This week we continue our series on the Irish Potato Famine of 1845. We start to dive into the committee relief programs that Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel instated. He wanted the Irish to work for wages to buy subsidized food, instead of bartering or getting food donated to them.  London also expected the middle class of Ireland to donate to the cause, but they were very hesitant because they feared for their own prosperity. 

Most of the country survives the 1845 harvest, although the prosperous Irish have started to leave the country in hopes of finding greener pastures. And while the public works programs paid several hundred thousand men, they mostly built roads to nowhere. And at the beginning of the harvest of 1846, the potato blight returns. 

Sources: The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by John Kelly

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This week we start our series on the potato famine that struck Ireland in 1845. Between 1845-1855 Ireland would lose a third of its population, 1.1 million to death and 2 million leaving the country because of the dire situation. 

In this episode we discuss how the Irish had become incredibly dependent on the potato in the years leading up to the famine and the UK's government inability to organize any real strategy to help.  Terrible weather, a lack of distribution systems, and a real misunderstanding of what was actually hurting the crop would delay any real help from getting to people for the first year. 

We will get into the government commissions, proposed solutions, and the British thinking that the Irish needed to simply work harder and be purer of heart. 

Sources: The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by John Kelly

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This week we are wrapping up the Henrietta Lacks Story! We will talk about the increased attention on the Lacks family including a BBC Documentary team, A con artist who called himself Doctor Sir Lord Keenan Kester Cofield, and Rebecca Skloot, the author of our source material. 

We will actually get into the trail of breadcrumbs that Skloot used to meet Deborah Lacks for the first time and then talk about there relationship as they uncover more and more about Henrietta's life together over a nearly 10 year long process to write "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" 

Scientists also discover what actually caused Henriettas Cancer in the first place and use that information to help create a HPV Vaccine. We talk about the attempt to create a Henrietta lacks Museum in Turner Station. 

Then we finish by discussing a movie based on the book, a new law recognizing Henrietta passed through congress, and an ongoing group of unjust enrichment lawsuits against some major biomedical companies who profited off of the manufacture of Hela cells over the years. 

This was a crazy story and we hope you enjoyed it!

Sources:

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot (2010)

“Henrietta Lacks Enhancing Cancer Research Act” by American Cancer Society Cancer action network(2014)

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks-IMDB page” Directed by George C. Wolfe (2017)

“What does the historic settlement won by Henrietta Lacks's family mean for others” by Meredith Wadman (2023)

“Novartis Settles with Henrietta Lacks' Estate over use of her cancercells to advance medicine” by Brian Witte Associated Press (2026)

“Henrietta Lacks: Family of woman whos cells were 'stolen' settles second lawsuit” by Max Matza (2026)

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Hey all,

We're taking two weeks off to regroup and catch up on life stuff and try to get our baby to sleep again. We will back July 7th and hit the group running! In the meantime, enjoy some of our old series or just enjoy the warm weather! See you in July! 

Thanks for listening! 

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This episode we get a bit more into how the family was effected by the news that part of their mother was still alive. 

We talk about the founding of John Hopkins and the pretty warranted fears that the black community had for night doctors and scientists looking to use black bodies for experiments. 

Then we get into the beginning of a legal debate determining whether we should retain property rights to parts of our body once they are disguarded. We talk about Ted Slaven who set up his own deal with the pharmaceutical companies to sell his blood eventually starting a company to produce and sell biological products splitting profits directly with the donors as partners. Slaven's blood would eventually be used to create a Hepatitis Vaccine. 

We also talk about John Moore who had an incredibly rare type of Leukemia and a 22 lbs spleen. The cell line created with his spleen and samples taken were valued at  three billion dollars. He would eventually take UCLA and his doctor to court suing them for theft of his body. 

Hope you enjoy!

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This week we get into how doctors at John Hopkins purposefully gave misleading information to the public about the HeLa strain. They gave a false name to obscure Henrietta Lack's true name, successfully hiding her identity for about 20 years. 

We also talk about Chester Southam and some incredibly unethical uses of the Hela cells. He injected over 600 patients with live cancer cells to see if cancer was communicable. Other than a small study with prisoners, he never told the patients about what he was doing, just telling them it was an innocuous immunity test. Though Southam was only ever given a temporarily suspended license and a slap on the wrist the debate about his actions helped solidify the country's stance on informed consent. 

Meanwhile researchers began learning how to create hybrid cells going so far as to make the first HeLa/Mouse hybrids. They used this practice to help accurately map the Human Genome discovering what each individual chromosome did. Scientists were very excited about hybrids but the public immediately feared the worst. Worried about an army of mouse men and other half man monsters sweeping the nation. 

Fears about mousemen proved unfounded but Hela was about to rock the scientific world when they discovered that the cells were so robust and resourceful that they were able to move from culture to culture with ease through unwashed hands or equipment or even through the air on a speck of dust. This revelation would later be called the HeLa Bomb and rectifying the massive contamination problem would cost millions and millions of research dollars as well as thousands of hours of wasted time. 

And we will finally talk about how Henrietta's name finally reached public knowledge and then how that news made it back to the Lacks Family.

Hope you enjoy!

Sources:

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot (2010)

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This week we talk about the darker side of cell culturing history including a man named Alexis Carrell and his not so "Immortal Chicken Heart". Also unfortunately more about eugenics...

We also get into the final months of Henrietta's life. Her cancer was incredibly aggressive and in the end there was nothing that doctors could do to stop it. However they also could have treated her with much more kindness and dignity in her final days. 

After that we look into all of the fast medical advancements and breakthroughs that happened because of  Henrietta's cells. We talk about the first HeLa production and Distribution factory set up at the Tuskegee Institute in order to help perfect the Polio Vaccine. We also get into the notorious Tuskegee Syphilis Study happening at the same time and going on for 40 years!???

After that  we discuss the creation of the first private for profit HeLa factory at Micro Biologic Associates moving the use of Henrietta's cells from pure research and  altruistic development of lifesaving vaccines to a money driven for profit tool. And can you believe it, even after  making massive piles  of money no one thought to compensate the source of their fortunes. 

This episode is a bit of a  long one but  we hope you enjoy! Thanks for listening!

Sources:

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot (2010)

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This week we are talking about Henrietta Lacks, a young black woman born in the 1920’s and her cells that would change the face of modern medicine. Scientists would call Henrietta's cells HeLa cells. 

The First HeLa cells were removed from her cervix in 1951 at Johns Hopkins hospital only a few months before her death caused by cervical cancer. Henrietta was 31 when she died. These cells however would live on long after their owners death.

The HeLa cells would become one of the most medically significant breakthroughs in science over the next half a century. They were used to help cure polio, Sent into space to test what happened to human cells in zero gravity, testing chemo therapy, Made Genetic Screening possible, Advanced In vitro fertilization research Advancing cloning research(yuck).

Basically anything that needs to be tested for human use has spent some time working with HeLa. it has become the defacto research workhorse. Demand for HeLa cells grew so large that factories had to be built just to propagate her cells. 

Today there are trillions of descendants of those original cells taken from Henrietta in labs all over the world. However Henrietta died just months after the first sample was taken. That sample was taken without her explicit consent and the family didn't even learn that scientists  were using her cells until 20 years  later and even after a multi million dollar industry was created around the  Hela Cells, the family didn't receive a dime until 2023.

We also talk about a woman named Mary Papanicolaou who voluntarily received a Pap Smear every day for 21 years! Wild. 

Hope you enjoy!

Sources:

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot (2010)

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This week we are wrapping up the Jay Gould story! After tanking the Gold exchange, Jay got right back to work messing up the train industry. 

He had a dream of connecting a transcontinental rail path, and he got to work purchasing any train companies he could get his rascally little hands on. By WHATEVER means necessary. 

All the while, perpetrating some stunning examples of price fixing, insider trading, and pump and dump schemes leaving most of his business partners in his wake. All activities that are highly illegal today but were just part of doing business back in Gilded Age America!

By 1881, Gould personally owned over 15,000 miles of rail line or about 15% of the countries total railways. 

We follow the ups and downs of this last chapter of his life before he eventually contracting tuberculosis and passing away at 56 leaving behind a huge legacy and a massive fortune but since he liked to stay mysterious and not put his name on anything most people don't think of him as the shady titan of business that he actually was.

We hope you enjoy!

Sources: American Rascal How Jay Gould Built Wall Street’s Biggest Fortune by Greg Steimetz

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We are back with another installment of the Jay Gould story. This week we have moved on from leather and firmly landed in the world of trains.

Gould thought he saw a prime opportunity in the Erie Railroad. however he wasn't the only one. In order to gain control of these tracks and trains, Gould would have to pick a fight with the already infamous Cornelius Vanderbilt. Both men were willing to stop at no cost to get control including but not limited to tanking the entire economy to do it. 

Eventually Gould and his partner James Fisk were able to narrowly gain control of the railroad. This fight between Gould, Fisk, and Vanderbilt would later be called the Eerie War. 

The success against Vanderbilt really put Gould on the map giving him enough power and money to make some even riskier bets and perpetrate some even more brazen rule breaking. This time with much wider reaching consequences. But that will be next week.

We hope you enjoy!

Sources: American Rascal How Jay Gould Built Wall Street’s Biggest Fortune by Greg Steimetz

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