Morbid

Podbit · Morbid

Episode Revisit: The Radium Girls

Explore episode Jun 18, 2026
History
The Radium Girls File Suit: Five Women Against a Corporation

Episode Revisit: The Radium Girls · Jun 18, 2026 History

In 1927, Grace Fryer and four other dying Radium Girls filed a landmark lawsuit against U.S. Radium for $125,000 — after two years of searching for a lawyer willing to take the case. By the time of the hearing, none of the five could raise their arms to take an oath. The company's lawyers responded by asking for a delay because their witnesses were on vacation in Europe.

Similar podbits

History
The Internet Archive and Marion Stokes: Why Preservation Heroes Matter

TWiT 1092: You Brought a Knife to a Wolf Fight - Apple Accu… · Jul 13, 2026 History

Marion Stokes ran nine properties and three storage units of VCRs, recording 24-hour news continuously from 1977 to 2012 — 71,000 tapes. She was right: that footage would have been lost otherwise. As Sony kills discs, TikTok ages, and source code rots, the question of who saves digital culture grows more urgent.

History
Data point $10B

What You Do In Your Own Home Is All Of My Business | East G… · Jul 13, 2026 History

Stalin never really wanted East Germany — he just wanted a buffer zone. So he stripped it: a third of all industrial plants and $10 billion of agricultural and industrial goods were extracted in the first two years, ensuring the GDR's economy was crippled before it even started.

History
Data point 1 in 6

What You Do In Your Own Home Is All Of My Business | East G… · Jul 13, 2026 History

The Stasi had 91,000 full-time officers and 170,000 informal informers — one in every six East Germans. Throw a party and invite twelve guests: statistically two of them are reporting back. No secret police force in history came close to this penetration rate.