Joe Rogan Experience #2360 - Caroline Fraser

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drum music plays) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drum music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rhythmical rock music plays) Thanks for doing this.

   2. CFCaroline Fraser0:13

      Thank you for having me.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      So I read about the premise of your book online, and immediately I'm like, "I gotta talk to this lady."

   4. CFCaroline Fraser0:21

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:21

      "That sounds crazy." Um, please tell people what the premise is, just so we can get started with this.

   6. CFCaroline Fraser0:28

      Yeah, well, I started thinking about this a long time ago, um-

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:32

      The book's called Murderland.

   8. CFCaroline Fraser0:33

      Yeah, the- the book is Murderland, and, um, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s around the time when there were a lot of, you know, serial killers beginning to pop up. And there always had been this question, why are there so many serial killers in the Pacific Northwest? And so that was the question I was really thinking about, and the- the premise, as it emerged from the research that I did and from some of the facts that I learned about what was happening in the Northwest in this run up to the 1970s is that, um, there may be a connection between, uh, the lead pollution, um, that was prevalent, uh, in the area because of smelters and leaded gas and serial killers. Um, because lead, of course, as we, I think, most people now know has a connection to a heightened aggression and violence in the people who've been exposed to it. So that was, you know, what emerged to me, uh, gradually over the years. I mean, I didn't know a lot about this when I started. Um, I knew about the serial killers, but I didn't really know about the whole lead story, and that came about, you know, I learned about it in part because of some murders. (laughs) I mean, I live in, uh, Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is a lovely place. Um, unfortunately, New Mexico has a high rate of homicides, um, in part it's because it's a poor state, and, uh, doesn't have a big tax base and has, you know, some issues with, uh, drug and alcohol addiction. And few years ago, maybe 2008 or something like that, um, some people, couple of people were murdered down the street from me, and I live in a very peaceful neighborhood, (laughs) you know, very... Um, and that was something that really made me start thinking about, um, the issue of maybe, you know, it might be a good idea to think of moving back to the Pacific Northwest, (laughs) um, uh, which I wanted to do anyway, because I have family up there and... Um, and a few years later, because of that, I was up in the Northwest and looking at real estate ads, and at this point I didn't really know anything about the smelter or the, um, the lead issues. But I was looking at property on Vashon Island, which if you know anything about the Pacific Northwest, is in Puget Sound, it's right across from West Seattle, beautiful little, uh, it was quite rural when I was growing up there, beautiful place. And I came across a real estate ad that said... And this is just for undeveloped property, and it said, "Arsenic remediation may be necessary." And I thought, "Wow, w- what (laughs) , what could possibly have caused so much arsenic pollution on Vashon Island that you would have to get it remediated?" I mean, that just seemed crazy to me. And I was so curious about that, and I looked it up online and, you know, within minutes discovered that there had been, uh, an infamous lead and copper smelter in the City of Tacoma, which is just south of Vashon Island, and so Vashon received a lot of the pollution from that smelter. And so that began a whole process of- of kind of learning about what happened here, you know, what happened in this region. And I also knew, uh, because I'm sort of really interested in serial killers, (laughs) as I mentioned, and had been for- for a long time, reading about them and reading about Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway, um, and I knew that both Bundy and Gary Ridgway, who was the Green River killer, um, had grown up in Tacoma at the same time that the smelter is... You know, the smelter had been operated- operating there since the 1880s, 1890s, so for a very long time. And I could see that a lot of, uh, news media had been devoted to looking at what had happened in this- in this region, you know? There was a wh- whole map, a GIS map, geographic, you know, information systems that allowed you to look up individual houses...... you know, residential homes in Tacoma and see how much arsenic and lead pollution was in the yards. So I discovered (laughs) that you could actually look up the house where Ted Bundy grew up and see how much lead was in his front yard and his backyard. And the more I read about lead pollution and lead, uh, the association with aggression and violence, the more I wondered, is there a story to be told here about this issue?

   9. JRJoe Rogan6:35

      So this, this i- issue of lead pollution, is it just serial killers or is there an elevated amount of violent crime that goes along with it?

   10. CFCaroline Fraser6:47

       Yeah. The, the issue of serial killers is one that I kind of introduced as a, you know, the most extreme example.

   11. JRJoe Rogan6:58

       Right.

   12. CFCaroline Fraser6:58

       But most, most of the research that's been done has focused on, um, aggression, juvenile delinquency, for example. There are long-term studies that look at kids who were exposed to lead, um, including in relatively small amounts, um, and then what happens to them later, um, you know, by the time they're, you know, teenagers or young adults. And they have shown a very strong association with, um, you know, problems with learning, uh, ADHD, uh, and, and as I said, delinquency and, and crime.

   13. JRJoe Rogan7:45

       And would... They've even shown that in places that don't have smelters, where people are just dealing with leaded gasoline that was used up until the 1990s, right?

   14. CFCaroline Fraser7:55

       That's right. Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan7:56

       They had decrease in IQ, uh, a lot of factors that they can directly tie into just the lead from gasoline, which is significantly less than I would assume you'd get from a large-scale smelting operation.

   16. CFCaroline Fraser8:13

       Yeah. And the, the leaded gas is particularly tragic because that was essentially a kind of (laughs) um, horrific experiment that was conducted on generations of kids in this country.

   17. JRJoe Rogan8:29

       Yeah.

   18. CFCaroline Fraser8:29

       Um, and adults, because everybody was exposed to that.

   19. JRJoe Rogan8:34

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CFCaroline Fraser8:35

       Um, obviously some people more than others. If you lived next to a major highway or something like that, you're getting more of it than-

   21. JRJoe Rogan8:44

       Yeah.

   22. CFCaroline Fraser8:44

       ... um, than if you maybe lived somewhere else. Although I think rural people were also exposed, um, because of the kinds of machinery and stuff that's used, uh, on farms and, and so forth. So it was, it was a terrible idea, and they knew that at the time, you know, the companies, the corporations, the people who introduced it, uh, Standard Oil, DuPont, et cetera. Um, they knew the dangers of this. They were told by medical doctors (laughs) -

   23. JRJoe Rogan9:21

       Really?

   24. CFCaroline Fraser9:21

       ... who said... Yeah. Uh, who said, "This will expose everybody to, you know, more lead than, than human beings have ever had to deal with before."

   25. JRJoe Rogan9:34

       Wow.

   26. CFCaroline Fraser9:35

       And-

   27. JRJoe Rogan9:35

       And they just did it to stop the engines from knocking?

   28. CFCaroline Fraser9:39

       They did, and apparently there were alternatives, but the alternatives, which were s- like ethanol, um, were not something that could be patented.

   29. JRJoe Rogan9:50

       Oh.

   30. CFCaroline Fraser9:50

       And (laughs) were not, uh, products-
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Yeah. I think that…

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:00

      uh, love to watch those true crime shows and those serial killer m- which I... That disturbs the shit out of me. Like, m- my family was watching something on, uh, The Night Stalker on Richard Ramirez and, uh, I'm like, "I can't watch this. I can't wa-... I get sick. I get sick and I can't watch it." They're, like, fascinated. Like, why is that? Why do you think women are so interested? I'm not, like, lumping you in with all women, but there is a weird thing with women and true crime podcasts.

   2. CFCaroline Fraser15:29

      Yeah. I think that that has to do with the fact that women deal with fear. You know, fear of... Um, and it may be very, you know, nebulous, it may be kind of unclear what... You know, but a lot of women have just had the experience of being afraid walking alone at night or-

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:51

      Mm.

   4. CFCaroline Fraser15:51

      ... walking through a parking lot or... You know, or they've had direct experience of, you know, some kind of, of male violence or aggression, you know, at home, domestic violence. So I think there's a whole gamut of experiences that women, uh, have had, uh, to one extent or another that feed into that. And for me, it was growing up, you know, just a couple of miles from the places where Ted Bundy began abducting women in the summer of, you know, the, the winter and summer of 1974 and everybody knew there was somebody out there. This is at a time when the term serial killer wasn't even really in use yet. People didn't really understand the phenomenon. Um-

   5. JRJoe Rogan16:48

      Mm.

   6. CFCaroline Fraser16:48

      ... it was still kind of a- an unusual, um, thing and, and this, this was happening, you know, women were disappearing from dorm rooms or their rooms at University of Washington, they were disappearing off the street, uh, and then they weren't seen again for weeks, for months. You know, in the... July of 1974, I was 13 and on a really hot, you know, Sunday afternoon in 1974, two women disappeared from a crowded beach at Lake Sammamish, which was about, you know, 10 minutes from my house. And so having had that experience of, of being around at that time, it was incredibly, you know... It was, it was both really disturbing, but also I just really wanted to understand what was happening.

   7. JRJoe Rogan17:50

      So did you plan on writing a book about serial killers or was this understanding of the lead and the arsenic what led you...... down to write this book?

   8. CFCaroline Fraser18:04

      Yeah, I never really wanted to write a book that was just about serial killers. I mean, I think that's been done, you know? (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan18:11

      Right.

   10. CFCaroline Fraser18:11

       And lots of people have, have done that and done a good job, you know? I mean, Ann Rule, the woman who wrote the first, uh, book about Ted Bundy, who knew Ted Bundy.

   11. JRJoe Rogan18:22

       Oh, she knew him?

   12. CFCaroline Fraser18:22

       Yes. She, she worked with him, uh, at a rape crisis clinic-

   13. JRJoe Rogan18:28

       Oh my God.

   14. CFCaroline Fraser18:28

       ... in Seattle. Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan18:30

       He worked at a rape crisis clinic. Wow.

   16. CFCaroline Fraser18:33

       Yeah. He, he was very interested in doing research on rape. (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan18:37

       Wow.

   18. CFCaroline Fraser18:37

       Because, of course, he was something of an expert, so yeah, yeah, that was why that book was such a phenomenon because she knew him before anybody had identified, you know, anything in him. She liked him. She was friends with him.

   19. JRJoe Rogan18:55

       Wow.

   20. CFCaroline Fraser18:56

       She gave him, you know, a ride to the Christmas party. (laughs) She-

   21. JRJoe Rogan19:00

       Oh my God.

   22. CFCaroline Fraser19:02

       Yeah, and-

   23. JRJoe Rogan19:02

       Was this while he was killing or before he started?

   24. CFCaroline Fraser19:06

       Well-

   25. JRJoe Rogan19:07

       Is it known?

   26. CFCaroline Fraser19:07

       ... the thing that we don't really know about Ted Bundy is when he started killing. He would never answer that question, and one of the cases that I talk about that really is part of what made me want to write this book is, is a case, um, of an eight-year-old girl who was abducted in Tacoma in, uh, 1961, in August of 1961, Ann, Ann Marie Burr, and he was 14 at that time, and, uh, he is now one of the principal subs- suspects, I think, uh, behind her abduction.

   27. JRJoe Rogan19:47

       Oh, wow.

   28. CFCaroline Fraser19:47

       So that may have been his first-

   29. JRJoe Rogan19:50

       14?

   30. CFCaroline Fraser19:50

       ... uh, murder.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   The vol- …

   1. CFCaroline Fraser30:00

      So there's not a lot of driving, uh, happening in terms of the, the, what we see now.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:06

      The vol-

   3. CFCaroline Fraser30:06

      I mean, yeah, the, the, it just wasn't as, as big of a deal, um...It was, you know, rare to have one car, m- much less, you know, two or, or three, and then during the war you had ... I mean, the war, World War II is really interesting to look at in terms of lead because I have a sort of little chapter about this because during World War II, gasoline, of course, was rationed. You know, they needed all of it for the war effort. But the war effort itself, um, raised the amount of metals, all these metals. Lead, copper, uh, et cetera were needed so intensively for the war that they began to be produced more than at any other time in world history. And so, the pollution from that, you know, from producing all these, you know, tanks and vehicles and planes and everything that they needed, uh, (laughs) was really b- going to form the basis of what would become the Superfund program because a lot of the Superfund sites in this country can be traced back to World War II, and so that's when a lot of the stuff started entering, um, the environment. Uh, and once it's there, it's really hard to get rid of it. I mean, that's the problem with lead. It doesn't wash away. It doesn't go anywhere. It just hangs around and, uh, becomes, you know, part of our (laughs) environment. It becomes dust that is, you know, in people's houses or their attics, um, and, and that, I think, is what people eventually started, you know, eh, when p- when after the war, people started driving lots and, lots more, you know, in the '50s and '60s, uh, this country particularly was, um, doing (laughs) really well economically and everybody was buying cars and driving them for the first time, um, you know, en masse. And so-

   4. JRJoe Rogan32:21

      In, in history. In human history.

   5. CFCaroline Fraser32:22

      That's right.

   6. JRJoe Rogan32:23

      Yeah.

   7. CFCaroline Fraser32:23

      And so, it really becomes, I think, a, a heavy, um, pollutant around that time, and so by the '70s, the kids who had been, you know, born in the '50s, they're starting to show the effects of lead poisoning.

   8. JRJoe Rogan32:40

      Mm. I have a friend who, uh, briefly lived in Brooklyn and, uh, he had a very small backyard that he was gonna try to grow some plants in, grow, grow a small garden, um, but he, uh, did some soil samples, he's a very, very intelligent guy, did some soil samples and sent it to a university to get it tested and it was just filled with lead, and he was like, "What is this all about?" And they were like, "It's all from leaded gasoline." So this was in the 2000s, so I think this was around 2012, 2013, and they had told him there's, uh, a few things that you could do. There's certain plants that you could grow that would remove some of it from the soil other than completely excavating and replacing it with fresh soil, but his whole backyard was essentially lead poisoned.

   9. CFCaroline Fraser33:28

      Yeah, it's, um-

   10. JRJoe Rogan33:30

       "When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler." (laughs) Join a car sharing club today. That was during the r- the gas rationing days. Some of these are crazy. That one's the craziest one but ... "Have you really tried to save gas by getting into a gas club? They do it, so can we." Oh, clown cars? What is that? A wagon? Uh, sorta, yeah. What is that? It's a bunch of soldiers in the back. Soldiers. Oh, okay. Wow. So they were just, this was all just about gas rationing. Wow. Save fuel to make munitions for the battle. Wow. "The daughter who heaped on the coal." Wow, they're mad at her. Look at her. (laughs) Oh, no, I'm trying to stay warm and stay alive. (laughs) Wow. So, um, is there an uptick in violence in these areas where they were, um, m- making stuff for the war effort where they would be polluting the area? This is an ad for BetterHelp. The internet is a breeding ground for misinformation. Even a simple search for ways to get rid of a headache can produce millions and millions of results from taking pain relievers, to detoxes, to medication, to cold compresses. It's overwhelming, and even when you do find something that's true that works for other people, it might not work for you. In some cases, it's better to just ask a living, breathing expert. If you have a headache that won't go away, go talk to a doctor, and if you're struggling with your mental health, consult a credentialed therapist. You can learn a lot about yourself in therapy like how to be kind to yourself, and how to be the best version of you, whether you wanna learn how to better manage stress, improve your relationships, gain more confidence, or something else, it starts with therapy. Try it for yourself with BetterHelp. Millions have benefited from their services and there's a reason people rate it so highly. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/jre. That's betterhelp.com/jre.

   11. CFCaroline Fraser35:57

       Yeah, I mean, you, you definitely see, you know, what happened in Tacoma is, is very well recorded now. Um, another city where this happened was El Paso, Texas because-

   12. JRJoe Rogan36:10

       Mm.

   13. CFCaroline Fraser36:11

       ... um, ASARCO had, uh, another major smelter, um-... in El Paso that had started in the 1890s and had been spewing this stuff out for decades. Uh, but all of the smelters during the war were kind of, um, they weren't taken over by the government, but the government introduced all kinds of, you know, price fixing and, and so forth to, to make it, um, not possible for these companies to raise prices, um, astronomically, and, and, and a lot of the stuff was requisitioned for the war effort. So in El Paso, by the 1970s, they were starting to discover that, um, this whole area around the smokestack of the smelter, uh, was heavily, uh, lead contaminated, um, and what I, (laughs) you know, disc- I thi- I thought, "Well, El Paso, that's interesting," but there were no serial killers in El Paso and so I Googled that and, like, you know, within a minute I discover that Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalker, um, grew up in El Paso not very far from the smelter. And-

   14. JRJoe Rogan37:33

       Wow.

   15. CFCaroline Fraser37:33

       ... you know, we associate him now with Los Angeles because that's where he committed most of his murders, but he did not grow up there.

   16. JRJoe Rogan37:42

       Wow. So this association with, um, these chemicals and violence and ... So this is well-known, and is ... If you could look at a map of the areas where this is the biggest problem, is there also a correlation with, uh, an uptick in violent crime and an uptick in serial killers? Like, is it not just Pacific Northwest? Is it around El Paso as well?

   17. CFCaroline Fraser38:10

       Yeah, when you start looking up, okay, well, what's the crime rate, the violent crime rate in El Paso? And yes, that starts going up, um, in the 1970s, uh, and so there, there does seem to be an association with this. There's a guy named Rick Nevin who was, uh, who is an, an economist and social scientist and he put together, um, a paper about this that I n- uh, which was published online that includes about, you know, 45 graphs of all these different, um, uh, you know, sho- showing the rise in violent crime, the rise in teen pregnancies, the ... which is sort of how women come into it, the, the impulsivity, um, seems to have perhaps, uh, led to, uh, a real rise in teen pregnancies in the '70s and '80s, um, which'll ... You'll, you know, if you'll rem- remember, that was kind of a big thing then.

   18. JRJoe Rogan39:19

       Yeah.

   19. CFCaroline Fraser39:20

       Um, and is- and now.

   20. JRJoe Rogan39:21

       Is this also tied, is this also tied to the sexual revolution? I mean, and, and then also, when was birth control, like oral birth control introduced?

   21. CFCaroline Fraser39:31

       I think that was in the 1960s, early '60s that that first becomes available. I can't tell you exactly what year, um, but yeah, I mean, I'm sure that there is some-

   22. JRJoe Rogan39:45

       There's a bunch of other factors. It's not like we can pin everything on lead and arsenic that-

   23. CFCaroline Fraser39:50

       That's right.

   24. JRJoe Rogan39:51

       But there's contributing factors.

   25. CFCaroline Fraser39:52

       And, of course, people, you know, always point out, well, you know, not everybody in Tacoma and El Paso became a (laughs) serial killer-

   26. JRJoe Rogan40:00

       Right.

   27. CFCaroline Fraser40:00

       ... which, of course, is true. Um-

   28. JRJoe Rogan40:02

       Well, it's also, like, what you're talking about Ted Bundy, there's a bunch of-

   29. CFCaroline Fraser40:05

       Right.

   30. JRJoe Rogan40:05

       ... factors that lead this person to becoming that.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Oh, my God. …

   1. CFCaroline Fraser45:01

      calculation of what those kids' lives were worth, because they felt like, "Okay, we're gonna get sued if we keep running the plant without filtration, but is that really gonna matter? Because these kids' lives are probably only worth about $11 million apiece."

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:21

      Oh, my God.

   3. CFCaroline Fraser45:21

      "And our profits are such that it makes more sense to keep operating regardless of what happens to these kids."

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:31

      Oh, my God.

   5. CFCaroline Fraser45:32

      And we know this because of the lawsuits that were ultimately filed, because, you know, they, they did end up in court, and there were kids, there was a, a baby who was, um, more, uh, lead-poisoned than any human being that the doctors had ever seen.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:52

      So it says here that after it destroyed the, the fire broke out that destroyed the filters, it says, "For the next year and a half, the smelter continued to operate, and dust polluted with heavy metals rained down on the area. During that time, children living in the area were screened for lead by the state and the US Center for Disease Control, and the results were foreboding. Children in Kellogg, for example, averaged 50 micrograms per deciliter of blood. The CDC recommends five micrograms high enough to warrant concern, and children with levels above 45 micrograms are advised to undergo chelation therapy, which involves administrating compounds like..." I don't know how to say that word. How do you say that word?

   7. CFCaroline Fraser46:35

      (laughs) I don't know.

   8. JRJoe Rogan46:36

      "... dimercaptocynk acid, either orally or intravenously to remove heavy metals from the bloodstream. Lead is a neurotoxin linked to schizophrenia, poor academic performance, low cognitive ability, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Once the metal gets into the blood, it concentrates in the brain, the kidneys, the liver and the bones. In pregnant women, lead can cross into the placenta, poisoning their unborn babies." Holy shit. (exhales)

   9. CFCaroline Fraser47:08

      Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was a nightmarish thing and...

   10. JRJoe Rogan47:11

       Look at this. It says, oh my God, it, and so listen to this, "Slowly poisoned, as a teenager in Kellogg, Ohio, Flory," this person we're talking about, "attended the Silver King School, built in 1928 in the gulk, gulch between Bunker Hill Lead Smelter and zinc plant. An offshoot of the Coeur d'Alene River flowed by the school. It was," says Flory, "a light, glowing green color, sort of a glow, like a glow stick." Oh, God. "In 1973, a fire broke out," and so this is the, the fire that we were talking about. Oh my God. "A, a light, glowing green color."

   11. CFCaroline Fraser47:53

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan47:54

       Fuck.

   13. CFCaroline Fraser47:56

       I used to live in, um, New Jersey right by the, um, in, in, um, Jersey City.

   14. JRJoe Rogan48:04

       Oh, yeah.

   15. CFCaroline Fraser48:05

       Right by the, uh, Liberty State Park, which a bunch of the acreage of that was off-limits to people because it was so (laughs) polluted.

   16. JRJoe Rogan48:15

       Yeah.

   17. CFCaroline Fraser48:15

       And I remember, you know, 'cause you could actually walk from my apartment in Jersey City (laughs) to Liberty S- Liberty State Park, but you had to go by this, you know, place that was crushing cars, one of those facilities where they, um, compact cars. And, I mean, there was all this heav- heavy industry there, and, and pollutants, and you had to walk across this little wooden trail over a, a stream...... um, to get to the park and the water was that color. (laughs) I mean, it was like-

   18. JRJoe Rogan48:49

       Ugh.

   19. CFCaroline Fraser48:49

       ... this disgusting, you know, color not found in nature and you just looked at it and thought, "Wha- what is that? What's in that?" You know.

   20. JRJoe Rogan48:58

       And this is in the United States of America where we have at least some kind of regulations.

   21. CFCaroline Fraser49:05

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan49:05

       Just imagine what is happening when these companies are allowed to ship off to third world countries where there's no regulation and they're bribing officials and just-

   23. CFCaroline Fraser49:19

       Well, that's-

   24. JRJoe Rogan49:19

       ... polluting everything.

   25. CFCaroline Fraser49:20

       Yeah. I mean, that's what happened with ASARCO, you know? It- it- once the EPA had sort of got started and- and the various, uh, clean air and clean water acts were passed and- and, uh, legislation about what you could do in the workplace, 'cause I mean, imagine what it was like to work in these, um, smelters. (laughs) It was-

   26. JRJoe Rogan49:41

       Yeah.

   27. CFCaroline Fraser49:43

       ... um, it just basically became illegal to operate them and the companies could no longer afford to do it, so they all pretty much went out of business in the 1980s. But it- it- it is just an incredible sort of time in America because it was like, well, what's the trade-off here, you know? The- the profits are worth much more than people's lives.

   28. JRJoe Rogan50:09

       Gosh.

   29. CFCaroline Fraser50:10

       And that place, uh, the Coeur d'Alene, um, you know, there's a town- city called Coeur d'Alene in Idaho, but there's also this giant lake, uh, Lake Coeur d'Alene, and all that pollution from Bunker Hill, from the mines, from the, um, smelter, it all went downriver and is now sitting at the bottom (laughs) -

   30. JRJoe Rogan50:35

       Yeah.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Oof. …

   1. CFCaroline Fraser1:00:00

      you can see the, the deficits, the little holes that are supposed to be full of something that helps you make good decisions, you know, the part of your brain that helps you control yourself and control your behavior. That's kind of missing-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:16

      Oof.

   3. CFCaroline Fraser1:00:16

      ... in, in some of these, um, kids, and they have shown now that the effects are worse in men than they are in women, that the, you know, the, the damage to the frontal cortex, the neur- neurology, um, is, is more marked in men, and they can see this on the MRI scans. Um, and I think there's, you know ... I don't know that they know why-... that's happening. But it does seem to be, um, you know, a real effect that they're writing papers about.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:52

      Well, it does take longer for men to develop their frontal cortex. That's why men are so stupid when they're young-

   5. CFCaroline Fraser1:00:57

      (laughs)

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:57

      ... and women are much more mature younger. Like a, you know, a 20-year-old woman is probably far more mature than a 25-year-old man, and a lot of that, they think, has to do with the frontal lobe.

   7. CFCaroline Fraser1:01:12

      Yeah, I mean, it obviously is some, you know, incredibly important, um, discovery. What they make of that and, and how it's all gonna, you know, come out in the wash in terms of what can be done to help kids who have these issues, that, I think, is, is another story.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:01:33

      It's just so twisted when you think about the fact that this is all a fairly new thing, like this chemical exposure. Chemical exposure and pollutant exposure is a fairly new thing in terms of like human history. You know, as we're gaining this understanding of how the human brain develops, which is also a fairly new thing, we're also dealing with this thing that we did collectively as the human race, this thing that we did-

   9. CFCaroline Fraser1:02:01

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:02:01

       ... where we introduced these insane chemicals into the brains of children.

   11. CFCaroline Fraser1:02:07

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:02:07

       And, and in this case, like in Idaho, knowingly-

   13. CFCaroline Fraser1:02:11

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:02:11

       ... calculated.

   15. CFCaroline Fraser1:02:13

       And one of the things that sort of (laughs) blows my mind is that we've known for centuries, for eons, that these things are bad, you know? I mean, the Romans and the Greeks knew that lead caused, you know, people to go crazy. I mean, they had people who worked with lead, you know, in foundries and things then, and they knew it was a problem. We've known that arsenic (laughs) is a poison since forever. And yet, you know, comes along the 20th century, and somehow, these, these corporations are telling communities, including the community on Vashon Island, you know, "Oh, arsenic is really not a problem." You know, "The human body just excretes it naturally." (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:03:05

       Geez.

   17. CFCaroline Fraser1:03:05

       You know, all kinds of just crazy arguments were being put forward to, to justify what they were doing.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:03:13

       I found out at one point in time in my life that I had a, a disturbing level of arsenic in my system. I went to get blood work done, and my doctor said, uh, "You have a, a concerning level of arsenic." And he started asking me about my diet. And, uh, I said, "I eat a lot of sardines." He's like, "Stop doing that." I go... He goes, "How much do you eat?" I go, "Like three or four cans a night." He's like, "Don't do that."

   19. CFCaroline Fraser1:03:38

       (laughs) Wow.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:03:39

       So, because sardines spend-

   21. CFCaroline Fraser1:03:42

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:03:42

       ... their time on the bottom of the ocean-

   23. CFCaroline Fraser1:03:43

       Right.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:03:44

       ... like that's where all the heavy metals accumulate.

   25. CFCaroline Fraser1:03:46

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:03:46

       And I was getting arsenic from eating cans of sardines. I stopped eating the sardines. I waited like a few months, I went back, got more blood work, and it's gone.

   27. CFCaroline Fraser1:03:56

       Wow.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:03:57

       I was like, "Wow."

   29. CFCaroline Fraser1:03:58

       Yeah, I mean, the- there actually are two kinds of arsenic. There's organic arsenic, which you can get from seafood. And if you're eating a lot of, you know, shrimp or sardines or, or whatever, it can build up. And I think that that form of arsenic is, is slight- is less toxic and less of a problem. You don't want it.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:04:22

       You definitely don't want it.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:30:00

   I've never heard that…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      What percentage of polio do you think is asymptomatic?

   2. CFCaroline Fraser1:15:04

      I've never heard that there's polio that's asymptomatic.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:15:08

      95 to 99%.

   4. CFCaroline Fraser1:15:09

      Wow.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:15:10

      95 to 99% of actual polio is asymptomatic.

   6. CFCaroline Fraser1:15:17

      Wow.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:15:17

      So what they were calling polio was most likely DDT poisoning-

   8. CFCaroline Fraser1:15:22

      Wow.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:15:22

      ... that was sprayed everywhere, that was sprayed everywhere for gypsy moths and all, all sorts of different pest-

   10. CFCaroline Fraser1:15:28

       Mm.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:15:28

       They just... They didn't know. And then once they did know, it was too late, and they were just trying to cover it up and say, "No, we cured polio. We cured it. Look." And these people that were, you know, getting air quotes "polio," were most likely getting poisoned by DDT.

   12. CFCaroline Fraser1:15:47

       Yeah, I think that the... You know, a lot of this environmental stuff has become so overwhelming to people that they kind of tuned it out.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:15:55

       Yes.

   14. CFCaroline Fraser1:15:56

       It's like, "What are we going to do about it?"

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:15:57

       Right.

   16. CFCaroline Fraser1:15:57

       "There's nothing we could do, so like-"

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:15:59

       Right.

   18. CFCaroline Fraser1:16:00

       "... let's just pretend it's not happening (laughs) ."

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:16:02

       I make sure that I don't read any of this stuff late at night.

   20. CFCaroline Fraser1:16:05

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:16:05

       You know, when I, when I r- read stuff like this late at- late at night, I can't go to sleep. I just- I freak out. I just- it just disturbs me, human beings, their capacity to do things like this, e- either knowingly or unknowingly, and then to cover it up knowingly, and then to try to find some way to profit off of the removal of it, or the treatment of these ailments that these people suffer, and then d- the obfuscating and the, you know, d- diverting the attention to some other thing, like calling it a disease or calling it something else.

   22. CFCaroline Fraser1:16:42

       Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things in my mind when I kind of wanted to develop the whole thing about, you know, put- talking about serial killers and violence and aggression and where that might have come from. Because I, you know, I wanted to talk about all that and I didn't want to just use it as a kind of Trojan horse to introduce all this stuff about pollution. But I did think it was a way to get people maybe to think about these issues who might not otherwise want to do that, you know?

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:17:17

       Right.

   24. CFCaroline Fraser1:17:17

       Who, who, um... And I think people are interested in the history of how they might have been, you know, exposed.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:17:28

       Sure.

   26. CFCaroline Fraser1:17:28

       When I, when I did a, a reading up in Seattle a, a month or so ago, you know, everybody was talking about where they grew up in relation to the smelter (laughs) .

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:17:40

       Mm-hmm.

   28. CFCaroline Fraser1:17:40

       Like, how close they were to it, um, and, you know, what they might have, uh, experienced as a result. And that, I think, is one of the interesting things about the Tacoma story, is that, um, many poor people were directly exposed. You know, the people who worked at the smelter, they lived right around the smokestack, so they got the worst of it. Um, but there were a lot of other communities in the area, including Mercer Island where I grew up, which is now kind of a famously wealthy... You know, some of the, you know, Microsoft people have houses there, or, you know, I think Paul Allen had a house there. Um, uh, and it was... When I was a kid growing up there, it was a well-to-do, upper middle class, um, place. And one of the things I look at in the book is some of the (laughs) really bizarre, um, crime that happened on the island at that time, that you wonder was this, you know, in any way, um, related to, you know, some of these things we're talking about, the rise in, um, lead in the air from, from leaded gas? Because, uh, Mercer Island i-... is crossed by I-90. I-90 comes down out of the Cascades a- and crosses Mercer Island, which is sitting in the middle of Lake Washington, uh, and ends up in Seattle. And so Mercer Island had a lot of pollution from I-90, um, and it also was in the plume from the Tacoma Smelter. And while I was growing up there, some weird shit (laughs) happened.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:19:32

       Like what kind of shit?

   30. CFCaroline Fraser1:19:33

       Well, I lived on a street, um, that was close to I-90 and was actually... It kind of ran over the top of a tunnel, um, that enclosed I-90 on part of the island, and down the street from where I grew up was growing up another young guy named George Waterfield Russell, who turned out to be a serial killer, and in the 1990s, um, killed three women on the east side, uh, where Bellevue is. Um... And so that is really kind of a striking, um, fact. You know, you don't expect, um, serial killers to come from that kind of a neighborhood. Not very far away from where, uh, Russell grew up, this other guy was also... Who went to my high school (laughs) , as did Russell, um, was growing up, who became one of the worst arsonists in Seattle history when he burned down his parents' warehouse and killed several, uh, Seattle firefighters. Um, so there were those two. There was a guy, um, in my class at the high school who, uh, was obsessed with his ex-girlfriend and went... He, he worked at a, um, a facility that used dynamite and he stole some, uh, dynamite and, um, blasting caps and he went and blew up her dorm building. Uh, and there was another kid (laughs) who went to my junior high who decided he was so depressed he was going to kill himself, and he drove his car at like 100 miles an hour. It actually wasn't his car. It was like his girlfriend's (laughs) sister's Camaro or something, and he drove it, you know, at a million miles an hour into the wall of the junior high gymnasium and destroyed the gymnasium. (laughs) .
7. 1:30:00 – 1:39:04

   Well, I'm sure they've…

   1. CFCaroline Fraser1:30:00

      the EPA is being defunded in a lot of ways. I'm sure the EPA is not a perfect, um, agency. (laughs) You know? I'm sure they've made, um, mistakes, but they're the ones-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:30:12

      Well, I'm sure they've been compromised, but also someone should be looking into this.

   3. CFCaroline Fraser1:30:15

      Yes. And-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:30:16

      And you're gonna need some sort of an environmental group-

   5. CFCaroline Fraser1:30:20

      Right.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:30:21

      ... that is responsible and just, that can look at these things and say, "Hey, this is a real issue." And all of our health-

   7. CFCaroline Fraser1:30:28

      Right.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:30:29

      ... is dependent upon them doing a really good job of sussing this stuff out.

   9. CFCaroline Fraser1:30:34

      And it's the EPA that's responsible for the Superfund program, which is, uh, in large part responsible for cleaning this stuff up. But they're being defunded, you know, and so who's gonna do that? Who's gonna clean up, you know, the areas that have radioactive, um, you know, legacy pollution from World War II, Hanford and all of that? I mean, that stuff's been going on for decades-

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:31:06

       Yeah.

   11. CFCaroline Fraser1:31:07

       ... and it's not finished. (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:31:08

       Well, there's an area in France that is the size of Paris-... that human beings can't go into, all because of the war.

   13. CFCaroline Fraser1:31:18

       And what kind of-

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:31:20

       Or you can find it-

   15. CFCaroline Fraser1:31:21

       ... um-

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:31:21

       Jamie could find this, so I don't want to speak out of turn about this, but munitions.

   17. CFCaroline Fraser1:31:25

       Uh-huh.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:31:25

       Um, you know, like unexploded munitions and, and just-

   19. CFCaroline Fraser1:31:29

       No.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:31:29

       ... where things got bombed, where it's so toxic human beings can't live there. And it's the size of Paris. It's like this enormous chunk of land that's like, it's ruined, probably forever.

   21. CFCaroline Fraser1:31:44

       Yeah, I mean, and, and there's gotta be some kind of, of, uh, you know, government intervention (laughs) and stuff like this.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:31:53

       Yeah.

   23. CFCaroline Fraser1:31:53

       There, there has to be the responsibility, because the corporations walked away.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:31:58

       Right.

   25. CFCaroline Fraser1:31:58

       And so they can't... You know ASARCO is, still exists, but it's now, um, operating out of Mexico.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:32:07

       (scoffs) How convenient. (laughs)

   27. CFCaroline Fraser1:32:10

       (laughs) And... Yeah, that's a whole story.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:32:12

       There is Zone Rouge, uh, World War I-era battlefields that are still dangerous over a hundred years later.

   29. CFCaroline Fraser1:32:20

       Wow.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:32:20

       Yeah. So the Red Zone is a, a chain of former battlefields across North- Northeastern France that the government has cor- cordoned off due to the many dangerous ordinance that remains from the First World War. The area originally spanned over 460 square miles-

Episode duration: 2:03:14