525 - Snap It Out

This is exactly right. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]

“Somebody tell me that a shocking public murder.”

This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened

in New York City, politics. A screen could down, get down, those are shots. A tragedy that's now forgotten and a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.

Listen to Worshack, murder and city hall on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Huge news, everybody. We're clearing out the merch store.

That's right. Our spring cleaning sale is happening now. You can get 20% off-site-wide when you use code ERM, Spring 26, from March 26 to 29. That not only includes merch from my favorite murder,

but all your favorite exactly right shows. And for even bigger deals, go to the last chance section and take 20% off-arty discounted items. This sale ends on March 29, so don't wait too long.

That's exactly right, store.com, promo code ERM, Spring 26.

Some exclusions apply. Goodbye.

“Hi, I'm Danielle Robeye, host of Bookmarked,”

the podcast by Reese's Book Club. And this week, we are talking about a monster, or maybe the woman who refused to be one. I'm sitting down with Maggie Gillin Hall to unpack her new film The Bride.

And trust me, this isn't your grandmother's bride of Frankenstein. What I was more interested in was the monstrousness inside of each of us. You can spend your life running from those things, or you can turn around and shake hands with them.

Listen to Bookmarked. The Reese's Book Club podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate our architecture.

Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor?

That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week

on Dear Movies I Love You. The new podcast from the exactly right network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on? Biggie. You put on biggie when you feel uncomfortable? So I want to get confident.

This is DJ Heaster Prince, music is therapy. A new podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist, 12 months, 12 areas of your life. Money, love, career, confidence. This isn't just a podcast.

It's unconventional therapy for your entire year. Listen to DJ Heaster Prince, music is therapy. On the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music)

- Hello and welcome to my favorite murder. - That's Georgia Hearthstar. - That's Karen Kilgara. - And we're here podcasting for you with full hearts and can't lose.

- And golden. - And living our lives like it's golden. - And we're golden. - And we are doing it. - Okay, we have to talk about this.

Are you sick? The cuss. - Oh, oh, oh, we have to talk about, we went to Austin over the weekend for South by Southwest for the iHeart podcast awards,

so much fun every year. I get on the plane. I'm sitting right behind, directly behind Karen. And directly next to Karen. So I can see this person through the arm chair rest thing.

This fucking dude, tell them about him. - Well, this dude was very proud because he had a curchiff that he liked to blow his nose in and he started about three minutes before the plane took off.

I felt like I was interpreting maybe some nervousness about the flight, maybe some tension. - Maybe some fucking like bubonic plague. - Well, so he pulls this curchiff out of his pocket.

“- And the curchiff I'll never forget it.”

- Gigantic. And he blows his nose like he's doing a bit. Like it's like a, I'm an elephant. - Yeah, sure I'm fitting thing. - Which you know, like I blow my nose constantly.

So I'm not gonna be like a shame, a person. I don't, I try not to do that in public public. - No, and especially like this idea of like, well, someone has their own, I keep saying curchiff.

What's the right? - The curchiff. - The curchiff. - So that this man, then after he blew it. - And did this.

- Already what Gigantic? - Gigantic. - Gigantic. - Green handkerchief. - But then he snaps it out like a goddamn picnic blanket.

I am not exaggerating when I tell you, he blows his nose in it and then snaps it out like three times.

- It started weird.

I almost set something like on the fourth time.

By the 15th time, I was literally like screaming and putting my sweater over my mouth every time. - So this is the biggest problem. Don't be sick on a plane. And if you are at least try to pretend you're not.

“But don't get on a plane if you have to blow your nose”

'cause you're so sick every minute. - If I'm gonna argue with that, I don't think that's what it was. I think he had a truly sick perversion to like getting snott on people or something.

- 'Cause it was so non-sensically, when have you ever seen someone blow their nose and then snap out the handkerchief? - Snap it out. - It that reminds me of like,

there was a time where I kept walking at my stress runs kept walking into a man who forgot to lock the door standing at the door. - Oh no. - I'm like, why do you think you've happened to me

and someone was like, that's a fetish. Is having someone walking on your peeing and I was like, okay, it's not just a sweared right, you know. And it was always like, not that nice stress runs matter,

but it was a place where like it wasn't a gas station where you're like, you've been driving for six hours. - Oh my gosh. - Oh my gosh. - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

- Well, and also in this situation, it's very easy and joky to be like it's a fetish. But nothing else explains the amount of times he did it the drama with which he snapped it out where I was just like,

I can't believe the people across the aisle are pissed. - It was so bad that I made,

I did something I've never do on flights.

I made friends with a person sitting next to me. I had to turn and start talking to her or I was going to fucking scream. - Yeah, and she ended up in this lovely woman, what's that page?

I who lives in my fucking neighborhood. - So fun. - And we chatted the whole time, I'm sure that was super annoying too, 'cause I hate people.

- Oh no, I didn't hear you. I didn't hear you making a friend. I was up in the front, getting stuff on my shoulder from this man. - I can't believe you're not sick.

- And I don't think I am. Although I'm today in Los Angeles fun weather talk, it's so hot. - It's hot.

“- Did I kind of feel sick from, how is it this hot?”

- Yeah. - And I wore a really kind of, I didn't think it through summer shirt on. And then when I got to work, I was like, I don't know where this on.

- Camara? - On Camara, on Videos. - On Netflix. - It concerned these days listeners with a whole other thing that's happening

while you listen, we've got all these other things to worry about. - It's just like, like, keeps happening, even though it's happening. - Even though me and my 55 year old face aren't that into it.

(laughing) - Also, what is wrong with my hair? - What are you talking about?

- It's always a weird triangle.

Well, anyway, thanks for I heart, we really love being partners with I Heart as a company. - The people that worked there are so cool. We were so excited to be at that award show. I texted Nora, I was like,

"Hey, you're a favorite podcast, "one podcast of the year, "cause she loves Gagly Squat." - Yeah. - Like God, they were the fucking most hilarious women I've ever,

they were good. - So charming and lovely. - We don't have to worry about the future. They're going to kill it in every direction. So we're so hilarious.

- We can retire. - But yeah, we got to see lots of people that we like there and hang out. - Watch what crap ends, always a pleasure. So it was super fun.

- Fun all around. - We lost, but we're really, we were just happy to be there. - We're used to losing. - We're used to losing. - That's where, that's our comfort zone.

“I think I really get uncomfortable when the winning starts.”

- Yeah. - I mean, we already won at life, so. - We won like, posted up on a couch in the S.B.s awards. - Tinging out. - Having, saying hi.

- Like Jake from disgrace land on one side. - Craig Pralton the other. - Craig Pralton the other. - You know what? What more does anyone want?

- What more in this life? - Oh, we got to see the head and the heart play life, like in front of 50 people or something is great. - Thank you. - Thank you.

- No, she could just think of this year, but now you can't win it all. - But a lot, because again, to talk about the weather, the weather was so wildly up and down there that I did a lot of shopping,

and I just want to shout out feathers, the vintage door and Austin, 'cause I bought jewelry there. I bought a coat there. I bought a short sleep shirt there.

I did it every season. - I haven't unpacked it, so I forgot that I bought a shirt. I didn't even touch. - Yes, I grossed it.

I haven't unpacked it. - Well, no, it's such a pain. It's like, you just come back and get right back into everything. - Yeah. - I think the woman at feathers actually,

'cause she gave me two tote bags with their logo one, I think. - Thanks. - Love a tote bag. - Yeah.

- We should have count tote bags one day as like a fan called video. - I've got them to count for sure. - Yeah. - I'm gonna hold drawer full of funny.

- ironic sayings on them. - Cities, we visited our own merch. - I just got a gelsin's tote. - Oh. - 'Cause you know how everybody's into this

trader Joe's tote around the world. - Yeah. - Well gelsin's in the game now. - Kid in there, gelsin. - Gelsin's our local rich people's grocery store.

They're like, we can do this. - Speaking of we can do this, we have a podcast network. - That's right. - It's called exactly right media.

Here are some quick highlights. - Okay, this is very exciting. Our newest limited series, two-faced John of God, is currently featured

The full series is available to binge

in both English and Spanish. So if you haven't listened to this podcast yet, now's the time, it's so good. - Speaking of incredibly exciting, over on that's messed up.

Cara and Lisa recap the SVU episode reasonable doubt about no doubt. And they sit down with the-- - No, that's not true. - And they sit down with, get ready for this

because my jaw dropped when I heard about this. Their guests is the great Bradley Whitford. - I mean, what a booking. - Wow. - Hello.

- Wow, Karen Lisa, killing it. - So great. Did you see the death by lightning

“the new Netflix series about the presidential assassination?”

He's in it and he is so good. He's so good. - And this week on buried bones, Kate and Paul had to Boston in 1886, where the owner of a laundry mat

is found murdered in his shop. A laundry mat in 1880. - No, I was just thinking about that. - A laundry mat, as investigators learn more about the victims' ambitions,

a clearer picture of the case begins to emerge. - Tantantantantant, should be at the end of every one of their paragraphs. - Yeah, true. - And on, do you need a ride?

- Chris and Karen welcome for Francesca Fiorentini, and they talk about Olympic tears, serious skin care, and more. - Yeah, that was a fun episode. And by the buy over in our merch corner,

the spring cleaning sale runs from March 26th to March 29th, you can get 20% off site wide

“if you have been waiting to grab any kind of a merch,”

this is your moment. - Any kind of a merch? - Yeah, go to exactly [email protected] and use promo code ERM Spring26, right that down, for 20% off your entire purchase,

although some exclusions apply as they do in life. - I mean, you think you just have carte blons to get 20% off anything in life? - Have you learned nothing? - Crell, are you new? Come on.

- 10, 10, shot, five, city hall building. - A silver 40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene. - From I Heart Podcasts and best case studios. This is Worshack, murder at City Hall. - Could this have happened in City Hall?

Somebody tell me that! - July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest. Both men are carrying concealed weapons. And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.

- Have everybody in the chambers of dogs, a shocking public murder. - A scream, get down, get down, those are shots, those are shots, get down. - A charismatic politician.

- You know, he just bent the rules all the time. - I still have a weapon. - And I could shoot you. - And an outsider with a secret. - He alleged he was a victim of flat down.

- That may have been not have been political. That may have been about six. - Listen to Worshack, murder at City Hall on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

- Huge news, everybody, we're clearing out the merch store. That's right, our spring cleaning sale is happening now. You can get 20% off site wide. When you use code ERM, spring 26, from March 26 to 29, that not only includes merch from my favorite murder,

but all your favorite exactly right shows. And for even bigger deals, go to the last chance section and take 20% off already discounted items. This sale ends on March 29th, so don't wait too long. - That's exactly right, store.com,

promo code ERM, spring 26. Some exclusions apply, goodbye. Have a feel like you're being chased by the marriage police. Welcome to Boys & Girls, the podcast by dating isn't dating.

A ranged marriage is basically a reality show,

except the contestants, our strangers, and your entire family is judging. You're sipping coffee with one maybe, grabbing dinner with another, and praying your carmy can or barbecue peers before your shelf life runs out.

Trust me, I've been through this ancient and unshakable tradition. I jumped in hoping to find love the right way, and instead I found chaos, cringe, and comedy. And now I'm looking for healing. Boys & Girls dives into every twist and turn

of the arranged marriage carousel. For me, talk word, the near misses, the heartbreak, and let's not forget all the jokes. Listen to Boys & Girls on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, it's Alec Baldwin.

“This season on my podcast, here's the thing I'm speaking”

with more artists, policymakers, and performers that compose a Mark Shaman. Once you've established that you have the talent, it's about the hang. It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people

that you're with.

You know, Robin Eye was always a great hang.

and then eventually get around to the music.

“That's what I mostly think of when I think of him.”

The time together, laughing, lawyer, Robbie Kaplan. The great gift of being a lawyer is the ability to actually change things in our society in a way that very few people can. I mean, you can really make a difference

to causes, and I say to you, if you bring the right case at the right time and energy quality. Yeah, when there's the perfect example. And journalists, Chris Whipple. Every White House staffer, they work in a bubble

called the West Wing, and it's exponentially more so in the Trump White House. Listen to the new season.

Of here's the thing on the eye-heart radio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, it's me, Anison Field, from the girlfriends. The number one hit true crime show that puts women right in the center of their own stories. I'm back with more one-off interviews

with some truly kick ass women on the girlfriends spotlight. I want to introduce you to Sylvia. I'm going to climb this. And then there's Versaqa.

“Let's see how we can stop killing and see our lives.”

Layler, dare to ask the question. Is badness hereditary? And finally, will meet Rosamund. If it wasn't for the air, where Ella lived, she wouldn't have died on that fatal night.

You'll even get to meet my mom in that one who I can always count on to keep my feet on the ground. I'm not too intimidated by her. What are you talking about? Listen to the girlfriend spotlight.

On the eye-heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) All right. Okay, I'm going to kick us off today.

I'd never heard of this story before.

It's like kind of crazy and kind of relevant. I actually just saw a trailer. Zac Alifianakis has a new show out. Have you seen the trailer for it? It's him and the whole thing's about gardening

and growing food. And basically how we need to learn how to grow our own food again.

“Can he stop being the greatest history of the world?”

Yeah. Love this man. But it's like a truly something he's very passionate about and like he's basically teaching people how to do that. So I love that.

That's kind of a perfect little, a side plug. Zac is my friend and I adore him and his work, but something to think about as I tell you, this story that begins in 1940s Oregon at the Oregon State Hospital in the capital city of Salem.

This is the state's oldest running psychiatric institution. It was first opened in the 1880s and it's still operating today. The original building has been, I've put remodeled, but it's like completely redone,

but the original campus is where they filmed one floor over the cuckoo scene. All right. In the seven. So author Diane Garris Gardner wrote a book about the hospital

and she's quoted as saying quote, "The history of the Oregon State Hospital is inevitably the history of the mental health system itself." And quote. And like psychiatric institutions across America,

that history includes decades of harmful practices based on outdated thinking, like forced sterilizations. And of course, lobotomies, horrifying thing that happened, and everyone still has to deal with, alongside the systemic harm caused by chronic

underfunding and overcrowding of mental health facilities. So our story begins here on the afternoon of November 18th, 1942. It's just after five o'clock. Hundreds of patients and staff are eating

or have just eaten their hospital issued dinner when slowly one by one, they begin to display classic signs of poisoning. Some collapse, others vomit, many struggle to breathe within hours, dozens of people are dead,

and officials have no idea who or what is to blame. - I got it. - This is the story of the 1942 Oregon State Hospital poisoning tragedy.

- Oh, I've never heard of this.

- Right. - Me either. Tessa, our AP is the one who suggested it. - Yeah. - So the main sources used today are the book Inside Oregon State Hospital,

a history of triumph and tragedy by Diane Garris Gardner, and reporting by Capy Lynn for the Statesman Journal. Capy. - Capy's cute. - That's a great name. - With a K. - K.A.P.P.Y. - It's actually C.A.P.I. - Oh, that's cute.

- But C.A.P.P.Y is also cute. (laughs) - Capy. - And the rest of the sources in our show notes. So a mass poisoning has been carried out, and investigators need to know why. At the time, tensions in the United States

could not be higher. Pearl Harbor was the year before, December 1941, and that actually ended up pulling us into World War II, wartime austerity measures. Now touch every aspect of American life,

as the country funnels its resources overseas, and trade routes are disrupted. Americans are forced to cut back on everything in their lives

- It's right. - It's just that way.

“- She bars, that's the one that always gets me”

in World War II movies when they're like, "Look at her, she bars." - Yeah, chocolate, that reminds me of a tone man. It makes me sad. - Oh, I just re-watch that.

- Okay, let's go. - Okay. - But that part where they're on the beach and just waiting to get rescued and saying, "Okay, okay." So over here, well, that's going on. Our boys are sacrificing their lives at home.

Americans feel all the austerity the most at the grocery store, because food rationing means that every household has to be very careful when it comes to grocery shopping. And since Pearl Harbor, there's increased anxiety

that there will be further attacks on US soil, especially in the coastal states, because Japanese subs are being seen in the Pacific, German U-boats are being seen in the Atlantic.

- I did not fucking terrifying.

- I mean, it was real, real. - Yeah, yeah. - There's even concerned that the already strained US food supply could be targeted by the enemy.

“The government urges Americans to start growing crops”

in their backyards and in community gardens, calling them "Victory Gardens." - Yeah. - Which is very smart and true. To counteract all the fear and scarcity around food.

So with that in context November 18th, 1942, the Oregon State Hospital is just a regular Wednesday, aside from all of that, about 30 people work in the kitchen as dinner is prepared for patients and staff. And 30 might sound like a lot until you realize

the cooking staff prepares three meals a day for around 3,000 people. So it's a huge number, but just like every other department like this hospital, the kitchen's also going through of staffing crisis because of the war.

So they are understaffed and overworked as well. And this is how bad it is of the 30 kitchen workers. Only three of them are actually employed as cooks. We're not sure if there are other staffers in the mix, but the vast majority of the kitchen staff

seem to be patients who are called trustees. Trustees don't actually cook the food, but the hospital relies on them for things like washing the dishes and tidying up and they are not paid for their labor. So they're like patient interns.

A combination of inadequate state funding, overcrowding and wartime rations dictates the menu every day. So at this dinner tonight, the main dishes scrambled eggs, which is kind of horrible. - Just gonna ask if you thought like the food still

tasted better back then than it does today, but I don't want scrambled eggs in any fucking time period. - It's disgusting. - It's scrambled eggs. - Not even if they're nice and loose and running. - Wow.

“- Well, I can answer, because I think this is a thing,”

we don't think about as much these days, except for unless you're on food stamps or your family has to rely on powdered food, but these eggs are frozen yulks made with powdered milk. - Gross.

- So I'm not thinking it's a delicious morning start to your day. - I can't imagine. - Is that way you said for dinner, though? - It's dinner. - We had breakfast or dinner a lot as kids,

because that was just easy and affordable. And I didn't realize I was so excited that we're getting. - Day is night, night is day. - We're flipping it all around. I know my dad would make us breakfast

and dinner pancakes. As long as you put little faces inside, we didn't care what was happening.

Okay, so scrambled eggs is basically considered decent

sustenance, considering that seven cents, which is about a $1.50 in today's money, is all the hospital is able to allocate to feed each patient. - Per day. - Yeah.

- Holy shit. - Oregon State Hospital is enrolled in the federal program that supplies the kitchen with frozen egg yolks and according to the book inside Oregon State Hospital, quote, "Without the subsidy, the patients would only be given

one egg a week and no meat at all." And quote, wow. So the rationing is very serious. The hospital's latest shipment of eggs came a few months back in February.

It contained six D seven hundred pounds of frozen yolks divided into two gallon containers. - I didn't know you could freeze yolks, I don't know. - I know. - Like it.

- Do you think they look like little ice cubes with yellow circles? - Oh, that's cute. - With some orange juice. (laughing)

- Little cocktail, nice cocktail. - The thing is, and I did, I'm gonna say this as a person who grew up in the egg basket of the world at one time, pedulum of California, or all about the eggs there.

- Yeah. - I just don't really love interacting with eggs. - No, in most ways, I know you mean, yeah. You set it yourself, but I'm gonna jump right on that fan wagon and pin it back to my hometown.

Okay, so these frozen yolks are stored in the basement, in storage rooms with the rest of the hospital's food supply. This night dinner served at five o'clock as usual. It's delivered to rooms and in the dining areas across several wards.

They're far apart from each other, but connected by a tunnel system. But as soon as people start eating their dinner, it's clear something is wrong. These eggs taste funny, and some will describe them as salty,

You know, I think I've had food poisoning twice.

“The taste that I always tasted was metal.”

- Really? - Have ever had that? - No, like what kind of food was it? - One time, it was a Chinese chicken salad. - And it was like a penny?

- Yes, it was like there was weird metal in there, but it's not like tangy. - Yeah, but it was like someone poured a lichroy across my Chinese chicken salad. In that way, that doesn't belong to it. - That's not a food taste, and then count down, count it down.

So in one section of the hospital, a nurse named Ali Wassel is so uneasy about the taste. She orders all of her patients to stop eating these eggs, everybody in the ward. Even still, many people do eat the eggs,

even just a bite or two, and then within minutes, they begin complaining of leg cramps

and nausea that are intensifying as each second passes.

- Leg cramps, let's carry. - I've got egg leg cramps. - Like food poisoning that goes to leg places that aren't your gut or your system? - Yeah.

- It's like your fucking leg. - Yeah, that's like in the blood. - Yeah. - Oh, okay. - Egg hands.

“- I have some, some start vomiting blood.”

And other stop breathing in their faces turned blue. - Oh, shit. - Within an hour of dinner being served one person is dead. When doctors and nurses show up to help, they're immediately overwhelmed by the massive number

of people in that number is in the hundreds, needing immediate treatment. So it's just like everybody in the room. - This smells, this smells crampled egg vomit. - This screams.

- Sorry everyone, I'm trying to make this.

I'm trying to really like build a picture. - Yeah, build a world. - This is what we do on this show. - Right. - So you were old built with words.

- Powdered scrambled egg vomit. - Sorry. - We're gonna call this the brunch episode. (laughing) - Okay, okay, go.

- Five hours later, 10 people are dead. - Jesus. - Yeah, by four in the next morning, 40 staff members and/or patients have died. - God.

“- By Thursday evening, the death toll hits 47.”

Nurse Alya sells word is the only one with no victims. She actually ends up getting sick from the one bite of eggs. She took one. She then was like, "Forks down!" - Wow.

- But she does recover. The hospital morgue is small. It could only hold a few bodies at a time. So victims have to be laid out in hallways and in the on-site chapel until outside mortuary

from around the entire state come and take the bodies away. So based on the symptoms, it's immediately suspected to be a mass poisoning. Fear washes over and already anxious public as newspapers begin reporting on the tragedy.

Toxicologists test both the victim's stomach contents and these eggs themselves. But the frozen yokes were distributed by the federal government itself as a part of a wartime food subsidy program

and sent to institutions all throughout Oregon and across the country. So the genuine fear that these eggs have been deliberately poisoned by enemies of the United States

to terrorize Americans begins to take hold, right? Like it looks like they're trying to make it look like the government's poisoning their own people or whatever. So before more harm can be done, Oregon's governor orders all Oregon-based beneficiaries

of this federal subsidy program to stop using frozen yokes immediately. The federal people are like, "I can't please just one by, I love them so much." - But what will I have for dinner?

- What will I have for my noon time snack? The federal government then makes a similar order and starts testing its surplus eggs for toxins or poison. Meanwhile scientists from the Army, the FDA,

and the American Medical Association are dispatched to Salem, Oregon to assist local pathologists in its investigation and all of this happens within about a day of the tragedy taking place.

So immediately people are a lot of people to die overnight from food poisoning. - And it is what an opening scene for our movie because holy shit, you're the doctor in the nurse flirting. - Yeah. - Kind of interesting each other.

Kind of cute. I'm not sure walking, talking. - Yeah. - Hey, what do you think of the top 20 hits of the 1940s? How about this war?

Come around to corner. - This is the plot of the movie Airplane. - You're talking about-- - And I love that movie. - Unfunny airplane, but the same amount of eggs. Okay.

This scientists quickly confirm the eggs were laced with a huge amount of sodium fluoride, which is lethal to humans even in small doses. - Why thought they were just bad? They were fucking laced, laced shit.

- And basically sodium fluoride is rat poison

and roach poison. Of course, like a state-run hospital like that has plenty of rat and roach poison on hand. So the investigators also determined the eggs were contaminated during the cooking process,

meaning any other program using the same government subsidized

- Okay, bring it away, defrost and drink away, friend.

“So the mystery is now centered squarely inside the Oregon state”

hospital kitchen and investigators want to know how and why. This poison got cooked into a scrambled egg dinner. The 70s, it's like, don't serve people this food. Every member of the kitchen crew is interviewed, but investigators don't get anywhere.

None of the kitchen staff admits to knowing anything and investigators worry that the trustees, testimonies, are complicated by the fact that they're also psychiatric patients. - Of course. - But then five days after the poisoning,

a 64-year-old assistant cooked named Abraham McKillup cracks. He reveals that-- - Is that a plan on purpose? - Oh, oh, I didn't even think about that. - Wow.

- That's good. - I mean, cracks. - Bad to me.

Cracks, pokes is a little beak out of the shell.

- Cracks like an egg. - He reveals that on the night of the poisoning, he was prepping scrambled eggs and he realized that he needed powdered milk for the recipe, but he was so busy he couldn't step away

from the line and go get it for himself. So he asked one of the patient trustees, a 27-year-old named George Nose and to go downstairs and grab the powdered milk for him.

“And then Abraham gave the patient his key”

to the storage room downstairs. This was a break in protocol employees are forbidden from giving patients their hospital keys. - Sure. - But George Nose and was a very trusted trustee

in the kitchen in Abraham needed a hand. So they're understaffed three cooks and also George had been down to the basement food storage area before. So this was something he had done and was used to doing.

So he could be trusted to do it. But here's the problem. What George did not know was that there were two food storage rooms in the basement, both open with the same key. - One said poison on it and one said food on it.

- Poison food food. - I mean, this is one of the worst and saddest crazy mix up storage. - So he didn't purposely kill it. - Absolutely not, absolutely not. So when he went down to get the powdered milk,

he unknowingly went into the wrong room, which is such a mind fuck. Like this idea that without your knowing,

there's a whole second room that you could have gone into.

- Yeah, but even then it's like, it should say fucking poison on it. Fuck, it should say fucking poison. - Right? - It should say fucking poison.

- Fucking poison. - Yes, you're exactly right. And keep that bookmark that idea for later. When George looked around in that second room that he thought was the first room for the powdered milk,

he thought he found it in this big, unlabeled, that sitting right next to all the other food. It was white, it was odorless power. He scooped out several pounds of it as requested. - It's a power instead of power.

- Can I really? It's almost over for me. And thank you for everything else, but it was white, odorless powder. Sorry.

- I don't even know what I'm saying. - No, 'cause I don't wanna say white power for fuck's sake. - God, you say it all the time. - No, but don't tell me that. - It was white, odorless powder,

and he scooped out several pounds of it as requested. And then headed back upstairs, handed it over to Abraham and around six pounds of that poison was mixed into the eggs. - State police would later say that just two pounds of this powdered sodium fluoride

would be enough to kill 2,000 people. And the fact that it was so potent, probably saved lives because it caused the people who ate it to immediately vomit the poison up. - Right, and it tasted so fucking weird,

sodium, whatever the fuck's so salty or so fee, or whatever. - Yeah, Jesus. - Do immediately be like, ugh, as opposed to my delicious powdered milk eggs.

Abraham admits to the investigators that he put two and two together very quickly once diner started showing symptoms. He told the hospitals head chef, Mario Hare. - Hey, Mario.

- And they retraced Georgia's steps into the basement and they figured out he must mistook the white powder that was cockroach poison for powdered milk, but they were too afraid to come forward right away. - So both Abraham and Mary are arrested.

- So they were right to be afraid. - George is not arrested. Rumors swirl that they carried out the poisoning intentionally. It was a terrorist plot of some kind, but then a grand jury investigation proves that

to be a baseless rumor and that considering how stretched then all the hospital staff were an accident like this was bound to happen. Because of the staffing shortage, Oregon State Hospital has been operating

without a staff dietitian, and that's the person who usually is in charge

“of storing and labeling things in the basement, right?”

So you cut costs and you cut corners, that's what starts happening. So that's likely how it's possible

would wind up sitting unlabeled next to real food. That's also unlabeled. So because of these staffing issues,

“it's impossible for Abraham and his colleagues”

to do their jobs without relying heavily on the patient trustees who are not trained as actual staff and were not told the detail about the second food storage room. - Yeah. - In the end, the grand jury does not bring

any criminal charges against assistant cook, Abraham McKillup, head chef, Mario Herr, or George Nosen, and it's easy to assume that all three of them were fully traumatized for life by this entire event. - For sure.

- In fact, a grand jury makes a very practical recommendation to state lawmakers about the need for legislation requiring all poisons to be explicitly labeled. So exactly what you're saying. And the grand jury takes this opportunity

to issue a damning report about the Oregon State Hospital itself and the impossible responsibilities of an overwhelmed staff. This goes far beyond the kitchen staff and far beyond wartime staffing.

It also involves incredible overcrowding

and consistent underfunding by lawmakers,

“which then feeds into the staffing crisis.”

According to the book inside Oregon State Hospital, in this era, one daytime staff or cares for 16 patients at a time. Think of it. - Too many.

- Think of that as like two types in a restaurant. - You have eight tables of people who need a lot of help. - Totally. - But at night, there's only one staffer for every 150 patients.

- Oh my God. - That's just general staff. There are only eight doctors for more than 2,700 total patients, which means inevitably employees are gonna rely on things like restraints and confinement,

more often than if there were practical patient to caregiver ratio. - Right. - So it's basically this situation's worst case. - Expectably there's also a ton of employee turnover

with one staff showing, quote 108.68% turnover and staff from 1940 to 1942 alone. - Oh my God. - Everybody's like, "Buy." - Fuck this.

- This is horrible. - In the wake of this horrific event, national laws are passed,

“requiring that poisons be manufactured with clear warning labels.”

It seems so obvious. - There are also noted increases in funding, and staffing at American public hospitals, but the poor reputation of American mental health care institutions persists.

By the 1950s and into the 60s, there's a growing movement to replace institutionalization with community-paced mental health care, allowing patients to live more normal lives, while they get outpatient treatment

from doctors and psychiatrists. Given all the horror stories from psychiatric hospitals, this is seen as much more humane approach that's conducive to better care. In 1963, President Kennedy actually signs

the Community Mental Health Act that's geared in part to establishing these types of community mental health care centers across the U.S. and that's one of the last pieces of legislation that he will sign before his assassination.

But in the decades to follow an especially during the Ronald Reagan era, much of the funding meant to create these centers is slashed,

and Kennedy's vision is never fully realized.

And it's often pointed out that Kennedy was drawn to this issue because of his sister Rosemary's devastating lobotomy, which Georgia covered in episode 259. So public psychiatric care is so seriously underfunded in this country that jails and prisons

have now become de facto ill-equipped, untrained, and unwilling mental health providers. And while policies vary from state to state, we are not in a particularly progressive era when it comes to this issue,

particularly at the federal level, and in fact, I would say that is the sarcastic understanding that is, it's probably about as bad as it could be. - Right. - So just months ago, Trump's DOJ cut $80 million

in grant money for mental health and substance abuse treatment services and training, which is interesting because Republicans,

after every mass shooting, always say,

we need mental health services. Talk about that all the time, and then they cut the funding, and then in mid-January, 2026, the substance abuse and mental health services administration slashed around $2 billion in grant money for these services,

and of course, Trump's big, beautiful bill cut federal, Medicaid funding by 15%, that's just some of the cuts to the mental health services. - Oh, are we gonna go on a necessary war? We don't have money from people who actually fucking need it.

- It's so blatantly obvious now that I don't think it can be an argument anymore. When we just strip money out of schools, children don't get to have air conditioning or crayons, mental health facilities have no staffing,

and yet, here we are, we have no for no more in the Middle East, that no one understands why we're there.

- Food is more expensive than it's ever bad. - Right. - So, the cost of living is just constantly going now. - Wow. - And it's creating a pressure cooker for people

with mental health issues, as well as everybody else.

“- Yeah, you should point it at me when you said that.”

- Oh my God. - But you're not wrong. - I'm like four inches. - I meant, that was the middle of the table. - That was a see, I swear.

- Don't mind it, give it to me, please. I'll take it, I'll be the spokesperson. - Can we please have some money, please? Can we, this horrible event, the Oregon State Hospital poisoning,

is a reminder of the stakes of indifference in neglect when it comes to our national health care. As JFK actually said, back in 1963, quote, "The situation has been tolerated for too long. It is troubled our national conscience,

but only as a problem unpleasant to mention, easy to postpone and despairing of a solution. We can procrastinate no more. We must promote to the best of our ability and by all possible and appropriate means,

the mental and physical health of all our citizens." And quote, "And that's the story of the 1942 poisoning at Oregon State Hospital."

- Wow, and your mom had never talked about it

or anything that I had heard about it. - No, no, no. - But I mean, I wonder if she would have learned about it, you know, just for the kinds of things that can happen if you are going into a field

for they're used to having their funding cut. - Totally, I'm sure. - I'm sure.

“- And there's a real good picture that I think you'd like”

'cause it's basically one of the, of me. - It's you, representing all mental health services. It's just a pick that really good picture of a victory garden that would be used to do posters. And I think it's like, it's so timely.

- Oh, there it is, it's such a good picture. - Right, it's, grow your victory garden. It counts more than ever, we need those, yeah. We need to feed ourselves, we need to feed our communities. - I love that.

- I need to take care of each other. - There's a really good book. - Is it written by Zach Alvin like this? - Oh yeah, why does that come next up to do with this? - No.

- His gardening show. - All right, that's called The Lost Girls of Willow Brook. We know Willow Brook State Hospital in Jersey that we talked about where crops he's from. It's an old school book.

It's a book where a girl goes to find her missing twin sister and gets committed 'cause they think it's her.

“It's like the 70s and it really explains how awful”

the experiences in there by first-hand this girl's called.

The Lost Girls of Willow Brook by Ellen Marie Wiseman. - Well, I want to read that. - I highly recommend it if you just want to get in there. - Yeah, see the reality. - Yeah.

♪ 10, 10, shot, five, city hall building ♪ - The Silver 40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene. - From I Heart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Worshack, Murder at City Hall. - Could this have happened in City Hall?

Somebody tell me that! - July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest. Both men are carrying concealed weapons and in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.

(dramatic music) - Everybody in the chamber is a dog, a shocking public murder. - A scream, get down, get down. Those are shots, those are shots, get down. - A charismatic politician.

- You know, he just bent the rules all the time. - I still have a weapon. - And I could shoot you. - And an outsider with a secret. - He alleged he was a victim of flat down.

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spring 26, some exclusions apply. Goodbye. - Ever feel like you're being chased by the marriage police. Welcome to Boys & Girls, the podcast by dating is in dating.

A ranged marriage is basically a reality show.

Except the contestants are strangers and your entire family is judging. You're sipping coffee with one maybe, grabbing dinner with another and praying your carmy can or Barbie appears before your shelf life runs out.

Trust me, I've been through this ancient and unshakable tradition.

and instead I found chaos, cringe and comedy. And now I'm looking for healing. Boys & Girls dives into every twist and turn of the arranged marriage carousel. For me, talk world, the new emissars, the heartbreak,

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here's the thing I'm speaking with more artists,

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We would sit in kibits for hours and then eventually get around to the music.

“That's what I mostly think of when I think of him,”

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You can really make a difference to causes and I say to you if you bring the right case at the right time and the right. - Marriage equality. - Yeah, when there's the perfect example.

- And journalist Chris Whipple, every White House staffer, they work in a bubble called the West Wing, and it's exponentially more so in the Trump White House.

- Listen to the new season of here's the thing

on the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. - Hello, it's me Anna Sinfield from the Girl Friends, the number one hit true crime show that puts women right in the center of their own stories. I'm back with more one of interviews with some

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“- Let's see how we can stop killing and see your lives.”

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- I'm not too intimidated by her.

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(upbeat music) - Great job. - Great job. - Thank you. - We're a little story. - Yes. - Here's another one. - Great. - Well, this one's got a little bit of a light

in a dark room kind of story. We're going to do it in honor of women's history month. - Wonderful. - I'm a woman. - I'm a history month. This is a story of a woman who, in her early 20s,

put herself at great personal risk to save the lives of more than 150 Jewish children in Nazi occupied Holland. This is the story of Marion Pritchard. - Hell yes. - Let's get right into it. - Let's go from fucking World War II to World War II.

- Right into that World War II vibe. I just any time we talk about these people, it's very exciting, but it's also that kind of like, we should be talking about what people did during World War II all the time because we need to know.

The rise up energy. - That's right. - So the main source for this story is a three hour interview with Marion from 1998 conducted by USC Show of Foundation and the Show of Foundation was established by Steven Spielberg shortly after he completed Schindler's list.

Did you know that? It started out by collecting the testimony of Holocaust survivors, but it has expanded to testimony from survivors of events beyond World War II. And the rest of the sources you can be found in our show notes.

So Marion Philippa Van Binsburghen is born on November 7, 1920 in Amsterdam. Her mother Grace is English and her father Yaccobe is Dutch. He's a judge coming from a long line of judges on his family side. And so Marion has what sounds like a very happy and idyllic childhood. And as a child, Marion is oblivious to any amount of anti-semitism

that exists in the Netherlands. She's not Jewish. She doesn't really pay attention to it. Although once when she's jumping rope and singing, a jump rope song, her father tells her to stop singing it because it's insulting to Jewish people.

So there are a little bit progressive, the family, but still Marion will find out later, decades later, that at this point in time, her father does belong to a bridge club

“that doesn't allow Jews, which I think is pretty normal for the time.”

So anti-semitism certainly around, even if Marion isn't particularly attuned to it. She does vividly remember Hitler's rise to power, which happened in Germany around the time she was in middle school. In her interview, she says, quote, "The general Dutch attitude was

this clown can't last. Nobody thought that even if he came to power that that would last." And quote, "Yeah, heard of it." What she does notice is that after 1933,

because their families have fled to the Netherlands.

“Around seven grade Marion is sent to a British boarding school,”

but her father brings her back to Amsterdam for high school, because he thinks the academics in England are not rigorous enough, and then she attends a very academic Dutch high school. And at school, Marion is aware that some of her classmates are Jewish, because they don't attend school on Saturday,

but other girls come from much more secular family. So Marion isn't even aware of the true number of Jewish friends she has, until once the Nazis occupy Holland. Ali wrote, "No, to Georgia, Holland is a region within the Netherlands." And Amsterdam is within this region, but there are parts of the Netherlands

that are not Holland. Appreciate you. I don't think we'll ever solve the mystery of Holland. Yeah.

Marion says that her father belongs to what would have been considered

a fairly conservative political party in the Netherlands, but in many ways her family, particularly her father, are quite progressive. For example, Marion studies ballet,

“and at ballet school, she meets several men who she knows are gay,”

and when Marion brings us up with her father, he tells her that everyone should be treated with respect. Wow, yeah, which is very progressive. Yeah, back then too. By the time Marion's 14, she decides that her ambition and life

is to become a psychoanalyst. She has an older friend who is a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. Hey, Harold. And learning from her friend makes her want a study psychology. So when she's about 19 and 1940, she enrolls

in a social work school in Amsterdam, and she makes this conscious decision not to go to medical school, which is what she'd need to do because by this point, the Nazis have already occupied the Netherlands, and in order to enroll in med school,

she would have to swear a loyalty oath to the Nazis. She doesn't want to do it, so she goes to social work school instead. That's really creepy to think that that's how they infiltrated everything. Like what does that have to do?

“Why would you have to swear to oath to Nazis to go to school?”

Because you're only going to work for the master race, and to, you know, like, God, yeah, do no harm. Doesn't really exist anymore. Yeah, you know? They etched that off.

They're just like more snakes. More snakes. Snakes around the place. Snakes around everything. We love snakes.

We love snakes. The Nazis had invaded the Netherlands in May of 1940, as you know, four months before Marion had started in social work school, but they did not deport the Jews. The Netherlands right away, and Marion points out in this interview that one of the reasons

for this is that the Nazis wanted the help of the Dutch people, and the Dutch people didn't really have deep currents of anti-Semitism yet. I mean, it was obviously there, but compared to other countries in Europe, it wasn't as hardcore, and so even though there was anti-Semitism, the idea of deporting, not to mention killing,

their Jewish neighbors was not really palatable to many of the Dutch, so they started slower there. Around 1941, Marion believes that Dutch Jews and Jews from other countries, who have fled to the Netherlands, should make plans to leave or go into hiding. She's noticing how bad it's getting.

Her friends tell her she's crazy that it's never going to get that bad.

And then another lens, and Marion's father is convinced that it is going to get that bad. She says, quote, "My father's one of the few people that red mind comp from beginning to end, "it's awful dull reading I tried," and quote, meaning like, "he fucking saw the writing on the wall." Yeah. And in the book, yeah.

So at this point, Marion is around 20 years old, and her social work courses include one day a week spent doing field work, so Marion is assigned to a compound of little houses where families are sent by a judge to live, generally if the father is an alcoholic, and can't function, the families are sent to these little houses. Marion and her fellow students usually help out here by doing activities with the kids.

Deportations of Jewish people are beginning to happen around Amsterdam at this time, and they're told that they're being deported to work camps, and that families will be kept together, but this is of course not true. One day a police officer tips off the head social worker at Marion's field assignment that a Jewish family in that compound where she helps the children was going to be arrested and deported that night, and so the social worker, the head social worker asked each of the

social worker students, including Marion, to take home a child from that family, knowing that what's happening when they get deported is not good, and it's not what they're saying, it's going to be. Yeah. So that night, Marion shows up at home with a little two-year-old boy. It's just this dress of like, even just thinking about babysitting my own niece, we're just like here, take it to your old for the day. From their family, from their family,

with them, it is another ever going to see them again. Yeah, nothing's familiar. The tension is right there, and then just like, tend to that child. Totally. Oh, people worked. I mean, it's just like, nice. You can imagine the same thing happening right now. We take this kid home

take this child home. I mean, that happened to people that is happening to people that did happen

“and people were like, little kids sat at home alone because their parents were taken and gone,”

and they were just like, sitting in a house by themselves, sitting in an apartment by themselves. So her parents are completely on board with this, and they take care of this little boy for months. Marion's father understands that the boy must be kept hidden, but her mom doesn't totally understand the severity and is less secretive about housing the boy. She like mentions it to the milk man who luckily doesn't say anything, but Marion is very aware via the Nazi controlled

newspapers that citizens are given a $5 reward for turning in their Jewish neighbors and any neighbors that are hiding Jewish people. That in today's money, $5 in 1941 or so, but also in Dutch money, I am not going to make you do it in one hundred and ten. And they also weren't Dutch people not to aid their Jewish neighbors or that they too will be deported. So it's just it's not

“a slap on the wrist if you are trying to help hide to a few people. You're just treated.”

You know, yeah, everybody goes down. Also that idea that people, because it's wartime, like I was just talking about where it's the rationing, $5 is so much money. Totally. But if you plant a victory garden, you're not as desperate. Right. You know, if there's a potato to go around,

you don't have to take that money. My grandma, you know, lived in the fields in Poland for the first

seven years of her life because they burnt down her village in the Quagrom. So she was like the youngest of five or six kids and her mom would work the potato farm during the day and put a still a potato. They'd eat the inside of the potato for dinner one night and the next night they'd eat the skins of the potato and that was what they survived. The whole family for seven years. Yeah. Oh my God. And then one of her brothers would steal a horse from the who's like a really charming kid. He'd

steal a horse from one side like the German side and then sell it back to them next day. Like yes. They survived somehow. Half two. Yeah. Good. Okay. So one day around the spring of 1942 when Marion is 21 years old. She's writing her bike to class when she passes a home for Jewish children. These are children that have been brought from Germany into the Netherlands to protect them from the Nazis and now they're being deported. Most likely it turns it can't in the Netherlands and then

offschwitz generally out these camps children under 15 are just killed when they arrive immediately. They can't work elsewhere in Amsterdam and Frank's family will go into hiding a few months later in the summer of 1942 when she and her family are eventually discovered and arrested. They are sent to this transport camp and then to Auschwitz. So these children who had left their home countries and their homes are now being rounded up in front of her face. So Marion of course doesn't

know any of this yet but watches in horror as she sees Nazis throwing children onto trucks by their arms, their legs, one little girl by her pig tails. Marion says quote, "I'm sitting on my bike and not believing my eyes. There's two women coming from the other direction and they tried to stop the Nazis and they picked the women up and threw them on top of the kids and drove off." And that was when I fully consciously decided that this was it and quote. So at 21 years old,

Marion decides to be formally involved in the hiding of Jewish children from the Nazis. Marion points out that quote, "Most rescue in Holland was not organized. It was individual effort because the fewer people who knew the better." The two-year-old boy that had been living with them had eventually been moved to another family and Marion doesn't want to bring home any more kids to live with her family because of her mother's mouth mouth. Her mother not getting it,

“it sounds like. Yeah, it seems like that's what happened. So at first Marion's main involvement”

is to help shuttle Jewish children just to do, she wants to still do something even though she can't

hide them in her own house. So at first her main involvement is to help shuttle Jewish children

around Amsterdam to families who can keep them hidden. She and other young women carry the kids around on bicycles, mostly in broad daylight because too any observer would look like the mother in a child, their own child. On multiple occasions, Marion secures false papers for Jewish babies. She takes them to city hall on what she describes as a quote, "mission of disgrace," and quote, "and pretends she's an unwed mother and that the children are hers." So she has to show up and be

shamed and just shipping and unwed mother just so she can get these children papers, which is like, you know, incredibly badass. Right. For months, this is how Marion helps shuttle children back and forth to families that can house them. She estimates that she works in some capacity on the hiding as about 150 Jewish children. Then in December of 1942, a friend

They move into a house outside of Amsterdam, which is at the time unoccupied, but belongs to a

“relative of the friend who had connected Marion with the family. So the father of the family is a”

man named Fred Polak and his children are Lex, who is for Tom, who is Chu, an erica, who's less than a year old. And their mother, Edwina Moore, is only half Jewish, but has papers that seem to obscure that fact. So she's able to move freely and she's actually a major figure in the Dutch resistance. But the father and the children are all known to be Jewish, so they have to hide.

So Marion basically lives in this house and friends of hers and the resistance build a hiding place

under the floorboards of the living room for this family. By day, it's covered with a rug and a coffee table and so the family's just able to live in the house. But if they need to, the family can hide in this space. So Marion practices getting everyone in there so she can do it in less than a minute. Like, it's just has to happen really fast. Yeah. So Marion's friends also leave her with a loaded

“revolver, just in case. Marion hides it on a shelf behind the bed. She sleeps in and about a”

year passes without any incident. And then when evening, Marion hears the engine of a car approaching and she knows that this means it's Nazis because local Dutch people write bicycles. So she quickly

gets the family into the hiding place before opening the door to three Nazis and a Dutch police officer

who is now a Nazi collaborator. Fuck, and not. After not finding any Jews in the house, because they're all hiding place, they leave. And so Marion has the family stay hidden for another half an hour and then she lets the children out and feeds them and puts them to bed and just thinks that they, they're gone. Things that the Nazis are gone. But then that Dutch Nazi collaborator comes back and quietly let themselves into the house through an unlocked back door. And you've got to wonder.

So he comes back alone without the official Nazis. You see, thinking there's a woman alone in this house or easy thinking she's hiding, Jews, Jewish people, we don't know. But clearly, bucking the various.

Yeah, clearly there's something to be exploited here and he's here to do it exactly.

So Marion hears him and without stopping to think, she grabs the revolver from a hiding place and enters steps him before he walks further into the house to discover where the children are sleeping because we're not in the hiding place anymore. When they come face to face, before either of them can say anything she shoots and kills him. She says quote, "I couldn't think of anything to do, but shoot him." And quote. Marion is 23 years old and she's just killed a man and she is

absolutely no idea what to do. But her good friend, a gay, Jewish ballet dancer named Carol with a K, is being hidden in the garden shed in the house next door. Hugh has died his hair has a fake ID so he's able to move somewhat freely around the village and he hears the shots and runs over to her house to see what happened. She tells him what happened and he says, "I'll help you. I've got a plan." Marion says quote, "If it hadn't been for Carol, we would have been in serious trouble."

So this guy hears the shot and he's like, "Let's take care of this." So essentially he goes into the village wakes up the baker who he's friends with and then he and the baker go to see the local undertaker, sounds like a nursery rhyme. Meanwhile they're all doing this after Nazi imposed curfew. So it's dangerous even if he hadn't been Jewish but he is. And so in the morning as soon as the curfews lifted the baker comes over with his wagon loads the Nazi's body onto it and then

he brings the body to the undertaker and I wonder how many times has happened. The undertaker puts the body of this Nazi police officer into a casket under another man's body. Sorry I had to jump on that but no. It's so satisfying. How many? And that idea that like there is something to be done within these insane circumstances which is stick together and make a plan together. Right. What can you do? If you're not the undertaker you're the baker and you have a way to transport the

body like you can do something. Yeah and everybody has a kind of part these parts to play. Right. So the Nazis buried that day with the other man and nobody is the wiser. Marian says quote the world at the time did not neatly divide up into perpetrators victims bystanders and rescuers. The delivery man wasn't actively involved in the resistance. The mortician wasn't actively involved in the resistance and yet when asked they cooperated. Yeah. Because they know good from bad. I mean it is such a

clear thing. Difficult if you are on meth which many people were apparently. Right. And difficult

“if you get brainwashed by this idea that you need to feel superior to sort of something else. But”

yeah everybody else is looking at it going. Yeah if there's men picking up children by their

Or the kid with the pigtails. Asked for the Dutch Nazi collaborator or the guy she killed it sounds like he had been disliked by everybody to begin with. Yeah he's a fucking Nazi collaborator. But it doesn't seem like even the Nazis looked around. Yeah he was a he wasn't one of them. He's nobody goes looking for him. So no one goes and looks into it. Right. Marian and the pollock family lived together in the house for about another year until the war ends. So it doesn't seem

like the story comes to light until later when Marian starts speaking about her experiences in the 80s. Yeah so that was just kept a secret. Yeah glad you talked about it. There were about 140,000 Jewish people living in the Netherlands and about 28,000 of them went into hiding during the war of that 28,000, about 12,000 were ultimately discovered. In hindsight we can see that people underestimated the dangers of presenting themselves to the Nazis for deportation

to what were described at the time as labor camps. So it and actually overestimated the dangers of going into hiding. Yeah almost like that mentality. If it'll just be easier if you do what they want.

“Right. You should go. Why didn't you cooperate? You should have cooperated. I think we've all”

learned that lesson at this point. Yeah. Cooperation is the big mistake and that's why they say

that. That's why I can't cooperate with fucking liars. Yeah. Your resistance is crucial. Yeah.

Of course hiding was also extremely dangerous but the odds of survival were better. This could not have been achieved without people on the individual level like Marian stepping in to help in whatever way they could. Marian points out that the parents who gave their children up to be hidden or making the most wrenching decision possible and we're not even completely sure it was the right one. She says quote, the greatest rescuers of children were the parents who gave them up and quote,

I mean there's so many stories from that time. Kinder transport and all this. They were like people who would smuggle the Jewish babies out of the slums. Yeah. Or they called the gettoes. Yeah the gettoes were like a guy would go into fix up pipe and they would stick a baby underneath it. I mean like those kinds of things are just like thank God for those people. My other grandma's for more saw. I mean, somebody on us. After the war, Marian works for the United Nations Relief

and rehabilitation administration as a social worker in a displaced persons camp in Germany. These camps were where survivors and refugees were housed until they could reconnect with any

other surviving family members. It's just so crazy that like basically when the camps were

that's the word, broken up like invaded, liberated, liberated. When the camps were liberated, a lot of the prisoners had to stay there and live there because their homes had been given away or their entire families were murdered. Yeah, they had to stay there until they could figure out what to do. A lot of that is hence is real like it's just such an insane extreme. What an experience like what a yeah. So basically they had to live there and there is where Marian meets a US army officer

named Anton Pritchard and they fall in love and get married at the camp.

“You know, when life is that extreme, like something growing out of such incredibly dark”

tragic times, the most beautiful. I mean, that's like the human experience, right? Marian and Anton move to New York. We're Marian goes back to school to become a psycho-analyst and she works at a renowned children psychiatric hospital in the northern suburbs of New York City from much of her career. She also goes on to teach at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Thank you to Ali for putting it thatically, which is known for its highly regarded psychology

program. She's educated new generations of mental health professionals. Many of whom ultimately

choose to go into the field because of Marian. One colleague says, quote, "Not only did she save lives during the 1940s, but she continues to save lives today through her influence." And quote, "So yay for mental health professionals." Yeah. And leaders. Yeah. In Marian dies in 2016 at the age of 96, her family writes in a bituary about her due to telling her accomplishments in World War Two, but this is the anecdote they end with, saying quote, "Marion Pritchard was loving and caring

with family and friends and involved in conscientious citizen and the person of great courage and compassion." On one occasion, an adult niece and her husband arrived at her home, frazzled from a long trip with four restless children. One of them asked, "Is there life after

“children?" Marian calmly replied, "Life is children." And quote, "And that is the story of”

Dutch resistance hero, Marian Pritchard." Wow. I mean, I feel like I've heard versions of that story

for women's history a month and for how fucked up the world is right now. Yeah, really. Marian,

she was doing it. She didn't give a shit. No. She did give a shit. She did give a shit.

“You have to give a shit. You have to give a shit. You have to make the baker give a shit.”

You have to make the undertaker give a shit. You have to get them, you have to organize them. That's right. And then save some people. That's right. It's not a tall task. I mean, in decent human beings is all we're asking. Just save some children. Focus on children. That's right. For once in your life. Well, that was a very deep episode that we just did. I didn't expect

that. That was a very like moving episode. Yeah. Good job, you guys. Hey listeners, handle it. Stay

sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want to clicky? This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Leonis Koelachi. Our researchers are Mary McLashon and Ali Alken. Email your hometowns to my favorite murder at gmail.com and follow the show on Instagram at my favorite murder.

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This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics. A screen good down, good down, blows a shot. A tragedy that's now forgotten and a mystery that may have been not been political, that may have been about sex. Listen to Vorshack, murder at City Hall on the iHeart Radio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Huge news, everybody. We're clearing out the merch store. That's right. Our spring cleaning

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Host of bookmarked the podcast by Reese's book club. And this week, we are talking about a monster, or maybe the woman who refused to be one. I'm sitting down with Maggie Gillen Hall to unpack her new film The Bride. And trust me, this isn't your grandmother's bride of Frankenstein. What I was more interested in was the monstrousness inside of each of us. You can spend your life running from those things, or you can turn around and shake hands with them. Listen to bookmarked.

The Reese's book club podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate our architecture. Who's been hotter in a doorway than a loser of a tailor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I love you. The new podcast from the exactly right network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on from blockbusters to decuts.

Listen to Dear Movies I love you on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

“When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on? Biggie. You put on biggie when you feel uncomfortable?”

So I want to get confident. This is DJ Hesterprin's music is therapy. A new podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist, 12 months, 12 areas of your life. Money, love, career, confidence. This isn't just a podcast. It's unconventional therapy for your entire year. Listen to DJ Hesterprin's music is therapy. On the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.