The bloody history of childbirth is riddled with death and despair. It's a burden that was carried almost entirely by women, behind closed doors, something men took no part in. And, because of that, we know very little about it today. What we do know is that it was an extremely dangerous affair. Mortality was so high, many women wrote a will as soon as they found out they were pregnant. The 18th century saw the beginning of the "medicalization" of childbirth when inexperienced forcep bearing male doctors got involved and began a crusade to put a stop to midwifery. But, ironically, childbirth didn't get any safer after that. It actually got deadlier, at first.

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Sources:

• Birth Injury Help Center "The History of Childbirth"
• Designing Motherhood "Birthing Furniture: An Illustrated History"
• What to Expect "500 Years of Childbirth History in Under 2 Minutes"
• Oregon Health and Science University "A Brief History of Midwifery in America"
• The Guardian "I enjoyed researching the bloody history of childbirth - then I had a baby"
• World Health Organization "Maternal Mortality"
• Slate "The Disturbing, Shameful History of Childbirth Deaths"
• Statistica "Percentage of physicians in select specialties in the U.S. who were women as of 2023"
  
  
  

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On March 25th, 1911, a fire erupted on the 8th floor of the Asch building in New York City. The 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of this building housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory which employed around 500 people, mostly young immigrant women, to sew women's blouses under sweatshop conditions. The owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, believed the building to be fireproof and refused to take any fire safety measures. They also locked the exit doors, fearful that the women would steal from them if allowed to leave before their bags could be searched. Due to this negligence, 123 women and 23 men died, burned alive, trapped in locked stairwells or waiting for the only elevator. Many of the victims were forced to jump from 8th and 9th floor windows, their broken bodies littering the sidewalk below. This horrifying tragedy was a wakeup call for labor conditions in the US, leading to the passing of more than 30 health and safety laws. But what of Blanck and Harris? Were they punished? Did they learn their lesson? Of course not.

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Sources:

• Cornell University website about the Triangle Factory Fire
• History.com "Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire"
• US Department of Labor "History of Labor Day"
• OSHA "The worse day I ever saw"
• The New York Times, March 26, 1911 "141 Men and Girls Die in Factory Fire"
• Encyclopedia Britannica "Triangle shirtwaist factory fire"

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Michael Rockefeller was the great grandson of John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil and the richest man in the world. He was also the son of Nelson Rockefeller, New York governor, Vice President of the United States, and a well known art collector. Michael had big shoes to fill. To do that, he followed in his father's art collecting footsteps, traveling to the Asmat region on the west coast of New Guinea to collect wood carvings for his father's Museum of Primitive Art in Manhattan. The Asmat people were hunter gatherers living in the jungle with almost no western contact. They led a very different life than Michael, practiced head hunting and cannibalism. Michael admired the Asmat, their culture, their art. But he never truly understood them. He couldn't. So when his sailboat capsized near the village of Otsjanep and he disappeared attempting to swim to shore, never to be seen again, his family assumed he had drowned. But did Michael Rockefeller really drown? Or was his fate far more violent? Let's fix that.

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Sources:

• "Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art" by Carl Hoffman
• Smithsonian Magazine "What Really Happened to Michael Rockefeller"
• The Met Museum "Bis Pole"
• Rockefeller Archive Center "John D. Rockefeller"
• PBS American Experience "Biography: Nelson A. Rockefeller"
• NPR Author Interviews "Cannibals and Colonialism: Solving the Mystery of Michael Rockefeller"

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Perched between the ocean and the sound in Nags Head, completely dominating the narrow sliver of land that makes up part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, is a monumental sand dune, a mountain of lush golden sand. This dune system, known as Jockey’s Ridge, is somewhere around 4,000 years old and can reach heights of over 100 feet. It’s majestic, it’s miraculous, the tallest living sand dune on the east coast, a unique ecosystem home to a myriad of coastal creatures, a landmark and navigation tool dating back hundreds if not thousands of years, a playground for generations of children, and the most visited state park in North Carolina. But, did you know that back in the 1970s, Jockey’s Ridge was slated for demolition to make way for a condominium complex? And did you know that three young children and their fearless mother put their foot down, quite literally, to save it? And that I have one of those children here with me today? Let’s fix that.

Check out the Friends of Jockey's Ridge
Check out hannahwestwrites.com

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Sources:

• "Remarkable Women of the Outer Banks" by Hannah Bunn West
• "Save Our Sand Dunes" by Hannah Bunn West
• WRAL News "Buried Treasure: Old castle hidden beneath NC's largest sand dune fully visible again"
• Atlantic Realty "9 Things You Didn't Know About Jockey's Ridge"
• Coastal Review "'Save Our Sand Dunes' recalls fight to save Jockey's Ridge"
• North Beach Sun "Buried Treasures - What is Under Jockey's Ridge?"
• OBX Stuff "History of the Nags Head Soundside Resort at Jockey's Ridge State Park"
• Coast Review "Jockey's Ridge most visited as NC parks shatter records"
• The Virginian Pilot "The Moving Mountain Jockey's Ridge Shift is Mystery, For Now"
• Outer Banks History Center "David Stick Papers"

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Polio has been around since ancient times but it was a very quiet disease for most of history, affecting few people and raising little alarm. It wasn’t until the 20th century that polio began to appear among the masses, terrifying epidemics, a mysterious disease that seemed to target children out of nowhere, paralyzing them, killing them. No one knew how it spread. No one knew how to treat it. No one knew how to stop it. They quarantined. They avoided swimming pools and water fountains. They lived in fear. But the strange thing was, these polio epidemics were only happening in developed countries, countries that had recently gone to great lengths to ensure improved hygiene and sanitation. Good hygiene, cleanliness, was supposed to prevent the spread of disease. How had it backfired so horrifically with polio? Let’s fix that.

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Sources:

• Yale Medicine Magazine "Breaking the back of polio"
• Wikipedia "History of Polio"
• Encyclopedia Britannica "Polio through history"
• PBS "Candy Land"
• BBC "The man in the iron lung"
• World Health Organization "History of the Polio Vaccine"
• Mayo Clinic "Polio"
• CDC "Covid-19 Mortality Update"

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Check out Outer Lore! In January of 1812 a schooner named The Patriot disappeared off the coast of North Carolina's Outer Banks. This dangerous stretch of coastline has claimed some 3,000 ships, earning it the nickname "Graveyard of the Atlantic." Aboard the Patriot was Theodosia Burr Alston, daughter of infamous US vice president Aaron Burr, on her way to visit her father in New York. The disappearance of The Patriot and its famous passenger remain a mystery to this day. The discovery of a portrait resembling Theodosia that supposedly washed up with a shipwreck along the Outer Banks only adds to the mystery. Is the Nags Head portrait really Theodosia Burr? What really happened to her? A storm? Mutiny? Pirates? Is it possible she survived?

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Sources:

• Library of Congress Blogs "The Unsolved Mystery of Aaron Burr's Daughter"
• ECU Joyner Library Special Collections "Unsolved North Carolina Mysteries: The Case of Theodosia Burr Alston"
• South Carolina Historical Society "December, 1812: Theodosia Burr Alston is Lost at Sea"
• allthatsinteresting.com "Inside the Mysterious Disappearance of Aaron Burr's Daughter, Theodosia Burr Alston"
• teachingamericanhistory.org "The Mysterious Disappearance of Theodosia Burr Alston"
• DigitalNC "The Real Life 'Hamilton' Sequel Set in Nags Head"
• National Constitution Center "Aaron Burr's trial and the Constitution's treason clause"
• The Aaron Burr Association "The Tragedies in Aaron Burr's Life"
• Encyclopedia Britannica "Aaron Burr"
• ThoughtCo "Dueling in the 19th Century"

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In 1975, the Khmer Rouge stormed into Cambodia's capital city of Phnom Penh victorious after 5 years of civil war. The people rejoiced. They thought the victors were there to liberate them, to restore peace and order after years of fighting. That couldn't have been farther from the truth. Over the next 4 years, the Khmer Rouge communist regime would force people into the countryside to work in rice fields night and day, where many died of starvation and disease. They killed the weak, the slow, the intellectuals, anyone who thought for themselves was a threat. In just 4 years, an estimated 2 million Cambodians were murdered by the Khmer Rouge. How could this happen? Join me to discover how the pieces came together, how this violent regime used fear and manipulation to control the masses, and how we can stop it from happening again. Knowledge is power.

Sources:

• worldhistory.org "Khmer Empire"
• history.com "Khmer Rouge"
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum "Cambodia"
• University of Minnesota "Cambodia"
• Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields "Worms from Our Skin"
• Holocaust Museum Houston "Genocide in Cambodia"

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This episode explores the famed poison, Aqua Tofana, that desperate housewives used to murder their husbands in 17th century Italy. I'll delve into the legend of Giulia Tofana, the apparent namesake behind the poison who was supposedly responsible for the deaths of 600 men in the mid 1600s and do my best to separate fact from fiction to uncover what in the world was going on in Italy and, more importantly, why.

Sources:

• mikedashhistory.com "Aqua Tofana: slow poisoning and husband killing in 17th century Italy"
• SyFy "Giulia Tofana, the Italian Serial Poisoner Who Became a Legend"
• National Centre for Domestic Violence "Giulia Tofana - Serial Killer or Heroine?!"
• allthatsinteresting.com "Meet Giulia Tofana: the 17th century professional poisoner said to have killed 600 men"
• TBS News "When makeup can kill: The sinister tale of Giulia Tofana"
• Encyclopedia Britannica "Drawing and Quartering"

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