U.S. Radium founder Dr. Sabin Arnold von Sashaki personally experienced radium's destructive power when he cut off his own fingertip after radium got in. He knew within years of founding the company that the paint was deadly. He told the board. He still let thousands of young women lick their brushes.
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At 29:56 · chapter starts 28:50
The episode's most damning revelation arrives here: U.S. Radium founder Dr. Sabin Arnold von Sashaki was not ignorant of radium's dangers — he had lived them. Author Kate Moore documents that early in the company's history, radium got into von Sashaki's left index finger, and he hacked off the tip himself, saying it looked 'as though an animal had gnawed it.' The body's fatal confusion between radium and calcium — absorbing the radioactive element into bone where it continuously decays tissue — was explained to von Sashaki by radiation experts. He raised concerns to the board and was overruled. He then said nothing to the hundreds of young women putting radium-coated brushes in their mouths every day [1] — Alaina Urquhart "Von Sashaki cut off his own finger tip: U.S. Radium founder Dr. Sabin Arnold von Sashaki, aware of radium's dangers from personal experienc…" 30:40 . 'Within at least a few years of founding his company,' Alaina states flatly, 'von Sashaki knew radium-based paint was extraordinarily dangerous. But he kept that knowledge from his employees.'
U.S. Radium founder Dr. Sabin Arnold von Sashaki, aware of radium's dangers from personal experience, hacked off the tip of his own left index finger after radium got into it — yet concealed this knowledge from his workers.
The body mistakes radium for calcium, absorbing it into bones where it continuously releases alpha particles, decaying and destroying bone tissue from within.
When the dial painters walked home after their shifts, they glowed in the dark — hair, clothes, and skin coated in luminescent radium dust. Some deliberately wore their dance dresses to work on Fridays so they would glow on the dance floor later. They were celebrated as glamorous local celebrities; no one knew they were walking around irradiated.
Factories that replaced coal engines with electric ones in the early 1900s got only 6% efficiency gains. Those that redesigned their entire factory around electricity got a 3x productivity improvement. Swapping AI tools into your existing structure will give you 6%. Rebuilding around AI will give you 10x.
Lebanese terrorists backed by Iran were holding American hostages throughout the Reagan presidency. Reagan had loudly campaigned against negotiating with terrorists — putting him in an impossible position that his team quietly decided to ignore.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the US openly supplied Iraq with weapons, training, and intelligence. At the same time, Oliver North was secretly funneling missiles to Iran. The US was playing both sides of a shooting war.
Oliver North traveled to Iran under the alias 'William P. Goode' with a fake passport. CIA Director William Casey allegedly gave him cyanide pills so he could kill himself rather than be tortured if captured. He returned safely and the deal moved forward.
The Pentagon sold missiles to the CIA for $3,700 each. The CIA sold them to Richard Secord at cost. Secord sold them to Iranian middleman Ghorbanifar for $10,000 each. Ghorbanifar charged Iran even more. The profit — including $3 million in interest in one Swiss account — was diverted directly to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
America secretly transferred 2,000 missiles and missile parts to Iran in 8 shipments over more than a year. Only 3 of 7 hostages were released. Three more were taken. The net result was zero freed hostages and a full-blown constitutional scandal.
On October 5, 1986, a CIA Contra supply plane flew a weapons drop at 2,500 feet in broad daylight. A Sandinista soldier shot it down. The only survivor, Eugene Hasenfuss, had borrowed a parachute from his skydiving brother. He was captured, paraded in front of cameras, and told the Sandinistas everything he knew.
The CIA supply operation used a front company called Southern Air Transport, widely known to be a CIA cover. Crew members of the downed plane carried their Southern Air Transport employee IDs in their wallets. One also had a business card directly linking him to Oliver North's office in Washington.
When the scandal broke, Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall conducted what became known as a 'shredding party,' destroying a day's worth of documents. The full truth of Iran-Contra may never be known because of what was fed through that shredder.
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