Dark History of Radium Girls
How did the Radium girls expose one of corporate America's greatest betrayals?
4.4 (40)
62 mins
Discover the horrifying story of factory workers who unknowingly painted radioactive watch dials and paid for it with their health and lives. Explore how their suffering sparked one of the most important workplace safety battles in American history.
Ep 1:
The Girls Who Glowed
Meet the teenage dial painters who glowed like angels—and uncover the radium craze born in the Curies' Paris lab that made their glamorous new jobs possible.
Ep 2:
Poison Sold as a Miracle
As radium becomes a miracle cure sold everywhere, factory girls are taught to "lip, dip, paint"—ingesting poison while executives quietly shield themselves from the same substance.
Ep 3:
Honeycombed Bones, Buried Truths
Mollie Maggia's jaw crumbles beneath a dentist's fingers as mysterious illness spreads among the dial painters—while U.S. Radium buries the truth in a falsified report.
Ep 4:
The Bones That Wouldn't Lie
A pathologist exhumes a glowing corpse to expose a deadly lie, while five dying women defy a corporation and a broken legal system to demand justice.
Ep 5:
Roses Won From Darkness
Illinois workers face stolen bones and corporate cruelty, but the Radium Girls' sacrifice ultimately reshapes American labor law and safeguards generations of workers to come.
Discussions (5)
Nico
Level 7 · 2 mo agoGlowed like angels, died like lab rats
Sean
Level 5 · 2 mo agoVon Sochocky literally hacked his own finger off knowing radium was deadly and still let girls put it in their mouths daily for profit.
Floyd
Level 8 · 2 mo agoRadium half life of 1600 years checks out. Marie Curie's notebooks still radioactive today, stored in lead boxes at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. You can view them but you sign a liability waiver first.
