Too Much of a Good Thing

“The dose makes the poison.” What do you think of when you hear that? Perhaps you think of an alchemy class at a fantastical wizarding school or of an infatuation turned into a blinding obsession. Maybe you remember the morning after a weekend bender or a “sugar coma” crash.  What can be harmless, or even beneficial, in certain amounts can become dangerous or deadly when there is too much. Horrific History co-hosts Eric Slyter and Curtis Bender explore cases in history when the everyday things from life can, when overused, have mind-altering, physically debilitating or even deadly effects.

 

The death of a United States President; visual, auditory and sensory hallucinations; a man who turned blue and a modern problem which was also used as a medieval torture technique […]

Fukushima isn’t the only nuclear site in the news lately! The Hanford Nuclear Reservation, only a couple of hours away from Horrific History Podcast’s headquarters in Washington State, has its own set of problems! A collapsed railway tunnel and radiation leak are just the start of the problems anticipated for the future, as the crumbling infrastructure at Hanford meets steep budget cuts in the cleanup of the toxic site. You can learn more in the linked article. Hanford was pivotal in the development of the first atomic bombs, and part of the Manhattan Project covered in For a Healthy Glow: Radiation Poisoning. #NoSqueamAllowed

 

Slideshow Photo Credit: Great Beyond Day 210/365 – The Fine Print is 10 feet tall via photopin (license)

Blog Post Photo Credit: Andras, Fulop Radiation Area 9606_814 via photopin (license)

Making Your Blood Boil

How well do you cope with being under pressure? Does it make your blood boil? Do you keep calm like a Soviet astronaut pulling a cool move out of The Martian?

 

From Polynesian pearl diving taravana and the discovery of Boyle’s Law, Horrific History co-hosts Eric Slyter and Curtis Bender uncork the most explosive and gory details of decompression sickness in history. To help you acclimate to the increased squeam-atmospheres of pressure, they begin with animal experimentation, caisson disease, Nazi Germany experiments involving (live?) human brain dissection and […]

How could we have missed the radioactive boar phenomenon in our episode For a Healthy Glow, about radiation poisoning? Better late than never! Of course, given the nature of the subject matter, we’ll be reporting on Fukushima for a long time to come. Remember, #NoSqueamAllowed!

Blog post photo credit (from article): Toru Hanai/Reuters

Slideshow photo credit: Cloudtail the Snow Leopard Wild boar via photopin (license)

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

For a Healthy Glow

A finger, hand, limb or life…. What would you give up for the advancement of science? Would you give up as much as the Radium Martyrs of All Nations?

 

Horrific History Podcast’s co-hosts, Eric Slyter and Curtis Bender discuss radiation poisoning in history, beginning with late Renaissance alchemy research in 1603 and continuing on to address more modern history including the Manhattan Project, Kyshtym Disaster, Chernobyl, and touching on current-day Fukushima.

 

From capturing the “golden light of the sun” to “seeing one’s death” through x-ray experimentation, this episode discusses all the horrifying things that came with the development of radiation research including blindness, loss of appendages, and even slow painful demises! You’ll hear about radium condoms, miracle “cures” and other products like “liquid sunshine,” as well as the legal case of the “Radium Girls” who had been so exposed to radium over the course of their factory work that parts of them […]