525 - Snap It Out

On today’s episode, Karen covers the 1942 Oregon State Hospital poisoning and Georgia tells the story of World War II hero Marion Pritchard. For our sources, please visit https://www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3UFCn1g. Head to social media to share your favorite moments from this episode. Instagram: instagram.com/myfavoritemurder http://instagram.com/myfavoritemurder Facebook: facebook.com/myfavoritemurder http://facebook.com/myfavoritemurder TikTok: tiktok.com/@my_favorite_murder http://tiktok.com/@my_favorite_murder Send your hometown stories to [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Join the Fan Cult to access ad-free episodes of My Favorite Murder. Members also receive merch store discounts, exclusive audio and video content and more! Visit www.fancult.supercast.com http://www.fancult.supercast.com/ to join. Shop for My Favorite Murder and other Exactly Right merchandise here: www.exactlyrightstore.com http://www.exactlyrightstore.com/. Rate, review and follow My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

• 0:06Speaker 01

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• 0:34Georgia Hardstark?

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• 0:37Karen Kilgariff?

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• 0:43Karen Kilgariff?

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• 0:52Georgia Hardstark?

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• 0:57Karen Kilgariff?

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• 1:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Audible, stories that speak to you. Goodbye. The Hulu original series Phony is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ Sonny's life is pretty great until he wakes up from a car accident to a world that looks exactly like his, with one exception, his mom.

• 1:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Starring five-time Emmy nominee Connie Britton and Sam Nivola, this small town is hiding the mother of all mysteries just beneath the surface.

• 1:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Watch the Hulu original series, Phony.

• 1:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Goodbye.

• 1:33Speaker 04

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• 2:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Hello and welcome.

• 2:22Georgia Hardstark?

  To My Favorite Murder.

• 2:23Karen Kilgariff?

  That's Georgia Hardstark.

• 2:24Georgia Hardstark?

  That's Karen Kilgariff.

• 2:25Karen Kilgariff?

  And we're here podcasting for you with full hearts and can't lose.

• 2:30Georgia Hardstark?

  And golden.

• 2:31Karen Kilgariff?

  And living our lives like it's golden.

• 2:33Georgia Hardstark?

  And we're golden.

• 2:34Karen Kilgariff?

  And we are doing it.

• 2:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, we have to talk about, are you sick because?

• 2:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 2:43Georgia Hardstark?

  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.

• 2:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 2:51Georgia Hardstark?

  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 armchair rest thing. This fucking dude, tell them about him.

• 3:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, this dude was very proud because he had a kerchief 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.

• 3:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Maybe some fucking like bubonic plague.

• 3:24Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, so he pulls this kerchief out of his pocket.

• 3:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Green handkerchief, I'll never forget it.

• 3:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Gigantic. And he blows his nose like he's doing a bit, like it's like a, I'm an elephant kind of trumpeting thing.

• 3:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Which you know, like I blow my nose constantly, so I'm not going to be like a shamey person. I don't, I try not to do that in public, public.

• 3:44Karen Kilgariff?

  No, and especially like this idea of like, well, someone has their own, I keep saying kerchief. What's the right?

• 3:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Handkerchief.

• 3:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Handkerchief. Except for that this man, then after he blew it.

• 3:56Georgia Hardstark?

  And did this already wet.

• 3:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Gigantic.

• 3:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Damp, gigantic, green handkerchief.

• 4:02Karen Kilgariff?

  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.

• 4:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Every 60 seconds.

• 4:13Karen Kilgariff?

  It started weird. I almost said something like on the fourth time, by the 15th time, I was literally like. Screaming and putting my sweater over my mouth every time he did it.

• 4:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Here's the biggest problem. Don't be sick on a plane. And if you're, if you are, at least try to pretend you're not. Like, don't get on a plane if you have to blow your nose because you're so sick every minute.

• 4:36Karen Kilgariff?

  If I may, 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 snot on people or something because it was so nonsensically. When have you ever seen someone blow their nose and then snap out the handkerchief? Snap it out.

• 4:54Georgia Hardstark?

  That reminds me of like, there was a time where I kept walking at nice restaurants, kept walking into a man who forgot to lock the door. Standing at the urinal. And I was like, why does it keep happening to me? And someone was like, that's a fetish. Is having someone walking on you peeing. And I was like, okay, it's not just this weird.

• 5:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Right.

• 5:13Georgia Hardstark?

  You know, and it was always like, not that nice restaurants matter, but it was a places where like, it wasn't a gas station where you're like, you've been driving for six hours.

• 5:20Karen Kilgariff?

  The lock's broken.

• 5:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, exactly. Well, and also in this situation, it's very easy, jokey to be like, it's a fetish, but nothing else explains

• 5:28Karen Kilgariff?

  the amount of times he did it, the, the drama with which he snapped it out, where I was just like, I can't believe the people across the aisle are pissed.

• 5:38Georgia Hardstark?

  It was so bad that I made, I did something I've, I 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.

• 5:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 5:49Georgia Hardstark?

  And she ended up being this lovely woman, what's up Asia, who lives in my fucking neighborhood.

• 5:53Karen Kilgariff?

  So funny.

• 5:54Georgia Hardstark?

  And we chatted the whole time. I'm sure that was super annoying too, because I hate when people.

• 5:57Karen Kilgariff?

  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.

• 6:04Georgia Hardstark?

  I can't believe you're not sick.

• 6:05Karen Kilgariff?

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

• 6:11Georgia Hardstark?

  It's hot.

• 6:12Karen Kilgariff?

  That I kind of feel sick from, how is it this hot?

• 6:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 6:15Karen Kilgariff?

  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 want to wear this on.

• 6:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Camera?

• 6:24Karen Kilgariff?

  On camera, on video.

• 6:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Video on Netflix.

• 6:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Big concern these days, listeners, with a whole other thing that's happening while you listen. We've got all these other things to worry about.

• 6:34Georgia Hardstark?

  It's just like life keeps happening, even though it's happening.

• 6:38Karen Kilgariff?

  Even though me and my 55 year old face aren't that into it. Also, what is wrong with my hair?

• 6:44Georgia Hardstark?

  What are you talking about?

• 6:46Karen Kilgariff?

  It's always a weird triangle. Well, anyway, thanks for I to iHeart. We really love being partners with iHeart as a company. The people that work there are so cool. We were so excited to be at that awards show. I texted Nora, I was like, hey, your favorite podcast won podcast of the year because she loves Giggly Squad.

• 7:04Georgia Hardstark?

  My god, they were the fucking most hilarious women I've ever, they were so charming and lovely.

• 7:09Karen Kilgariff?

  We don't have to worry about the future. They're going to kill it in every direction. They were so hilarious.

• 7:14Georgia Hardstark?

  We can retire.

• 7:14Karen Kilgariff?

  But yeah, we got to see lots of people that we like there and hang out.

• 7:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Watch what crappens. Always a pleasure. So it was super fun.

• 7:22Karen Kilgariff?

  Fun all around.

• 7:22Georgia Hardstark?

  We lost, but we're really, we were just happy to be there.

• 7:25Karen Kilgariff?

  We're used to losing.

• 7:26Georgia Hardstark?

  We're so used to losing.

• 7:27Karen Kilgariff?

  That's where, that's our comfort zone. I think I really get uncomfortable when the winning starts, so.

• 7:31Georgia Hardstark?

  I mean, we already won at life, so.

• 7:33Karen Kilgariff?

  We won like posted up on a couch in at these awards.

• 7:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Hanging out.

• 7:38Karen Kilgariff?

  Having, saying hi.

• 7:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Like Jake from Disgraceland on one side.

• 7:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Craig Peralta on the other.

• 7:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Craig Peralta on the other.

• 7:44Karen Kilgariff?

  What do you, what more does anyone want?

• 7:45Georgia Hardstark?

  What more?

• 7:46Karen Kilgariff?

  In this life. Oh, we got to see the Head and the Heart play live, like in front of 50 people or something. It was great. Thank you. Thank you all.

• 7:55Georgia Hardstark?

  No chicken shit bingo this year, but you can't win it all.

• 7:58Karen Kilgariff?

  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 store in Austin. Because I bought jewelry there. I bought a coat there. I bought a short sleeved shirt there. I did it every season.

• 8:17Georgia Hardstark?

  I haven't unpacked yet, so I forgot that I bought a shirt at a vintage store.

• 8:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 8:21Georgia Hardstark?

  So gross that I haven't unpacked it.

• 8:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, no, it's such a pain. It's like you just come back and get right back into everything.

• 8:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 8:28Karen Kilgariff?

  I think the woman at Feathers actually, because she gave me two like tote bags with their logo on it, I think, once for you.

• 8:35Georgia Hardstark?

  Love a tote bag.

• 8:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Georgia Hardstark?

  We should count tote bags one day as like a fan cult video.

• 8:39Karen Kilgariff?

  I've got them to count for sure. I've got a whole drawer full.

• 8:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Funny ironic sayings on them.

• 8:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Cities we've visited.

• 8:46Georgia Hardstark?

  Our own merch.

• 8:47Karen Kilgariff?

  I just got a Gelson's tote.

• 8:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh.

• 8:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Because you know how everybody's into those Trader Joe's totes. Around the world.

• 8:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Karen Kilgariff?

  Well, Gelson's in the game now.

• 8:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Get in there, Gelson.

• 8:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Gelson's our local rich people's grocery store. They're like, we can do this.

• 9:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Speaking of we can do this, we have a podcast network.

• 9:04Karen Kilgariff?

  That's right.

• 9:05Georgia Hardstark?

  It's called Exactly Right Media. Here are some quick highlights.

• 9:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay, this is very exciting. Our newest limited series, Two-Faced John of God, is currently featured on Apple Podcasts right this second. 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.

• 9:23Georgia Hardstark?

  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 guest is the great Bradley Whitford.

• 9:41Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, what a booking.

• 9:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 9:43Karen Kilgariff?

  Hello.

• 9:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow. Cara and Lisa killing it.

• 9:46Karen Kilgariff?

  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 head to Boston in 1886, where the owner of a laundromat is found murdered in his shop. A laundromat in 1886.

• 10:05Georgia Hardstark?

  I know. I was just thinking about that.

• 10:07Karen Kilgariff?

  A laundry vat. As investigators learn more about the victim's ambitions, a clearer picture of the case begins to emerge.

• 10:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Dun dun dun. It should be at the end of every one of their paragraphs.

• 10:18Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, true.

• 10:18Georgia Hardstark?

  And on Do You Need a Ride, Chris and Karen welcome Francesca Fiorentini. And they talk about Olympic tears, serious skincare, and more.

• 10:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, that was a fun episode. And by the by, over in our merch corner, the spring cleaning sale runs from March 26 to March 29. You can get 20% off site-wide. If you've been waiting to grab any kind of a merch, this is your moment.

• 10:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Any kind of a merch? So yeah, go to exactlyrightstore.com and use promo code ERMSPRING26. Write that down for 20% off your entire purchase, although some exclusions apply.

• 10:55Karen Kilgariff?

  As they do in life. I mean, you think you just have carte blanche to get 20% off anything in life? Have you learned nothing? Grow up. Are you new? Come on.

• 11:07Speaker 01

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• 11:37Georgia Hardstark?

  There are plenty of things that keep you up at night. Your sleep tracker shouldn't be one of them.

• 11:41Karen Kilgariff?

  You know that feeling, laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, counting all the times you said something weird.

• 11:46Georgia Hardstark?

  And then you wake up and check your sleep score. Now you have to start your day knowing that you failed at sleeping.

• 11:52Karen Kilgariff?

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• 11:54Georgia Hardstark?

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• 11:59Karen Kilgariff?

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• 12:06Georgia Hardstark?

  Fall asleep to the next chapter of an audiobook like The Odyssey, a nervous system reset meditation, or a calming sound bath.

• 12:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Then you can find out which gives you 20 more minutes of deep sleep each night.

• 12:17Georgia Hardstark?

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• 12:18Karen Kilgariff?

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• 12:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 12:24Karen Kilgariff?

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• 13:09Karen Kilgariff?

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• 13:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Take it from me, a bad couch can ruin your life.

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• 13:29Georgia Hardstark?

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• 13:39Karen Kilgariff?

  And with Article's 30-day satisfaction guarantee, you can shop with confidence, knowing that if you're not completely in love with your new furniture, you can easily return it. Man, there was nothing I loved more than when I was broke and I could still buy furniture that I needed at Article. It wasn't cheap-looking. It's like I was investing in these pieces that were comparatively inexpensive, and I was like finishing rooms. I was like getting the kitchen table that was like bringing the whole thing together. And it was such an incredible thing because I never got to do that before. I love that about Article.

• 14:11Georgia Hardstark?

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• 14:15Karen Kilgariff?

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• 14:20Georgia Hardstark?

  That's article.com/murder for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more.

• 14:25Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 14:27Georgia Hardstark?

  The Hulu original series Phony is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

• 14:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Sonny's life is pretty great, until he wakes up from a car accident to a world that looks exactly like his, with one exception: his mom.

• 14:39Georgia Hardstark?

  To everyone else, she's the same Ellen they've known their whole lives, but for Sonny, he knows something is off.

• 14:45Karen Kilgariff?

  As his relationship with his mother begins to crack in unsettling ways, he's forced to question what happens when the perfect mom becomes a perfect stranger.

• 14:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Is this all in his head, or is there really an imposter in his house?

• 14:56Karen Kilgariff?

  Starring five-time Emmy nominee Connie Britton and Sam Nevola, this small town is hiding the mother of all mysteries just beneath the surface.

• 15:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Watch the Hulu original series Phony.

• 15:05Karen Kilgariff?

  Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Goodbye.

• 15:12Karen Kilgariff?

  All right. Okay, I'm gonna kick us off today. I'd never heard of this story before. It's like kinda crazy and kind of relevant. I actually just saw a trailer. Zach Galifianakis 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.

• 15:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Can he stop being...

• 15:40Karen Kilgariff?

  The greatest hippie in the world.

• 15:41Georgia Hardstark?

  Perfect, yeah.

• 15:42Karen Kilgariff?

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

• 15:49Georgia Hardstark?

  I need that. I love that.

• 15:51Karen Kilgariff?

  That's kind of a perfect little plug, a side plug.

• 15:53Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 15:54Karen Kilgariff?

  Zach 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 put remodeled, but it's like completely redone, but the original campus is where they filmed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in the 70s.

• 16:22Georgia Hardstark?

  I hear ya.

• 16:23Karen Kilgariff?

  So author Diane Garras 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," end 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 that 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 5

• 17:06Karen Kilgariff?

  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.

• 17:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 17:27Karen Kilgariff?

  This is the story of the 1942 Oregon State Hospital poisoning tragedy.

• 17:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Fuck, I've never heard of this.

• 17:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Right? Me either. Tessa, our AP, is the one who suggested it.

• 17:36Georgia Hardstark?

  No way.

• 17:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. So, the main sources used today are the book Inside Oregon State Hospital: A History of Triumph and Tragedy by Diane Garras Gardner and reporting by Cappy Lynn for the Statesman Journal. Cappy?

• 17:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Cappy's cute.

• 17:50Karen Kilgariff?

  That's a great name.

• 17:52Georgia Hardstark?

  With a K? K-I-P-P-Y?

• 17:53Karen Kilgariff?

  It's actually C-A-P-I.

• 17:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, that's cute.

• 17:56Karen Kilgariff?

  But C-A-P-P-Y is also cute.

• 17:59Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, cappy.

• 18:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Cappy. 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 from shoes to paper to tires.

• 18:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Just smiling.

• 18:33Karen Kilgariff?

  Right?

• 18:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Just everything.

• 18:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Hershey bars. That's the one that always gets me in World War II movies when they're like, "Look, a Hershey bar."

• 18:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, a chocolate bar. That reminds me of atonement and it makes me sad.

• 18:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, I just rewatched that. It's so good.

• 18:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Can you even?

• 18:46Karen Kilgariff?

  But that part where they're on the beach and just waiting to get rescued is insane. Okay. So, over here, while 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.

• 19:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Imagine how fucking terrifying.

• 19:20Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, it was real, real.

• 19:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:22Karen Kilgariff?

  There's even concern 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, quote, "victory gardens," which is very smart and true. To counteract all the fear and scarcity around food. So with that in context, November 18th, 1942, at 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 huge, huge numbers. But just like every other department at this hospital, the kitchens also going through

• 20:07Karen Kilgariff?

  a 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 dish is scrambled eggs. So it's kind of horrible.

• 20:52Georgia Hardstark?

  I was just gonna ask you 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. That's disgusting. I hate scrambled eggs.

• 21:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Not even if they're nice and loose and runny? Well, I can't answer, because I think this is a thing we don't think about as much these days, except unless you're on food stamps or, you know, your family has to rely on powdered food. But these eggs are frozen yolks made with powdered milk.

• 21:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Gross.

• 21:22Karen Kilgariff?

  So I'm not thinking it's a delicious morning, you know, start to your day.

• 21:27Georgia Hardstark?

  I can't imagine. Is that, wait, you said for dinner, though?

• 21:29Karen Kilgariff?

  It's dinner.

• 21:30Georgia Hardstark?

  We had breakfast for dinner a lot as kids, because that was just easy and affordable. I didn't realize, I was so excited that we're getting.

• 21:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Day is night, night is day.

• 21:40Georgia Hardstark?

  It's so exciting.

• 21:41Karen Kilgariff?

  We're flipping it all around. I know, my dad would make us breakfast and dinner pancakes.

• 21:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 21:45Karen Kilgariff?

  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 dollar fifty in today's money, is all the hospital is able to allocate to feed each patient.

• 22:02Georgia Hardstark?

  Per day.

• 22:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 22:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Holy shit.

• 22:05Karen Kilgariff?

  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," end quote.

• 22:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 22:19Karen Kilgariff?

  So the rationing is very serious. The hospital's latest shipment of eggs came a few months back in February. It contained sixty-seven hundred pounds of frozen yolks, divided into two gallon containers.

• 22:31Georgia Hardstark?

  I didn't know you could freeze yolks, and I don't.

• 22:33Karen Kilgariff?

  I know.

• 22:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Like it.

• 22:34Karen Kilgariff?

  Do you think they look like little ice cubes with yellow circles?

• 22:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Aww.

• 22:38Karen Kilgariff?

  That's cute, with some orange juice.

• 22:42Georgia Hardstark?

  Little cocktail, nice cocktail.

• 22:44Karen Kilgariff?

  The thing is, and I did, I'm gonna say this as a person who grew up in the egg basket of the world.

• 22:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 22:49Karen Kilgariff?

  At one time, Petaluma, California, we're all about the eggs there.

• 22:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 22:52Karen Kilgariff?

  I just don't really love interacting with eggs.

• 22:55Georgia Hardstark?

  No.

• 22:56Karen Kilgariff?

  In most ways.

• 22:57Georgia Hardstark?

  I know what you mean.

• 22:58Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. You said it yourself, but I'm gonna jump right on that bandwagon 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, other people will describe them as soapy. You know, I think I've had food poisoning twice. The taste that I always tasted was metal.

• 23:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Really?

• 23:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Have you ever had that?

• 23:40Georgia Hardstark?

  No, like, what kind of food was it, like?

• 23:42Karen Kilgariff?

  One, one time it was a Chinese chicken salad.

• 23:45Georgia Hardstark?

  And it was like, like a penny?

• 23:46Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes. It was like, there was weird metal in there, but it's not like.

• 23:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Tangy.

• 23:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, but it was like someone poured a La Croix across my Chinese chicken salad in that way, where it's like, that doesn't belong.

• 24:00Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 24:00Karen Kilgariff?

  That's not a food taste.

• 24:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 24:02Karen Kilgariff?

  And then countdown. Count it down. So in one section of the hospital, a nurse named Ally Wassell 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.

• 24:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Leg cramps. That's scary.

• 24:29Karen Kilgariff?

  I've got egg leg cramps.

• 24:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Like food poisoning that goes to like places that aren't your gut or your system?

• 24:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 24:36Georgia Hardstark?

  It's like your fucking leg?

• 24:38Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, that's like in the blood.

• 24:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 24:42Karen Kilgariff?

  Egg hands.

• 24:42Georgia Hardstark?

  I have pain.

• 24:44Karen Kilgariff?

  Some start vomiting blood, and others stop breathing and their faces turn blue.

• 24:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Holy shit.

• 24:50Karen Kilgariff?

  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, and that number is in the hundreds, needing immediate treatment. So it's just like everybody in the room.

• 25:06Georgia Hardstark?

  The smell.

• 25:07Karen Kilgariff?

  The smell.

• 25:08Georgia Hardstark?

  I've scrambled egg vomit.

• 25:09Karen Kilgariff?

  The screams.

• 25:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Sorry, everyone, I'm trying to make this, I'm trying to really like, build a picture.

• 25:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 25:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Build a world.

• 25:15Karen Kilgariff?

  This is what we do on this show.

• 25:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 25:16Karen Kilgariff?

  We world build with words.

• 25:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Powdered scrambled egg vomit. Sorry.

• 25:21Karen Kilgariff?

  We're gonna call this the brunch episode.

• 25:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay.

• 25:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, go.

• 25:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Five hours later, 10 people are dead.

• 25:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus.

• 25:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Yep. By four, the next morning, 40 staff members and/or patients have died.

• 25:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh my god.

• 25:36Karen Kilgariff?

  By Thursday evening, the death toll hits 47. Nurse Ally Wassell's ward is the only one with no victims. She actually ends up getting sick from the one bite of egg she took when she then was like, forks down.

• 25:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow.

• 25:51Karen Kilgariff?

  But she does recover. The hospital morgue is small, it can 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 mortuaries 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 an already anxious public as news. Papers begin reporting on this tragedy. Toxicologists test both the victim's stomach contents and these eggs themselves. But the frozen yolks 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

• 26:36Karen Kilgariff?

  the United States to terrorize Americans begins to take hold.

• 26:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 26:40Karen Kilgariff?

  Like, it looks like either 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 yolks immediately. The federal people are like, "I can't, please, just one bite. I love them so much."

• 27:01Georgia Hardstark?

  What will I have for dinner?

• 27:02Karen Kilgariff?

  What will I have for my noontime 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 flying in.

• 27:27Georgia Hardstark?

  That's a lot of people to die overnight from food poisoning.

• 27:31Karen Kilgariff?

  And it is. What an opening scene for our movie. Because, holy shit, you're the doctor and the nurse flirting, kind of interested in each other, kind of cute, I'm not sure, walking, talking.

• 27:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Karen Kilgariff?

  "Hey, what do you think of the top 20 hits of the 1940s? How about this war come around a corner?"

• 27:50Georgia Hardstark?

  This is the plot of the movie Airplane that you're talking about. And I love that movie.

• 27:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Unfunny airplane, but same amount of eggs.

• 27:59Karen Kilgariff?

  Okay. The scientists quickly confirm the eggs were laced with a huge amount of sodium fluoride, which is lethal to humans even in small doses.

• 28:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, I thought they were just bad. They were fucking laced.

• 28:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Laced.

• 28:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Shit.

• 28:13Karen Kilgariff?

  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 egg yolks can rest easy, because theirs are fine.

• 28:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay.

• 28:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Drink away. Defrost and drink away, friends. 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. And somebody's just 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.

• 29:07Georgia Hardstark?

  Of course.

• 29:07Karen Kilgariff?

  But then, five days after the poisoning, a 64-year-old assistant cook named Abraham McKillop cracks. He reveals that-

• 29:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Is that a pun on purpose?

• 29:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, oh, I didn't even think about that.

• 29:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow, that's good.

• 29:21Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, cracks, bad to me. Cracks, pokes his little beak out of the shell.

• 29:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Cracks like an egg.

• 29:28Karen Kilgariff?

  He reveals that on the night of the poisoning, he was prepping the 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 Nozen, to go downstairs and grab the powdered milk for him. And then Abraham gave the patient his key to the storage rooms downstairs. This was a break in protocol. Employees are forbidden from giving patients their hospital keys.

• 29:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Sure.

• 29:58Karen Kilgariff?

  But George Nozen was a very trusted trustee in the kitchen, and 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.

• 30:25Georgia Hardstark?

  One said poison on it, and one said food on it.

• 30:28Karen Kilgariff?

  Poison, food, food. I mean, it's, this is, this is one of the worst and saddest crazy mix-up stories.

• 30:37Georgia Hardstark?

  So he didn't purposely kill a bunch of people?

• 30:39Karen Kilgariff?

  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 mindfuck. Like, this idea that without your knowing, there's a whole second room that you could have gone into.

• 30:53Georgia Hardstark?

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

• 31:01Karen Kilgariff?

  It should say 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 vat, sitting right next to all the other food. It was white. It was odorless power. He scooped out several pounds of it as requested.

• 31:25Georgia Hardstark?

  He said power instead of powder.

• 31:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Did I really? It's almost over for me. And thank you for everything. It's been nice. It was white odorless powder. Sorry.

• 31:39Karen Kilgariff?

  No, because I don't want to say white power for fuck's sake. God.

• 31:44Georgia Hardstark?

  You say it all the time.

• 31:45Karen Kilgariff?

  No, 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.

• 32:16Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. And it tasted so fucking weird. Sodium, whatever the fuck.

• 32:19Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 32:20Georgia Hardstark?

  So salty or soapy or whatever.

• 32:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Jesus.

• 32:23Karen Kilgariff?

  To 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 diners started showing symptoms. He told the hospital's head chef, Mary O'Hare, "Hey, Mary."

• 32:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Mary.

• 32:40Karen Kilgariff?

  And they retraced George's steps into the basement, and they figured out he 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 thin 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.

• 33:22Karen Kilgariff?

  And that's the person who usually is in charge of storing and labeling things in the basement.

• 33:27Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 33:28Karen Kilgariff?

  So you cut costs and you cut corners. That's what starts happening. So that's likely how it's possible that a gigantic vat of cockroach poison 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.

• 33:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 33:55Karen Kilgariff?

  In the end, the grand jury does not bring any criminal charges against assistant cook Abraham McKillop, head chef Mary O'Hare, or George Nozen. And it's easy to assume that all three of them were fully traumatized for life by this entire event.

• 34:10Georgia Hardstark?

  For sure.

• 34:11Karen Kilgariff?

  In fact, the 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 staffer cares for 16 patients at a time. Think of it.

• 34:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Too many.

• 34:52Karen Kilgariff?

  Think of that as like two tops in a restaurant. You have eight tables of people who need a lot of help.

• 34:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 34:59Karen Kilgariff?

  But at night, there's only one staffer for every 150 patients.

• 35:05Karen Kilgariff?

  That's just general staff. There are only eight doctors for more than 2,700 total patients, which means inevitably employees are going to rely on things like restraints and confinement more often than if there were practical patient to caregiver ratio.

• 35:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 35:21Karen Kilgariff?

  So it's basically this situation is worst case. Expectedly, there's also a ton of employee turnover, with one stat showing, quote, "108.68% turnover in staff from 1940 to 1942 alone."

• 35:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, my God.

• 35:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Everybody's like, "Bye."

• 35:38Georgia Hardstark?

  Fuck this shit.

• 35:39Karen Kilgariff?

  This is horrible.

• 35:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 35:40Karen Kilgariff?

  In the wake of this horrific event, national laws are passed requiring that poisons be manufactured with clear warning labels. It seems so obvious.

• 35:49Georgia Hardstark?

  It does.

• 35:49Karen Kilgariff?

  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 US.

• 36:33Karen Kilgariff?

  And that's one of the last pieces of legislation that he will sign before his assassination. But in the decades to follow, and especially during the Ronald Reagan era.

• 36:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Boo.

• 36:45Karen Kilgariff?

  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.

• 37:15Karen Kilgariff?

  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 a sarcastic understatement. That is, it's probably about as bad as it could be.

• 37:30Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 37:31Karen Kilgariff?

  So just months ago, Trump's DOJ cut $88 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.

• 37:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 37:45Karen Kilgariff?

  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 in this country.

• 38:09Georgia Hardstark?

  How are we gonna go to a unnecessary war if we don't have money from people who actually fucking need it?

• 38:15Karen Kilgariff?

  It's so blatantly obvious now that I don't think it can be an argument anymore.

• 38:19Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 38:19Karen Kilgariff?

  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.

• 38:30Georgia Hardstark?

  We have no fucking-

• 38:30Karen Kilgariff?

  In a war in the Middle East that no one understands why we're there.

• 38:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. No health insurance, children are starving.

• 38:36Karen Kilgariff?

  Food is more expensive than it's ever been.

• 38:39Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. Fuck, the cost of living is just constantly going up.

• 38:42Karen Kilgariff?

  It's beyond, and it's creating a pressure cooker for people with mental health issues as well as everybody else.

• 38:48Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. You should point it at me when you said that.

• 38:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh my god.

• 38:51Georgia Hardstark?

  But you're not wrong. You are-

• 38:54Karen Kilgariff?

  For example, I meant, that was the middle of the table. That was an us hand, I swear.

• 38:59Georgia Hardstark?

  I don't mind it. Give it to me, please. I'll take it. I'll be the, I'll be the spokesperson for-

• 39:06Karen Kilgariff?

  You're like, 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 and 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 has 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, end quote. And that's the story of the 1942 poisoning at Oregon State Hospital.

• 39:47Georgia Hardstark?

  Wow. And your mom had never talked about it or anything yet and heard about it?

• 39:52Karen Kilgariff?

  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 where they're used to having their funding cut.

• 40:03Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally. I'm sure. I'm sure.

• 40:05Karen Kilgariff?

  And there's a real good picture that I think you'd like, because it's basically one of the-

• 40:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Is it me?

• 40:10Karen Kilgariff?

  It's you, representing all mental health services. It's just the pic, that really good picture of a victory garden that when they used, they used to do posters. And I think it's like, it's so timely.

• 40:21Georgia Hardstark?

  There it is. It's such a good picture.

• 40:24Karen Kilgariff?

  Right? It's, grow your victory garden. It counts more than ever. We need those-

• 40:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 40:30Karen Kilgariff?

  We need to feed ourselves. We need to feed our communities.

• 40:34Georgia Hardstark?

  I love that.

• 40:35Karen Kilgariff?

  We need to take care of each other.

• 40:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Um, there's a really good book.

• 40:38Karen Kilgariff?

  Is it written by Zach Galifianakis?

• 40:40Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, yeah. Why does Zach Galifianakis have to do with this?

• 40:43Karen Kilgariff?

  His gardening show.

• 40:44Georgia Hardstark?

  Oh, right. It's called The Lost Girls of Willowbrook. You know, Willowbrook State Hospital in Jersey that we talked about where Cropsy'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 because they think it's her. It's like the seventies. And it really explains how awful the experience is in there, like firsthand. This girl's called, The Lost Girls of Willowbrook by Ellen Marie Wiseman.

• 41:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, I want to read that.

• 41:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Highly recommended. If you just like, want to get in there.

• 41:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 41:14Georgia Hardstark?

  See the reality.

• 41:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 41:16Speaker 01

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• 41:44Karen Kilgariff?

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• 41:48Georgia Hardstark?

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• 42:01Karen Kilgariff?

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• 42:06Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 42:08Georgia Hardstark?

  The Hulu original series Phony is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

• 42:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Sonny's life is pretty great, until he wakes up from a car accident to a world that looks exactly like his with one exception: his mom.

• 42:21Georgia Hardstark?

  To everyone else, she's the same Ellen they've known their whole lives, but for Sonny, he knows something is off.

• 42:26Karen Kilgariff?

  As his relationship with his mother begins to crack in unsettling ways, he's forced to question what happens when the perfect mom becomes a perfect stranger.

• 42:34Georgia Hardstark?

  Is this all in his head, or is there really an imposter in his house?

• 42:37Karen Kilgariff?

  Starring five-time Emmy nominee Connie Britton and Sam Nevola, this small town is hiding the mother of all mysteries just beneath the surface.

• 42:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Watch the Hulu original series Phony.

• 42:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 42:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Goodbye.

• 42:53Speaker 04

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• 43:23Karen Kilgariff?

  Sometimes being a little salty is completely justified.

• 43:26Georgia Hardstark?

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• 43:31Karen Kilgariff?

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• 43:39Georgia Hardstark?

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• 43:45Karen Kilgariff?

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• 43:53Georgia Hardstark?

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• 43:57Karen Kilgariff?

  I really do love Kachava, and I really do think it does taste delicious for getting you through the morning, filling in the gap if you just need some protein and you need some vitamins. It's such a nice little treat.

• 44:09Georgia Hardstark?

  It's such an easy way to get everything you need, and it tastes good, too, which is just a huge bonus.

• 44:13Karen Kilgariff?

  So embrace your salty side.

• 44:15Georgia Hardstark?

  Go to kachava.com and use code MFM for 15% off your first order.

• 44:19Karen Kilgariff?

  That's Kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com, code MFM. Goodbye.

• 44:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Great. Great job.

• 44:27Karen Kilgariff?

  Thank you.

• 44:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Horrible story.

• 44:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Yes.

• 44:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Here's another one.

• 44:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Great.

• 44:31Georgia Hardstark?

  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.

• 44:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Wonderful. I'm a woman.

• 44:41Georgia Hardstark?

  I'm a history month. This is the story of a woman who, in her early twenties, 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 Marian Pritchard.

• 44:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Hell, yes. Let's get right into it.

• 44:57Georgia Hardstark?

  Let's go from fucking World War II to World War II.

• 45:01Karen Kilgariff?

  Right into that World War II vibe. I just, anytime 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.

• 45:15Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right. So the main source for this story is a three-hour interview with Marian from 1998, conducted by USC Shoah Foundation. And the Shoah 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 Marian Philippa Van Binzbergen.

• 45:43Georgia Hardstark?

  Is born on November 7th, 1920 in Amsterdam. Her mother Grace is English and her father Jacob is Dutch. He's a judge coming from a long line of judges on his family's 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 antisemitism 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 they're 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.

• 46:28Georgia Hardstark?

  So antisemitism is 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," end quote.

• 46:51Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, I've heard of it.

• 46:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. What she does notice is that after 1933, more German, Austrian and Polish children start showing up at her school because their families have fled to the Netherlands. Around seventh 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 families. So Marion isn't even aware of the true number of Jewish friends she has until once the Nazis occupy Holland. And then Ally wrote, note to Georgia, Holland is a region within the Netherlands

• 47:36Georgia Hardstark?

  and Amsterdam is within this region, but there are parts of the Netherlands that are not Holland. Appreciate you.

• 47:42Karen Kilgariff?

  I don't think we'll ever solve the mystery of Holland.

• 47:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 47:47Georgia Hardstark?

  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 whom she knows are gay. And when Marion brings this up with her father, he tells her that everyone should be treated with respect.

• 48:08Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 48:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, which is very progressive.

• 48:11Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, back then, too.

• 48:12Georgia Hardstark?

  By the time Marion's 14, she decides that her ambition in life is to become a psychoanalyst. She has an older friend who is a nurse in a psychiatric hospital.

• 48:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Hey, parallels.

• 48:23Georgia Hardstark?

  And learning from her friend makes her want to study psychology. So when she's about 19 in 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.

• 48:48Karen Kilgariff?

  That's really creepy to think that that was, that's how they infiltrated everything. Like, what does that have to do? Why would you have to swear an oath to Nazis to go to school?

• 48:58Georgia Hardstark?

  Because you're only going to work for the master race and to, you know, like, God.

• 49:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 49:04Georgia Hardstark?

  Do no harm doesn't really exist anymore.

• 49:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 49:07Georgia Hardstark?

  You know?

• 49:08Karen Kilgariff?

  They etch that off. They're just like, more snakes.

• 49:10Georgia Hardstark?

  More snakes.

• 49:13Karen Kilgariff?

  Snakes around a pipe.

• 49:14Georgia Hardstark?

  Snakes around everything.

• 49:16Karen Kilgariff?

  We love snakes.

• 49:16Georgia Hardstark?

  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 of 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 antisemitism 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 antisemitism, 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.

• 49:57Georgia Hardstark?

  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 in the Netherlands. 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 read Mein Kampf from beginning to end. It's awful dull reading. I tried," end quote. Meaning, like, he fucking saw the writing on the wall and in the book.

• 50:29Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 50:30Georgia Hardstark?

  So at this point, Marion is around 20 years old, and her social work courses include one day a week spent doing fieldwork. 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

• 51:14Georgia Hardstark?

  be arrested and deported that night. And so the social worker, the head social worker asks 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.

• 51:30Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 51:30Georgia Hardstark?

  So that night, Marion shows up at home with a little two-year-old boy.

• 51:35Karen Kilgariff?

  It's just the stress of, like, even just thinking about babysitting my own niece, where just like, here, take a two-year-old for the day.

• 51:43Georgia Hardstark?

  From their family.

• 51:44Karen Kilgariff?

  From their family.

• 51:45Georgia Hardstark?

  Because the family is never ever going to see them again.

• 51:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. Nothing's familiar. The tension is right there. And then just, like, tend to that child.

• 51:52Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally. Because people are, I mean, it's just like ice. You can imagine the same thing happening right now. Be like, take this kid home because their parents might never be heard from again. And they will be part of that unless you take this child home.

• 52:03Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean, that happened to people, that is happening to people. That did happen to people, where 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.

• 52:16Georgia Hardstark?

  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 milkman, 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'm not going to make you do it.

• 52:54Karen Kilgariff?

  300?

• 52:55Georgia Hardstark?

  110. And they also warned 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 Jewish people. It's, you're just treated, you know.

• 53:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, everybody.

• 53:09Georgia Hardstark?

  Criminal, yeah.

• 53:10Karen Kilgariff?

  Everybody goes down. Also, that idea that people, because it's wartime, like I was just talking about where it's, it's the rationing, $5 is so much money.

• 53:18Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 53:19Karen Kilgariff?

  But if you plant a victory garden, you're not as desperate.

• 53:22Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 53:23Karen Kilgariff?

  You know, if there's a potato to go around, you don't have to take that money.

• 53:26Georgia Hardstark?

  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 Quagmire. So she was like the youngest of five or six kids. And her mom would work the potato farms during the day and put, steal 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 on.

• 53:52Karen Kilgariff?

  The whole family.

• 53:53Georgia Hardstark?

  For seven years. Yeah.

• 53:54Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh, my God.

• 53:55Georgia Hardstark?

  And then one of her brothers would steal a horse from, he was like a really charming kid. He'd steal a horse from one side, like the German side, and then sell it back to them the next day.

• 54:07Karen Kilgariff?

  Like, yes.

• 54:07Georgia Hardstark?

  They survived somehow.

• 54:09Karen Kilgariff?

  Have to.

• 54:10Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 54:10Karen Kilgariff?

  God.

• 54:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Okay, so one day around the spring of 1942, when Marion is 21 years old, she's riding her bike to class when she passes a home for Jewish children. These are children that had been brought from Germany into the Netherlands to protect them from the Nazis. And now they're being deported, most likely to a transit camp in the Netherlands. And then Auschwitz, generally at these camps, children under 15 are just killed when they arrive immediately. They can't work. Elsewhere in Amsterdam, Anne 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.

• 54:55Georgia Hardstark?

  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 pigtails. 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," end 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," end quote.

• 55:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 55:39Georgia Hardstark?

  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...

• 55:50Karen Kilgariff?

  Mouth.

• 55:51Georgia Hardstark?

  Mouth.

• 55:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Her mother not getting it, it sounds like.

• 55:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, it seems like that's what happened. So at first, Marion's main involvement is to help shuttle Jewish children. 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 to any observer, it would look like... Like the mother and a child, her own child. Mm hmm. On multiple occasions, Marian secures false papers for Jewish babies. She takes them to City Hall on what she describes as a, quote, "mission of disgrace," end quote, and pretends she's an unwed mother and that the children are hers. Oh.

• 56:36Georgia Hardstark?

  So she has to show up and be shamed and just Holy shit. Admit to being an unwed mother, just so she can get these children papers, which is like, you know. Incredibly badass. Right. For months, this is how Marian helps, shuttling children back and forth to families that can house them. She estimates that she works in some capacity on the hiding of about 150 Jewish children. Then, in December of 1942, a friend asks Marian if she will live with a Jewish man and his three young children to help keep them hidden. 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 Marian with the family.

• 57:18Georgia Hardstark?

  So the father of this family is a man named Fred Pollock, and his children are Lex, who is four, Tom, who is two, and 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 Marian basically lives in this house, and friends of hers in 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 is just able to live in the house. But if they need to, the family can hide in this space.

• 58:03Georgia Hardstark?

  So Marian practices getting everyone in there, so she can do it in less than a minute. Like, it just has to happen really fast. Yeah. So Marian's friends also leave her with a loaded revolver, just in case. Marian hides it on a shelf behind the bed she sleeps in, and about a year passes without any incident. And then one evening, Marian hears the engine of a car approaching, and she knows that this means it's Nazis, because local Dutch people ride 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. Fucking narc. After not finding any Jews in the house, because they're on the hiding place, they leave. And so Marion has the family stay hidden for another half an hour.

• 58:48Georgia Hardstark?

  And then she lets the children out and feeds them and puts them to bed and just thinks that they They're gone. Thinks that the Nazis are gone. Yeah. But then, that Dutch Nazi collaborator comes back and quietly lets himself into the house through an unlocked back door. And you've got to wonder, so he comes back alone, without the official Nazis. Is he thinking there's a woman alone in this house? Or is he thinking she's hiding Jews, Jewish people? We don't know. But clearly, fucking nefarious. Yeah, clearly, there's something to be exploited here. Right. And he's here to do it. Exactly. So Marion hears him, and without stopping to think, she grabs the revolver from its hiding place and intercepts him before he walks further into the house to discover where

• 59:32Georgia Hardstark?

  the children are sleeping, because we're not in the hiding place anymore. Mm-hmm. 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." End quote. Marion is 23 years old, and she's just killed a man, and she has 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. He has dyed 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."

• 1:00:15Georgia Hardstark?

  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." Yeah. 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 curfew is 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.

• 1:01:00Karen Kilgariff?

  Under another body?

• 1:01:01Georgia Hardstark?

  Under another man's body.

• 1:01:03Karen Kilgariff?

  Sorry, I had to jump on that. It was so satisfying.

• 1:01:06Georgia Hardstark?

  How many?

• 1:01:07Karen Kilgariff?

  It's so satisfying.

• 1:01:08Georgia Hardstark?

  How many?

• 1:01:09Karen Kilgariff?

  And that idea that like, there is something to be done within these insane circumstances, which is stick together and make a plan together.

• 1:01:16Georgia Hardstark?

  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.

• 1:01:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Yep. And everybody has a kind of part, these parts to play.

• 1:01:25Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:01:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Hmm.

• 1:01:27Georgia Hardstark?

  So the Nazis buried that day with the other man and nobody is the wiser. Marion 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." End quote.

• 1:01:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. Cause they know good from bad. I mean, it is such a clear thing. Difficult if you are on meth, which many people were, apparently.

• 1:01:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:01:56Karen Kilgariff?

  And difficult if you get brainwashed by this idea that you need to feel superior to something else. But, yeah, everybody else is looking at it going, yeah, if there's men picking up children by their pigtails and throwing them to the back of the truck, the men are the bad guys, not the two-year-old.

• 1:02:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Totally.

• 1:02:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Or the kid with the pigtails.

• 1:02:13Georgia Hardstark?

  As for the Dutch Nazi collaborator, the guy she killed, it sounds like he had been disliked by everybody to begin with.

• 1:02:21Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, he's a fucking Nazi collaborator.

• 1:02:24Georgia Hardstark?

  But it doesn't seem like even the Nazis looked for him.

• 1:02:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, he wasn't one of them. He's...

• 1:02:29Georgia Hardstark?

  Nobody goes looking for him. So no one goes and looks into it.

• 1:02:32Karen Kilgariff?

  Great.

• 1:02:33Georgia Hardstark?

  Marion and the Polack family lived together in the house for about another year until the war ends. So it doesn't seem like this story comes to light until later when Marion starts speaking about her experiences in the 80s.

• 1:02:47Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Georgia Hardstark?

  So that was just, kept a secret.

• 1:02:49Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:50Georgia Hardstark?

  Glad she 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, and actually overestimated the dangers of going into hiding.

• 1:03:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, almost like that mentality of it'll just be easier if you do what they want.

• 1:03:24Georgia Hardstark?

  Right. You should, why didn't you cooperate? You should have cooperated.

• 1:03:27Karen Kilgariff?

  I think we've all learned that lesson at this point.

• 1:03:31Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:31Karen Kilgariff?

  Where it's cooperation is the big mistake. And that's why they say that. That's why.

• 1:03:36Georgia Hardstark?

  Can't cooperate with fucking liars.

• 1:03:38Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. Your resistance is crucial.

• 1:03:40Georgia Hardstark?

  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 were making the most wrenching decision possible and were not even completely sure it was the right one. She says, quote, "The greatest rescuers of children were the parents who gave them up," end quote. I mean, there's so many stories from that time. Kinder transport and all this.

• 1:04:14Karen Kilgariff?

  They were like people who would smuggle the Jewish babies out of the slums, what were they called?

• 1:04:19Georgia Hardstark?

  The ghettos.

• 1:04:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, the ghettos, where it's like a guy would go in to fix a pipe.

• 1:04:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Right.

• 1:04:23Karen Kilgariff?

  And they would stick a baby underneath it. I mean, like those kinds of things are just like, thank God for those people.

• 1:04:28Georgia Hardstark?

  My other grandma's from Warsaw.

• 1:04:29Karen Kilgariff?

  I mean.

• 1:04:31Georgia Hardstark?

  So bananas. 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, um, what's the word?

• 1:04:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Broken up, like invaded? Liberated?

• 1:04:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Liberated. When the camps were liberated, a lot of the prisoners had to stay there and live there because their home- Homes had been given away or

• 1:05:04Karen Kilgariff?

  Their entire families were murdered?

• 1:05:05Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, they had to stay there until they could figure out what to do. A lot of that is hence Israel. Like, it's just such an insane.

• 1:05:12Karen Kilgariff?

  Extreme.

• 1:05:13Georgia Hardstark?

  Extreme.

• 1:05:14Karen Kilgariff?

  What an experience, like what a.

• 1:05:15Georgia Hardstark?

  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.

• 1:05:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Oh.

• 1:05:27Georgia Hardstark?

  You know.

• 1:05:27Karen Kilgariff?

  When life is that extreme, like something growing out of such incredibly dark, tragic times is the most beautiful. I mean, that's like the human experience, right?

• 1:05:37Georgia Hardstark?

  Marian and Anton moved to New York, where Marian goes back to school to become a psychoanalyst. And she works at a renowned children's psychiatric hospital in the northern suburbs of New York City for much of her career. She also goes on to teach at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

• 1:05:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Worcester.

• 1:05:55Georgia Hardstark?

  Thank you to Ally for putting it phonetically, 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," end quote. So yay for mental health professionals.

• 1:06:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah. And leaders.

• 1:06:21Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah. And Marian dies in 2016 at the age of 96.

• 1:06:26Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow.

• 1:06:26Georgia Hardstark?

  Her family writes an obituary about her detailing her accomplishments in World War II, but this is the anecdote they end with, saying, quote, "Marion Pritchard was loving and caring with family and friends, an involved and conscientious citizen, and a 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," end quote. And that is the story of Dutch resistance hero Marion Pritchard.

• 1:07:02Karen Kilgariff?

  Wow. I don't, I mean, I feel like I've heard versions of that story. Or like the fictionalized versions of that story, but I love hearing the name.

• 1:07:11Georgia Hardstark?

  Yeah, so that's for Women's History Month and for how fucked up the world is right now.

• 1:07:16Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah, really. Marian, she was doing it. She didn't give a shit.

• 1:07:20Georgia Hardstark?

  No, she did give a shit.

• 1:07:22Karen Kilgariff?

  She did give a shit.

• 1:07:23Georgia Hardstark?

  You have to give a shit.

• 1:07:24Karen Kilgariff?

  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.

• 1:07:30Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right.

• 1:07:31Karen Kilgariff?

  And then save some people.

• 1:07:33Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right.

• 1:07:33Karen Kilgariff?

  It's not a tall task.

• 1:07:35Georgia Hardstark?

  I mean, be a decent human being is all we're asking.

• 1:07:39Karen Kilgariff?

  Just save some children. Focus on children.

• 1:07:43Georgia Hardstark?

  That's right.

• 1:07:44Karen Kilgariff?

  For once in your life. Well, that was a, that was a very deep episode that we just did.

• 1:07:50Georgia Hardstark?

  I didn't expect that. That was a very like moving episode.

• 1:07:53Karen Kilgariff?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Georgia Hardstark?

  Good job, you guys.

• 1:07:55Karen Kilgariff?

  Hey, listeners, handle it. Stay sexy.

• 1:07:58Georgia Hardstark?

  And don't get murdered. Goodbye.

• 1:08:01Speaker 05

  Elvis, do you want a cookie?

• 1:08:10Karen Kilgariff?

  This has been an Exactly Right production.

• 1:08:12Georgia Hardstark?

  Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.

• 1:08:15Karen Kilgariff?

  Our editor is Aristotle Lasevedo.

• 1:08:17Georgia Hardstark?

  This episode was mixed by Leona Scolacci.

• 1:08:20Karen Kilgariff?

  Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Ally Elkin.

• 1:08:23Georgia Hardstark?

  Email your hometowns to [email protected].

• 1:08:26Karen Kilgariff?

  And follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder.

• 1:08:28Georgia Hardstark?

  Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:08:33Karen Kilgariff?

  And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.

• 1:08:35Georgia Hardstark?

  And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and the remind me buttons. That's the best way you can support our show.

• 1:08:41Karen Kilgariff?

  Goodbye.

• 1:08:45Karen Kilgariff?

  Calling all amateur detectives and podcast obsessives.

• 1:08:49Georgia Hardstark?

  Virgin Voyages' second True Crime Voyage sets sail March 20th, 2027, for a five-night escape to Grand Turk and the Beach Club at Bimini.

• 1:08:58Karen Kilgariff?

  As part of the On Air at Sea collection, this immersive sailing brings together fan favorite podcasts, including Disgrace Land, Buried Bones, and Wisecrack, for live recordings, behind-the-scenes access, exclusive meet and greets, and crime-themed programming that you won't find anywhere else.

• 1:09:14Georgia Hardstark?

  All aboard our award-winning, kid-free ships.

• 1:09:17Karen Kilgariff?

  Head over to virginvoyages.com/truecrime to secure your spot. Goodbye.

• 1:09:22Speaker 06

  Halloween's almost here and I've got plans. My first stop is Total Wine & More for cold beer, ready-to-drink cocktails and a bottle of wine to share. And I know I'm getting the lowest prices. Get the fun started at Total Wine & More. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. P21.

• 1:09:38Speaker 07

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolaire, Omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 1:09:51Speaker 06

  Zolaire 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolaire, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolaire. Zolaire may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolaire should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolaire is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection or hardened circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolaire.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolaire. This is an advertisement for Zolaire,

• 1:10:35Speaker 06

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• 1:11:12Speaker 01

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