In the early 20th century, hundreds of women were employed to paint luminous watch dials using radium-based paint. Despite early warnings from medical experts, companies continued to insist the work was safe. This episode examines the history of the Radium Girls, focusing on what corporate leaders knew, how they delayed accountability, and the lasting legal and public health consequences. It also draws a direct line to modern chemical exposure cases, including PFAS contamination. Supported by court records, contemporaneous news reports, and government data, this episode explores how institutional denial functions, and why the same patterns persist today.

Attribution Notes:

• Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow.
• If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow

Follow This, Again on Instagram: @thisagainshow

This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust.

While this episode has some narrative interpretations, it draws heavily from primary source materials, historical journalism, and expert reporting.

Moore, Kate. The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2017. https://www.sourcebooks.com/9781492650959-the-radium-girls-tp.html

Clark, Claudia. Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910–1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. https://uncpress.org/book/9780807846407/radium-girls

Martland, Harrison S., Philip Conlon, and Joseph P. Knef. “Some Unrecognized Dangers in the Use and Handling of Radioactive Substances.” Journal of the American Medical Association 85, no. 23 (1925): 1769–76. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/238584

Rich, Nathaniel. “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare.” The New York Times Magazine, January 6, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html

Library of Congress. “Radium Girls: Living Dead Women.” Headlines and Heroes (blog), March 11, 2019. https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2019/03/radium-girls-living-dead-women

Fryer v. U.S. Radium Corporation, Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County, 1927–1928. Records Related to Radium Dial Painters, 1917–1949

Leach v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Circuit Court of West Virginia, Wood County, No. 01-C-698, filed 2001. Class action settlement available via DuPont C8 Health Project. Dupont_case.pdf

United States Environmental Protection Agency. PFAS Strategic Roadmap: EPA’s Commitments to Action 2021–2024. Washington, DC: EPA, October 2021. https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2021-10/pfas-roadmap_final-508.pdf

How do you justify rebellion when you are fighting for freedom, and then justify suppressing it once freedom is yours?

In this episode of This, Again, we rewind to the years immediately after American independence, when the Founding Fathers were forced to confront a problem they had not fully planned for. Americans were rebelling again, this time against them.

We begin with the Boston Tea Party before it became a founding myth, when it was still risky, debated, and unresolved. Then we follow that same logic of resistance as it reappears during the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, when farmers in western Pennsylvania challenged a federal law passed by a government that claimed to represent them.

Along the way, we sit with the anxiety, fear, and reasoning that shaped how early American leaders explained the difference between rebellion they celebrated and rebellion they suppressed. This is not an episode about whether the Founders were right or wrong. It is about how people reason under pressure, how legitimacy hardens after survival, and how the logic that creates a revolution does not disappear once power changes hands.

Primary sources from Alexander Hamilton and George Washington anchor the episode, alongside historians who explore the psychological and political aftermath of the American Revolution.

Attribution Notes:

• Every effort was made to cross-check primary sources and modern research. Where paraphrasing is used, it’s drawn from the texts below with narrative license for clarity and flow.
• If you spot an error or have a source to suggest, DM @thisagainshow

Follow This, Again on Instagram: @thisagainshow

This, Again is written, produced, and hosted by Mallory Faust.

Hamilton, Alexander. Federalist No. 15. 1787. Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed15.asp

Hamilton, Alexander. Federalist No. 6. 1787. Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed06.asp

Hamilton, Alexander. Federalist No. 9. 1787. Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed09.asp

Hamilton, Alexander. Letter to George Washington, August 18, 1794. In The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 17. Edited by Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.

Hamilton, Alexander. “Tully No. IV.” 1794. In The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 25. Edited by Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.

Washington, George. Proclamation Calling Out the Militia. September 25, 1794. Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/gw02.asp

Petition of the Inhabitants of Washington County, Pennsylvania. 1792. Quoted in Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution.

Secondary Sources

Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Bouton, Terry. Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

Wood, Gordon S. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789 to 1815. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Maier, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765 to 1776. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1972.

Archival Collections

Avalon Project, Yale Law School. Founding era documents, Federalist Papers, and presidential proclamations. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/

National Archives. Early American government records and founding documents. https://www.archives.gov/

Petition of the Inhabitants of Washington County, Pennsylvania, 1792, quoted in Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Hamilton, Alexander. Letter to George Washington, August 18, 1794. In The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 17, edited by Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.

Hamilton, Alexander. “Tully No. IV,” 1794. In The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 25, edited by Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.