Show Notes & Episode Description

Episode Title: The Cost of Glowing: The Radium Girls & Corporate Greed

Episode Summary:

When luminous watches became the latest craze, the young women painting the dial plates were told the paint was completely harmless. Instead, they were ingesting a slow, deadly poison. In this episode of Money Ruins Everything, we dive into the chilling history of the Radium Girls—the corporate cover-ups, the hired medical experts paid to lie, and the devastating legal battles where companies tried to stall for time while the victims fought for justice.

Tune in as we expose how corporate profits were prioritized over human lives, and honor the courageous women whose fight forever changed worker safety standards.

In This Episode, We Cover:

The illusion of safety and the deadly reality behind luminous watch dials.

How corporations weaponized legal delays and hired experts to hide the truth.

The staggering human cost of prioritizing profit over people.

The legacy of the Radium Girls and how their fight reshaped labor rights.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow, rate, and review Money Ruins Everything on your favorite podcast app so you never miss a deep dive into the systems that shape our world.

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Money Ruins Everything—the podcast dissecting greedy people, corrupt corporations, and the systems that reward them.

In our series premiere, Profiles in Greed, we take a deep dive into the life and empire of the original corporate supervillain: John D. Rockefeller.

Long before Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, Rockefeller became America's first billionaire, amassing a fortune that—adjusted for today's economy—would equal roughly $450 billion (about 3% of the U.S. GDP). But how did a traumatized kid from an unstable, impoverished background in upstate New York rise to become the richest man in modern history?