Show Notes
Orange, New Jersey, 1917. The United States Radium Corporation opens a factory and hires hundreds of young women — some as young as fourteen — to paint luminous watch dials for the military. The pay is exceptional. The paint is radium. And their supervisors teach them to shape their brushes with their lips. Lip, dip, paint. Two hundred and fifty times a day. The company's own scientists use lead shields and metal tongs. The painters use their tongues. Within years, teeth are falling out. Jaws are crumbling. Women in their early twenties are dying of causes officially listed as syphilis. And when Harvard researchers confirm the truth — that radium has been migrating into the women's bones — the company president forges the report and submits a falsified version to the state. This is the story of Grace Fryer, Katherine Schaub, Amelia Maggia, and the dozens of women who came to be known as the Radium Girls. It's the story of a cover-up that stretched from factory floor to courtroom, of fake doctors and perjured executives, of a judge who adjourned a dying woman's case so the company's expert witnesses could summer in Europe. And it's the story of how five women — none of whom could raise their arms to take the oath — took on one of the most connected corporations in America, and built the legal foundation that would eventually give rise to OSHA. Their bones are still radioactive. They will be for another 1,600 years. Told in the style of Hardcore History — immersive, narrative, without mercy. ⚠️ Content note: This episode contains detailed descriptions of illness, physical deterioration, and death.
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Corporate Wars is written and narrated by Tomislav Krevzelj. New episodes drop weekly. Website: corporatewarspod.com
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