way. In nineteen sixty five, Reimert Ravenholt took
Speaker 1: over us AIDS Office of Population. Under his auspices, it
Speaker 1: would grow from basically nothing to a multibillion dollar international
Speaker 1: crusade against overpopulation. Raven Holt was a true believer as
Speaker 1: well as profoundly charming and well connected. Thanks to thanks
Speaker 1: to this, his office had no oversight whatsoever. He could
Speaker 1: spend the money allotted to him by Congress. However he
Speaker 1: saw fit. Yeah, that's not a recipe for disaster at all. No,
Speaker 1: it's gonna go great. It's gonna be a good story
Speaker 1: for Matthew Connelly quote. His preferred strategy was national inundation,
Speaker 1: based on the idea that making contraceptives freely available, ideally
Speaker 1: at the very doorstep of consumers, could increase usage. Massive
Speaker 1: purchasing contracts of as many as a hundred million monthly
Speaker 1: pill cycles also ensured that pharmaceutical companies would join in
Speaker 1: defending his growing budget and encourage corporate support for his organization.
Speaker 1: When some of these US back contraceptives were siphoned off
Speaker 1: and resold, raven Holt was unconcerned. This black market constituted
Speaker 1: a free distribution network. He also used NGOs to provide
Speaker 1: training and sterilization and distribute low cost abortion kits even
Speaker 1: where abortion was illegal. Raven holt strategy, according to a
Speaker 1: Population Council officer, was to make abortion so easy to
Speaker 1: perform and so widely used that it would be meaningless.
Speaker 1: When raven holt superiors tried to remove him, they found
Speaker 1: it was all but impossible his supporters were too numerous.
Speaker 1: M hm sucks. M hmm. So he said easy accessible,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily safe. Would that be exactly? So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of what he's doing that's mine obviously, Like
Speaker 1: I think everyone should have access to safe and cheap
Speaker 1: contraception everywhere in the world. Safe is key and one
Speaker 1: of the things that raven Holt is able to do
Speaker 1: in order to get as much Because for raven Holt,
Speaker 1: it's safe is not as important as numerous. What he
Speaker 1: wants is to stop as many babies being born as possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining he's just sending out packages of hangars.
Speaker 1: Yeah he would, Yeah, he would have if he if
Speaker 1: he thought that that would have done it. But like
Speaker 1: he would have preferred something that's easier to get people
Speaker 1: on but may have some of the same consequences as
Speaker 1: using a hangar um because people are going to use
Speaker 1: the hangar, but people might take a pill that has
Speaker 1: also a horrible effect of it. Because again, so yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to that. This all brings us back
Speaker 1: around to the Dalkon Shield because Reynard Ravenholt, ray to
Speaker 1: his buddies, was the man who approved H Robbins that
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company's request for the U. S Government to buy
Speaker 1: up all of the unsold millions of Dalkon shields and
Speaker 1: sell them in bulk to the global South. Now, I
Speaker 1: want you to remember, to save money. Robbins was selling
Speaker 1: these shields in massive bulk packages of a thousand each,
Speaker 1: and they were unsterilized, sterilized. My favorite part of the
Speaker 1: whole thing is, yeah, just basically, yeah, this was very uncommon.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, crap. And the wire hangar isn't an
Speaker 1: or isn't a bacterious super highway, so that's good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So obviously selling unsterilized i U d s was very odd.
Speaker 1: I U d s were always sold sterile in the
Speaker 1: United States. U s A demanded an explanation as to
Speaker 1: why Robbins was shipping them unsterilized, and an employee for
Speaker 1: AH Robbins wrote back that the shields were being sold
Speaker 1: that way for the purpose of reducing price and thereby
Speaker 1: attaining wider use uh and is intended for restricted sale
Speaker 1: to family planning support organizations who will limit their distribution
Speaker 1: to those countries commonly referred to as less developed. So USA,
Speaker 1: it was like it worries us that these are unsterilized.
Speaker 1: H Robins says, don't worry. That makes them cheaper and
Speaker 1: we're only selling them to poor people. And the response, Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: thanks man. Yeah, that's exactly what they said. Yeah, because again, right,
Speaker 1: Raven Holts all about national inundation. He just wants as
Speaker 1: much contraception out there as possible and like consequences be damned.
Speaker 1: So he's fine with this. He's a good guy. Three five,
Speaker 1: that's fine. I think it's rid of someone I don't
Speaker 1: think is smart because they don't read the same books
Speaker 1: that I read. Then it's all good, great ship right here.
Speaker 1: So Robbins explained that medical practitioners in those countries were
Speaker 1: expected to sterilize shields by soaking them and disinfectant. Now,
Speaker 1: this was again very uncommon. Normally, you just get them
Speaker 1: sterilized and you wear sterile gloves and you insert them.
Speaker 1: Having people sterilize them introduces a potential for someone to
Speaker 1: funk up and not sterilize them properly, which is why
Speaker 1: it's not the way you do something like an I U. D.
Speaker 1: In a contemporary write up of this, Mother Jones noted
Speaker 1: quote in the United States, according to private gynecologists we interviewed.
Speaker 1: The insertion of an I U D that had merely
Speaker 1: been soaked into disinfectant before use would possibly be grounds
Speaker 1: for a malpractice suit. Robbins insists that the sterilization procedure
Speaker 1: it recommended was effective, but it is highly likely that
Speaker 1: few people ever read the instructions. The company attached only
Speaker 1: one set of instructions for each pack of a thousand shields,
Speaker 1: and those were printed, and only three languages English, French,
Speaker 1: and Spanish. Although the devices were destined for forty two
Speaker 1: countries from Ethiopia to Malaysia, we're still only ten inserts
Speaker 1: were provided per hundred shields, adding a measurably to the
Speaker 1: problem of infection. Oh well, so, in my mind it
Speaker 1: really was like an Ikea level of instructions to it,
Speaker 1: where you get brief stick figures and they're like, good luck.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll give you. I'll give a keya credit.
Speaker 1: They generally, wherever they sell i Kea products, print them
Speaker 1: in the language most common in that country. I'm sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like the foreign language to me, trying to
Speaker 1: put mostly nonsense, but also very few people put Ikea
Speaker 1: in Ikea furniture inside their bodies. I mean, I feel
Speaker 1: like that could be an Ikea furniture like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least just say yeah, there'd be a bunch of
Speaker 1: extra eyes and d's and g s to the name.
Speaker 1: But yeah. So H. Robbins also assured USA that actual
Speaker 1: medical professionals weren't needed to insert the dalkon s field
Speaker 1: into patients. A lot of these devices were headed to
Speaker 1: rural family planning clinics, and the drug company insisted that
Speaker 1: staff without medical degrees were more than capable of handling
Speaker 1: the job. USA pushed back in this case, too, noting
Speaker 1: that in the United States, there's been numerous reports of
Speaker 1: adverse reactions from patients who had taken that who had
Speaker 1: had the dalt Un shield inserted by doctors who weren't gynecologists.
Speaker 1: If m d s had trouble following the instructions, surely
Speaker 1: random aid workers who weren't even doctors in like the
Speaker 1: Ethiopian countryside world also make mistakes. So H. Robbins did
Speaker 1: with pharmaceutical giants do best. They commissioned a study that
Speaker 1: would show exactly what they needed it to show a
Speaker 1: study or did they just lie they paid for a
Speaker 1: study that showed what they needed. Yeah, and the study
Speaker 1: they paid for showed that paramedics could learn to reliably
Speaker 1: insert the dalkon shield in a half hour. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: of course they said they could just insert it, or
Speaker 1: that they could do it correctly and safely learned they
Speaker 1: could correctly learn how to do it safely in a
Speaker 1: half hour, paramedics. Number one, they paid for this study.
Speaker 1: Number two. Most of these aid workers, and again fucking
Speaker 1: rural like Ethiopia, are like like aid workers, Like a
Speaker 1: lot of them aren't paramedics or any other kind of
Speaker 1: medical professional, but some of them are still putting these
Speaker 1: things in people as what we would like to talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that the white girl from America who
Speaker 1: claimed to be a nurse who killed millions, like many orphans, yea,
Speaker 1: many orphans. Yeah, but that just happened recently. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that didn't happen back then. No, no, no, well actually yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean different things happened back then. It was usually
Speaker 1: more of a government thing. I don't know that it
Speaker 1: was anyway, we'll get it. I'm just thinking, like, in general,
Speaker 1: if you want white people to try to send help,
Speaker 1: this was one of those send help moments. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: a ton of babies get killed by this. It's it's
Speaker 1: fucking god, I get left with that hurts, keep going yeah,
Speaker 1: well you know, um so yeah, h Robbins like pays
Speaker 1: for this study and are like, see, you can teach
Speaker 1: people to do it in a half hour. We're not
Speaker 1: actually going to teach the people we sell these two
Speaker 1: to do it. We're just going to give them instructions
Speaker 1: they probably can't read. But potentially, if they were paramedics
Speaker 1: and had a proper instructions, they could learn how to
Speaker 1: do it. And that's enough for USA to give it
Speaker 1: and be like hell, yeah, cool, yeah, here's millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: So Ray Ravenholt gave the Dalkon shield his rubber stamp,
Speaker 1: and suddenly hundreds of thousands of Dalkon shields, all paid
Speaker 1: for by the U. S. Treasury, were out on their
Speaker 1: way to forty two different nations. This happened at the
Speaker 1: same time that a planned parenthood study revealed pregnancy rates
Speaker 1: in excess of six percent from Dalkon shield insertion in
Speaker 1: places like Costa Rica and Yugoslavia, in nearly fifteen percent
Speaker 1: in one Latin American country. So because they're not being
Speaker 1: put in right so again, sometimes the amount of unintended
Speaker 1: pregnancies with dalkon shields in some places like fift because
Speaker 1: the people putting them in don't know how to do it.
Speaker 1: And you have to remember that we're not just talking
Speaker 1: about unintended pregnancies here. Remember the dalkon shield is a
Speaker 1: bacterial super highway in the best of conditions, and that's
Speaker 1: in when it's sterile, right, Yeah. And patients in these
Speaker 1: poorer nations who were receiving unsterile shields and having them
Speaker 1: inserted with unsterile applicators suffered from infections, miscarriages, and death
Speaker 1: at vastly higher rates than what was seen in the
Speaker 1: United States. We do not know and will never know
Speaker 1: the full toll from this because nobody bothered to take
Speaker 1: any sort of notes on it, like nobody gave a
Speaker 1: ship about how many people actually got hurt by this
Speaker 1: thing in these countries. We do, however, have some specific
Speaker 1: stories of individual victims to highlight the horror. For Mother
Speaker 1: Jones quote, when Maria Aguirez woke up on the morning
Speaker 1: of June ninety seven, she was at first two drenched
Speaker 1: with sweat to feel the blood. They had warned her
Speaker 1: at the clinic that there might be some bleeding, but
Speaker 1: this was more than a period. Her skirt, the worn sheet,
Speaker 1: the matt were soaked through more than her. After her
Speaker 1: oldest daughter's birth, when the midwife had at one point
Speaker 1: simply prayed dimly, Maria must have realized that the baby
Speaker 1: was already awakened fussing. He was still fussing an hour
Speaker 1: later when Maria's sister, someone by the older children, came
Speaker 1: running in. Maria was no longer sweating because she died
Speaker 1: as a result of, in fact, an infection that her
Speaker 1: Dalkon shield gave her. Yeah, and I'm wondering if, like
Speaker 1: some of these numbers that they say, it's effectives because
Speaker 1: they died, Yeah, they were pregnant. That works for Ray Ravenholtz. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he stops the pregnantcy. That's all that matters to Ray.
Speaker 1: Population control advocates like Ray Ravenholt had been willing to
Speaker 1: look the other way at unsterile medical devices implanted by
Speaker 1: qualified people. They were not particularly concerned by victims like
Speaker 1: Maria Aguires as events by the fact that neither us
Speaker 1: AID or any other international organization even tried to track
Speaker 1: down all the fatalities and injuries caused by the overseas
Speaker 1: importation of the Dalkon shield. The only thing that actually
Speaker 1: disturbed them was the evidence that the shield was ineffective
Speaker 1: as a birth control method, because it was okay to
Speaker 1: endanger the lives of poor children, but it was not
Speaker 1: okay to risk them having more kids. We can't have
Speaker 1: more kids. You didn't do what we wanted. Damn. Now again,
Speaker 1: we don't have any sort of authoritative numbers on the
Speaker 1: number of deaths and injuries as a result of the
Speaker 1: millions of Dalkon shields imported to the global South. Author
Speaker 1: Morton Mints estimates that quote shield related p I D
Speaker 1: pelvic inflammatory infection killed hundreds, possibly thousands of women outside
Speaker 1: the United States. If the shield were in a third
Speaker 1: world country where there are no doctors, no antibiotics, becomes infected,
Speaker 1: she's going to die. And again, this is the seventies.
Speaker 1: Antibiotics are not as common as they are now, especially
Speaker 1: in places like Ethiopia. You know, still under Raven Holtz guidance.
Speaker 1: The name of the game for us AID was national
Speaker 1: inundation and I U D s That worked eight to
Speaker 1: nine percent of the time. We're better than bringing more
Speaker 1: poor people into the world. As lawsuits against Age Robin
Speaker 1: spun up in the United States, the company sent one
Speaker 1: of their employees on a tour of Asia to sell
Speaker 1: more shields. In every place he stopped, the employee would
Speaker 1: be met by the local USA population officer, who would
Speaker 1: assemble a group of local physicians for the Robin's employee
Speaker 1: to lecture and sell to. When Robbins was finally forced
Speaker 1: to discontinue the product in nineteen seventy four, US aid
Speaker 1: was left, in the words of a Mother Jones reporter,
Speaker 1: holding the bag, or rather the bulk pack, they had
Speaker 1: no choice but to issue an international recall. We don't
Speaker 1: know how many women and isolated mountain villages across India
Speaker 1: and Guatemala and wherever else actually learned that the thing
Speaker 1: in their uterus had been recalled for being dangerously unsafe,
Speaker 1: because again, no one at Age Robbin's for U s
Speaker 1: A cared to find out. It just was not important
Speaker 1: to them. The lack of communication, Yeah, already, and then
Speaker 1: that's how they did the recall. So I can't did
Speaker 1: we talk about whether or not the lifespan how long
Speaker 1: that's supposed a shield is supposed to last five years?
Speaker 1: Which means yeah. And and removal again, because it's spiked
Speaker 1: removal as a nightmare for people to actual surgical procedure.
Speaker 1: I'm saying yeah, and people die from that as well.
Speaker 1: And again the number but probably thousands, probably a death
Speaker 1: toll of thousands worldwide. The Dalkon Shield was a major
Speaker 1: national story in the US, where it killed maybe a
Speaker 1: couple of dozen people, but it's spread overseas, funded by
Speaker 1: US tax dollars, was not well known. Mother Jones is
Speaker 1: the only outlet I have found who actually covered that
Speaker 1: part of the story during that time in any kind
Speaker 1: of detail, and they deserve a lot of credit for that.
Speaker 1: It is an excellent article. A nineteen eight five article
Speaker 1: I found in the Washington Post, for example, didn't even
Speaker 1: mention that the Dalkon Shield had been sold overseas. Mother Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: why why would you care? Therefore? Come? Yeah, they're poor,
Speaker 1: they're poor in they're not Ethiopia. Yeah. Mother Jones actually
Speaker 1: interviewed Ray Ravenholt in nineteen seventy nine to ask why
Speaker 1: he had given the seal of American goodwill to this
Speaker 1: whole bloody endeavor, and the picture they paint of him
Speaker 1: is bizarre and not very positive. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: read the description that journalist wrote about meeting ray oh
Speaker 1: No in person. He is a tall, affable Midwesterner with
Speaker 1: an engaging smile and a marked inability to sit still
Speaker 1: once he warms up to the subject at hand. No,
Speaker 1: sooner had we gotten through the introductions than he bounded
Speaker 1: off to one corner of his spacious office and returned
Speaker 1: with his latest contraceptive enthusiasm, a plastic guns style laparoscopic
Speaker 1: device which, when aimed through the vagina, shoots little plastic
Speaker 1: bands around the fallopian tubes, resulting in permanent sterilization. He
Speaker 1: demonstrated by placing one foot up on his chair and
Speaker 1: shooting the bands at his shoelace, only after he completed
Speaker 1: the simulated sterilization of his left foot, where we able
Speaker 1: to bring the subject round to the Talcott shield. So
Speaker 1: he had this in his office as like a toy.
Speaker 1: Just keeps us little like fucking gun thing for wrapping
Speaker 1: up collopian tubes sheets it at his foot to impressive
Speaker 1: journalist for real, he's got to be a serial killer.
Speaker 1: He's a ten bundy. There's no way we didn't use
Speaker 1: this on a woman like hey, hey, I got something
Speaker 1: for you. Yeah, tie your hands behind your back. Let
Speaker 1: me show you. So you're gonna love this. What's the
Speaker 1: fucking Ray raven Holt? Uh so uh? Mother Jones continues,
Speaker 1: and this is Ray raven Holt speaking, and they're quoting him. Robbins.
Speaker 1: The company didn't know there was any problem with it
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two, he insisted, which is not true.
Speaker 1: When we countered that Ah Robbins had been deluged with
Speaker 1: reports of adverse reactions by that time, raven Holt smiled
Speaker 1: patiently and explained, you don't really know anything until you
Speaker 1: have a very very large number of people who have
Speaker 1: used it. You might have one kind of impression from
Speaker 1: ten thousand people, another from a hundred thousand. You might
Speaker 1: need a million ten million before you really know. So
Speaker 1: it's not tell everybody's dead. Then you actually you have
Speaker 1: to have a dent rating of because you've got wrong.
Speaker 1: If you've given it to ten thousand women and two
Speaker 1: thousand of them have horrible, horrible, life altering reactions to it,
Speaker 1: you gotta give it to another ten million before you
Speaker 1: can really tell if it's dangerous. I mean again, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like what we're going through with a pandemic.
Speaker 1: Yeah that bad. Come on, yeah, come in, Yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 1: It's only people. That's not a big deal. When pressed,
Speaker 1: Ravenholt did eventually agree that us AID had heard some
Speaker 1: of the tens of thousands of stories of septic pregnancies, infections,
Speaker 1: and miscarriages that had flooded the US media by nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, but he pivoted immediately from that to leaning
Speaker 1: forward with enthusiasm to tell the Mother Jones reporter his
Speaker 1: own pet theory about i U D induced pelvic infections.
Speaker 1: This is ray women who frequently change sexual partners have
Speaker 1: these intercurrent, low grade infections. The i U D can't
Speaker 1: cause an infection. The body tolerates anything at sterile. Wait,
Speaker 1: isn't that the same kind of argument about the rape?
Speaker 1: You know your body rejects, Oh my god, what is happening? Well,
Speaker 1: because he knows the Dalkon shields are being sent unsterilized
Speaker 1: and that obviously not everybody is going to properly sterilize them. Um,
Speaker 1: and also because the data existed at this point, he
Speaker 1: knows that the Dalkon shield is a magnet for infections
Speaker 1: by design. It's awesome stuff, and when Mother Jones This
Speaker 1: is my favorite part, when Mother Jones pointed out to
Speaker 1: him that the infections uh that he was blaming on
Speaker 1: promiscuity might be caused by the non sterile devices being
Speaker 1: exported by us AID. Raven Holt defended his agency shipping
Speaker 1: out unsterile Dalcon shields by pointing out that all the
Speaker 1: other i U d s they shipped out to poor
Speaker 1: people were supplied unsterile too. Oh great, that's awesome, good job, bro.
Speaker 1: Uh okay, I love the again, the gymnastics that someone
Speaker 1: has to go through and be like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, this is cool. And let me tell you
Speaker 1: it's fine. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. It's because
Speaker 1: we're always this year responsible, right, And you know before
Speaker 1: gotten many people called us out. No one really really
Speaker 1: talked about like here, why are they talking about it?
Speaker 1: Why are we talking about it? Yeah? Was the problem?
Speaker 1: Let me show you my little toy. Yeah, let me
Speaker 1: show you my you want you wanted to sterilize my
Speaker 1: foot again one more time? You know who won't sterilize
Speaker 1: your foot? Samantha? Oh god, products and services that support
Speaker 1: this podcast. Okay, um, this has gone. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know what I am anymore. Ah, we are back and
Speaker 1: just having a good old time. I'm crossing my legs
Speaker 1: and explictly so as sleazy as the justifications Ray raven
Speaker 1: Holt gave to Mother Jones were he had to issue them.
Speaker 1: By nineteen seventy nine, Dalkon shields were still in use
Speaker 1: around the world, and they were in the bodies of
Speaker 1: more than four hundred and forty thousand people. Five years
Speaker 1: after age Robins suspended sales of the device, medical practitioners
Speaker 1: in Pakistan, India, and South Africa were still inserting Dalkon
Speaker 1: shields into new patients. It's pretty good stuff, Mother Jones
Speaker 1: wrote at the time in nineteen seventy nine. It is
Speaker 1: impossible to know how frequently this is still taking place,
Speaker 1: but our own sources have told us of at least
Speaker 1: two cases. In Nairobi, Kenya. On the wall of the
Speaker 1: Family Planning Association clinic, there is a poster advertising the
Speaker 1: Dalkon shield. In early May nineteen seventy nine, a young
Speaker 1: woman patient at this clinic was offered, among other birth
Speaker 1: control options, at Dalkon shield. In Ottawa, Canada, Pierre Blaize,
Speaker 1: senior consultant to the Bureau of Medical Devices told us
Speaker 1: the shield was being inserted as late as nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: two years after he had been withdrawn to the US market. Finally, Yep, yep, yep. Finally,
Speaker 1: neither a I D nor even the FDA would have
Speaker 1: any way of stopping H. Robbins from privately dumping its
Speaker 1: own unsold stock of dalco on shields if the company
Speaker 1: was of a mind to do so, and it was.
Speaker 1: In a recent interview, Robin's attorney, Franklin Tatum, admitted to
Speaker 1: us that his client was still selling the devices through
Speaker 1: the first quarter of nineteen seventy five, even as they
Speaker 1: were being recalled through a I D and allegedly destroyed.
Speaker 1: So he was personally he was still doing it even
Speaker 1: though the company was still selling it, even after they
Speaker 1: like they were not only selling it through a I D.
Speaker 1: They were selling it directly to other poorer nations while
Speaker 1: they were fighting court cases in the US and pulling
Speaker 1: it off of that market. And um, of course nothing
Speaker 1: really happened to him. No, why wouldn't. I mean, the
Speaker 1: company got destroyed, But the people responsible to THESEUS are
Speaker 1: millionaires and their kids are still millionaires and probably funding
Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro were someone today, um it self great self,
Speaker 1: very good, um just cool shit. So Ray Ravenholt had
Speaker 1: the power and influence to put a stop to most,
Speaker 1: if not all, of this, but he chose not to,
Speaker 1: And the question why is easy to answer. Ray was
Speaker 1: a pretty open dude. In nineteen seventy seven, Ravenhold give
Speaker 1: an interview to the St. Louis Post Dispatch where he
Speaker 1: insisted that population explosions, unless stopped, would lead to revolutions.
Speaker 1: Population control, Ray explained, was necessary in order to maintain
Speaker 1: the normal operation of US commercial interests around the world.
Speaker 1: Without our trying to help these countries with their economic
Speaker 1: and social development, the world would rebel against the strong
Speaker 1: US commercial presence. The self interest thing is the compelling
Speaker 1: element self interest. That's really fascinating, honest. I mean, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: ridiculously honest. Um, I just love that it all results
Speaker 1: in women dying, and we gotta golve the women they're
Speaker 1: giving they're they're making babies well, and specifically, what he's
Speaker 1: saying here is we have to sterilize large chunks of
Speaker 1: the developing world as they call it, the Third World,
Speaker 1: the Global South. We have to sterilize these poor people
Speaker 1: because otherwise they're going to destroy capitalism like they are going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the world will rebel against us commercial presence if we
Speaker 1: don't reduce their populations. They're gonna realize that we're sucking
Speaker 1: the yah. Yeah, that we are really screwing them over.
Speaker 1: So this is the best way to kill them, kill
Speaker 1: them all. Yeah. Again, the bad guys generally capitalism in
Speaker 1: the end. So most population control advocates supported a variety
Speaker 1: of methods to achieve their raims. Economic development, healthcare, expanded
Speaker 1: women's rights. All of these can reduce family size. Ray
Speaker 1: Ravenholt preferred instead to focus on contraceptives, and only contraceptives.
Speaker 1: Before the Dalkon Shield rose to popularity, he'd done this
Speaker 1: by trying to flood the global South with hormonal birth
Speaker 1: control pills. These were sold over the counter in places
Speaker 1: like Bangladesh, with no doctor consultation required and precious little
Speaker 1: information about what the health consequences might be. In Bangladesh,
Speaker 1: this caused what one reporter called a biological disaster. Quote,
Speaker 1: the average Bangladeshi woman weighs ninety two pounds and suffers
Speaker 1: from chronic malnutrition. Even in a hundred and already five
Speaker 1: pound American woman, The pill is known to deplete the
Speaker 1: body's supply of vitamins A, basics D, and folic acid,
Speaker 1: hence the special vitamins sold in the US as supplements
Speaker 1: to the pill. Furthermore, no less than nine of the
Speaker 1: Bangladeshi women who accepted the pill were breastfeeding. According to
Speaker 1: a study by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, babies nursed
Speaker 1: by pill users grew at an average rate that was
Speaker 1: only two thirds of that of babies nursed by non
Speaker 1: pill users. Ending world hunger is the most common rationalization
Speaker 1: for the top down approach to population control, but in Bangladesh,
Speaker 1: A I D was creating its own kind of chemically
Speaker 1: induced famine. Motherfucker Jesus Christ, it's pretty bad kidding me.
Speaker 1: So a big part of what's happening here is that
Speaker 1: these birth control pills that USA had been handing out
Speaker 1: in Bangladesh had been judged safe for American women, and
Speaker 1: American women have were much better fed, had much better nutrition,
Speaker 1: did not have the same kind of vitamin deficiencies that
Speaker 1: Bangladeshi women did. They were larger like, so obviously the
Speaker 1: same pill that works on them is going to be
Speaker 1: toxic to people who are smaller and who have Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's horrible. Essentially, they had to have supplements
Speaker 1: like that because, of course all that mattered was that
Speaker 1: they weren't having as many babies. That doesn't however, maybe death, sure,
Speaker 1: let's do this whatever. Yeah, And obviously, data in the
Speaker 1: US at this time already showed that high estrogen pills
Speaker 1: had more health consequences than low estrogen pills. Um and
Speaker 1: so in the US, birth control pills had switched over
Speaker 1: to low estrogen birth control pills, but that meant there
Speaker 1: were still millions of high estrogen birth control pills that
Speaker 1: like nobody in the U s would buy. So obviously
Speaker 1: Ray Ravenho bought them all and shipped them off to
Speaker 1: poor people. Of course, we're gonna go. We're gon hand
Speaker 1: about somewhere. We gotta make fun money somehow. We can't
Speaker 1: waste this. Come on, come on. Yeah. And one of
Speaker 1: the most breathtakingly unethical moments in the history of birth control,
Speaker 1: marketers for us AID even found a way to turn
Speaker 1: one of the common consequences of high estrogen pills, which
Speaker 1: was painfully swollen breasts, into a positive. They started promoting
Speaker 1: the pills in rural Bangladesh with the tagline it makes
Speaker 1: your breasts more beautiful. It is good for you, including
Speaker 1: the tailors who have to make bigger brasiers. You want
Speaker 1: big boobies, try those, baby, I got you. Your boobs
Speaker 1: are gonna be amazing. You know when you're laying down
Speaker 1: and people come to see you dead, don't be legit.
Speaker 1: J christ Uh. Now, we focused rightfully on age Robbins
Speaker 1: in the horrifying Dalcan Shield, but the terrible reality of
Speaker 1: Western doctors forcing unsafe i u D s on impoverished
Speaker 1: women actually goes back even further than that. In the
Speaker 1: early nineteen sixties, western population control programs in rural India
Speaker 1: and Pakistan started using experimental spiral and ring shaped i
Speaker 1: u d s. These specific i u d s had
Speaker 1: been widely discredited by doctors at the time as causing
Speaker 1: extremely high rates of infection, pain, and bleeding. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote now from the website Climate and Capitalism. Just at this. J.
Speaker 1: Robert Wilson, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Temple University,
Speaker 1: told the nineteen sixty two Population Council conference i u
Speaker 1: D should be ruled out regardless. We have to stop
Speaker 1: functioning like doctors he said, In fact, it may well
Speaker 1: be that the incidence of infection is going to be
Speaker 1: pretty high in the patients who need the device most. Again,
Speaker 1: if we look at this from an overall long range view,
Speaker 1: these are the things I have never said out loud
Speaker 1: because I don't know how it's going to sound. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the individual patient is expendable in the general scheme of things,
Speaker 1: particularly if the infection she acquires is sterilization but not lethal. Expendable, expendable,
Speaker 1: So yeah, no mask on there, Like, yeah, she's expendable.
Speaker 1: And honestly, if she gets a horrible infection that renders
Speaker 1: her sterile, that's a win that if we did what
Speaker 1: we said that we're going to do right, we can
Speaker 1: hold that population just right out in the open with it.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Yeah, I mean I give that guy on
Speaker 1: honestly more credit than I give Raven Holt, because he's
Speaker 1: not Raven Holtz is saying the same thing but dressing that.
Speaker 1: This guy's just like, yeah, fuck him, like it's about
Speaker 1: stopping him from giving birth. I don't care how we
Speaker 1: do it. Don't worry about the doctor's oath. Just go
Speaker 1: ahead and do your thing. Yeah, we can't act like doctors.
Speaker 1: These are poor people and they're not white. So it's fine.
Speaker 1: It's fine about this control, this good ship. Yeah, uh yeah.
Speaker 1: Wilson's fellow obstetrician, Alan Goodmocker, an influential figure in the
Speaker 1: Population Council and i PPF extolled the benefits of I
Speaker 1: U d S in a similar vein, no contraceptive could
Speaker 1: be cheaper. And also once the damn thing is in,
Speaker 1: the patient cannot change her mind. In fact, we will
Speaker 1: hope she will forget it's there, and perhaps in several
Speaker 1: months wonder why she has not conceived. Oh wait what? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty bad, right, It's like roofy. Yeah, hopefully the
Speaker 1: dumbastards will forget they even have it. You'll never remember
Speaker 1: and then oh god, yeah it's pretty bad right, I
Speaker 1: don't like now. A lot of the evidence for this
Speaker 1: episode comes from a couple of different sources, but most
Speaker 1: of them written by one man, Matthew Connolly, who has
Speaker 1: done more to unravel and expose the whole horrific story
Speaker 1: of the population control movement than probably any other Westerner.
Speaker 1: His book, Fatal Misconception lays out the whole sordid tale.
Speaker 1: In it, he concludes the great tragedy of population control.
Speaker 1: The fatal misconception was to think that one could know
Speaker 1: other people's interests better than they know it themselves. But
Speaker 1: if the idea of planning other people's families is now discredited,
Speaker 1: this very human tendency is still with us. The essence
Speaker 1: of population control, whether it targeted migrants, the unfit, or
Speaker 1: families that seemed either too big or too small, was
Speaker 1: to make rules for other people without having to answer
Speaker 1: to them. It appealed to the rich and powerful, because
Speaker 1: with the spread of emancipatory movements and the integration of markets,
Speaker 1: it began to appear easier and more profitable that to
Speaker 1: control populations than to control territory. That's why opponents were
Speaker 1: correct in viewing it as another chapter in the unfinished
Speaker 1: history of imperialism more profitable Holy Fund. Yeah Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that chapter, Samantha, is in fact not finished. Today. You
Speaker 1: can still find many of these same attitudes present and
Speaker 1: well meaning powerful people today. In May two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: a group of billionaires including Bill Gates, Ted Turner, David Rockefeller,
Speaker 1: George Soros, and Warren Buffett all met in semi secrecy
Speaker 1: to discuss what they termed a nightmarish scenario over population.
Speaker 1: The London Sunday Time said they considered this a potentially
Speaker 1: disastrous environmental, social, and industrial threat since at present more
Speaker 1: than projected population growth was expected to occur in the
Speaker 1: global South. We can assume they were worried about precisely
Speaker 1: the same nations and sorts of people as Ray Ravenholt.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting that David Rockefeller attended because in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties his father is one of the major founders
Speaker 1: of the Population Council, which helped fund and drive through
Speaker 1: lobbying everything we've talked about today. In nineteen seventy, journalists
Speaker 1: Steve Weissman termed people like Rockefeller members of the American
Speaker 1: population elite. In an immortal line for Ramparts magazine. He noted,
Speaker 1: in the hands of the self, seeking humanitarianism is the
Speaker 1: most terrifying ism of all. Wow, all right, so caring
Speaker 1: about people and uh and I'm wanting to help enough?
Speaker 1: How help people survive? Well, No, it's it's it's when
Speaker 1: you're it's when you try to cloak your desire to
Speaker 1: control other people's behavior as wanting to help them, right,
Speaker 1: It's not wanting to help someone to force a contraceptive
Speaker 1: on them that they don't know the consequences of and
Speaker 1: that will harm them, and that you're not going to
Speaker 1: give them follow up care and provide them with the
Speaker 1: essential vitamins and stuff. It is. It is helping someone
Speaker 1: to be like, hey, here's a bunch of free condoms,
Speaker 1: here's how you use them. Or here's much birth control pills,
Speaker 1: here's how you use them. Here's what you need to
Speaker 1: know about how it will affect your body. Here's what
Speaker 1: you need to take in order for this to be safe.
Speaker 1: You know. That is helping people. It's helping people to say,
Speaker 1: you know, here's access to vaccine. You know that will
Speaker 1: deal with a problem that you have in this region. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not helping people to, for example, do with the
Speaker 1: CIA did in Pakistan and secretly give people a fake
Speaker 1: vaccine in order to get blood samples to track down
Speaker 1: Osama bin laden, which is the thing that happened. It's
Speaker 1: not like historic maze and ice at all. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: the biggest problem here is that, in no way is
Speaker 1: over population actually a problem. Over Population is not driving
Speaker 1: climate change. Over Population is not the issue we're dealing
Speaker 1: with here. It's what all these billionaires are focusing on
Speaker 1: because in part, if you can get other people to
Speaker 1: think that overpopulation is the problem, that people won't look
Speaker 1: at billionaires is maybe part of the problem. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this brings me to the conclusion of this story, um,
Speaker 1: the because yeah, there are some people who have learned
Speaker 1: from the past of the population control movement, from this
Speaker 1: chapter in the history of imperialism, and one of those
Speaker 1: groups is the Sierra Club. Like most environmental organizations, the
Speaker 1: Sierra Club bought whole hog into population control throughout the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. They thought that the best way to protect
Speaker 1: wild nature was to reduce the human population, and they
Speaker 1: bought into a lot of the stuff that we've talked
Speaker 1: about today and helped to fund it and all that
Speaker 1: horrible shit. But in they published a blog post repudiating
Speaker 1: that history, titled the Overpopulation Myth and its Dangerous Connotations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it took him a while, right. The article is brutal
Speaker 1: and unsparing. It points out that the Population Bomb in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight book by Paul Erlick that was probably
Speaker 1: the single most influential inspiration behind modern fears of overpopulation,
Speaker 1: was also profoundly racist. It quote opens its fearmongering. With
Speaker 1: a sensationalized account of traveling through Delhi, India during a
Speaker 1: taxi ride, author Paul Airlick notes people visiting, arguing and screaming,
Speaker 1: thrusting their hands through the a taxi window begging. Since
Speaker 1: that night, I've known the feel of overpopulation. What Erlich
Speaker 1: fails to mention, however, is that while Delhi's population was
Speaker 1: just say of three million, both New York and Paris
Speaker 1: housed about eight million at the time. Air Lick's emphasis
Speaker 1: on an Indian city as the exemplification of overpopulation was
Speaker 1: part of a large and continuing pattern of focusing blame
Speaker 1: on the Global South and mostly the non white people
Speaker 1: who lived there, as affluent Western Europeans and Americans. And
Speaker 1: in this article, which is quite good, the Seria Club
Speaker 1: makes the accurate point that our actual population with overpopulation
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the raw number of humans
Speaker 1: on Earth, and certainly not in the number of people
Speaker 1: who live in the Global South. It has everything to
Speaker 1: do with the wildly outsized amount of resources consumed by
Speaker 1: a privileged few, namely you and me and everybody listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast. The world's wealthiest half billion people are
Speaker 1: responsible for fifty percent of the planet's carbon dioxide emissions
Speaker 1: despite making up six percent of the population. Yep, like it. Yep,
Speaker 1: there's so many things. I just can't understand the whole
Speaker 1: overpopulation movement in itself, not seeing that as a travesty
Speaker 1: to humanity in general. Yeah, and it's it is fundamentally
Speaker 1: racist while also being a thing that people who would
Speaker 1: call themselves anti racist buy into because they see, look
Speaker 1: at all these giants, these all these families that are
Speaker 1: nine and ten kids, and you know, Mexico and Guatemala,
Speaker 1: in in in Paraguay or whatever. Uh, Like, that's we
Speaker 1: gotta that's a problem part of has to be part
Speaker 1: of the climate change problems. Like, no, dude, it's the
Speaker 1: fact that your family has three cars for two people, right,
Speaker 1: Like that is a bigger driver every lion on using
Speaker 1: all kinds of emissions. Yet But okay, it's absolutely the
Speaker 1: poor people who's living on and more to the point,
Speaker 1: it's not even really honestly, if we want to actually
Speaker 1: get at the core of the problem with climate change,
Speaker 1: it's not even like the fact that your family has
Speaker 1: three cars. It's that there is this giant system of
Speaker 1: mega corporations that profit based off of releasing emissions into
Speaker 1: the air that also effectively control the levers of government
Speaker 1: and very effectively market to all of us, and also
Speaker 1: very effectively stop reforms and things like public transportation that
Speaker 1: would reduce our need, like our dependence on emissions generating vehicles.
Speaker 1: Like it's all bad, but it's sure as hell not
Speaker 1: the pop It's not the fault of somebody in Ethiopia
Speaker 1: who has eight kids, you know, if that I mean
Speaker 1: to be fair in general, Like the poverty situation is
Speaker 1: not because that they are wasting ship. That's not That's
Speaker 1: not that poor people are the best at not wasting ship.
Speaker 1: But I remember one time in Mosle in Iraq, we
Speaker 1: were like hanging out with this this group of like
Speaker 1: civil defense people, like basically e m t s, like
Speaker 1: going into collapsed buildings in the day and pulling people
Speaker 1: out of the rubble. And like they wanted to watch
Speaker 1: a movie. So they took apart an old refrigerator and
Speaker 1: an old like giant like not one of the flat screens,
Speaker 1: one of the big boxy TVs, and they wired the
Speaker 1: TV through the refrigerator into a generator so that we
Speaker 1: could watch I think it was Patriot Games on like
Speaker 1: some fucking local channels. Okay, yeah, yeah, they didn't waste ship.
Speaker 1: There wasn't things wasted. That's that's the problem. Is the
Speaker 1: conversation is who's wasting one? And who was actually the
Speaker 1: problematic issue in this conversation? And what are you really
Speaker 1: getting at? You just want to be in the hierarchy
Speaker 1: and make sure you come out on top. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: Like there's sucking people listening to this, probably including me,
Speaker 1: who have bought new TVs when old ones were not
Speaker 1: permanently broken but just became a problem. It just you
Speaker 1: wanted something nicer. It's it's a bigger screen. I want
Speaker 1: the big screen with a better Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah anyway, Well, thank you for the horror nightmare that
Speaker 1: you just put me through. Robbery once again and then
Speaker 1: and Sophie, uh, there are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: I will be horrified of now. I feel like my
Speaker 1: I U D maybe trying to crawl out of me. Um,
Speaker 1: thank you for that. I did not use a vaginal
Speaker 1: death crab yea for mine. And I want to be clear,
Speaker 1: like I've tried to make a point of this. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying I d are bad. I hope that's not
Speaker 1: what anyone takes out of this, like the obviously shield was,
Speaker 1: and you know, the Marina might wind up being something
Speaker 1: like that. We don't really know what the whole story
Speaker 1: is going to be on that, although I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people who haven't and have had no problem
Speaker 1: with it. Like the bad guy in this is again imperialism,
Speaker 1: and also talking about the healthcare in general, who has
Speaker 1: provided what type of care and what is being who
Speaker 1: has the privilege of getting the better not whatever whatnot.
Speaker 1: So that's also the conversation. But yeah, the vaginal death
Speaker 1: crabs something that I will always remember. Thank you. I
Speaker 1: love that this was our first meeting. That that's what
Speaker 1: our conversation talking about vaginal death crabs. And we can
Speaker 1: hear us play as vaginal death crabs when you know
Speaker 1: in two were able to finally go on tour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm so excited for this. I've got my uku lately
Speaker 1: ready will actually be opening for the Eagles. Oddly enough,
Speaker 1: it was strange cook, Ye, my dream is coming true. Amazing.
Speaker 1: Uh Okay, well, you got anything you want to plug
Speaker 1: before we roll out of here. Samantha again, you can
Speaker 1: find me on stuff. Mom never told you a podcast
Speaker 1: with I heart wherever you get your podcast, and you
Speaker 1: can find me as a McVay Samantha m c v
Speaker 1: e y. That is the spelling, not the other one.
Speaker 1: I just want to put that out there on both
Speaker 1: Instagram or Twitter. Yeah, and I am not available anywhere
Speaker 1: you cannot find me. Don't try. I will destroy you.
Speaker 1: Challenge accepted. Yep, You're so weird sometimes, Robert, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know how do There's so many episodes of
Speaker 1: this fucking podcast. I can't end all of them like
Speaker 1: a competent professional. I feel like I got surprised into
Speaker 1: a two partter. I was like, what more death traps? Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: We said at some point early in the series that
Speaker 1: we mostly we would only rarely do two parters, and
Speaker 1: then we seated to pivot to only doing two parters
Speaker 1: almost in the I don't know how I let that.
Speaker 1: What if we do in the occasional twice per week?
Speaker 1: And then it was like I order or just twice
Speaker 1: per Welcome to the Welcome in my world. Never enough
Speaker 1: good bad information out there, pieces old