Joe Rogan Experience #1500 - Barbara Freese

1. 0:01 – 1:12

   From environmental law to the front lines of climate denial in Minnesota

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:01

      And we're rolling. How are you, Barbara? (clapperboard snaps) What's happening?

   2. BFBarbara Freese0:03

      I'm good, Joe. How are you?

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:04

      Pleasure to meet you.

   4. BFBarbara Freese0:05

      Pleasure to meet you.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      How did you get started on this, and how did, how did you get interested in the subject?

   6. BFBarbara Freese0:12

      I got interested in this subject through climate change, uh, climate denial specifically. I'm an environmental attorney, and back in the 1990s I worked for the State of Minnesota. And we found ourselves very briefly sort of on the front lines of the scientific debate over climate change. And the way that happened was the, the state had passed a law saying that utilities regulators should try to estimate the cost to the environment of generating electricity. We get most of our power from coal, or we did then. Um, and so we looked at coal emissions. We looked at the traditional pollutants that we had regulated for a long time. And, and my client was the Pollution Control Agency, so I was familiar with those. What we also looked at, though, and, and I wasn't familiar with, was CO2 and its effect on climate change, because, uh, while that was a big issue globally, there was already a, a global treaty signed, um, to fight climate

2. 1:12 – 4:08

   Coal-industry witness tactics: paid experts, “CO2 is good,” and downplaying warming

   1. BFBarbara Freese1:12

      change. States had not taken a look at that. And what happened was we, uh, struck a nerve with the coal industry, and they sent to Minnesota a, a bunch of witnesses, a bunch of scientists, uh, to testify that we did not have to worry about climate change, and it wasn't going to happen. Uh, or if it did, it would be just, just a little, and we'd like it. And that all of those scientists, the, the IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, uh, those scientists, uh, that the rest of the world, including the US government in the treaty signed by George H.W. Bush, uh, the ones that they were relying on, those scientists were basically biased. They were biased because t- they, they were in it for the money somehow. They wanted research grants or they had some political agenda. It was kind of vague. Um, but, but it was clear they did not want us worrying about this issue at all.

   2. JRJoe Rogan2:09

      They, they told you that it would be just a little and that you would like it? What did, what did they-

   3. BFBarbara Freese2:13

      Oh, yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan2:13

      ... mean by that?

   5. BFBarbara Freese2:14

      Well, uh, a couple of things. One of the arguments, and you will still hear this sometimes, is that CO2 is a plant fertilizer, which is true. Um, and therefore more CO2 makes the world a, a happier place for plants and, and therefore better for everybody else. And to the, to the point where one of the coal interests who were i- in that, uh, who were parties had put out a video saying that the earth was deficient in CO2, and by digging up the coal and burning it, we were, we were correcting that.

   6. JRJoe Rogan2:46

      (laughs)

   7. BFBarbara Freese2:46

      Um, yeah. Uh, so that was-

   8. JRJoe Rogan2:48

      Wow.

   9. BFBarbara Freese2:48

      ... one of the arguments. The other was, "You know, it'll be mild. It'll be warm. The winters won't be as cold. And, and hey, this is Minnesota, so, you know, you guys are gonna appreciate those warmer winters." Um, so yeah. There was a lot of crazy stuff that, that hasn't gone away. In fact, many, in many ways it's gotten a lot worse. But there was certainly enough to leave me shocked, and-

   10. JRJoe Rogan3:10

       Was that the first time you were ever aware that corporations do send in people to try to diffuse arguments or could pollute the waters?

   11. BFBarbara Freese3:19

       I, I don't think I was quite that naive, but I'd certainly never seen anything like this. I mean, these were people under oath, you know?

   12. JRJoe Rogan3:26

       Mm-hmm.

   13. BFBarbara Freese3:26

       And, and they were saying things that were pretty extreme, uh, and, and many of which would just get a lot more extreme.

   14. JRJoe Rogan3:34

       And they were scientists.

   15. BFBarbara Freese3:35

       The many... Yes, th- the ones I cross-examined were mainly the scientists. They s- also sent in some other witnesses as well. So they didn't, they didn't actually work, you know, in a coal company.

   16. JRJoe Rogan3:44

       Mm-hmm.

   17. BFBarbara Freese3:44

       They were hired by the coal industry to come in and testify.

   18. JRJoe Rogan3:47

       And these scientists, th- presumably they were paid to do this.

   19. BFBarbara Freese3:52

       Yes.

   20. JRJoe Rogan3:52

       So is that... I mean, how do you track that? Like if you-

   21. BFBarbara Freese3:56

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JRJoe Rogan3:56

       ... if you have scientists and they come in and they say things that you know are not accurate or deceptive, how do you find out what their motivation is? Uh, did you, did you ask them if they'd been paid? And-

3. 4:08 – 6:31

   Tracking conflicts of interest and the tobacco-to-climate ‘Merchants of Doubt’ pipeline

   1. BFBarbara Freese4:08

      We were able to put some things in the record re- regarding how much money they had gotten from different fossil fuel interests over the years. So we definitely did, uh, point to that, argue about that. W- we didn't realize some of the witnesses had a, a much deeper history than we understood in science denial. One of the witnesses was a, a, a pretty prominent scientist, uh, named Frederick Seitz, who has since died. But, um, what we didn't know, uh, what I didn't know when I cross-examined him, I mean, this was a, a shoestring operation, was that he had spent a lot of time actually consulting for the tobacco industry.

   2. JRJoe Rogan4:44

      Mm.

   3. BFBarbara Freese4:44

      Um, so that would have been nice to, to bring up, but no.

   4. JRJoe Rogan4:47

      We had talked about, just before the podcast, the film Merchants of Doubt, and that's how I kind of got into your work.

   5. BFBarbara Freese4:52

      Right.

   6. JRJoe Rogan4:53

      That that film touches on that, how people who worked for the tobacco industry eventually went to work to deny the manmade climate change.

   7. BFBarbara Freese5:02

      Right. Well, in his case, he had actually been a physicist who was, uh, very involved in the Cold War weapons program, so he kind of came at it from that direction. And it wasn't until really he had retired from his, his sort of main scientific and academic work that he was brought in to work for the, the tobacco industry. But what happened was this handful of scientists, um, profiled in that movie and, and in the book by the same name, um, they would also then work with these nonprofit groups, these free market groups that were strongly opposed to regulation of industries. And so, and those same groups then would address lots of different issues, from tobacco to ozone and, and now to climate change, and, and really a lot of other, uh, scientific issues as well for industries facing regulation.

   8. JRJoe Rogan5:50

      God, someone should do a psychological profile of those people, particularly the tobacco people-

   9. BFBarbara Freese5:55

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JRJoe Rogan5:55

       ... because there's, like, such a direct correlation between tobacco and cancer. Like, it's... The climate change thing, it's almost like, boy, it's so hard to track because it's so far in advance, and if you say that climate change isn't real, what deaths are caused? Is it directly attributable to that? Like, how do you-You know what I'm saying? But, like, cancer and cigarettes, it's like here's a person, they smoke cigarettes, they have cancer.

   11. BFBarbara Freese6:16

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JRJoe Rogan6:17

       You said it didn't come from cigarettes. What does that feel like to you-

   13. BFBarbara Freese6:20

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan6:20

       ... to, to be that person that actively tries to... Well, they're essentially lying. They're lying for money.

   15. BFBarbara Freese6:28

       They're lying. Let, let me just back up one second-

   16. JRJoe Rogan6:30

       Okay.

4. 6:31 – 10:01

   Why denial works: delays, complexity, and internal rationalizations (tobacco example)

   1. BFBarbara Freese6:31

      ... and, and then talk about that, just because, uh, I, I wanna make it clear that while the, the link between c- smoking and cancer may seem entirely obvious, there's enough of a delay that opens up-

   2. JRJoe Rogan6:42

      Mm-hmm.

   3. BFBarbara Freese6:42

      ... the opportunity for denial. The link between putting greenhouse gases in the air and, and dramatic climate change, that's actually as establi- well-established as the links between smoking and cancer. It's just that there... it is a more complicated process-

   4. JRJoe Rogan6:56

      Yes.

   5. BFBarbara Freese6:56

      ... and, and there's potentially more of a delay, and it depends in large part on what humans do along the way. So, so it does, it does get kind of complicated. As far as, uh, psychologically profiling the, the tobacco companies, I mean, or the tobacco executives, I won't presume to suggest this book does that, but, but I do write a lot about what the, these folks were saying, not just to the public, but to, you know, internally. We've got some internal documents and, and certain things that may have been public utterances, but were clearly just sort of part of their internal rationalization.

   6. JRJoe Rogan7:28

      Mm-hmm.

   7. BFBarbara Freese7:29

      And for example, I start the book with a quote from the head of Philip Morris, who says, "Who knows what you would do if you didn't smoke? Maybe you'd beat your wife. Maybe you'd-"

   8. JRJoe Rogan7:38

      Yeah.

   9. BFBarbara Freese7:38

      "... drive cars fast." And, you know, that, that's part of how I think the tobacco industry approached this. They would, they would imagine this sort of counterfactual, uh, where, you know, a world without tobacco, without cigarettes, and then they would imagine what that would be like. And, of course, they'd always imagine it was much, much, much worse than-

   10. JRJoe Rogan7:57

       Much, much worse. Yeah.

   11. BFBarbara Freese7:58

       ... smoking, right?

   12. JRJoe Rogan7:58

       Yeah. I read that part. And also, the, the man in question wound up quitting cigarettes, so...

   13. BFBarbara Freese8:04

       Right. Yeah. He, he had to-

   14. JRJoe Rogan8:05

       He started-

   15. BFBarbara Freese8:06

       ... quit fairly quickly.

   16. JRJoe Rogan8:06

       ... wife-beating and speeding and (laughs) what, what does he do?

   17. BFBarbara Freese8:09

       Right. Exactly, yeah. That was the question. And, and we never really did find that out.

   18. JRJoe Rogan8:13

       It's such a strange way to live your life, to, to, to be deceptive in a way that you know is gonna... I mean, the, there's... I don't know how many people have gotten cancer from cigarettes, but it's probably millions.

   19. BFBarbara Freese8:26

       Well, and it isn't just cancer, it's heart-

   20. JRJoe Rogan8:28

       Yeah.

   21. BFBarbara Freese8:28

       ... disease, etc., so-

   22. JRJoe Rogan8:29

       Yeah.

   23. BFBarbara Freese8:29

       ... millions... I mean, uh, I've seen an estimate that in the 20th century, smoking killed... I wanna make sure I get this right. I think it was 100 million people.

   24. JRJoe Rogan8:39

       Oh, wow.

   25. BFBarbara Freese8:39

       More than, more than maybe both wars, world wars put together. Uh, uh, it's 7 million a year, I think, is the, is the global death toll. In the US, it's, uh-

   26. JRJoe Rogan8:51

       Half a million?

   27. BFBarbara Freese8:51

       ... 480,000 a year. Yeah, mm-hmm.

   28. JRJoe Rogan8:54

       Directly attributable.

   29. BFBarbara Freese8:55

       Right. They trace-

   30. JRJoe Rogan8:56

       Yeah.
5. 10:01 – 18:27

   The earliest ‘industrial denial’ case study: Britain’s slave-trade rescue narrative

   1. BFBarbara Freese10:01

      dynamic is they start thinking about themselves, uh, and, and their truly lofty mission, which isn't just to sell a product, but something else. It's to protect freedom, or if you're a slave trader, it's to rescue the Africans from terrible lives in Africa and bring them to the comfortable plantations. Um...

   2. JRJoe Rogan10:19

      That was actually an argument?

   3. BFBarbara Freese10:21

      Oh, yeah. The, the slave trade had a complete rescue narrative. I'm talking about the British slave trade here, because that was, that was the first really intense campaign of industrial denial I could find. The Brit- uh, the British dominated the slave trade in the 1700s, and the (laughs) ... uh, they faced a very powerful abolition movement at the end of that century, which was really going to the public and saying, "Look at how brutal this is." They had witnesses. They had the torture devices. They had all kinds of evidence. Um, and the British were really responding, because they... even though they dominated the slave trade, you know, they, they had this notion of themselves as civilized and, and promoting freedom and being very humane. So this was starting to really affect the industry. So the traders and the planters got together. They formed a slave lobby. They had a very organized campaign in response, and-

   4. JRJoe Rogan11:16

      There was a slave lobby?

   5. BFBarbara Freese11:18

      There was a very powerful slave lobby. I mean, the, the thing about the slave trade was you had people invested in it, from the royal family down to the, the local bakers, uh, to many members of Parliament. I mean, it was a widely accepted, fully legitimate industry. So the, the abolitionists really had their work cut out from- for them. And they had all this evidence. The industry comes back and they, they knew they couldn't just say, "Oh, it's not so brutal." They actually came back with this complete counternarrative, which was, "We are rescuing these people," that, that they're... the Africans are eager to be purchased. They actually try to market themselves as how fit they are for, for work. They enjoy that crossing across the Atlantic. There is singing, dancing, games of chance. Um...And when they get to the plantations, it is incredibly comfortable. They get comfy little houses. It's like a cradle-to-grave welfare state. They don't have to worry if they get sick, we take care of them, we feed them. Um, and they're doing way better than those poor peasants back there in Britain, or those poor miners, or those people working in, in the new factories. So, uh, that was, that was part of it. And, and the next part of it was that they, they said that if they had left them in Africa, if you didn't continue this trade, all of these prisoners of war would be massacred, or they would be eaten by cannibals-

   6. JRJoe Rogan12:44

      (laughs)

   7. BFBarbara Freese12:45

      ... or they would die of famine. So, they were... This was a rescue narrative. And here's the really clever part of this, because if you believe that you are rescuing (laughs) them or/and if you persuade other people... I'm not suggesting the industry believed this, but if you can persuade people that you are rescuing them, the flip side of it is, that abolition would doom them. You would be shutting the gates of mercy on mankind. Uh, because a- as one, one trader put it, the house of bondage is really the, the house of freedom to them. I may have mis-spoken that a little bit, but it was a truly Orwellian quote. And-

   8. JRJoe Rogan13:22

      Wow.

   9. BFBarbara Freese13:22

      ... and, and so that way, you, you translate abolition into inhumanity, into brutality. And, and you portray the continued slave trade as a way to, to save these people. Oh, one, one quote was great, that if you were to free these slaves... And, and by the way, at this point, they weren't actually talking about freeing the existing slaves, just stopping the flow of new slaves. But one of the quotes was that, "Freeing the slaves would be cramming liberty down the throats of people incapable of digesting it."

   10. JRJoe Rogan13:54

       Wow.

   11. BFBarbara Freese13:54

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan13:55

       So this was the first example that you found of industry-

   13. BFBarbara Freese13:59

       Right.

   14. JRJoe Rogan13:59

       ... that was working to try to distort the perceptions of reality, so that they can continue what they're doing.

   15. BFBarbara Freese14:06

       Right. And, uh, you know, they did a lot of other things that we've seen modern industries doing. They, they fr- you know, I mentioned the reference to the poor peasants, and, and they also talked about, you know, "How would you like it, Britain, if, if people came in and started telling the peasants and the soldiers and the sailors that they had rights?" Uh, you know, so basically this kind of, you know, "Help us or you are next."

   16. JRJoe Rogan14:31

       Oh, wow.

   17. BFBarbara Freese14:31

       "Your whole class structure is going to collapse." That kind of an argument. Um, and then they had an argument about basically f- failing to make a distinction between their industry and their interests and the whole country, or rather, you know, kind of an early version of what's good for the country is good for GM and vice versa.

   18. JRJoe Rogan14:49

       Mm.

   19. BFBarbara Freese14:49

       They said, "If you abolish this trade, it means universal bankruptcy for the kingdom. It means Britain is not powerful anymore. It means Britain becomes a province of France. Uh, it means, in the sugar islands, that the slaves will massacre the, the whites, exterminate the whites, and, and... or maybe make the whites slaves." Um, so they basically, you know, just created this incredible slippery slope that every, that any kind of reform or certainly abolition of this industry would, would be disastrous for the entire kingdom.

   20. JRJoe Rogan15:19

       So, uh, how well documented is this in terms of like the influencers, like who, who started this? Like how... And did... Is it... Was there, there, like open discussions about how to spin this in a way that it's going to get people to think that slavery is a good thing?

   21. BFBarbara Freese15:33

       Well, I don't know about internal discussions within the industry. What we do have are, uh, lots and lots of books and pamphlets, because this was all done in writing.

   22. JRJoe Rogan15:42

       Mm-hmm.

   23. BFBarbara Freese15:43

       We also have some hearings, and we have, uh, parliamentary debates. They were recorded, not, you know, verbatim, but people tried to write (laughs) them down. And so we have some version of what was actually said in these debates and the various hearings. There were parliamentary hearings. So there's actually quite a lot of evidence of the arguments being made in their own words.

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:03

       So, and then this was primarily in Britain, right?

   25. BFBarbara Freese16:07

       Right. This is... Well, that's what I'm talking about here. Obviously, there was the... We had our own abolition movement here-

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:12

       Right.

   27. BFBarbara Freese16:12

       ... and our own debate.

   28. JRJoe Rogan16:13

       That's what I was gonna ask you. Did those same arguments, um, did they actually get presented in the United States?

   29. BFBarbara Freese16:18

       Some of them did. Uh, in the United States, it was different, because, of course, you had an entire society, uh, built around slavery. And it... I read one, one reference, one historian saying that about half of the defenses of slavery came from the clergy. It wasn't quite the same sort of clearly, "Here's an industry and, and here's an audience that they're talking to." Um, so that's one of the reasons I didn't focus quite, uh, at all really on the, on the American debate.

   30. JRJoe Rogan16:47

       Half of it was from clergy?
6. 18:27 – 27:02

   Human nature meets corporate structure: diffusion of responsibility and shareholder primacy

   1. BFBarbara Freese18:27

      And I realized early on, there was just no way to write this book if I was gonna try to parse that out, and I also decided it doesn't matter that much, because I think these are really m- very much intertwined, um, and, uh, they're both equally destructive and they're both, I think, equally responsive to these kind of external circumstances that we create in corporations when we form corporations and we put them into a, into a marketplace. So, I, I do think it's part of human nature. Um, I do think we've created this system that brings this out in people, and really encourages it in, in so many ways. I mean, you mentioned the diffusion of responsibility, and that is huge, because we do know, and, and I dip into the social psychology in here, not a ton of it, because that science is still relatively new and, and kind of, you know, a little bit thin-

   2. JRJoe Rogan19:17

      Mm-hmm.

   3. BFBarbara Freese19:17

      ... compared to the environmental science that I, that I talk about, which is very, very deep. But, um, we do know that when you, when you diffuse responsibility, it makes it very easy for people not to feel responsible for the harm that's done. So, if you've got a corporation, of course you have division of labor. You also have division of management from ownership, so if you're a lower worker and you're told to lie about something or cause some harm, well, you're minding your own business, and you bl- and, and you let the, your boss take responsibility. If you're the boss, uh, you're focused maybe on y- y- your employees and, and certainly on your shareholders, so if you're lying about something or causing harm, it doesn't necessarily feel like a personal, selfish act of deception. It probably feels like an act of loyalty and responsibility-

   4. JRJoe Rogan20:05

      Mm-hmm.

   5. BFBarbara Freese20:05

      ... to your sharehol- shareholders. Your shareholders aren't going to care or know, because first of all, they're far away usually. Uh, they, they don't really know what's going on. They have maybe just a temporary transactional interest in what's going on. They just bought the stock. They want to sell it quickly and make some money, so, so you don't really have anybody there who feels really responsible for this. Th- there was a definition of a, of the corporation from the early 20th century in something called The Cynic's Dictionary as, "An ingenious device for obtaining personal profit without personal responsibility."

   6. JRJoe Rogan20:41

      Mm-hmm.

   7. BFBarbara Freese20:41

      And, and of course, that is exactly what we intend from corporations, because they are, we, we grant limited liability to the shareholders.

   8. JRJoe Rogan20:50

      Mm-hmm.

   9. BFBarbara Freese20:50

      And, and that's why, it's that, it's that protection from risk that people are willing to pool their capital, and, and that's sort of very key to, to the very idea of a, of a corporation. And then, of course, the, uh, the focus on profits means that you're constantly focused on, uh, on money and, you know, it, every, in, in the most short-term way, not even long-term profits, which would be a narrow enough focus, um, but then there's a lot of other things to add to it. Uh, you, you've got competition, um, by definition, uh, certainly if you're in a competitive markets, we want there to be competition, and so that means you are already in a, a kind of tribal mindset. Uh, and you've got the ideology of the marketplace, which, you know, we can go back to Adam Smith, the invisible hand and, and basically the notion that if you, you can pursue your own self-interest and the marketplace will automatically convert that to public good. And that does work in a lot of cases, and probably worked a lot better in the 1700s, but when you've got these enormous organizations that have incredible market power and these very new risky technologies often, uh, it, it is much harder to, to be confident that that's going to work. And then i- more recently, we've seen that, that idea that you don't have to worry about the social consequences of your commercial action, uh, just get intensified. We, we had, you know, Milton Friedman in 1970 writing this very persuasive article saying that the only real objective, the only legitimate objective of a corporation is to maximize shareholder profit, and if they're talking about protecting the environment or doing any of these other things, that's socialism, and, and that's illegitimate. And th- and that really did, uh, sway a lot of people. That movement really moved forward and then it got more extreme in the '90s and, and in the 21st century where you've got this, this strain of, of, you know, intense faith in market forces that was manifested by Alan Greenspan, uh, at the Fed, by the Koch brothers, uh, David Koch has passed away, so, so now Charles Koch, and the network of influence groups that he created, the, the think tanks, the free market groups, these different academic groups. So, you know, one, one of the things that I, I try to trace a little bit in the book is talking about the rise of the consumer movement and the environmental movement in the '60s and '70s and people saying, "Wait a minute. We need corporations to, to be aware of these problems, and we need government to regulate corporations to make sure that our cars are safe and our ozone layer is not destroyed." Uh, but then starting in 1980 when Reagan is elected, you suddenly see those, those concerns replaced with a concern over regulation and, and really a backlash that, that, you know, has, has come and gone, but basically intensified over the years. And, and now of course we have a situation where, you know, not only do we have a government unwilling to regulate, but we have one that is rolling back critical regulations that were put in place by previous administrations.

   10. JRJoe Rogan24:01

       And of course influenced by these very corporations to do that.

   11. BFBarbara Freese24:05

       Absolutely. And I mean, it gets, it gets kind of complicated here, because if you think, for example, about Charles Koch and Koch Industries, it's based in oil refining, so that is very much based in the fossil fuel industry.But, but, uh, the Koch network is very ideological, passionately ideological. Um, and they just happen to coincide with, with being in the- in the fossil fuel industry. But you have a lot of other groups that have received money from oil companies, from the coal industry, so it gets kind of integrated. Um, I do try to not treat them all the same in the book. I try to kind of differentiate and- and you really do have a difference between the- the kind of Koch perspective, the coal industry perspective, the oil industry perspective, and then all of these little free market groups, actually they fit more around the Koch side.

   12. JRJoe Rogan24:54

       But they all seem to have one thing in common, that they're rationalizing and justifying their actions because they wanna continue to make profits regardless of the impact on the environment or the people.

   13. BFBarbara Freese25:04

       Exactly.

   14. JRJoe Rogan25:05

       And this, that's a weird thing about just the idea of a corporation itself, it's almost like a diabolical vehicle for- for allowing people to do things.

   15. BFBarbara Freese25:14

       (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan25:15

       You know? To- to- to be able to do something and say, "Hey, we're gonna do this as a collective and therefore no- no individuals are responsible for the results of the collective." Particularly if you're not the one who gets to decide what gets done, you're just taking orders and you're just doing your job, and your job is segmented, and it's all compartmentalized so you're not- you're not dumping anything in the river bottom.

   17. BFBarbara Freese25:37

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JRJoe Rogan25:37

       You don't have to worry about that.

   19. BFBarbara Freese25:38

       Mm-hmm.

   20. JRJoe Rogan25:38

       But, uh, I like your new car and that's a beautiful house that you got- you bought with the profits of poisoning lakes.

   21. BFBarbara Freese25:43

       (laughs) Well...

   22. JRJoe Rogan25:44

       It's weird.

   23. BFBarbara Freese25:44

       That's- that's exactly it. In fact I- I suggest in the book that if you were a super villain and you wanted to create a society that would ultimately destroy itself by imposing huge risks on each other and on the planet-

   24. JRJoe Rogan25:58

       Mm.

   25. BFBarbara Freese25:59

       ... you would probably create something that looks a lot like our current corporate-dominated global economy, in the sense of these organizations that amplify your self-interest, that diminish your sense of responsibility, that amplify all of your biases. You'd have a justifying ideology to make it all seem fine, you would have the- the responsibility so diffuse that nobody would really feel too badly about it, uh, and you would give these folks incredible political power, including constitutional rights, so that they could dominate your democracy, so that they could, uh, y- basically corporations can do whatever is legal, used to not be that way. They could do whatever they were authorized to do by their charter and then they'd have to stop. So they'd get a- the permission to build a canal and then they'd- and then they'd be done and go away. Eventually we made them immortal in that they could do whatever they wanted, uh, as long as it's legal, and then we gave them huge amount of power to determine what actually is legal by influencing our democracy.

7. 27:02 – 29:19

   Corporations shaping law and politics: charters, trust-busting, the New Deal, and modern backlash

   1. JRJoe Rogan27:02

      I was gonna ask you about that. Like, what is the birth of the limited liability corporation? Like when- when did all that occur?

   2. BFBarbara Freese27:08

      Well, they go way back. I mean, during the slave trade they were- they didn't necessarily call them that, but they were essentially owned by shareholders, and so they would, you know, pool their capital, so it's very similar. We've had corp- I mean, actually corporations are centuries old if you go back to, I think, some early universities and things.

   3. JRJoe Rogan27:26

      Mm.

   4. BFBarbara Freese27:27

      But we- w- we didn't have kind of general purpose corporate laws in this country I think until mostly in the 1800s, so when we first formed this country, um, you would have to go to the legislature. There were only a couple of- of significant corporations around, even at the time of the founders, and so that's why you really don't see corporations in the Constitution. No, they're not mentioned because they weren't very powerful. When they did get more powerful, you know, you have some quotes from some of the founders saying, "Ooh, this is- this is a little scary." Uh, and then of course they became very powerful in- in the 1800s, you end up with the Gilded Age and- and so then you have folks like Teddy Roosevelt who are saying, "Wait a minute, the, you know, this is a creation of law and so we get to determine how much power it has." And he responded with the- the kind of trust-busting movements breaking down some of the really big, old trusts. Um, and- and that was, you know, probably the first big pushback where- where the- the government said, "Wait a minute, you corporations are too powerful. We're going to try to reduce that power." Um, and then I think the next big phase of that would have been in the Depression where you have the- the new deal coming in and saying, "Okay, banks, you just wrecked the economy. We're gonna regulate you, we're going to give workers more rights, we're gonna create social security, we're gonna do all kinds of things that- that diminish corporate power over the democracy." And then it happened again in the '60s and '70s, and what I think is a- is that it might be about to happen again given that there is now so much concern about corporate power, uh, you know, Citizens United, influence over our democracy, um, people worried about concentration of wealth at the very, very tippy-top, and, uh, obviously people worried that we are unable to deal with climate change.

8. 29:19 – 32:33

   Social media as the next denial amplifier: polarization, manipulation, and addictive algorithms

   1. JRJoe Rogan29:19

      And, uh, another factor would be the power of social media corporations to influence elections, to influence public discourse. Um, they seem to have kind of snuck in in a way that was really unexpected and people didn't see it coming.

   2. BFBarbara Freese29:34

      Right. Well, I mean, that's actually the pattern.

   3. JRJoe Rogan29:36

      Yeah.

   4. BFBarbara Freese29:36

      People never see it coming.

   5. JRJoe Rogan29:38

      Right.

   6. BFBarbara Freese29:38

      I mean, what- what all of these chapters pretty much begin with some kind of a discovery and some industry races in there and takes advantage of it. I mean, even slavery, the discovery would have been new world and this enormous commercial opportunity if you can just get the workers in there to- to grow the tobacco and the cotton and the sugar. Um, but- but so you would have the discovery, you have an industry springing up to take advantage of it, and- and making a lot of money and- and changing social norms along the way, then problems are emerging, uh, obviously with slavery they were inherent, but problems will emerge. Other people outside the industry discover those problems and pay attention to them, draw attention, and then eventually you get to a law. Now, that's kind of an artificial ending because you have to make sure that law gets enforced, but- but in almost all of these chapters you get to some sort- form of government action where they say, "No, you can't do that anymore. We- we stop this industry, we ban this product or at least we're gonna try to-"... tweak your behavior. Um, but that process, first of all, it takes a long, long time and enormous damage can be done in the meantime.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:45

      Mm.

   8. BFBarbara Freese30:45

      Um, but that process doesn't work. You don't even get your, your somewhat happy ending if the industry has become so powerful that, that it determines whether it gets regulated or not, and it blocks those regulations.

   9. JRJoe Rogan31:00

      Well, that's what I was getting to is 'cause that kinda seems where we're at now with corporations like Facebook. Like, they have an insane amount of power and that power is actually being used to dictate who becomes president.

   10. BFBarbara Freese31:15

       Mm.

   11. JRJoe Rogan31:15

       And that's what's really strange. Like, there's never been a corporation that... I mean, other corporations did their best to influence the market and influence regulations in a way that they can continue to profit, but this is a different thing, where they're literally influence- in- influencing directly who becomes the person who runs the country-

   12. BFBarbara Freese31:37

       (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:37

       ... which is a new thing.

   14. BFBarbara Freese31:38

       Well, it, it's a new thing when they do it through information.

   15. JRJoe Rogan31:42

       Yes.

   16. BFBarbara Freese31:43

       Um, it's not a new thing when they do it through money.

   17. JRJoe Rogan31:45

       Right, of course.

   18. BFBarbara Freese31:45

       Um, that's, that's pretty well established, but, but yeah. I mean, you know, uh, somebody, probably not me because I don't know this, this industry well enough, but, but the pattern is so clear that, that it's clear where we're, where we're heading, right?

   19. JRJoe Rogan32:02

       Mm-hmm.

   20. BFBarbara Freese32:02

       I mean, the problems will get worse and worse. Other people will talk about them. The problems are very new, I think, because we are talking about problems related to information and, and that, you know, and social media, how does social media affect social animals? I mean, this gets-

   21. JRJoe Rogan32:17

       Hm.

   22. BFBarbara Freese32:17

       ... really complicated. It's gonna be hard to figure this out. Um, but in addition to ha- having their own denial about what harms they inadvertently unleash, uh, they are vectors for the denial of other industries, right?

9. 32:33 – 38:08

   Climate action realities: Paris targets, oil-company messaging, and the political-will gap

   1. JRJoe Rogan32:33

      Mm.

   2. BFBarbara Freese32:33

      And so that's one of the reasons climate denial, for example, is still going to be out there and deeply rooted for a long time even though the oil industry, which played a huge role in, in building it up, has basically said, "Uh, we, we accept the climate science. We know this is happening." In fact, the, you know, Exxon Mobil even says it, it accepts the Paris Agreement, which says that we have to limit warming to well below two degrees, um, centigrade. And th- and that sounds small. That's actually a, a, a pretty dangerous amount of warming, but th- that's the target of this Paris Agreement, although it also says we're gonna try to limit it to 1.5 degrees. Now, what that means is dramatically reducing our emissions s- first over the next 10 years. I mean, if you want to limit to 1.5 degrees, we're talking about cutting our emissions by 50%. That means pretty much in- cutting s- f- 50% of our, of our fossil fuel use.

   3. JRJoe Rogan33:29

      Mm.

   4. BFBarbara Freese33:29

      Um, that, that's a simplification, but then you have to go for that more aggressive target to zero, net zero emissions by 2050. So, we're talking essentially about this huge industry having to either completely transform itself or go away within 30 years, and then, by the way, after that, you have to go into negative emissions, which means building a new industry that sucks carbon out of the air and buries it. We haven't even really begun to talk about that, but, but that's assumed what we're gonna have to do because we have now delayed for 30 years thanks in large part to fossil fuel denial. So, so you got Exxon saying, "Yeah, yeah, we, we understand Paris and all that," but if you, if you look at their own projections about what they think is gonna happen, they put out these formal projections of how much oil will be consumed in the whole world and what our emissions are going to be. They still project emissions going up and then sort of leveling off until, like, 2040 by which time, in fact (laughs) , they need to be very, very low. So, it's kind of like the tobacco companies. The big tobacco companies are no longer denying the basic facts. They admit this product is addictive, and I've got a quote in the book from one executive saying, "Yeah, kills about half of our, uh, of our lifetime smoking customers, our most loyal customers."

   5. JRJoe Rogan34:49

      Oof.

   6. BFBarbara Freese34:49

      So... but, uh, you know, and, but despite having for decades said, "If we really believed this was harmful, we wouldn't sell it," um, they're obviously continuing to sell it quite enthusiastically, and that's kind of where we are, I think, with the major oil companies. Coal is still in denial. Oth- others are still denying it, but, but the major oil companies are saying, "Yep, yep, that's a problem," um, but they are still planning on selling more and more of their product, and, and so that is sort of the kernel of denial that that industry has yet to grapple with.

   7. JRJoe Rogan35:22

      But isn't it right now, at least temporarily inseparable in terms of, of our ability to move around, tr- distribute goods? We kinda have to have oil. We have to have gasoline-

   8. BFBarbara Freese35:34

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan35:34

      ... and petroleum products.

   10. BFBarbara Freese35:36

       You, you do-

   11. JRJoe Rogan35:37

       Right now.

   12. BFBarbara Freese35:37

       ... at the moment. Right.

   13. JRJoe Rogan35:38

       At the moment, yeah.

   14. BFBarbara Freese35:38

       Um, but, you know, fortunately, we really do have the technologies to, to, in fact, slash our emissions.

   15. JRJoe Rogan35:46

       Yes.

   16. BFBarbara Freese35:46

       What we don't have is the political will, but you could. I mean, I, it is not impossible to say in 10 years we are going to have closed s- uh, certainly all of our gas plants, and our natural gas plants will either have carbon capture or they will be closed. It's not impossible to say all of our cars, certainly all of our new cars, are going to be electric and we're gonna, we can build an infrastructure. That can be done. It is a massive undertaking. It is... I mean, when people talk about the Green New Deal, uh, sometimes that rhetoric includes World War II and I think that's actually appropriate because we are talking about a, a massive change, uh, that is going to transform our, uh, economy, and at the same time, hopefully, address some of the inequalities that we already have in place. I mean, that, that's gonna make it trickier, but most of the deals-... are, for example, very aware that we're gonna be hurting coal miners, we're gonna be hurting oil rig workers and, and trying to put in place some ways that, that we can keep them from suffering, kee- f- help them find other jobs, help their communities diversify and, and whatnot. So y- you know, if, if we are going to avoid what will be a multi-century catastrophe, in terms of climate change, this is what we have to do. And I, and I ... it's hard for me to even say the word catastrophe, because I know how people hear that. I know it sounds like a crazy exaggeration.

   17. JRJoe Rogan37:08

       Do you really think it does at this point?

   18. BFBarbara Freese37:10

       Well, I think it does to enough people that it, it does.

   19. JRJoe Rogan37:14

       But why?

   20. BFBarbara Freese37:14

       Well-

   21. JRJoe Rogan37:14

       Is it because of propaganda?

   22. BFBarbara Freese37:17

       Uh, yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan37:17

       'Cause it seems like if you ... Yeah, right?

   24. BFBarbara Freese37:19

       Yeah. I mean, there's been so much pushback.

   25. JRJoe Rogan37:19

       'Cause if you pay attention to the people that ... when they give you the worst projections, the, the things that we should avoid ... I mean, when I w- what I was getting at when I was talking about these oil executives still selling oil is that, right now, they have to. I mean, this is, I, I understand that there, there needs to be a shift and I'm absolutely in fa- in favor of that. But if, if there was no oil right now, if they just-

   26. BFBarbara Freese37:41

       Right. That would be-

   27. JRJoe Rogan37:41

       ... cut it all off-

   28. BFBarbara Freese37:42

       That would be a crisis.

   29. JRJoe Rogan37:42

       ... we- yeah. We have a real issue right there.

   30. BFBarbara Freese37:44

       Right. We have a real issue. I mean, humanity has an issue.
10. 38:08 – 50:28

    Markets, carbon pricing, and the China comparison

    1. JRJoe Rogan38:08

       Is the solution finding some method of profiting off of pulling carbon from the atmosphere? It seems like if, if it becomes very effective to do that, that could be an enormous way that these companies can kind of shift.

    2. BFBarbara Freese38:23

       Yeah. Well, uh, I'm not sure that these companies will shift.

    3. JRJoe Rogan38:26

       Some.

    4. BFBarbara Freese38:26

       Some of them could, because they do have drilling technology and whatnot, so they (laughs) could end up being, you know, leaders in actually burying the carbon that they once extracted and put into the atmosphere (laughs) .

    5. JRJoe Rogan38:36

       Oh, that would be so weird.

    6. BFBarbara Freese38:37

       Um, that would be weird. One o- one of the things that's so weird about this whole debate for decades now is that you y- you've got folks talking about how incredibly terrific markets are and how they can handle all these problems. Um, and, you know, starting in the '90s or so, folks were saying, "Great. Okay. Let's put a price on carbon," because otherwise, the markets are totally blind. If you can pollute for completely for free, the market has no incentive to reduce polluting or to draw carbon out of the air and bury it. But the people who seem to have the most faith in the power of markets are the ones most opposed to putting a price on carbon.

    7. JRJoe Rogan39:17

       Mm.

    8. BFBarbara Freese39:17

       So the, the advances we might have made ... And, and some states actually do have a price on carbon, but the advances we might have made more nationally and globally have been blocked by people who, who love markets. And, and here's another ironic part to this. The country who's like our main competitor and, not incidentally, a huge, huge polluter, is China, ostensibly Communist. They believe more in market power (laughs) than, you know, the, the right wing of the Republican Party.

    9. JRJoe Rogan39:46

       How so?

    10. BFBarbara Freese39:46

        They have put a price on carbon, and they are using market forces to try to reduce pollution.

    11. JRJoe Rogan39:53

        Really? So China is more progressive in, in terms of trying to reduce pollution than Americans? Is that-

    12. BFBarbara Freese39:59

        Well, China is polluting a huge amount.

    13. JRJoe Rogan40:01

        Yeah. That's what I was gonna say.

    14. BFBarbara Freese40:03

        But on this particular issue of w- how c- can the markets help us, uh, reduce pollution, they're using market forces to try to reduce their pollution and we're still not.

    15. JRJoe Rogan40:12

        Another really divisive aspect of this is that it's become some sort of a Left versus Right ideological issue. Like, there's a lotta people on the Right that I've had conversations with people that really don't have any idea what they're talking about where they instantly deny that climate change is a real issue. And when you press them on it, and just c- it's one of the benefits of having, uh, the sort of long form conversations.

    16. BFBarbara Freese40:35

        Mm.

    17. JRJoe Rogan40:35

        Is that if you're doing this on CNN and it's one of those talking head things where you only have seven minutes and there's three people shouting over each other, it's very hard to get to the heart of, "Why do you believe this?"

    18. BFBarbara Freese40:45

        Yeah.

    19. JRJoe Rogan40:45

        But when you're talking over long podcasts, hours long, you get to these people and they'll adamantly deny that it's an issue, but they don't know why.

    20. BFBarbara Freese40:59

        (laughs)

    21. JRJoe Rogan41:00

        Do you know what I'm saying? It's like a thing-

    22. BFBarbara Freese41:01

        Yeah. Uh-

    23. JRJoe Rogan41:01

        ... if you're a Right wing pundit or a Right Wing person and you're saying Right Wing things, you're gonna say, "Climate change is not our issue."

    24. BFBarbara Freese41:07

        Mm-hmm.

    25. JRJoe Rogan41:08

        "Our issue right now is the economy."

    26. BFBarbara Freese41:09

        Right. Okay.

    27. JRJoe Rogan41:09

        "What, what we gotta do right now is support jobs and people. There's a lot of people that need to put food on the table. There's a lot of people that need to ..." And then they get this sort of, uh, ranting, raving, pro-economic standpoint-

    28. BFBarbara Freese41:20

        Mm.

    29. JRJoe Rogan41:20

        ... and it becomes a denial of environmental problems that s- becomes Left versus Right, and it's very strange.

    30. BFBarbara Freese41:27

        Yeah.
11. 50:28 – 1:07:40

    Wall Street’s ‘denial’ before the 2008 crisis: complexity, incentives, and passing risk downstream

    1. BFBarbara Freese50:28

       Uh, no, I, I don't really get into it. I mean, I talk a little bit about, uh, yeah, no, it's really not a factor. I mean, the more, the most recent industry that I talk about, the two most recent industries are the fossil fuels denying climate change, and also Wall Street denying the, the, uh, the products and activities and, and hazards that led up to the financial crisis of 2008.

    2. JRJoe Rogan50:51

       That's a can of worms in and of itself, right?

    3. BFBarbara Freese50:54

       (laughs) Yeah. Yeah.

    4. JRJoe Rogan50:54

       You've, you've read Matt Taibbi's work on that?

    5. BFBarbara Freese50:56

       I, I've read some of his work, yeah.

    6. JRJoe Rogan50:58

       Yeah. He's-

    7. BFBarbara Freese50:58

       The vampire squid, uh-

    8. JRJoe Rogan51:00

       Yeah. (laughs)

    9. BFBarbara Freese51:01

       ... clam to the face of humanity. Yeah, that's an immor- immortal line, so his description of Goldman Sachs.

    10. JRJoe Rogan51:07

        Yeah, his work is fascinating and terrifying on it.

    11. BFBarbara Freese51:10

        Yeah.

    12. JRJoe Rogan51:10

        Just you, you... And he's not a guy with a financial background, so he had to do a deep dive into all that stuff for years-

    13. BFBarbara Freese51:17

        Mm-hmm.

    14. JRJoe Rogan51:17

        ... to sort of get a grip on how they do things-

    15. BFBarbara Freese51:19

        Mm-hmm.

    16. JRJoe Rogan51:19

        ... and what they're doing. And the f- the idea that that is the backbone of our civilization, in terms of our economic civilization, is really crazy. What a goofy system.

    17. BFBarbara Freese51:28

        Yeah. And, uh, and, of course, that industry's become, you know, so much bigger, as a percentage of GDP, and so much pr- more powerful without any evident social benefits, as far as I can see. And, you know, I, I'm also not a person with a financial background. I came to this, you know, f- as an environmental lawyer, um, and not as a particularly naive person. But I have to say, I was really astonished at, at the depth of the exploitation. I mean, just the attitude. It wasn't even like we're, we think we're trying to do the right thing for our clients, or we think we're trying to do the right thing for, you know, society. It was, it was just this full-on take the money and run-

    18. JRJoe Rogan52:09

        Mm.

    19. BFBarbara Freese52:09

        ... and, and exploitation. I mean, there's a, they have this cute little code on Wall Street, uh, that was prominent before the crisis. I don't, hope it's not so prominent now. It's, um, IBGYBG, which stands for I'll be gone, you'll be gone, which was the answer when somebody said, "Wait a minute, we're, we're pumping all this risk into the system. Th- this investment product is going to fail. This is all gonna hit the fan, this is all gonna collapse." IBGYBG. And, and-

    20. JRJoe Rogan52:39

        Oh, Jesus.

    21. BFBarbara Freese52:39

        ... the bonuses for selling these crazy risky products, uh, were all front-loaded. So you sell somebody a multi-year product and you get the bonus right up front, so you don't care what the long-term risk is. And the attitude toward their clients, I mean, there, there's a, uh, uh, an author in, in Britain who interviewed all kinds of people, um, and promised them anonymity from the British, uh, uh, the, the, uh, the British financial industry, but it overlaps very much with the US one. And the, the culture was, "Hey, rip your client's face off." You know? "You eat lunch or you, uh, be lunch." And-

    22. JRJoe Rogan53:18

        Oof.

    23. BFBarbara Freese53:18

        ... I mean, a lot of really, really vicious stuff going on. And, uh, risks that y- were, were so obvious that you, you can't believe that they were denying them. I mean, obviously when there's a housing bubble, it will burst.

    24. JRJoe Rogan53:32

        Mm-hmm.

    25. BFBarbara Freese53:33

        And there was an obvious housing bubble, it was denied for a long, long time, and that ultimately became the basis of all of this really toxic debt that got magically transformed into triple A investments. And it wasn't, I think, that the industry was denying that it was going to burst, they just felt they were gonna get in and out before it burst, so they could pass the risk off to the next party before it happened. So, um, I don't know, do we call that, uh, rationalization? Is it... I mean, it's, I, I put it all under the very broad category of denial, but, but, uh, it, uh... Actually, the head of JP Morgan later would testify to the, uh, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, "Somehow, you know, we just missed the fact that housing prices don't go up forever."

    26. JRJoe Rogan54:18

        (scoffs)

    27. BFBarbara Freese54:18

        I don't think they really did miss that fact.

    28. JRJoe Rogan54:19

        They really said it that way?

    29. BFBarbara Freese54:21

        That's what, uh-

    30. JRJoe Rogan54:22

        Just paraphrasing?
12. 1:07:40 – 1:27:30

    Radium: medical promise turned consumer craze, worker poisoning, and victim-blaming

    1. BFBarbara Freese1:07:40

       ... the future of human civilization (laughs) and, uh, and the one that, that I got started on, yeah. But, um, but yeah, I cover, I cover seven other industries, including slavery, radium, um-

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:07:51

       Radium?

    3. BFBarbara Freese1:07:51

       Radium.

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:07:52

       What's the-

    5. BFBarbara Freese1:07:53

       Yeah.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:07:53

       ... industrial strength denial take on radium?

    7. BFBarbara Freese1:07:56

       Radium. Radium is a crazy, crazy story. Um, radium is this insanely, uh, radioactive element that was discovered, you know, around, just ar- right, right around 1900 by the Curies in France. And it was a mystery. I mean, it was way more radioactive than uranium and people didn't even know what radioactivity really meant, but there was a, you know, this sort of aura of wizardry around it. And, and when they discovered it, they didn't, uh, uh ... well, the first thing they discovered, and they discovered this the hard way, was that it burned your flesh. It didn't burn it right away, but you'd carry some around and then in, in s- a few days, you would have a burn there, because it was sending off all this energy. So, they thought, "Okay. We have this flesh-killing, cell-killing element. What can we do with it?" And they thought, "Well, let's try to kill cancer tumors," which was a, actually a very good idea, and they experimented with that. That was the, the medical use for radium. "We're going to put this radium next to a tumor, and then we'll take it away and it'll shrink and we can use the same radium for the next tumor." And so it was a very efficient thing.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:08:59

       What form was the radium in?

    9. BFBarbara Freese1:09:00

       They would put it ... well, they somehow d- would refine it and distill it into, you know, tiny, tiny little amounts, and then they would put it in a needle or put it in a vial or something and just position it, uh, near a tumor. It started out as ore and they had to refine it and refine it down, down, down, down, down. Um, and so, the, the governments at the time in Europe and Al- and also in the US thought, "Great. Here's this weird, crazy, valuable stuff. Maybe we should control this ore so we make sure it gets used to actually cure cancer." And, and in Europe, that's pretty much what they did. In the US, we tried to do that. But the industry, there was a brand new industry that was just forming, and they stepped forward. The, the first company was called Standard Chemical. They stepped forward and said, "No, no, no, no, no. I- if, if the government starts taking over radium because it's radioactive, radium ore, well, everything's a little radioactive. Where will this stop?" It was this classic sort of slippery slope argument. And somehow it, it succeeded and so what happened was this mysterious and potent element became another commercial project, uh, commercial product to be exploited by this, this company, Standard Chemical. There were some others that later popped up. Standard Chemical was founded by this guy named Joe Flannery, and he was, uh, he had a background as, uh, his family w- were morticians, and then he went into industry, and then he was kind of a snake oil salesm- salesman and he kind of failed. But he wanted with radium, he told Congress, to cure cancer. He had a good motive, but he also wanted a big market, right? Cancer is, you know, just one disease, and if you reuse the radium, that's not a market. So, he was determined to expand that market. He actually opened what, what was called the first free radium clinic in the world in 1913 in Pittsburgh, and he invited patients in and hired doctors and thousands of them were injected with radium or they drank radium. So, if you can somehow prove that consuming radium is healthy, then you have a market, right? And many of these people did have cancer, but it turns out that, that injecting them with radium would actually kill them a lot faster than the cancer would have. And one of the clinic doctors was, was questioned before Congress, and, and he explained, well, the way he looked at it, he was just shoving them over a little more quickly. So, he wasn't worried about the fact that he was, he was killing the cancer patients. And they weren't just treating cancer patients. They were treating anybody. They were treating arthritis, they were treating joint pain. And so they were, you know, giving this very toxic substance to people with low level chronic problems. And then he would ... he, he actually formed his own, um, medical journal, and he would have his doctors write up the results of this and, and put it in there and send it out to all the doctors. Uh, so yeah. I mean, it, it was really pretty crazy, but he did succeed in launching this health fad where suddenly there were lots of products that contained radium. Now, some of them said they did, but didn't, but, but many of them really did. Uh, and you could buy your radium, get your radium in all kinds of different ways. If you wanted a radioactive drink, you could drink it. You could still get injected. You could take pills. You could, if you wanted to soak in, in radium, you could buy bath salts, ointments. There was radio- there was radium toothpaste.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:12:29

        Whoa.

    11. BFBarbara Freese1:12:30

        Uh, yeah. Um, and, and, oh, and, and one of the, the more interesting ones, there were, uh, radioactive rectal suppositories. And these were marketed, uh, basically for male sexual dysfunction. That's not what they called it.

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:12:47

        What did they call it?

    13. BFBarbara Freese1:12:47

        Uh, they, they said this was for, as I recall, weak, discer- discouraged men who wanted to perform the duties of a real man.

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:12:56

        (laughs)

    15. BFBarbara Freese1:12:56

        Um, so yeah. And that was, you know, I think what happens is if you're, if you're going to sell a quack product, you try to identify problems that people are kind of embarrassed about, so they're less likely-

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:13:06

        Mm-hmm.

    17. BFBarbara Freese1:13:06

        ... to go to their doctor. They'll, they'll buy it out of the back of a magazine, and then-

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:13:09

        Mm-hmm.

    19. BFBarbara Freese1:13:09

        ... if it doesn't work, they're not gonna complain about it. They're not gonna sue you. Um, so, and, but these were not just marketed for that. They were marketed for colds. They were marketed for obesity, for constipation, for insanity. That was a big one, trying to cure insanity. So yeah, it becomes a health fad. Um-

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:13:25

        How long did this go on for?

    21. BFBarbara Freese1:13:26

        Well, pro- it pretty much fizzled out in the '30s, largely because one particularly prominent and wealthy individual could afford to poison himself very thoroughly by drinking these radium drinks, uh, every day. And ultimately, his-... his facial bones started to dissolve.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:13:46

        Oh, God.

    23. BFBarbara Freese1:13:46

        His teeth fell out, he had, like, holes between his sinuses and his mouth.

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:13:51

        (exhales)

    25. BFBarbara Freese1:13:52

        This is actually what happened as well to a, a group of workers who were painting radium paint onto watch dials, which is actually a more well-known part of this history. Um, a lot of young women were hired to paint radium onto watch dials. Not just watch dials, they put them onto-

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:14:08

        Oh my God.

    27. BFBarbara Freese1:14:08

        ... all kinds of products.

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:14:09

        Look at this, these images.

    29. BFBarbara Freese1:14:11

        Oh.

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:14:12

        You can see it up here.

Episode duration: 1:50:10