Transcript
Natural Cycles Advertiser (0:00)
Meet Natural Cycles, the only FDA cleared and CE marked birth control app that's 100% natural hormone free and side effect free. Here's how it works. The app analyzes daily changes in your body temperature to find your fertile window so you can plan or prevent pregnancy naturally. Natural Cycles is a clinically proven non hormonal birth control option that's 93% effective with typical use and 98% effective with perfect use. No synthetic hormones, just science. And if you're ready to start family planning, switching from preventing to planning a pregnancy is as easy as tapping a button. Plus, the Natural Cycles app makes tracking fertility easy. You can measure your temperature trends using an OURA Ring, Apple Watch or our Bluetooth thermometer, which is free when you sign up for an annual subscription. Join over 4 million registered users who are taking control of their fertility naturally. Save 15% when you sign up with code radio15@natural cycles.com that's radio15 for 15% off today.
Helena Merriman (1:00)
If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. Helena I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time the History Bureau Putin and the Apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Narrator/Commentator (1:34)
The History Channel Original Podcast.
Sally Helm (1:39)
History this week, February 4, 1955 I hi, I'm Sally Helm. The comics czar has been busy. Judge Charles F. Murphy is in charge of enforcing the new comics code, meant to make comic books less violent, more family friendly, to address a growing backlash against them. And Murphy's here today to report on that work to a New York state legislative committee. He's provided them with a series of before and after panels. In sum, it's clear that the comics czar or his minions have ordered that a character be plucked from the jaws of death before three men come across a flaming car, the speech bubble reads, we found all three dead afternoon, same car, no flames. And the speech bubble says the men had been knocked out when the car sideswiped into a tree. The comics code has been good to these particular reckless drivers. Another panel shows a dead woman in a tight black dress lying in a pool of blood. There's a crowd of onlookers, one of whom appears to be randomly naked. A note below the drawing reads, criticism put dress on girl in rear and change position on girl in foreground. Take out blood. In the next panel, no blood, and everyone is wearing clothes. The victim, unfortunately, is still dead. The committee praises Judge Murphy for his work. He has indeed cleaned up comics, at least a little. But later in the afternoon, another witness takes the stand. He's a noted psychologist named Frederick Wertham, who has been at the very center of the backlash against comics. And today, in this grand meeting room, he says that the industry has not nearly gone far enough. Maria Ayden describes the whole scene in her book, the Brooklyn Thrill Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book scare of the 1950s. At one dramatic moment of testimony, Wertham pulls out a whip and a knife, weapons he says he bought through ads printed in comic books. And he points to the recent case of the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, a group of teenagers who went on a violent, murderous spree that Wertham says was partly inspired by what they saw in comic books. He says one of the killers was obsessed with horror comics and even imagined himself as a vampire. On the night of one of the murders, he made sure to wear the black leather pants of his, quote, vampire costume. Wertham testifies, I will go so far as to say that had it not been for the crime comic books, these particular crimes would not have been committed. The hearing comes to a close, and the committee is left to decide. What is the future of the comic.