#2360 - Caroline Fraser

[00:00] the Joe Rogan experience train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day thanks for doing this thank you for having me so I've read about the premise of your book [00:18] online and immediately I'm like, I got to talk to this lady. That sounds crazy. [00:24] Please tell people what the premise is. [00:26] just so we can get started with this. [00:28] Yeah, well, I started thinking about this a long time ago. The book's called Murderland. Yeah, the book is Murderland. And 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? [00:58] about. And 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 process, [01:11] run up to the 1970s, is that... [01:16] They're... [01:17] may be a connection between the lead pollution that was prevalent in the area because of smelters and leaded gas and

[01:30] Serial killers, because lead, of course, as we, I think most people now know, has a connection to heightened aggression and violence in the people who've been exposed to it. So that was... [01:48] you know, what emerged to me gradually over the years. I mean, I didn't know a lot about this when I started. I knew about the serial killers, but I didn't really know about the whole lead story. And [02:04] That came about... [02:07] You know, I learned about it in part because of some murders. I mean, I live in... [02:14] Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is a lovely place. Unfortunately, New Mexico has a high rate of homicides. In part, it's because it's a poor state and doesn't have a big tax base and has some issues with drug and alcohol addiction. [02:44] Some people, a couple people were murdered down the street from me. And I live in a very peaceful neighborhood. And that was something that really made me start thinking about.

[03:01] The issue of maybe, you know, it might be a good idea to think of moving back to the Pacific Northwest, which I wanted to do anyway, because I have family up there. [03:15] And a few years later... [03:17] Because of that, I was up in the Northwest and looking at... [03:22] real estate ads. And at this point, I didn't really know anything about the smelter or the [03:29] the lead issues, but I was looking at [03:32] property on Vashon Island, which if you know anything about the Pacific Northwest is in Puget Sound. It's right across... [03:41] from West Seattle. Beautiful little, it was quite rural when I was growing up there, beautiful place. And I came across [03:52] a real estate ad that said [03:54] And this is just for undeveloped property. [03:57] And it said... [03:58] Arsenic remediation may be necessary. [04:01] Come on. [04:02] And... [04:03] I thought, wow, 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... [04:17] crazy to me. [04:19] and I was so curious about that, and I looked it up online, and [04:26] And, you know, within minutes discovered that there had been an infamous death.

[04:33] lead and copper smelter [04:36] in the city of Tacoma [04:38] which is just south of Vashon Island. And so Vashon received a lot of the pollution from that smelter. [04:47] And so that began a whole process of kind of learning about [04:54] What happened here? You know, what happened in this region? [04:57] Thank you. [04:59] And I also knew, because I'm [05:02] sort of really interested in serial killers, as I mentioned, and had been for a long time. [05:09] reading about them and reading about Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgeway. [05:16] And I knew that both... [05:18] Bundy and Gary Ridgeway, who was the Green River killer. Um, [05:25] had grown up in Tacoma. [05:27] At the same time that this smelter is, you know, the smelter had been operating there since the 1880s, 1890s, so for a very long time. [05:38] And I could see that a lot of news media had been devoted to looking at [05:45] what had happened in this region. You know, there was a whole map, a GIS map, geographic, you know, information systems that allowed you to look up individual maps [05:59] houses, you know, residential homes in Tacoma, and see how much arsenic and lead pollution was in the yards. So I discovered that you could actually look up

[06:11] the house where Ted Bundy grew up. [06:13] and see how much lead was in his front yard. [06:17] and his backyard. And the more I read about [06:21] lead pollution and lead the association with aggression and violence, the more I wondered, is there a story to be told here about this issue? [06:34] Thank you. [06:35] So... [06:36] this [06:37] This issue of lead pollution, is it just serial killers or is there an elevated amount of violent crime that goes along with it? [06:47] Yeah, the issue of serial killers is one that I... [06:53] kind of introduced as a, you know, the most extreme example. Right. But most of the research that's been done has focused on aggression, juvenile delinquency, for example. There are long-term studies that look at kids who were exposed to lead, including in relatively small amounts of, [07:20] Um... [07:21] And then what happens to them later, you know, by the time they're, you know, teenagers or young adults. And they have shown a very strong association with children. [07:35] You know, problems with learning, ADHD, and as I said, delinquency and crime. And 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?

[07:55] That's right, yeah. Yeah, decrease in IQ, a lot of factors that they can – [08:02] 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. [08:13] This episode is brought to you by the Farmer's Dog. Here's a fun fact. Research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer on average than dogs who are overweight. [08:24] Isn't that wild and also kind of obvious at the same time? So why is feeding vague scoops of ultra-processed kibble still the status quo for most dog owners? Healthy alternatives exist, and trust me, I know. [08:39] I buy one, the Farmer's Dog. I use it for both my dogs. They love it. They eat it up quick. It smells good to them. It smells good to me. It's human-grade food. The Farmer's Dog makes fresh food for dogs, and my dogs love it. Their recipes are made with real meat and fresh vegetables that are gently cooked to retain vital nutrients. They also portion out the meals to your dog's nutritional needs, which helps avoid overfeeding and makes weight management easier. [09:09] best friend something every dog owner wants? The answer to that is yes, obviously. So try the farmer's dog today and get 50% off your first box of fresh, healthy food. [09:22] Plus, get free shipping. Just go to thefarmersdog.com slash rogan. This offer is for new customers only. This episode is brought to you by Traeger Grills. If you enjoy food, and I mean really good food, Traeger is a game changer. This isn't just a grill. It's the ultimate way to cook outdoors, delivering unbeatable wood-fired flavor thanks to the all-natural hardwood pellets that fuel everything you grill, smoke, or bake.

[09:52] Just wood and fire and flavor. And what's truly wild is how easy it is. Just set the temp, load the grill, and let Traeger handle the rest. Grilled steaks, smoked ribs, even baked pizza, all on one grill. If you're into fire, flavor, and doing things right, check out Traeger Grills. [10:13] This summer, the Cup is taking over the U.S., and only DraftKings has you covered every step of the way. Follow every group stage upset, every knockout round thriller, every stoppage time moment that flips the whole tournament. Sweat all the big matches you love in real time with a seamless experience built for the world's biggest stage. No matter where you're watching, you're always connected and in the game with one app. [10:43] to get $200 in rewards within 21 days. That's CodeRogan in partnership with DraftKings. The crown is yours. [11:08] Yeah, and the leaded gas is particularly tragic because that was essentially a kind of horrific thing. [11:19] experiment that was conducted on generations of kids in this country and adults because...

[11:27] Everybody was exposed to that. Obviously, some people more than others, if you lived next to a major highway or something like that, you were getting more of it than if you maybe lived somewhere else. Although I think rural people were also exposed because of. [11:48] the kinds of machinery and stuff that's used on farms and so forth. So it was a terrible idea. [11:58] And they knew that at the time, you know, the companies, the corporations, the people who introduced it. [12:06] Standard Oil, DuPont, etc. They knew the dangers of this. [12:12] they were told by [12:14] medical doctors, who said, yeah, who said... [12:18] this will expose everybody. [12:23] to [12:24] more lead than human beings have ever had to deal with before. Wow. And they just did it to stop the engines from knocking. Wow. [12:34] They did, and apparently there were alternatives, but the alternatives, which were like ethanol, were not something that could be patented and were not products that you could make money off of. And so all these corporations chose to do this. [12:56] Oh, God.

[12:58] Yeah, I mean, it's really almost unreal to think about the... [13:04] the moral failure that this, I mean, failure doesn't even seem strong enough. It doesn't. It's so evil. It's so strange how many times that that has happened in, in human history and in fairly recent history. [13:19] where companies know what they're putting out or what they're releasing or what they're prescribing or whatever it is, is going to damage people. And they know that short term they can make a lot of money, and so they do it anyway. [13:32] Yeah, and they did for decades because, you know, this began in the 20s and 30s. [13:40] We can assume that the smelting thing they probably didn't know, correct? Like, at least in the 1800s. [13:47] Yeah, in the 1800s, they probably weren't thinking about stuff like that. They didn't have data on it. But by the time the companies really got up and running and the smelter in Tacoma was owned by... [14:05] A company called Asarco, which was the American smelting and refining company owned by the Guggenheim family. Oh, boy. And. But they've done so much for art. [14:19] Yeah. I mean, that it's just. That's what they like to do. Yeah. Yeah. [14:24] Yeah, it's a total kind of whitewashing the reputation. Yeah. And they were among the, you know, earlier corporations to do that and totally successfully.

[14:37] It's so dark. [14:41] explain to me the origins of the Nobel Prize? [14:46] Did you know the origins of the Nobel Prize? [14:48] It has something to do with explosives, right? Yes. The gentleman who the Nobel Prize is named after, they erroneously reported that he was dead in the newspaper. And they called him the merchant of death in the newspaper. And you're like, oh, my God, this is what people think about me because he invented dynamite. And so he's like, I've got to do something to clean up my reputation. So he devised this strategy. [15:15] awarding this prestigious award named after him [15:19] to all the great scientists and Nobel Peace Prize and all these different things. So now, when people hear the term Nobel, like, oh, he's a Nobel laureate. Oh, he's a Nobel Prize winner. [15:31] That's the origin of it. It was just a whitewashing operation. [15:35] Yeah, I mean, the same thing happened with... [15:39] the guy who invented the leaded gas formula, Thomas Midgley, who was... [15:48] Really a terrible guy. He invented the leaded gas stuff. He also invented chlorofluorocarbons, you know, the stuff in refrigerants that caused the hole in the ozone layer. Oh, terrific. So, like, two of the most devastating discoveries, scientific discoveries in the 20th century are down to the sky.

[16:18] you know, American Chemistry Association, which he still holds. I mean, even though he became really ill, he [16:30] as a result, I think, of working with this organization [16:32] Um... [16:35] Tetraethyl, it's called, the substance that was added to leaded gas. And he went to Florida to try and heal himself of this, which I don't think you can do. I mean, I don't think going to Florida... [16:55] heals lead exposure. But he, yes, and he developed something which was called polio. You know, he became, you know, unable to walk and he invented this whole bizarre kind of system of pulleys that he could use to lift himself out of bed. And eventually he strangled to death in this place. [17:23] sort of harness thing, which it may have been suicide, it may have been an accident, kind of unclear. [17:32] Wow. [17:34] So when you first started investigating this, was your interest in serial killers? You always had an interest in serial killers, which is always weird to me how many women are interested in serial killers. Like all of the top true crime podcasts, if you look at their demographics, it's a large chunk of it is women.

[17:53] And I know the women in my house love to watch those true crime shows. [17:58] And those serial killer movies, which disturbs the shit out of me. Like my family was watching something on The Night Stalker and Richard Ramirez. [18:07] And I can't watch this. I get sick. [18:11] I get sick. I can't watch it. They're like fascinated. Like, why is that? Why do you think women are so interested in this? [18:18] I'm not like lumping you in with all women, but there is a weird thing. [18:22] with women in true crime podcasts. Yeah, I think that that has to do with the fact that women deal with fear, you know, fear of... [18:34] 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 walking through a parking lot or, you know, or they've had direct experience of, you know, some kind of male violence or aggression, you know, at home, domestic violence. [19:04] ... [19:04] have had, 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 [19:22] women in the summer of, you know, the winter and summer of 1974. And everybody knew there was somebody out there. This is at a time when the term...

[19:36] Serial killer wasn't even really in use yet. People didn't really understand the phenomenon. It was still kind of an unusual thing. [19:48] thing and this was happening, you know, women were disappearing from [19:54] dorm rooms or their rooms at University of Washington. They were disappearing off the street. And then they weren't seen anywhere. [20:02] Again. [20:04] 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 being around at that [20:34] and [20:34] incredibly... [20:37] you know [20:39] It was both really disturbing, but also I just really wanted to understand. [20:44] what was happening. So did you plan on writing a book about serial killers [20:51] Or was this understanding of the lead and the arsenic – [20:56] what led you... [20:57] down to write this book. [20:59] Yeah, I never really wanted to write a book that was just about serial killers. I mean, I think that's been done. Lots of people have done that and done a good job. You know, I mean, Ann Rule, the woman who wrote the first book about Ted Bundy, who knew Ted Bundy. Oh, she knew him. Yes, she worked with him at a rape crisis clinic in Seattle. Yeah. He worked at a rape crisis clinic. Wow. Wow.

[21:29] He was very interested in doing research on rape. Wow. Because, of course, he was... [21:34] 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 wow she gave him you know ride to the christmas party oh my god yeah was this while he was killing or before he started [22:01] Well, 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... [22:13] really is part of what made me want to write this book is a case of an eight-year-old girl who was abducted in Tacoma. [22:24] in 1961, in August of 1961, Anne-Marie Burr. And he was 14 at that time. And he is now one of the [22:38] principal suspect, I think, behind her abduction. Oh, wow. So that may have been his first... [22:45] 14. Murder. [22:49] Yeah. [22:49] Sigh. [22:51] Was there like a history of him torturing animals or anything along those lines? [22:57] Um, no, but

[23:00] But one of the things that I think the FBI was discovering when they started doing all this, you know, investigation of the pasts, you know, the childhood of serial killers, was that this starts really young, that the fantasies and the obsessions with, you know, I mean, some of them famously do torture or kill the family pets and so forth with that. [23:30] Ted, that wasn't the case. I think with him, one of the things you see is that he never knew who his father was. [23:39] Born illegitimate at a founding home in Vermont. And his mother left him there for a couple of months before she went back and kind of retrieved him. And that's a common problem. [23:57] factor with a lot of these guys. They don't know their dad, they don't know who he is, maybe. [24:05] Yeah. [24:06] Or they have, you know, a very bad relationship with the parents. There's maybe abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse. We don't know that about Ted Bundy in terms of the abuse factor, but... [24:25] He remains, I think, really puzzling to people for that reason, because you don't see some of the usual...

[24:33] Signs. [24:34] with him. [24:36] And because he refused to answer questions. [24:38] Well, he talked a lot about, you know, various people were able to interview him. The detective in King County in Seattle, who was in charge of police. [24:54] The investigation, he was actually quite young when he took this on. I think it was his first major case as a detective. He eventually was able to interview Ted Bundy in prison when he was on death row. [25:24] because he was still trying to work the legal system. And so he didn't want to admit to what he'd done. How did he talk about it hypothetically in the third person? [25:35] I mean, it was sort of like O.J. Simpson or something. He would say, well, if somebody was going to do this, here's what he probably would have done. And so there was a lot of that up until the very last days of Bundy's work. [25:55] sojourn on death row. And then he finally began confessing in the last two or three days, in an attempt, I think, to get the governor interested in perhaps extending his life, because he could give information about where bodies had been left and so forth.

[26:19] But that didn't convince the governor of Florida. [26:23] Thank you. [26:24] So when you... [26:28] Saw this real estate and you found out that it needed to have arsenic removed from it. This began this sort of journey that you went on to try to connect – [26:38] this area with serial killers and toxins. And what did you find? Like, is there a disproportionate number of serial killers that come from that particular area? [26:51] Yeah, there really are, as I discovered, a really kind of extraordinary number, and it's hard to talk about these numbers. [27:01] simply because we don't know [27:04] What a normal number of serial killers in a given population. [27:09] So are there like undiscovered serial killers that are in that area or maybe deaths that are attributed to – [27:16] unknown people [27:17] There are several cases that have never been resolved. You know, there's something called the dismemberment murders. Dismemberment murders? Yeah, up in the Northwest where, you know, various feet and things were found washing up on shore and nobody could figure out who they belonged to. Oh, I remember that. That was fairly recently, right? [27:43] Am I thinking of the same thing? It may be another thing that you're thinking of. I think this dates back. It was another thing. It was like shoes that had a human foot in it.

[27:54] And they could have just been... [27:56] you know, bodies of people who drowned, because that's, I think, what happens in some cases. So I think that's a sort of question mark. There are a couple of others. There's one in Idaho that they've never solved. So there are those cases. But [28:18] Even aside from those, I mean, I spent a lot of time looking at the year 1974, because it seemed really active in terms of what was happening with serial killers around the country and in the world. [28:33] in the Northwest. And it was famously the year when Bundy... [28:39] really kind of broke free of any restraints he might have once had and began abducting women basically kind of like once a month. [28:51] during that year. And in 1974, I found [28:56] at least six active serial killers in Seattle or along the I-5 corridor who were all kind of working at the same time. Wow. And that seems like a lot. [29:09] to me. [29:11] And just looking at Tacoma. [29:14] The rate of violent crime really skyrocketed in 1974 and in the mid-70s. It's just started going up and up and up. And you see this, unfortunately, across the country. The rate of violent crime in the 70s and 80s rose to heights that had not been seen before in this country. Are there other factors? So there's leaded gasoline.

[29:41] which is a major factor. [29:43] Um... [29:44] But... [29:45] What other factors do you think in terms of environmental toxins and things? Like, why 1974? [29:52] Well, there are various theories that have been put forth. I mean, people have pointed out that [29:59] in the mid-70s was when the baby boom generation, which was large in terms of its population density, [30:11] that those people had started to kind of come of age. They'd entered the period when you're most likely to commit crimes, which is your 20s or 30s. And so there was that. There was a lot of economic uncertainty. There was a recession. Nixon, you know, was in the White House early on in the 70s. There was the Vietnam War. There had been a lot of [30:38] during the 60s. [30:42] And so people point to those factors as contributing to [30:47] to this as well. But I think also, you know, based on the science that's being done, you do need to look at the toxins that were becoming really, really prevalent. The lead, cadmium is another heavy metal that's very similar to [31:08] to lead in the body in terms of its association with aggression.

[31:15] manganese, all these things were being... [31:17] Yeah. Zinc is associated with aggression? I don't know that it's associated with aggression, but it's one of these things that was forming... [31:26] the exposure to particulate pollution, which is now associated with all kinds of issues [31:37] health problems. [31:39] you know, heart problems. I mean, lead is a toxin. It's a poison. And so you put it in the body and it becomes, you know, it's very... [31:51] easy for that to reach your brain. And [31:56] what happens is that [31:58] You know, especially if you're exposed to a lot of this stuff, you can be sick in all kinds of ways. You can get health, heart problems. It's now been associated with various forms of dementia, Alzheimer's. [32:14] ALS [32:17] So there's a lot of things that lead can cause, but they have shown statistically that the increase in lead, [32:27] in lead, in the population, in the air, in the mid-70s. [32:32] really... [32:34] may have contributed to a rise in violent crime. What year did they start putting lead in gasoline? [32:41] Well, they invented the stuff in the 1920s, but just thinking back to those early decades...

[32:48] Not that many people had cars, you know, and there was a big depression, of course, in the 1930s. So there's not a lot of driving happening in terms of what we see now. I mean, yeah, it just wasn't as big of a deal. Yeah. [33:07] It was, you know, rare to have one car. [33:11] much less, you know, two or three. And then during the war, you had... [33:18] 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... [33:28] 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 raised the amount of... [33:41] All these metals, lead, copper, 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... [34:07] was really 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 this stuff started entering the environment, right?

[34:27] 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... [34:38] hangs around and becomes, you know, part of our environment. It becomes dust that is, you know, in people's houses or their attics. And that I think is what people eventually started doing. [34:55] You know, when after the war, people started driving lots and lots more, you know, in the 50s and 60s, this country particularly was doing really well economically and everybody was buying cars and driving them for the first time. [35:14] You know, en masse. In history, in human history. That's right. And so it really becomes, I think, a heavy 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. I have a friend who briefly lived in Brooklyn. [35:44] small garden, but he did some soil samples. He's a very, very intelligent guy. Did some soil samples and sent it to university to get tested, and it was just filled with lead. [35:56] and [35:56] He was like, what is this all about? And he was like, it's all from leaded gasoline. So this was in the 2000s. So I think this was around 2012, 2013.

[36:07] And they had told him there's a few things that you could do. There's certain plants that you could grow that would remove some of it. [36:13] from the soil other than completely excavating and replacing it with fresh soil. [36:20] But his whole backyard was essentially lead poisoned. [36:23] Yeah, it's. [36:26] When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler. [36:31] Join a car sharing club today. That was during the gas rationing days. [36:37] That was the craziest one. Have you really tried to save gas by getting into a gas club? They do it. [36:42] So can we. Oh, clown cars? What is that? A wagon? What is that? It's a bunch of soldiers in the back. Soldiers. Oh, okay. [36:50] Wow. [36:51] So this was all just about... [36:54] Gas rationing. [36:57] Wow. Save fuel to make munitions for the battle. Wow. [37:01] The daughter who heaped on the coal... [37:05] Wow, they're mad at her. Look at her. [37:07] Oh, no, I'm trying to stay warm and stay alive. Wow. [37:12] So, [37:13] Is there an uptick in violence in these areas where they were making stuff for the war effort, where they would be polluting the area? [37:27] 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 others.

[37:54] 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 want to learn how to better manage stress, improve your relationships, gain more confidence, or something else. It starts with therapy. Try it for yourself with better help. [38:24] 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 slash J-R-E. That's BetterHelp.com slash J-R-E. [38:52] Yeah, I mean, you definitely see, you know, what happened in Tacoma is very well recorded now. Another city where this happened was El Paso, Texas, because Osarco had... [39:08] another major smelter, um, [39:12] in El Paso that had started in the 1890s and had been spewing this stuff out for decades. But all of the smelters, [39:23] during the war were kind of, they weren't taken over by the government, but the government introduced all kinds of, you know, price fixing and so forth to make it not possible for these companies to raise prices astronomically. 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, you know,

[39:53] this whole area around the smokestack of the smelter was [40:00] heavily lead contaminated. And what I, 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, grew up in El Paso, not very far from the smelter. [40:30] him now with Los Angeles because that's where he [40:33] committed most of his murders, but he did not grow up there. [40:37] Wow. [40:39] So... [40:40] this association with these chemicals and violence. And so this is well known. [40:47] and [40:48] is if you could look at a map... [40:51] of the areas where this is the biggest problem, is there also a correlation? [40:57] with an uptick in violent crime, an uptick in serial killers? Like, is it not just Pacific Northwest? Yeah. [41:03] Is it around El Paso as well? [41:05] 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 in the 1970s. And so there does seem to be an association with this. There's a guy named Rick Nevin, who was, who is an economist and social scientist, and he put together a

[41:32] um, [41:33] paper about this, which was published online, that includes about, you know, 45 graphs of all these different [41:46] You know, showing the rise in violent crime, the rise in teen pregnancies, which is sort of how women come into it. The impulsivity seems to have perhaps led to a real rise in teen pregnancies in the 70s and 80s, which, you know, if you remember, that was kind of a big thing. [42:14] than... [42:16] Is this also tied to the sexual revolution? I mean, and then also when was birth control? [42:24] like oral birth control introduced. [42:26] I think that was in the 1960s, early 60s, that that first becomes... [42:34] I can't tell you exactly what year. [42:38] But, yeah, I mean, I'm sure that there is some. There's a bunch of other factors. It's not like we can pin everything on lead and arsenic. That's right. But there's contributing factors. And, of course, people, you know, always point out, well, you know, not everybody in Tacoma and El Paso became a serial killer, which, of course, is true. Well, it's like what you're talking about, Ted Bundy. There's a bunch of factors that lead this person to becoming that. Right.

[43:03] Also, [43:04] Lead. [43:05] Yeah. I mean, you know, as I say somewhere in the book, a little extra lead, you know, may have been something that, you know, maybe they had a lot of other factors to begin with, abuse, poverty. In the 1950s, a lot of babies were delivered. [43:26] with forceps, which caused brain damage in a certain percentage of kids. [43:34] So I think you're looking at a lot of different ways [43:38] um [43:39] things that contributed to trauma to the brain. You know, I think now they're really focusing on that, you know, in terms of CTE and, you know, brain damage. We see that now in... [43:52] football players who've had... [43:54] head trauma repeatedly that this causes can cause violence and aggression and impulsivity right huge issue [44:04] Yeah. It's fascinating that it also exists in women who have not had head trauma and the correlation between teen pregnancies. [44:14] Thanks along those lines. [44:15] All it would take is a slight percentage more... [44:21] of impulsivity. [44:22] And then you would see a corresponding... [44:26] result of that. Not making great decisions about what you're doing. The gas thing, the lead in the gas thing, it's just crazy. It's just crazy to know that that was all done because someone couldn't patent ethanol.

[44:39] They couldn't patent other formulations that would lead to the same result, but – I mean, the same result in terms of not having gas making your engine knock. [44:51] wouldn't be as profitable for this person. [44:54] Yeah. And I think, you know, it may be worth mentioning or describing what a smelter does for people, because I think people are not familiar with that anymore. We don't have them in our cities anymore. But, you know, what these things were, were these giant primary smelters to melt water. [45:19] rock. [45:20] You know, it was like taking the rocks from mines that were full of all these different metals, you know. [45:28] including arsenic. This is where the arsenic came from. But they were full of metals like, you know, lead and copper and silver and gold, and melting those rocks in these giant furnaces. And all of this put off an enormous amount of pollution, you know, particulate pollution that was going up the smokestack. And they were, you know, the companies that ran these [45:58] they could for themselves, you know, the silver and the copper and all of that. And so they did have... [46:05] filters on them, but [46:07] One of the things that happens sometimes with these smelters is that they would kind of fail or the filters would fail. There's this horrifying...

[46:17] example in Idaho, it was a company called Bunker Hill that was one of the largest companies [46:24] silver mines, I think, in the world. And they had a lead smelter in this town called Kellogg, which is right on I-90. If you've ever driven on I-90, you know, from Missoula, Montana, or something like that to Seattle, you've driven through this place. And they built, you know, this giant smelter facility to handle all the stuff they were pulling out of the mines. [46:54] And... [46:55] In 1973, they had a fire in their filtration. [47:01] Um... [47:02] building that destroyed most of the filter that was trying, you know, the thing that was supposed to keep lead from going up the smokestack. [47:13] And there were kids in this town. There was an elementary school right across the street from the smokestack. [47:22] And the descriptions of that school are so horrifying because the teachers used to think that sometimes that the facility had caught fire because there was so much smoke. But in fact, it was just what the smokestack was putting out. But after that filter failed...

[47:47] That company, which was owned by Gulf and Western at the time, did a kind of back of the napkin calculation of what those kids' lives were worth. [48:00] because they... [48:02] felt like, okay, we're going to get sued if we keep running the plant without filtration. But is that really going to matter? Because these kids' lives are probably only worth about $11 million apiece. And our profits are such that it makes more sense to keep operating regardless of, [48:24] of what happens to these kids. Oh, my God. [48:27] And we know this because of the lawsuits that were ultimately filed, because, you know, they did end up in court. And there were kids, there was a baby who was... [48:40] more... [48:42] led... [48:44] poisoned than any human being that the doctors had ever seen. So it says here that after it destroyed the [48:51] 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. [49:04] by the state and the U.S. Center for Disease Control, and the results were foreboding. Children in Kellogg, for example, average 50 micrograms per deciliter of blood. The CDC recommends 5 micrograms high enough to warrant concern. And children with levels above 45 micrograms are advised to undergo blood.

[49:24] chelation therapy, which involves administrating compounds like... [49:28] I don't know how to say that word. [49:30] How do you say that word? I don't know. Dimer capto succinct 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. [50:00] Holy shit. [50:03] Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was a nightmarish thing. Look at this. It says, oh, my God. [50:09] so listen to this [50:13] Slowly poisoned – as a teenager in Kellogg, Ohio, Flory, this person I'm talking about, attended the Silver King School built in 1928 in the 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 like a glow stick. Oh, God. [50:39] In 1973, a fire broke out, and so this is the fire that we were talking about. [50:44] Oh my God. [50:45] A light glowing green color. [50:49] Yeah. [50:50] Fuck. [50:51] I used to live in New Jersey right by the...

[50:57] in Jersey City, right by the Liberty State. [51:02] park, which a bunch of the acreage of that was off limits to people because it was so polluted. And I remember, you know, because you could actually walk from my... [51:15] apartment in Jersey City to Liberty State Park, but you had to go by this place that was crushing cars, one of those facilities where they... [51:26] compact cars. And I mean, there was all this heavy industry there and pollutants. And you had to walk across this little wooden trail over a stream of [51:39] to get to the park, and the water was that color. I mean, it was like this disgusting, you know, color not found in nature, and you just looked at it and thought, what is that? What's in that? [51:54] And this is in the United States of America where we have at least some kind of regulations. [52:00] Just imagine what is happening. [52:03] when these companies are allowed to [52:06] ship off to third world countries [52:08] Or there's... [52:10] No regulation. [52:11] and they're [52:12] bribing officials and [52:14] Just polluting everything. Yeah, I mean, that's what happened with the SARCO. You know, once the EPA had sort of got started and the various Clean Air and Clean Water Acts were passed and legislation about what you could do in the workplace, because, I mean, imagine what it was like to work in these smelters.

[52:44] afford to [52:45] to do it, so they all pretty much went out of business in the 1980s. [52:50] But... [52:52] It is just an incredible sort of time in America because it was like, well, what's the tradeoff here? You know, the profits are worth much more than people's lives. And that place, the Coeur d'Alene, you know, there's a town city called Coeur d'Alene in Idaho, but there's also this giant lake, Lake Coeur d'Alene. [53:22] the smelter, it all went down river and is now sitting at the bottom of Lake Coeur d'Alene. And that's been a super fun event. [53:34] project for many, many years, but they really can't clean that up because it's the kind of thing where you try to remove the sediment. [53:46] That's full of all the lead and stuff. And it stirs everything up. And so it's really, really almost impossible to clean a lot of that. Let's talk about Service Titan. Over 10,000 contractors already run their businesses on Service Titan. Now they're building an AI trained on real trades workflows. This isn't generic AI. This is AI built specifically for contracting work.

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[55:48] because freshwater fish... [55:50] The problem is because of all the pollutants that settle into these lakes, [55:55] when you don't have flowing water. [55:58] Freshwater fish is just sitting... [56:00] in all these chemicals and all these heavy metals. And it's... [56:05] It's really disturbing. If you eat freshwater fish, your exposure to forever chemicals is like, [56:15] ridiculously high. [56:17] Like, what was the number? We pulled it up the other day. But... [56:22] It's akin to eating one freshwater fish is akin to, I believe it's like a year of exposure to forever chemicals. Yikes. Yeah. [56:33] Yeah, BPAs and all these different disgusting – [56:37] Things that are a part of our world that we didn't know until it was too late. [56:42] Eating one freshwater fish [56:45] Equals a month of drinking forever chemicals water. A month. [56:50] Oh my god. [56:53] PFAS found in high levels in freshwater fish with most concern for vulnerable communities. [56:59] I remember we did this television show once, and we were in Detroit. [57:05] And Detroit, which is notoriously very poor and at one point in time was the third richest. [57:11] city in the world. But when we were there, these people were fishing in this lake where [57:17] Really obviously very poor people.

[57:20] um... [57:21] and just catching food. [57:23] in this lake and I was like oh my god like what are these people eating like this is clearly polluted water. [57:28] And it was just outside of a plant. [57:31] And, you know... [57:33] They had no choice. They needed food. [57:35] And so they went there. They're poor. And who knows what kind of health consequences. [57:42] these poor people are suffering from. [57:44] Yeah, it's definitely the poor communities that get the worst of all of us. [57:51] 150 years ago. [57:54] All that was pristine. [57:56] It's such a short amount of time. If you think about how long those lakes existed. [58:01] how long these river systems existed. [58:04] a couple of hundred years. We've ruined everything essentially forever. [58:09] for profit. Yeah, absolutely. And they knew it. And that's what's sick. Yeah. [58:16] The thing you're telling me about this smelting plant and the fire in Idaho is... [58:21] And the fact that they knew and they made a back of a napkin calculation as to these children's lives. [58:27] That is so disgusting. [58:29] It's so hard to believe that that's how people operate, but yet I know they do. [58:34] Yeah. [58:35] I mean, it's murder. And that's why I called it Murderland. You know, I think that the behavior of these corporate... [58:44] actors. [58:45] was as bad. I mean, it's, you know, maybe pernicious to compare, but I think that, you

[58:55] the ways that corporations have behaved is [59:00] murderous, you know, that they're not, I mean, aside from, you know, just the issue of taking responsibility, they're just going to go ahead. [59:10] with what they want to do and make the profits that they want and leave us to pay the price. [59:18] And that, I think, is something that in a sane world would have to change. You know, we would have to... [59:25] look at what a corporation wants to do properly. [59:28] before they start doing it, you know, and figure out, okay, well, if they want to proceed with this, how do we prevent this? [59:38] the damage that could occur. [59:41] And if they can't figure out how to prevent it, [59:45] They shouldn't be operating. Also, they lie. [59:48] They lie. So whatever they're going to tell us. [59:51] I mean we found this out from pharmaceutical drug companies that when they run studies, they'll run 10 studies that show damage and they'll find one study that they can kind of manipulate into showing some sort of efficacy. And then they'll publish that one study and bury the other studies. [1:00:06] that show damage. [1:00:08] and then release a product, and then have internal emails. [1:00:11] where they show that they know that this is going to cause problems. And this is the issue with the drug Vioxx that wound up killing somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 Americans. [1:00:22] And I know... [1:00:23] People don't like to equate those people with serial killers.

[1:00:27] But what else would you call that? [1:00:29] What else would you call if you know that you're going to kill people, but you're also going to make money? [1:00:36] And you decide. [1:00:37] let's do it anyway. Let's do it anyway. Let's make some money. [1:00:42] And 60,000 people die because of it. [1:00:46] And then who knows how many people also survived but got strokes, and it's a large number. [1:00:52] Yeah, it's now very difficult to figure out how many people were directly and indirectly harmed by these smelters because of the destruction of evidence. Many of them had... [1:01:07] sort of [1:01:08] You know, people on staff who were whose job it was to put out false information in Tacoma. There was a guy, a doctor at the smelter. [1:01:21] who wrote false papers saying that, oh, the workers aren't being harmed by exposure to arsenic, when in fact his numbers showed that people who worked at the plant were dying of an elevated percentage of lung cancer. And he suppressed that information. He said, you know, he said their deaths were from heart failure, which... [1:01:49] Everybody dies of heart failure. You know, so he basically was falsifying the information from their death certificates and publishing papers.

[1:02:02] designed to make it look like arsenic wasn't a poison. Probably nicely rewarded by the corporation for doing that. [1:02:10] It's just this issue of diffusion of responsibility. [1:02:15] you have this obligation to your shareholders to continually make [1:02:21] each quarter [1:02:22] generate more income. [1:02:24] And then you have to figure out how to do that. And then you realize, like, oh, I'm just part of a big thing. I'm just going to do my job to get more money. I'm not going to think about the consequences. I'm just going to put blinders on and think about my vacation home that I'm going to get out of all this. [1:02:38] Thank you. [1:02:39] Yeah, I mean, it's, you know... [1:02:42] What you said about the lying is really true, and this is what you see in serial killers, that they lie about everything. They lie about stuff they don't even need to lie about. It's just – it's their – It's their MO. Yeah. They're just so inured to it, and they want to get away with what they're doing. [1:03:05] They should have went for... [1:03:06] corporate America. It should have worked for them. They could have got away with it. There might have been [1:03:10] Fine. [1:03:11] Yeah. I mean, I just wonder how many people who are working for these chemical corporations and how many how many exhibit the exact same traits as serial killers. They just don't want to get intimate and actually physically cause the murder, but get some sort of a bizarre thrill out of knowing. [1:03:30] that they're doing this kind of damage to people for profit.

[1:03:33] Yeah, I think that kind of psychopathy is maybe more common than we would like to think. Yeah, we don't want to think about it. We don't want to think about sociopaths. We don't want to think about psychopaths. And sociopaths and psychopaths, there's a lot of overlap there. [1:03:48] We don't want to think about what percentage of us – [1:03:52] exhibit these traits where we have zero empathy. [1:03:55] And there's a lot of people like that. There's zero. I mean, I know people like that that have no empathy. They don't care if other people get hurt. [1:04:02] And I don't understand it. [1:04:03] but I don't have whatever is wrong with them. And I always wonder, like, is that nature? Is that nurture? Are we dealing with environmental toxins? Is there exposure to something at a young age? Like, what is it that causes that? Well, I think it can be brain damage. You know, I mean, what happens to the frontal cortex of these... [1:04:28] kids who are exposed to lead and cadmium is that certain parts of the brain fail to develop. [1:04:38] correctly. And so and you can see 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. [1:04:56] in some of these kids. And they have shown now... [1:05:02] that the effects are worse in men

[1:05:05] than they are in women. That the damage to the frontal cortex, the neurology... [1:05:13] is more marked in men, and they can see this on the MRI scans. [1:05:23] know that they know why that's happening. But [1:05:27] It does seem to be a real effect that they're writing papers about. Well, it does take longer for men to develop their frontal cortex. That's why men are so stupid when they're young, and women are much more mature younger than... [1:05:41] like a you know what [1:05:43] 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. [1:05:52] Yeah, I mean, it obviously is some, you know, incredibly important discovery what they make of that and how it's all going to. [1:06:03] you know, come out in the wash in terms of what... [1:06:06] can be done to help. [1:06:09] kids who have these issues. That, I think, is another story. [1:06:19] a fairly new thing. [1:06:22] like this chemical exposure. [1:06:24] chemical exposure and pollutant exposure is a fairly new thing in terms of like human history. [1:06:29] you know, as we're gaining this understanding of how the human brain develops, which is also a fairly new thing,

[1:06:36] We're also dealing with this thing that we did. [1:06:39] collectively as the human race, this thing that we did where we introduced these... [1:06:43] Insane chemicals. [1:06:45] into the brains of children. [1:06:47] And in this case, like in Idaho, [1:06:50] knowingly. Yeah. [1:06:54] And one of the things that sort of blows my mind is that we've known for years [1:07:00] centuries, for eons, that these things are bad. You know, I mean, the Romans and the Greeks knew that [1:07:08] that led... [1:07:09] caused people to go crazy. I mean, they had people who worked with lead. [1:07:15] you know, in foundries and things then. And they knew it was a problem. We've known that arsenic is a poison since forever. And yet, you know, comes along the 20th century, and somehow 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. [1:07:45] You know, all kinds of just crazy arguments were being put forward to... [1:07:52] To justify what they were doing. I found out at one point in time in my life that I had a... [1:07:58] disturbing level of arsenic in my system. [1:08:00] I went to get blood work done. And my doctor said, you have a [1:08:04] concerning level of arsenic. And he started asking me about my diet and

[1:08:08] and uh... [1:08:10] I said I eat a lot of sardines. He's like, stop doing that. [1:08:13] He goes, how much do you eat? I like three or four cans a night. He's like, don't do that. [1:08:19] Wow. So because sardines spend their time in the bottom of the ocean. Right. Right. [1:08:24] Like that's where all the heavy metals accumulate. Yeah. And I was getting arsenic from eating cans of sardines. I stopped eating the sardines. I waited like a few months and went back, got more blood work and it's gone. [1:08:37] Wow. [1:08:38] I was like, wow. Yeah. I mean, 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... [1:08:50] you know, shrimp or sardines or whatever, it can build up. And I think that that form of arsenic is less toxic and less of a problem. You don't want it. You definitely don't want it. I mean, as your doctor said, don't do that. It's just crazy. Yeah, but the stuff that they were producing at the smelter in Tacoma was what's called inorganic arsenic. [1:09:20] And they used it for insecticides and... [1:09:26] very heavily at, you know, during the 40s and 50s, they were putting it all over apple orchards and cherry orchards and cotton crops. So those places were then contaminated with arsenic. And Washington State now has four plumes of arsenic.

[1:09:50] of this pollution. The big one was in Puget Sound from the smelter, which was like a thousand square miles of Puget Sound that was contaminated. But also Wenatchee, which is over in eastern Washington, where they have [1:10:06] all these apple orchards. [1:10:08] There's another plume there. [1:10:10] from those pesticides and... [1:10:14] insecticides. And there's a couple more. There's another plume up in Everett where there was a, what they called an arsenic kitchen. The Rockefellers used to own a [1:10:30] mines up in the Cascade Mountains and they had a smelter in Everett that was then bought by the Guggenheims and they moved their arsenic kitchen to Tacoma. But it left all this pollution in Everett. And so they discovered, you know, all these people had built houses and condos and things on top of [1:10:51] where the arsenic kitchen had been was, [1:10:54] which, you know, that stuff was never cleaned up, and so they had to... [1:11:00] you know [1:11:00] I think they had to buy those properties and remediate them. [1:11:04] So-called. Yeah, this term remediation. Like, how does one remediate a piece of land, like a five-acre plot of land that you plan on? [1:11:15] building a beautiful house. [1:11:17] On Vashon Island. How do they do that? Five acres of ground that's poisoned.

[1:11:24] Yeah. In Tacoma, what they did, that was where the worst of the pollution was because the smokestack was getting sitting right near the water. The smokestack was blown up in the 90s. [1:11:40] Blown up. [1:11:41] Yeah, they exploded the smokestack. On purpose? [1:11:46] Yeah, they closed the plant in 1986. Also, it was a debt-controlled demolition? Yeah, so it was a, yes, exactly. Which also probably contributed to... [1:11:56] greatly to more pollutants. They claimed that they cleaned the inside of the smokestack. Before they blew it up? Yeah. So yeah, in Tacoma, they carted away tons of soil. They took, you know, they went into people's yards, they tested all of the yards and told people, okay, you're going to have to replace the soil. And so yeah, they went in and they, by this point, [1:12:26] bankruptcy, and the EPA eventually had to take over the whole thing. But they, you know, the EPA got an [1:12:35] on... [1:12:37] unprecedented environmental bankruptcy settlement out of the Sarko, which was close to $2 billion. I think it was the highest settlement that they'd ever gotten from a corporation. But it had to clean up about 20 different Superfund sites, including the one in Idaho, in Coeur d'Alene, which they've been working on that for years and still haven't finished. But in Tacoma, they actually did replace the...

[1:13:06] the soil in many, many people's yards. But, you know, they run out of money. I mean, I think on places like Vachon, a lot of that was on the southern part. I think you could request soil replacement, but [1:13:26] In some of these places, but it wasn't necessarily guaranteed, depending on where you live. That's also so destructive to the ecosystem. So you're taking... [1:13:34] out everything that allows these [1:13:38] Plants to Live... [1:13:40] Animals... [1:13:41] mycelium, all the different, the network that connects all these plants together. You're pulling all that stuff out and introducing new soil. [1:13:52] And you're not going to do it everywhere. You're not going to get all of it out. There's no way. You're not going to be able to do the whole island. You're not going to be able to do like every inch of Tacoma, all the land. [1:14:03] This episode is brought to you by SimpliSafe. One thing you probably don't think about when you're planning the perfect summer getaway is protecting your home. But if disaster strikes, you want to be prepared. Even better, if it can be stopped before it happens. So check out SimpliSafe. They're the smarter option when it comes to home security because their systems help prevent and stop crime in real time before it starts. There's also no long-term contracts and no technician appointments. [1:14:33] and set it up in one afternoon by yourself or even sooner. It's one of many reasons why millions of people continue to trust and use SimpliSafe. Everyone deserves to have peace of mind, which is why I'm happy to partner with SimpliSafe again and offer an exclusive discount. Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting simplisafe.com slash rogan. That's half off at simplisafe.com slash rogan. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.

[1:15:03] Thank you. [1:15:03] This episode is brought to you by Blue Chew, the number one brand for better sex. Blue Chew just dropped something crazy. Blue Chew Gold. Blue Chew has made it easy for 5 million men to get hard, but now they've made it easier to get horny too. Blue Chew Gold gets your brain and body on the same page fast. Other options just help blood flow, but gold combines [1:15:33] and two, boost arousal and intimacy. So for a good time, go to BlueChew.com. And we've got a special deal for our listeners right now. When you buy two months of Blue Chew Gold, you get the third free with promo code ROGAN. You also receive an additional 10% off plus free overnight shipping on your first order. Visit BlueChew.com for more details and important safety information. Blue Chew is number one for a reason. [1:16:03] Yeah, and of course they have to take that soil somewhere. So in Tacoma, they took it to some special landfill. But I mean, one of the really crazy things that happened as a result of closing the smokestack, [1:16:18] there was that they took that arsenic kitchen that I was talking about, the one that had been up in Everett, and some of the most contaminated parts of the buildings that were part of the whole smelter compound, and

[1:16:35] The... [1:16:37] And Osarco promised that they were going to take all that stuff and... [1:16:42] put it somewhere else. I don't know where they were going to put it, but they said they were going to take it. But then they went bankrupt. And so they didn't remove it. And instead, they created this very bizarre kind of [1:16:58] Eh... [1:16:59] Pit. [1:17:00] with where they put all the worst stuff, including a bunch of the soil... [1:17:06] the contaminated soil from Everett and the arsenic kitchen and they [1:17:10] put it in a sort of, [1:17:12] super heavy-duty plastic-lined [1:17:15] you know, garbage bag, essentially. I mean, if you can imagine like the largest garbage bag in the world, they put all this stuff in it, and they capped it with soil. And that thing is sitting there, you know, still, even though they have now, um, [1:17:32] You know, they cleared off the whole area where the compound was, where the factories and the furnaces were, and they built condos on top of that. Oh, my God. But behind the condos is this giant hump of contaminated waste. [1:17:51] stuff in a giant plastic garbage bag. Did they tell the people that live in these condos? [1:17:58] What they're dealing with? Well, there's a very small historical display with some photographs and pictures.

[1:18:08] about the smelter that's in one of the buildings on the way to the public bathrooms. [1:18:15] Oh, my God. So presumably if the people who are buying condos there know anything about it, they probably are aware of the history. But they think it's – and in a sense, it has been cleaned up. I mean, but – In a sense. [1:18:33] But also, doesn't it leak into the water table? [1:18:37] Well, they have a lot of stuff that they've done. I mean, in the book, I talk about, you know, Frank Herbert, who wrote Dune, he was from Tacoma. And in fact, the stuff in Dune about the pollution and what has happened to the planet, you know, that he dramatized, a lot of that came from his disgust with the smelter. [1:19:07] basically destroyed its whole environment. And now they have [1:19:14] you know, develop this whole little park. [1:19:17] on one end, you know, the condos are on one end of this, what used to be the smelter property, and then on the other end, on top of this... [1:19:26] slag land. The slag is the stuff that's left over after you've pulled all the metal out of the rocks. There's the stuff that once it's cooled off, looks like gravel, or

[1:19:41] And it's called slag, but it isn't really gravel. I mean, it's contaminated with all the stuff. It's contaminated with arsenic. And so they built a park that's called Dune Park, and it's dedicated to Frank Herbert. And it's this little walking trail. And the whole thing, I think, is developed in such a way that it's kind of lined with plastic. [1:20:11] shores to keep stuff from leaking out. And like if you live in one of those condos, you can't plant anything. [1:20:20] anything that will be larger than a, you know, small shrub, in part because of the plastic liner thing. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's wild. That's so crazy. Yeah. [1:20:35] Whoa. [1:20:38] It's so disturbing. [1:20:39] And then there's so many factors too, right? There's the plants and then there's the... [1:20:46] industrial pesticides... [1:20:50] Have you ever read Dissolving Illusions? [1:20:52] Suzanne Humphries wrote this book about – [1:20:56] one of the aspects of the book is about DDT. [1:21:00] And the ubiquitous use of DDT and how so many people in rural communities were – [1:21:07] coming down with [1:21:08] air quotes polio. [1:21:10] paralytic polio

[1:21:13] that was directly... [1:21:16] correlated to the use of DDT. [1:21:19] Like the same areas where people – and it wasn't just human beings that were getting this polio, but it was also cows and horses and dogs. They were getting paralyzed as well, which it doesn't cross – [1:21:31] species. Human-derived polio does not cross species. It's a very dark story. [1:21:38] And [1:21:39] You want to hear something crazy? What percentage of polio do you think is asymptomatic? [1:21:45] I've never heard that there's polio that's asymptomatic. 95 to 99 percent. [1:21:51] 95 to 99% of actual polio is asymptomatic. [1:21:58] So what they were calling polio was most likely DDT poisoning. [1:22:03] That was sprayed everywhere. [1:22:05] They were sprayed everywhere for gypsy moths and all sorts of different pests. They just... [1:22:10] They didn't know. [1:22:12] And then once they did know, it was too late. And they were just trying to cover it up and say, no, we cured Berlio. We cured it. Look. Look. [1:22:21] And these people that were... [1:22:23] getting air quotes polio or most likely getting poisoned by DDT. [1:22:30] Yeah, I think that a lot of this environmental stuff has become so overwhelming to people that they kind of tune it out. Yes. It's like, what are we going to do about it? There's nothing we can do, so let's just pretend it's not happening. I make sure that I don't read any of this stuff late at night.

[1:22:45] When I read stuff like this late at night, I can't go to sleep. I just freak out. It just disturbs me, human beings, their capacity to do things like this, either knowingly or unknowingly, and then to cover it up knowingly. [1:23:04] and then to... [1:23:06] 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 the obfuscating and the diverting the attention to some other thing, like calling it a disease or calling it something else. [1:23:23] Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things in my mind when I kind of – [1:23:28] wanted to develop the whole [1:23:31] thing about, you know, 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 the stuff about pollution. But I did think it was a way to get people maybe to think about these issues and [1:23:55] who might not otherwise want to do that. And I think people are interested in the history of how they might have been exposed. When I did a reading up in Seattle a month or so ago, everybody was talking about where they grew up.

[1:24:18] in relation to the smelter, like how close they were to it. [1:24:24] And, you know, what they might have experienced as a result. And that, I think, is one of the interesting things about the Tacoma story is that. [1:24:36] Um, [1:24:36] 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. But there were a lot of other communities in the area, including Mercer Island, where I lived. [1:24:53] grew up, which is now kind of a famously wealthy, you know, some of the [1:25:01] You know, Microsoft people have houses there, or, you know, I think Paul Allen had a house there. And it was when I was a kid growing up there, it was a well-to-do upper middle class house. [1:25:15] place. And [1:25:18] One of the things I look at in the book is some of the really bizarre crime that happened on the island at that time. [1:25:27] you wonder was this, you know, in any way related to, you know, some of these things. We're talking about the rise in lead in the air from leaded gas because Mercer Island is, [1:25:44] is crossed by I-90. I-90 comes down out of the Cascades and crosses Mercer Island, which is sitting in the middle of Lake Washington, and ends up in Seattle.

[1:25:57] And so Mercer Island had a lot of pollution from... [1:26:02] I-90. [1:26:03] and it also was in the plume from the Tagoma smelter. And while I was growing up there, some weird shit happened. Like what kind of shit? Well, I lived on a street that was close to I-90 and was actually kind of ran over the top of a tunnel that enclosed I-90 on part of the island. [1:26:33] young guy named George Waterfield Russell who turned out to be a serial killer. And in the 1990s, [1:26:41] killed three women on the east side where Bellevue is [1:26:47] And [1:26:48] And so that is really kind of a striking... [1:26:52] um, um, [1:26:54] You know, you don't expect serial killers to come from that kind of a neighborhood, not very far away from where Russell grew up. This other guy was also who went to my high school, as did Russell, was growing up, who became one of the worst arsonists in Seattle history when he burned down his parents' house. [1:27:19] warehouse and it killed [1:27:21] several [1:27:22] Seattle firefighters. [1:27:25] So there were those two. There was a guy in my class at the high school who was obsessed with his

[1:27:35] ex-girlfriend and went he worked at a facility that used dynamite. [1:27:42] And he stole some dynamite and blasting caps, and he went and blew up her dorm building. [1:27:52] And there was another kid 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 sister's Camaro or something. [1:28:12] an hour into the wall of the [1:28:14] junior high gymnasium and destroyed the gymnasium. So all this stuff is happening, you know, in a period of time where [1:28:24] And in a place that you wouldn't think would have that level of... [1:28:30] Crime. [1:28:31] And that kind of crime. And that kind of crime. And oddly enough, always men. [1:28:36] Yeah. [1:28:38] which are uniquely affected. [1:28:40] by these things. [1:28:41] So what about the women that were there? Was there bizarre behavior? [1:28:48] that you might think [1:28:50] could be attributed to these toxins. [1:28:52] You know, I don't really know how to answer that. I mean, I think that there was... [1:28:58] um... [1:29:00] One of the things that I remember about the high school, for example, was, you know, that they there was a lot of.

[1:29:08] kind of creepy behavior, you know, going on in terms of food fights and just a lot of stuff you, I don't think you see as much now. I mean, I, this is completely anecdotal, so I can't support any of this, but it just, it felt to me like when my niece and nephew were growing up that, that they were less, [1:29:32] troubled as youths, you know, than we were in the 1970s. You know, they were growing up in the... [1:29:41] 90s, you know, and I think there is a little bit of that. I mean, there are... [1:29:50] Can't prove it. [1:29:52] Um... [1:29:53] But I think that... [1:29:56] It may be true that, you know, the whole, all the jokes about the baby boomers being crazy. [1:30:03] because of... [1:30:04] Um, [1:30:05] lead exposure. There may be a little bit of truth to that. [1:30:09] I mean it makes sense [1:30:12] I mean, it totally makes sense. I mean, if there were elevated levels. [1:30:16] of all this lead. [1:30:18] elevated levels of all these toxins. [1:30:20] And we know that it affects human behavior. I mean, it only makes sense. [1:30:24] It does. And I, you know, I hope that... [1:30:30] one of the things my book might be able to do is to encourage people to just think about this in their, you know, in their lives and,

[1:30:38] I think a lot of people are now much more aware of lead. I mean, that thing that you were showing earlier about the Bunker Hill thing, it said that five micrograms per deciliter of lead was the, they've now lowered that to 3.5. [1:30:55] And it really should be zero, you know, because there is no amount of lead that's safe in [1:31:03] in terms of exposure. And they know that. I think it just, if the federal government comes out and says it's zero, then [1:31:13] that triggers all kinds of things that have to happen, and it makes... [1:31:18] Parents freak out because, you know, they might take their child to a doctor and have them tested and find out there's some, you know, if it's not zero, then what are we going to do about it? Right. And it's, you know. And who's liable? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. [1:31:35] That's what's so disturbing about all this stuff is that... [1:31:38] a lot of effort is put forth to make sure that whatever companies that may be liable [1:31:44] They'll try to distort facts and... [1:31:48] try to hide evidence and try to make it seem like this is just a nothing burger. This is no big deal. [1:31:55] Well, you see that with fluoride. [1:31:57] You know, we've been putting fluoride in the water forever, supposedly, to help people with tooth decay. [1:32:02] And then you're seeing that there's a direct correlation between high levels of fluoride in the water and lowered IQs.

[1:32:09] And yet there's still people out there that are saying, oh, you're going to have to see a bunch of tooth decay. We need to put the fluoride back in the water. We need to stop this. Why? Well, because people are profiting. [1:32:20] off of putting fluoride in water. There's enormous corporations that are responsible for that fluoride. [1:32:26] and they provide that flora to the drinking water. [1:32:29] And under the guise of improving... [1:32:32] dental health. [1:32:34] Which is just crazy because you don't need it. [1:32:37] Like you could just brush your teeth and stop eating so much fucking sugar, which is really the culprit. That's really 100 percent the culprit. I mean, if you go back to ancient times. [1:32:47] One of the things they've seen, they find like... [1:32:50] skulls and dead people's teeth from hundreds of years ago. You don't find a massive amount of tooth decay. [1:32:59] Because people weren't eating a lot of sugar. [1:33:01] They weren't constantly eating candy and stuff that rots your fucking teeth out. We don't need to stop. We don't need to put... [1:33:09] this neurotoxin into water. [1:33:12] We need to stop eating poison. [1:33:14] It's like really simple. You don't add a poison to make you better because there's more poison. [1:33:21] It's really crazy. [1:33:23] And these are like hardcore facts. This is not something that's deniable. Like if you look at the correlation between fluoride and lowered IQs, it's pretty undeniable. They know it's a fact. They know it's a neurotoxin. But yet they'll brush it off. Oh, but that's in high doses and low doses. It's like, well, who's determining? Who's determining? There hasn't been a long history of human use for...

[1:33:51] of fluoride in drinking water. [1:33:53] It's fairly recent. I believe it goes back into the early 20th century. [1:33:58] It's crazy. Yeah. Well, it is. I mean, they always say the dose makes the poison. Sure. And I suppose that that's true. Oh, I'm sure it's true. But, I mean, zero amount is good for you. And this is not a smart thing for people to do. It's why you're not supposed to eat toothpaste that has fluoride in it. They tell you to spit it out. Why? Because it's got fluoride in it, and fluoride is fucking bad for you. Right. So why are we putting it in toothpaste in the first place? Like, help me out. You're just trying to clean teeth, right? [1:34:28] Why do you have to use fluoride? Well, you don't. That's why they sell fluoride-free toothpaste, and they advertise it as such. If fluoride was a thing that was helping everyone with tooth decay, why the hell would anybody want to buy fluoride-free toothpaste? Well, because people who have been actually paying attention and reading independent journalists and reading people that have gone outside the mainstream narrative that realize, like, this is not good for you. [1:34:54] Not only is it not good for you, it probably should have been removed from our water supply a long time ago. So who's responsible? And then it gets into that. It gets into like these corporations that have been dumping fluoride into water or justifying the use of fluoride, the politicians that have been doing it. Who's been getting paid? What's the paper trail? Like what's going on? [1:35:13] And... [1:35:14] It's just one more... [1:35:16] piece of disgusting and disturbing evidence of human depravity

[1:35:22] The people are willing to do things that are just... [1:35:24] they know are bad. [1:35:27] But they profit. And they got... This episode is brought to you by 8 Sleep. Okay. When it comes to sleep... [1:35:33] I've got to have the right temperature dialed in, depending on the time of year that might be ripping hot. I'm talking volcanic or igloo levels of iciness. The point is, I need the temperature to be just right so I can get deep sleep, the kind of sleep that drives real recovery. And luckily, 8 Sleep is all about giving you the best sleep possible. [1:36:03] regulating the temperature on each side of the bed in real time. Why? So you and your partner can consistently hit your ideal deep restorative sleep range and wake up feeling truly refreshed and recovered. Use my code Rogan at 8sleep.com slash Rogan for up to $350 off the Pod 5 Ultra. The best part is that you get 30 days to try it at home and return it if you don't like it. [1:36:33] love your investment in better sleep. That's code Rogan at 8sleep.com slash Rogan. [1:36:40] When you're a small business owner, you're always looking for the next big thing. Whether you're a gym owner looking to expand, a store stocking up for a busy season, or a restaurant owner planning a new menu, [1:36:51] you'll always need capital to grow.

[1:36:53] But traditional banks are making it harder than ever to secure a small business loan. [1:36:58] That's why thousands of business owners trust Cardiff for same-day funding. [1:37:02] Their online application takes less than five minutes and won't impact your personal credit score. [1:37:08] With over two decades of expertise, it's no surprise business owners keep voting Cardiff, America's favorite small business lender. [1:37:16] If you've been operating for at least a year and are earning at least $20,000 a month in revenue, [1:37:20] Apply now for up to $500,000 in same-day business funding at cardiff.co.rogan. [1:37:27] Again, that's cardiff.co slash rogan. Cardiff. Borrow better. [1:37:33] Department is not, you know, completely blameless in all of this either because, you know, in terms of lead, for example, one of the places that I think people are really concerned about is the schools, you know, public schools. Public school buildings were built, you know, often decades ago. So they're old and they have old... [1:37:56] Plumbing they have lead pipes lead paint lead paint, which is even crazier. They use lead in paint. Yeah and So there's you know, [1:38:07] There are real questions about how much the government is going to be on the [1:38:11] hook for replacing all of this stuff that has to happen, which is, you know, so much money in order to do that. And, you know, they have occasionally kind of tiptoed up to this. I think the, you know, the Biden administration did say that they were going to spend, you know, millions of dollars to try and do work at schools. Now, I think that's all in question.

[1:38:41] period right now because... [1:38:45] The EPA is being defunded in a lot of ways. I'm sure the EPA is not a perfect agency. I'm sure they've made mistakes, but they're the ones. I'm sure they've been compromised, but also someone should be looking into this. Yes. And you're going to need some sort of an environmental group that is responsible and just for, [1:39:08] that can look at these things and say, hey, this is a real issue, and [1:39:12] all of our health. [1:39:13] Right. It's dependent upon them doing a really good job of sussing this stuff out. And it's the EPA that's responsible for the super fund. [1:39:23] program, which is [1:39:25] in large part responsible for cleaning this stuff up, but they're being defunded, you know, and so... [1:39:34] Who's going to do that? Who's going to clean up, you know, the areas that have radioactive? [1:39:41] Um... [1:39:42] you know, legacy pollution from World War II, Hanford and all of that. I mean, that stuff's been going on for decades and it's not finished. Well, there's an area in France. [1:39:56] that is the size of Paris. [1:39:58] that human beings can't go into. [1:40:01] All because of the war. [1:40:03] And what kind of [1:40:05] Well, you can find it. Jamie can find it, so I don't want to speak out of tune about this, but munitions, like unexploded munitions and just where things got bombed.

[1:40:16] It's so toxic. Human beings can't live there. [1:40:19] It's the size of Paris. [1:40:22] It's like this enormous chunk of land that's like, it's ruined. [1:40:25] Probably forever. [1:40:28] Thank you. [1:40:29] Yeah, I mean, and there's got to be some kind of, you know, government intervention. Yeah. There has to be the responsibility. Because the corporations walked away. Right. And so they can't, you know, ISARCO still exists, but it's now operating out of Mexico. [1:40:52] How convenient. [1:40:54] Yeah, that's a whole story. There is Zone Rogue. [1:40:58] World War I era battlefields that are still dangerous over 100 years later. [1:41:04] Wow. Yeah. [1:41:07] So – [1:41:08] The Red Zone is a chain of former battlefields across northeastern France that the government has cordoned off due to the many dangerous ordinance that remains from the First World War. [1:41:20] The area originally spanned over 460 square miles from Nancy through to Lille and incorporates such battlefields as this... [1:41:30] How do you say that? Psalm? [1:41:32] Verdun and Vimy Ridge. [1:41:35] While the size of the region has lessened over the 100-plus years since the end of the conflict, the area is still characterized by the scars and remnants of the Great War. [1:41:43] Oh, so this is even World War I, and all that chemical stuff that they were using. Crazy, yeah. Using. Wow. That's when they first started using chemical warfare. Yeah.

[1:41:55] People are gross. [1:41:58] Oh, they're awesome too. Like a lot of people, you're awesome. A lot of people are awesome. A lot of people are great. I love them. But like in large groups, when they don't have responsibility for their actions. [1:42:11] They're gross. [1:42:12] It's... [1:42:14] It's very – the more – [1:42:16] you read about these types of things, like you're describing your book, and these... [1:42:24] horrible things that these [1:42:26] corporations have done. [1:42:27] the amount of pollution that they've caused and the amount of damage that they've done. And then – [1:42:33] the [1:42:34] effects on untold millions of human beings that have been exposed to these things. [1:42:40] It's just, it's so disturbing. [1:42:42] It's so disturbing that it just makes you – like I said, I can't read this stuff at night. [1:42:48] If I read this stuff at night, I can't sleep. I wind up getting up in the middle of the night and wandering around my house and just... [1:42:55] It really freaks me out. [1:42:56] Yeah. [1:42:57] I know a lot of people have said things to me like, how did you write this book? And I think they're talking about the serial killer part of it. [1:43:08] Which, you know, it is really disturbing stuff. [1:43:14] Yeah, all of it is disturbing. The fact that serial killers exist, that's disturbing. The fact that there might be some sort of an environmental effect or chemical effect that's causing some of this behavior. [1:43:24] to take place. But we did do the right thing in terms of, you know, now every country in the world that was selling products

[1:43:32] leaded gas has taken it off the market. So that was a good thing. Yeah, sure. We made some progress. And, you know, again, this guy's graphs that he published show this. Who's this guy again? Rick Nevin. He wrote this book called Lucifer Curves, which contain all these different graphs that show this. [1:44:02] in my book that he let me reproduce. You know, the violent crime rate goes up and up in the 70s and 80s. And then when they remove, yeah, when they remove the leaded gas, [1:44:17] The crime rate falls off a cliff. That is crazy. Look at this graph. It's almost like it mirrors it. Yeah, all these graphs look exactly the same. [1:44:28] that's so crazy. Yeah. [1:44:32] It's wild. [1:44:34] Okay, so look at this. Scroll up a little bit first. So murder from 1900 to 1959 versus paint lead. [1:44:43] Look at that. Yeah. [1:44:46] It's correlation. [1:44:47] They're almost mirrored. [1:44:51] And then aggravated assault versus gasoline-led. Same thing. It's like... [1:44:57] They follow the same path. It's nuts. [1:45:00] Robbery versus gasoline lead. Look at the drop-off with the drop-off of gasoline lead. That is nuts.

[1:45:09] And it's the same thing with serial killers. The number of serial killers in the 70s and 80s and 90s goes up to the highest... [1:45:18] that we've seen, you know, about 700 operating in this country during that period. And then it just drops off. [1:45:27] And that's why they call that the golden age of serial killers. Wow. And now it's like, you know, 50 to 100. [1:45:37] So I think there always have been serial killers, you know, throughout history. I mean, there's Jack the Ripper. [1:45:47] That whole period, you know, because that was the Industrial Revolution. That was a period when there was a lot of lead paint being produced in England. And so Jack the Ripper may have had a little bit too much work. [1:46:05] Led on top of whatever else was wrong with them. I mean, we don't even know who he was. It makes me really think about Peaky Blinders. You ever watch that show? Yes. That show is like, it's almost like they filtered the whole show. They did an amazing job of that show. First of all, it's one of my favorite series of all time. [1:46:22] It's so good. [1:46:24] But the show looks like... [1:46:27] it's in the middle of like [1:46:29] Coal fog. [1:46:31] You know, like everything is kind of gray. And they did an amazing job of recreating what life was like after the war in that part of Europe. And that's what it looked like.

[1:46:45] And coal includes a lot of compounds that are really dangerous to breathe. There was a whole thing that happened in London in the 1950s where they got – [1:47:02] I don't remember why this happened, but, you know, I mean, it was a really difficult time for that country after World War II. There was, you know, economically they were really struggling. And I think they got, during one... [1:47:16] winter in the 1950s, they got some really bad quality coal delivered. [1:47:23] to London, which caused this horrific smog event, essentially, that was so heavy that people were killed just trying to cross the street because you couldn't see anything. Oh, God. Yeah, it was like there was a whole episode of The Crown that was devoted to this. It was while Winston Churchill was prime minister. Sounds like driving through fog. [1:47:53] and that [1:47:55] you know, in the earlier, like Charles Dickens or whatever, you know, we would talk about fog all the time in London. And I just thought fog, oh, that's from, you know, the ocean or something. But it's not. It was smog. [1:48:09] And it was smog from industry and from coal fires. [1:48:14] Um,

[1:48:16] And I think they paid kind of a terrible price. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah, that's what Peaky Blinders looks like. It's like the whole series. It's almost like they did it. So this is the Thames River. [1:48:29] From 1952. [1:48:31] Wow. [1:48:33] Wow, look at that guy. He's got a fucking mask on. [1:48:36] Yeah, the great smog of 1952. That's what it was. And a lot of people who had asthma... [1:48:43] died. [1:48:44] You know, because... [1:48:46] It was so terrible. The error was just so terrible. Wow. Wow. [1:48:50] Two workers rested in an oxygen tent in Pennsylvania from 1948. [1:48:55] Yeah, there was a similar event in Pennsylvania. And there was a death fog. [1:48:59] Yeah. [1:49:00] Thank you. [1:49:00] Two shocking events still in living memory from Queen Elizabeth's generation because of Clean Air Act reinforcement. [1:49:08] Reducing just one of the pollutants targeted by the Clean Air Act added 1.6 years to the average American life. [1:49:14] Wow. [1:49:16] Yeah, I think Puget Sound had a problem. [1:49:21] that was caused by sort of the geography of the area because, you know, [1:49:25] Puget Sound is kind of a trough between the Olympic Mountains and the Cascade Mountains. And so it's a low area. And during certain times of the year, everybody used to heat their houses with wood fires, with Franklin stoves and stuff like that. Which is really bad for you, unfortunately. That's where coal comes from. Right. Right. When you buy charcoal.

[1:49:55] If you buy lump charcoal, that's what that is. [1:49:58] Yeah, so not as many people use that anymore. And like when I was a kid, I remember... [1:50:03] the skies being really gray a lot, you know, especially during the winter. And I think part of that was from the smoke kind of settling in that Puget Sound trough between the mountains. And they would tell people sometimes they would have a smoke, they'd have a fire ban. They couldn't use your wood stove. [1:50:25] Wow, because of air quality. Because of the air quality. [1:50:31] you know, the Northwest and to Puget Sound, and the air looks so much better. [1:50:37] I mean, and it's like during the summer, it's just [1:50:40] Like, I don't remember it being like this. [1:50:45] So, I mean, that's just my experience. But I think it's true that the air quality is better. [1:50:52] Well, it has to be. Yeah. And that's a very disturbing thing for people. They don't want to hear it. [1:50:58] Like you think of wood fire being natural. [1:51:01] but it's actually really bad. [1:51:04] Yeah, and I think... Like if everybody in the city of Austin heated their home in the winter with wood fires, it'd be a fucking disaster. Yeah. It'd be really bad. [1:51:13] If everybody in New York City... [1:51:16] Like, imagine. [1:51:17] Well, you can't because it's apartments. But if it was something... [1:51:20] where you had a chimney and everybody had wood fire. It would be terrible. [1:51:23] It's great if you're camping, if it's just you. If it's just you and your friends and it's a small wood fire, it's like relatively speaking, it's not going to cause too much damage.

[1:51:32] It's no big deal. [1:51:33] But when you get a large... [1:51:34] group of human beings, they're burning wood. Yeah. And you're all breathing that. It's just like a fire. Like, have you ever been around a wildfire? It's terrible. The air quality is awful. You know, Los Angeles has had a bunch of those. And many times when I was living in L.A., the entire city was covered in smoke. And you're just you're breathing these wildfire, this wildfire smoke. [1:51:58] Yeah, I mean, it's just undeniable, I think now. And... [1:52:03] And I think it's much, you know, people are really moving away from having... [1:52:08] wood stoves and fireplaces for that very reason. It's so weird because you think of like, oh, that's a comforting thing. Nice fireplace. It's beautiful. [1:52:19] You know? [1:52:19] I cook over hardwood all the time. [1:52:23] It's like the best way. You have a smoker, an offset smoker. [1:52:27] put a little bunch of [1:52:29] oak in there, post oak and [1:52:31] You cook that way, but, you know, what's coming out of that smokestock? [1:52:34] Yeah, nothing good. I mean, if you have one smoker, I'm sure it's fine. It's no big deal. But if everybody's doing it, it becomes an issue, especially if you have stagnant air. [1:52:44] Like you're talking about that trough. [1:52:47] Yeah, I mean, so, you know, we are doing the right things in some respects. I mean, you know, we're moving away from heating houses with wood. We're, you know, we stopped, you know, putting lead in paint. We stopped the leaded gas. What do you know, if anything, about gas, about natural gas cooking? Because this is one of the things during the Biden administration, they started –

[1:53:17] talking about removing gas kitchens and gas stoves from people's homes and people start freaking out like this is crazy you can't do this this is a but [1:53:27] There seems to be some... [1:53:28] real data that shows that having gas in your home [1:53:33] is not just dangerous, but dangerous for the development of children. [1:53:38] Yeah, I mean, I am not an expert on this, but I am... [1:53:44] I'm really concerned about what I've read in part because I have a gas stove. It completely makes sense. Yeah, and I like cooking on gas, but I've been really concerned about what I've read and also about the, you know, again, the industry suppression of evidence about this stuff. Right. And, you know, just the whole thing of calling it natural gas. Right, right, right. [1:54:14] Yeah, I mean... Yeah, there's a lot of natural stuff that's terrible for you. Did we really fall for that? I mean, it's... [1:54:21] Kind of heartbreaking if it turns out to have been, you know, as concerning as they're saying. And yeah. Well, you hear politicians talking about clean coal. [1:54:36] I've heard that term before, which is a wild term to use, clean coal. And it's bullshit. Yeah. I mean, it's total. It seems bullshit. Yeah. [1:54:44] It's just... Ugh.

[1:54:47] Yeah. [1:54:48] I just... [1:54:50] I mean, and I think, you know, as... [1:54:54] Homo sapiens, we're either going to get on top of this stuff or it's going to get on top of us. Yeah, well, it seems like it already has gotten on top of a generation. Yeah. [1:55:05] I mean, like we were talking about the leaded gasoline contributing especially in – [1:55:10] urban communities where you had to deal with a lot of [1:55:13] this exhaust... [1:55:15] and the pollution, there's a correlation between lowered IQs. It's a statistically significant correlation. [1:55:24] And all the stuff they're talking about now with plastics in the body. I mean, I read something this morning that said that we're walking around with plastic accumulation in our brains of enough... [1:55:38] Plastic to make a spoon. Yes. Yeah. In our brains. And it's like, well, that can't be good. No. I mean, I'm not an expert on the plastic stuff, but everything you're seeing about it is really alarming. And you just have to think that unless we... [1:55:56] Stop using this stuff unless we remove it from production. [1:56:02] Um... [1:56:04] we're going to be in real trouble. And when we come up with solutions, make sure those solutions aren't even worse for you. [1:56:10] Because one of the solutions was these damn paper straws. [1:56:14] So what makes a paper straw able to support liquid without dissolving?

[1:56:22] Forever chemicals. [1:56:24] Paper straws are way worse for you than plastic straws. [1:56:28] Way worse. Yeah. Especially if you're dealing with hot liquids, which is another factor when you're dealing with coffee cups. Yeah. Like coffee cups. My friend Paul Saladino did this demonstration where he took a typical paper coffee cup and dissolved the outside of it. [1:56:46] and showed you what you're actually pouring hot liquid into. You're pouring hot liquid into what essentially looks like a condom. [1:56:53] It's a plastic liner. [1:56:55] That lines the inside of these paper cups, which is why they can hold hot liquid in the first place. It doesn't even make any sense. Like, how is paper able to hold hot liquid without dissolving? Well, it has to have some sort of a... [1:57:07] surface inside of it that's a coating. [1:57:09] And that coating is filled with forever chemicals. [1:57:13] And it is fucking terrible for you. Yeah. [1:57:16] So our solutions have to be... [1:57:19] at least somewhat better. Right. You know, and then there's people that say, well, metal, the problem with metal straws is people trip. Right. [1:57:26] And the metal straw is going to their brain. Okay, you fucking don't trip. Jesus Christ. What are we saying here? I haven't followed the metal. Yeah, a bunch of people have died because they're looking at their phone. Yeah, they're looking at their phone and sucking something through a metal straw. And they trip and it goes into their head and kills them. [1:57:44] Oh, my God. Yeah, more than one person has died that way. Like, good Lord. Like, if it's not one thing, it's another. There's no end. Whenever we try to fix something, we come up with a solution that's actually worse than the initial problem. Not always, but. It's like a Rube Goldberg thing or something. Yeah. I mean, and it just makes you wonder, do we have to go back to some sort of really primitive form of existence like everybody rides donkeys?

[1:58:14] why we serve in the studio. We don't use plastic water bottles anymore. And we serve all of our guests. We use a steel cup. [1:58:23] This is why we have steel cups, because I realized a long time ago that plastic leeches into the water, and you have no chain of command. No one knows exactly how that water bottle was handled. No one knows how long it was sitting on a dock. No one knows what was the temperature of the truck that it was delivered to the supermarket. When you get it, it's cold. [1:58:53] it got into your hands. Well, if it's plastic, there's a high likelihood that it's leaching some chemicals. Now, here's another disturbing thing that they found. [1:59:02] Thank you. [1:59:03] He said, well, we should buy glass water. [1:59:05] Yeah, buy a glass water bottle. That solves the problem. Well, actually, it doesn't because of the caps, right? [1:59:11] So the caps... [1:59:13] They leach more because of the way they make these caps on these metal water bottles. Whatever the surface of the interior lining of those caps, it keeps water from leaking out. [1:59:25] leeches even more. [1:59:27] than it does with a water bottle that's plastic. So what they found is that glass water bottles... [1:59:33] leach more chemicals into the water [1:59:36] than plastic. [1:59:38] Which is just crazy. [1:59:41] Yeah, I mean, that must be like that. Make sure that's true. I'm pretty sure, 99% sure that's true.

[1:59:46] I read this whole article about it, but I want to be clear. [1:59:49] Because this is pretty important. [1:59:51] . [1:59:52] Yeah, I remember, you know, I'm old enough to remember when they delivered milk, you know, in glass bottles to the house. And they had these little paper caps on them. But I now wonder, you know, if those were sort of coated. Well, they seem like they're metal. It seems like a metal coated cap because there's something about the rigidity of it. [2:00:16] Recent studies indicated glass bottles may contain significantly higher level of microplastics than previously thought, even exceeding those found in plastic bottles. This is largely due to microplastics originating from the bottle caps. [2:00:32] specifically the paint used on them. While glass is often seen as a safer alternative to plastic, these findings highlight a potential concern. [2:00:40] regarding microplastic contamination in beverages regardless of the container type. And we've talked about the dangers of plastics on this podcast before because we had Dr. Shanna Swan from Harvard who wrote a book called Countdown. It's all talking about... [2:00:56] how the phthalates and these microplastics entering into women's bodies during the time where these children are developing, it's contributing to a bunch of different factors that are really dangerous to the endocrine system. And Kampitz suggests that most of the microplastics in the body are ingested through food, particularly meat, because commercial meat production tends to concentrate plastics in the food chain. Terrific!

[2:01:23] There's no escape. What has been the reaction to your book? Has there been any pushback by people that don't like your connecting serial killers to industrial contaminants? [2:01:41] Yeah, I mean, there have been people who say, you know, well, you know, why isn't everybody in Tacoma a serial killer and things like that. [2:01:51] Which I think is kind of the wrong focus. I mean, I'm just trying to introduce a description of sort of the most extreme... [2:02:00] version of what might have happened. And again, I don't [2:02:06] make those kinds of claims. I mean we can't for example [2:02:11] show that... [2:02:12] And Ted Bundy did what he did because of lead. [2:02:16] All I'm trying to show is that he was exposed. [2:02:21] to a significant amount of lead. And we know that from the testing of his house and his yard. [2:02:29] And so I'm just saying, think about what that might have done. Think about... [2:02:34] what it might have contributed. [2:02:36] probably wasn't the only reason. There was probably a whole suite of reasons why he did what he did with all of these guys. That's true. [2:02:47] But Gary Ridgeway, you know, again, he grows up. [2:02:52] two miles from SeaTac, from the airport, at a time when they were using lead in... Jet fuel. Jet fuel. Oh, wow. And so he's, and he's also right by two major highways. And what does he do when he grows up? He goes to work at a truck factory painting factory.

[2:03:15] Oh, boy. With a spray, you know, gun. And that lead, that paint has lead components. So he's got it coming and going. I mean, his brother talked about how he used to, they used to play on a, you know, [2:03:34] a slag pile from the copper mine in Idaho. So I think he's a guy who clearly [2:03:45] has to have come into contact with more lead than was good for him. Now, does that mean that's why you did it? You know, and he's, you know, his whole history involves so many victims. I mean, he... [2:04:02] plead guilty to something like 48 or 49. [2:04:07] But they've tied him to probably around 78 or 79. And that's probably an undercount. [2:04:15] So. [2:04:18] Thank you. [2:04:18] I think it's worth thinking about. [2:04:20] That's what I'm saying. I think it's worth thinking about what lead contributed to... [2:04:27] crime during that period. And I wanted to tell the story in a way that was kind of subjective, you know, and personal and not in an academic way. [2:04:40] way. I mean, there are some great [2:04:42] academic histories of lead, [2:04:45] exposure and the history of lead industries in this country. I didn't want to do that because it's been done. And because, you know, I think people, when they're reading something for, I wouldn't say entertainment, but you know, they want to be, they want to find something compelling and absorbing and learn something. And this I felt was a way of, you know, in Murderland of

[2:05:15] could kind of say, oh, you know, I didn't know about what happened with lead during World War II. I didn't know about what it could do. [2:05:24] to kids and how that might show up years later. [2:05:31] in their lives. [2:05:33] - Okay. [2:05:34] When you finish a book like this and then you release it, what does that feel like? [2:05:39] Like, you're contributing... [2:05:41] I think, greatly to this discussion. It's a very important one. [2:05:45] of the impact. [2:05:47] of these industrial pollutants [2:05:49] what, what, [2:05:50] These unknowing... [2:05:53] victims of this, not just the serial killers, but all the people that were probably damaged [2:06:00] by this stuff. [2:06:01] What does it feel like when you release a book like this? [2:06:05] . [2:06:06] Um, it's kind of overwhelming, you know, to see it suddenly kind of be in people's hands and they're reading it and they're asking you questions like, you know, and, um, [2:06:19] Yeah, I mean... [2:06:21] The funny thing about writing a book is that while you're writing it and doing the research, it's kind of your own private Idaho. It's your own private little playpen where you get to make all the decisions and make all the choices and – [2:06:39] And then, you know, editors get involved and all these other, you know, people at the publishing house and they start saying, well, what about this? What about that? And that's always sort of terrifying because you realize, oh, I haven't thought about all the, you know, ramifications. I need to, you know, do all this fact checking and make sure everything's right.

[2:07:09] nailed down as much as you can. [2:07:13] And that's all great. But then it enters people's hands and they're reading it. And sometimes, you know, when you publish a book, people have... [2:07:23] really different responses than you even imagined. You know, I mean, you can't [2:07:28] control it anymore. It's just out in the world doing its thing. And it's interesting. It's always sort of really interesting to, you know, I just heard from a woman who's the daughter of a guy who worked at the smelter in Tacoma. And I had been in touch with her, you know, briefly, [2:07:58] He was working for the union and did all this stuff to bring the whole arsenic thing to light to, you know, show that the... [2:08:11] plant doctor who he called the plant quack, was lying about the stuff. And [2:08:20] And, you know, he was sort of a hero in this whole story because he published, you know, he had this little newsletter that he published from his kitchen table. [2:08:33] Thank you. [2:08:34] And he was so funny, so great. And he really, you know, cared about the guys that he worked with. And so he, I think, helped compile a whole list of...

[2:08:46] which was called The Death List. I found it, there's a copy of it in the Tacoma Library, a Sarko Records that listed all the guys who worked at the smelter who died of various cancers pretty young, you know, like at age 55 or something. [2:09:08] And so, you know, when you hear from somebody like, you know, that woman [2:09:16] lived in Tacoma and remember this whole era, it's really gratifying. I mean, it's really great to know that you've put something on the record that will help people understand the history of this stuff. [2:09:31] Yeah, I think you've done the world of great service. [2:09:34] I really do. [2:09:35] Because I think it's difficult to compile all this stuff and put it into a digestible form. [2:09:41] And I think... [2:09:42] the connection that you've made to serial killers, which I think is a very valid connection, but also... [2:09:50] It's... [2:09:51] uh, [2:09:51] particularly exciting for people to [2:09:55] Pick it up. [2:09:56] Because so many people are fascinated by serial killers and so many people are creeped out by it. It makes it more compelling. [2:10:05] It makes it more interesting for people to read and that I think – [2:10:10] along the way, then they get this deeper understanding of this [2:10:14] gigantic problem [2:10:16] I hope so, yeah. I mean, that's the goal, you know, to try to, you know...

[2:10:25] Just, I mean, I hate to use the term raise awareness because it's such a cliche, but, you know, you do hope that people come away from reading something like this. [2:10:37] think, oh, you know, maybe... [2:10:39] Maybe I should have my water tested or maybe I should, you know, [2:10:43] be concerned about the playground where my kids are playing. [2:10:51] Well, [2:10:52] I think you did it. [2:10:53] And I'm really happy that you came in here to talk about it. I really appreciate it. [2:10:58] Well, I appreciate being here. My pleasure. Jamie, put the book up so people can see it. [2:11:05] Murderland. [2:11:06] Did you do the audio version of it? [2:11:09] I did not, but... Did someone else do it? Yeah, a woman... [2:11:15] Crime and bloodlust in the time of serial killers. [2:11:18] I like how you have it all foggy too. [2:11:20] You know, where it makes it look like pollution. Yeah, his head is sort of dissolving. Yeah, I mean, his head, whoever the artist is did a great job of like... [2:11:30] connecting kind of what we're talking about. [2:11:34] Yeah, they did a great job on the cover. [2:11:37] Well, thank you, Caroline. Thanks for coming in. Thank you. I really appreciate it. It was really good to talk to you. Great to be here. All right. Bye, everybody.

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