We are finally wrapping up our series on the Irish Potato Famine! We get into the third year of crop failures and the mass exodus of the Irish to ports unknown. People were desperate enough to leave on ships without shoes, without food or water sometimes, to Liverpool, North America and beyond.

The famine didn't end with a big resolution or solution, it unfortunately faded out over time and many people continued to suffer for years. And while the English may not have intentionally killed 1.2 million Irish people, they certainly made choices that caused needless death.

Sources: The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by John Kelly

Send us a text! Let us know what topics you want us to cover!

This week we continue our series on the Irish Potato Famine. And it's getting rough here folks. We're coping with the subject matter with a Irish whiskey tasting along with some rough information!

We're into a second year of crop failure, and the British government is finally realizing it might be helpful to just feed people? They replace their commissioner and decide to close the public worksites and open a network of soup kitchens but its much too little much too late.

Sources: The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by John Kelly

Send us a text! Let us know what topics you want us to cover!

This week we continue our series on the Irish Potato Famine. We are really getting into the thick of it. This episode starts in 1846, when the harsh reality of a second year with so much crop failure catches up to everyone.

The new prime minister John Russell has a tough time filling his predecessor's shoes and Trevelyan is still there, mailing people books about scarcity and talking about the plans in generalities while ignoring true human suffering. The UK government continued to believe they didn't want to create a dependency on government, while the Irish struggled to simply stay alive.

The public works programs were changed and many less men were hired, while thousands of other people put aside their pride and went to the workhouses in droves. Mass famine is upon a huge population in Ireland, and winter is ushered in with a whole week of snow.

It's getting bleak here folks, but I think we're all learning a lot!

Sources: The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by John Kelly

Send us a text! Let us know what topics you want us to cover!

This week we continue our series on the Irish Potato Famine of 1845. We start to dive into the committee relief programs that Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel instated. He wanted the Irish to work for wages to buy subsidized food, instead of bartering or getting food donated to them. London also expected the middle class of Ireland to donate to the cause, but they were very hesitant because they feared for their own prosperity.

Most of the country survives the 1845 harvest, although the prosperous Irish have started to leave the country in hopes of finding greener pastures. And while the public works programs paid several hundred thousand men, they mostly built roads to nowhere. And at the beginning of the harvest of 1846, the potato blight returns.

Sources: The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by John Kelly

Send us a text! Let us know what topics you want us to cover!

This week we start our series on the potato famine that struck Ireland in 1845. Between 1845-1855 Ireland would lose a third of its population, 1.1 million to death and 2 million leaving the country because of the dire situation.

In this episode we discuss how the Irish had become incredibly dependent on the potato in the years leading up to the famine and the UK's government inability to organize any real strategy to help. Terrible weather, a lack of distribution systems, and a real misunderstanding of what was actually hurting the crop would delay any real help from getting to people for the first year.

We will get into the government commissions, proposed solutions, and the British thinking that the Irish needed to simply work harder and be purer of heart.

Sources: The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by John Kelly

Send us a text! Let us know what topics you want us to cover!

This week we are wrapping up the Henrietta Lacks Story! We will talk about the increased attention on the Lacks family including a BBC Documentary team, A con artist who called himself Doctor Sir Lord Keenan Kester Cofield, and Rebecca Skloot, the author of our source material.

We will actually get into the trail of breadcrumbs that Skloot used to meet Deborah Lacks for the first time and then talk about there relationship as they uncover more and more about Henrietta's life together over a nearly 10 year long process to write "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"

Scientists also discover what actually caused Henriettas Cancer in the first place and use that information to help create a HPV Vaccine. We talk about the attempt to create a Henrietta lacks Museum in Turner Station.

Then we finish by discussing a movie based on the book, a new law recognizing Henrietta passed through congress, and an ongoing group of unjust enrichment lawsuits against some major biomedical companies who profited off of the manufacture of Hela cells over the years.

This was a crazy story and we hope you enjoyed it!

Sources:

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot (2010)

“Henrietta Lacks Enhancing Cancer Research Act” by American Cancer Society Cancer action network(2014)

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks-IMDB page” Directed by George C. Wolfe (2017)

“What does the historic settlement won by Henrietta Lacks's family mean for others” by Meredith Wadman (2023)

“Novartis Settles with Henrietta Lacks' Estate over use of her cancercells to advance medicine” by Brian Witte Associated Press (2026)

“Henrietta Lacks: Family of woman whos cells were 'stolen' settles second lawsuit” by Max Matza (2026)

Send us a text! Let us know what topics you want us to cover!

Hey all,

We're taking two weeks off to regroup and catch up on life stuff and try to get our baby to sleep again. We will back July 7th and hit the group running! In the meantime, enjoy some of our old series or just enjoy the warm weather! See you in July!

Thanks for listening!

Send us a text! Let us know what topics you want us to cover!

This episode we get a bit more into how the family was effected by the news that part of their mother was still alive.

We talk about the founding of John Hopkins and the pretty warranted fears that the black community had for night doctors and scientists looking to use black bodies for experiments.

Then we get into the beginning of a legal debate determining whether we should retain property rights to parts of our body once they are disguarded. We talk about Ted Slaven who set up his own deal with the pharmaceutical companies to sell his blood eventually starting a company to produce and sell biological products splitting profits directly with the donors as partners. Slaven's blood would eventually be used to create a Hepatitis Vaccine.

We also talk about John Moore who had an incredibly rare type of Leukemia and a 22 lbs spleen. The cell line created with his spleen and samples taken were valued at three billion dollars. He would eventually take UCLA and his doctor to court suing them for theft of his body.

Hope you enjoy!

Send us a text! Let us know what topics you want us to cover!