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- [00:00]
Mr. Ballin
Hey prime members, you can binge episodes 73 through 80 right now and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the app Today. In the spring of 2021, a man in his mid-50s crouched beside a raised bed of cherry tomatoes, pulling out weeds. Gardening was one of his greatest pleasures, but he'd been away from it for a few days due to a recent surgery. He could feel a subtle pain creeping up his chest and up into his jaw, but he thought a little garden hardening wouldn't make it any worse. Suddenly, the man felt like someone had stabbed him in the chest. He took a seat on the ground and began breathing slowly to calm himself down, and he put his hand over his heart. The beat was steady, but so was the pain, now washing over him in waves. With difficulty, he pulled himself to his feet, staggered over to the patio, slumped in a chair and took a sip of water. But it didn't help. The pain only got more and more intense until he realized he might be having a heart attack. Just as his vision began scanned a cloud, he reached across the table, grabbed his phone and dialed 911.
- [01:14]
Annaleigh Ashford
Growing up, Melissa had the perfect life until she discovered her father's dark secret. He was the notorious Happy Face Killer Experience a thrilling new Paramount original series inspired by a true life story. Now, when Melissa's father confesses to a new murder, she must choose between protecting her secret and risking everything to uncover the truth. Annaleigh Ashford and Dennis Quaid star in Happy Face, new series now streaming exclusively on Paramount.
- [01:40]
Mr. Ballin
Plus.
- [01:41]
Navy Recruitment
You are no dummy, but you're kind of acting like one. You used to crush it in school, outsmarting opponents on the field. And now, well, you're still smart, but not exactly challenging yourself. You could be advancing nuclear engineering in the world's most powerful Navy. You were born for it. So make a smart choice. You can be smart, or you could be nuke smart. Become a nuclear engineer@navy.com nuclear nuke smart America's Navy forged by the Sea.
- [02:13]
Mr. Ballin
From Ballin Studios and wondery I'm Mr. Ballin, and this is Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, where every week we will explore a new baffling mystery originating from the one place we all can't escape our own bodies. So if you like today's story, please take the follow button's prized collection of very expensive comic books and sell them for pennies on a dollar at a yard sale. When it comes to medicine, some problems are very easy to fix. Doctors have seen them so many times that they know exactly what to do and how everything will play out. But in today's two stories, everything is not as it seems. And by the time doctors realize what's actually happening, they might be too late. Our first story is about a man whose routine surgery results in a life threatening complication that his doctors never saw coming. And our second story is about a young man in Turkey whose breathing problems come from a source nobody ever suspected. And now, here's our first story called the sliver. 56 year old Greg Wolf backed his dusty old jeep down the driveway and headed towards one of his favorite places, the garden center. Ever since the COVID pandemic started, his work had slowed down, so he had a lot more time on his hands for hobbies like gardening. As he cruised along the winding road, he thought about what he might want to plant Every year. He liked to mix it up and try a few new fruits, flowers, or vegetables. Greg stopped at a red light and let his mind wander, picturing different layouts for his garden. When the light turned green, Greg put his foot on the gas pedal. But just as he entered the intersection, a black truck came barreling toward him. There was an explosion of crunching metal and shattered glass. Greg felt a blinding pain rip through his spine as his car spun across the road. And then everything went black. Three days later, Greg lay on his stomach in an operating room under fluorescent lights. Just minutes earlier, an anesthesiologist had shot him full of lidocaine to numb his spine for surgery. And as he began to feel the medicine kicking in, it occurred to him that this was actually the first time he had not been in pain since the car accident. Even though Greg had been wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash, the impact of the crash had broken a vertebrae in his back. He'd been in the hospital for days while doctors did everything they could to try to stabilize his injury. Once he'd regained consciousness following the crash, doctors told Greg that he was very lucky. The accident could have been much worse. Greg had suffered what's known as a stable fracture. This meant that when his vertebrae cracked, it stayed in the same place rather than being knocked out of alignment. So the nerve endings in Greg's spinal column were not affected. If they had been, Greg could have been paralyzed. To relieve his pain, Greg's doctors had decided to perform a surgery called kyphoplasty, which corrects small fractures like the one in his vertebrae. This was the surgery he was being prepped for right now. A few minutes later, the doctor arrived and greeted Greg and walked him through what was going to happen. Greg was going to remain conscious during the procedure. Then, after Greg acknowledged that he was ready to go, Greg felt the doctor's hands on his back, followed by a dull pressure as a large hollow needle entered his spine. After the needle was in place, the doctor inserted a balloon like device into Greg's vertebrae through the needle and gently inflated it until it opened up a small space in the bone. Into this space, the doctor then injected a special type of liquid cement. As the cement settled in the cracked vertebrae, it hardened and bonded against the bone. This would stabilize Greg's spine while staying flexible enough to allow him a full range of motion. And critically, it would also help reduce Greg's pain. Within a week, the doctor said, he'd be feeling like his old self. Greg felt the pressure in his back start to fade as the doctor withdrew the needle from his spine. A few minutes later, a nurse came in and wheeled Greg down the hall to a recovery room to rest. As the anesthesia began to wear off, Greg did feel soreness in his spine, but the pain was mild. And after what he'd been through, this felt like a gift. A few hours later, as Greg got dressed and ready to go home, the surgeon came by to check on him. He recommended that Greg only take showers, not baths, for a few days to allow the wound on his back to heal. And he should avoid any heavy lifting for at least a week. But otherwise, his life would be just like before the surgery. Riding home from the hospital with his wife, Greg felt like he had miraculously avoided a tragedy. Now he could get back to enjoying his life. But only seven days later, Greg was back in the emergency room. Everything hurt. His chest, his neck, his jaw. Even turning his head sent shivers of pain rippling through his body. The first few days back at home had been fine. He was able to take walks and cook, even do a little gardening. But on the fifth day, he began to feel this new kind of pain in his chest. Following the doctor's advice, Greg checked his wound from the surgery to see if it was infected. But the wound looked fine. So he decided to turn in early that night and hope he would feel better in the morning. However, over the next two days, Greg's pain only spread. Craig tried to relax and avoided doing anything strenuous, but almost any movement, even just turning his head, hurt like crazy. He thought he felt well enough to weed his guard in. And that's when the pain suddenly became almost blinding. It was so intense that Greg thought he was having a heart attack. And so now he was lying on a bed in an emergency room, trying not to move a muscle, the pain still flickered through his chest and neck. He could barely breathe. Greg had never felt anything like this. It felt even worse than what he imagined a heart attack was like. Greg just hoped that whatever was happening, it was not too late to fix it. ER Dr. Miranda Gibbs was just coming back from lunch when an X ray technician stopped her in the hallway with an update. There was something seriously wrong with her new patient, Greg Wolf. She followed the technician to his office and looked at Greg's X rays displayed on his computer. Greg's spine looked fine. His recent kyphoplasty surgery had clearly repaired his cracked vertebrae. But something else she saw in Greg's X ray disturbed her. Dr. Gibbs pulled out her phone and called the medical imaging department. She told them she needed to book a CT scan for her patient immediately. Two hours later, the images had been processed and were ready for her inspection. Sitting in her office, Dr. Gibbs struggled to comprehend what she was even looking at. She grabbed the phone and called the er. She hoped there was a trauma surgeon on duty or somewhere nearby, because Greg Wolf was a pinprick away from disaster. An hour later, Greg was on his back, unconscious. His chest had been surgically opened. A surgeon leaned over him, looking in at Greg's heart. The surgeon maneuvered until he found what he was looking for. A long, thin, 4 inch object. It had pierced through the upper right chamber of Greg's heart and also cut into his right lung. This is what Dr. Gibbs had seen in the images of Greg's chest. Now the strange object was just sitting there, simultaneously poking Greg in the heart and lung. The surgeon steadied himself and carefully gripped the object with his tool. Any abrupt movement could cause a tear in Greg's heart or lung. The damage could be fatal. As he began to pull the object out, the surgeon was surprised at how hard the object was. It was like a stone, pale, pointed and slightly curved. Little by little, the surgeon pulled the hard little dagger out from Greg's organs until finally it was free. Examining it in the light, it looked a bit like one of those heavy duty needles used to repair upholstery or carpet. Except it was made of medical grade cement. It would turn out during Greg's back surgery. A small splash of the liquid cement had leaked out of his vertebrae into his body. Once there, it hardened into a sliver and basically followed through Greg's bloodstream, eventually reaching his heart. Greg's sudden stabs of pain he was feeling were from the tip of the cement needle piercing his heart. His trouble breathing was the needle literally poking his lung. If he had waited even 24 more hours to go to the ER, the needle could have stabbed him even more deeply and potentially killed him. Fortunately, doctors were able to repair the tear in Greg's heart and his lung, and after being sewn back up, he made a quick recovery. Only one month later, Greg Wolfe was back in his garden in full health. He had dodged two near death experiences in two weeks, and he had no intention of trying for a third.
- [11:22]
Annaleigh Ashford
Inspired by a Southern legend, Huggin Molly is a monstrous spider woman. Her patchwork dress is stitched from the clothes of children she snatches when she skitters down from her lair deep in the mountains. She wraps them in her red yarn like little flies in the clutches of her palm. The children watch their homes fade in the distance. The earth blurs beneath her spindled legs as she rushes over hills and fields, the moon and stars the only witnesses to their vanishing to her lab. They'll go wrapped in red, waiting to be found, waiting to be woven whole. Explore more Deep south mythos and encounter creatures like Molly in South of midnight. Available April 8, 2025 on Xbox Series X and S Game Pass ultimate and PC and Steam Pre install on Game Pass or pre order now. Terms apply see xbox.com subscription terms rated M for Mature. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace makes it easy to create a website and grow a business all in one place. All on your terms with these brand new product features introducing design intelligence from Squarespace, empowering anyone to build a beautiful, more personalized website tailored to their unique needs. Squarespace Payments is the easiest way to manage your payments all in one place. Onboarding is fast and simple. Get started in just a few clicks and start receiving payments right away. Plus give your customers more ways to pay with popular payment methods like Klarna, Ach Direct Debit in the US, Apple Pay Afterpay in the US and Canada, and ClearPay in the UK. Squarespace offers dozens of intuitive design tools to help grow credibility and engage visitors with an unrivaled suite of design effects built in and ready to go. I like when all the tools you need to bring your ideas to life are this easy to find. Head to squarespace.comballin to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code ballin. That's squarespace.com ballin code ballin for 10% off your first purchase.
- [13:18]
Mentos
Thank you to our partner Mintoscum. You ever feel like you're just going through the same motions day after day. We've all been there, staring at brake lights in traffic or stuck in a long meeting. Not anymore. With Mentos Gum. Listen up. This isn't just your regular gum. We're talking about a whole vibe refresh. Think of it as your personal reset button. One piece and suddenly that traffic jam becomes your private concert venue. That meeting that should have been an email. It turns into a full on fiesta. From flavors like fresh mint to bold strawberry, Mentos gum transforms ordinary moments into fresh possibilities. Whether you want to switch up your route home or keep your mind fresh in a meeting, Refresh the everyday with mentosgum. Yes to fresh with mentosgum.
- [14:08]
Is Actually Happening Host
What if everything we thought we knew about justice was wrong? In this Is Actually Happening's new series, A World Beyond Revenge, we explore a radical idea that justice can be about healing, not just punishment. Through five powerful stories, we meet people who've experienced unimaginable harm and those who caused it as they come together to seek something radical healing. From a man tortured for a crime he didn't commit to a woman who misidentified her attacker. These stories will change the way you think about justice, forgiveness, and the possibility of a better world. Follow this Is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts you can listen to. This Is Actually Happening ad free right now by joining Wondery.
- [15:00]
Mr. Ballin
And now here's our second story called Killer Fashion. On a cold, clear afternoon In February of 2000, after a long, bumpy ride through snow capped mountains, 15 year old Ahmet Balik stepped off a bus into the city center of Erzeroum, Turkey. The urban bustle was a culture shock for a country kid like him. He had spent his whole life in the small Turkish village where he was born, helping his family tend land and herd livestock. But two weeks earlier, Ahmet's uncle had found him a job in a textile factory in Erzeroum. So here he was, surrounded by cars and buses and people, with businesses and cafes stretching down every block. It was a lot for Ahmet to process, but he was thrilled to be in this new environment and to start this exciting new chapter. He grabbed his bag from the bus's luggage compartment and headed straight for his new job. As he walked through the city, Ahmet had to stop every few blocks to catch his breath. Erzeroum was a high, mountainous city and so the air was thinner up there. He could feel the difference in his lungs. Eventually, Amit found the factory, walked inside and introduced himself. His boss gave him a quick tour of the facility. As they walked around, Amet's saw long rows of industrial looms and conveyor belts loaded with fabric, and he also saw another part of the building that was filled with workers hunched over sewing machines. Then Amet followed his boss to a back area of the factory, where narrow pallets were clustered in a corner. The man told him that that was actually where many of the workers without families would sleep, since the hours were long and the factory was a good distance from most residential areas. Now Amet really needed this job to work, and he would do whatever it took. So he smiled and tossed his bag on one of the pallets and followed his boss to begin his training. Four and a half years later, in July of 2004, Hamet wiped the sweat from his face as he paced the crowded waiting room of a government hospital. He was 19 years old, but he felt much older. His life at the factory had been a whirlwind, getting up at dawn, shuffling to the assembly line, then sewing and finishing garments until dark. He and a couple other workers shared an apartment near the city center. But some nights he was too tired to make the walk back. So on those nights he just curled up on the floor of the factory until it was time to get up and start the next day's shift. And before long, the late nights and early mornings began to take their toll. His sleep got worse, which only made the days feel longer. Hemet also developed a bad cough, and gradually it got so severe that he began waking up in the middle of the night gasping for breath. The exhaustion also affected his appetite, and he started losing weight, and this only made Amet feel weaker and more fatigued. It was a vicious cycle. A year earlier, in the fall of 2003, his condition had gotten so bad that he began making mistakes at work. He confused the measurements of seams and hems. He skipped entire steps of the production process. In November of that year, some shops complained about the quality of their orders, and the errors were traced back to Amethyst. When Amet's boss confronted him about the problem, Amet tried to pass it off as an accident. But Amet's boss could tell something deeper was wrong, so he removed Amet from the work schedule until his health improved. Without a job, Amet felt lost. His small amount of savings quickly dwindled. Amet tried to find other work, but Erzeroum was full of young men who were hungry for similar jobs, and since Ammet looked visibly ill, most employers turned him away. Amit had been able to scrape by on savings through the winter but by the spring of 2004, Amit was broke. His roommates tried to be understanding, but told Amit that he would have to move out if he couldn't keep up with his share of the rent. And so, if Amit couldn't find a job soon, he would soon have no choice but to move back to his family's home in the country. Unfortunately, Amit's time away from the factory did not improve his health. He was still sleeping poorly. He felt run down, dizzy and exhausted. And then one scorching summer morning in July, Amit woke up so out of breath that he couldn't even make it to a job interview he had booked. He realized something serious might be wrong with him. So Amit took a cold shower, threw on clothes, and dragged himself to the government hospital across town. Now here he was, weak and lightheaded, pacing a waiting room full of sick people. An hour later, a nurse called Amet's name. He was taken to a treatment room where a tired looking doctor listened while Amet described his symptoms. When he was done, the doctor told Amet he most likely had tuberculosis, commonly called tb, a contagious bacterial disease of the lungs. For hundreds of years, TB had been one of the world's deadliest diseases. But thanks to the development of antibiotics in the 20th century, it was now a very treatable illness. The doctor guessed that Ahmet had caught TB in the factory. Since the disease spreads easily in confined spaces, all it takes is being near the wrong cough or sneeze. The doctor said that most likely the disease had lingered in his lungs ever since. Amet was surprised by the diagnosis, especially considering the doctor didn't actually run any tests. But it seemed like an obvious enough explanation. And he was honestly just relieved to have an explanation at all for his trouble breathing and fatigue. And so the doctor prescribed Amet medication that would stop the TB from being contagious within two weeks. And then two weeks after that, all of Amet's symptoms would be gone. Amit was thrilled. If the doctor was right, he could be back in the factory within a month, making his full wages again. He wouldn't have to move back home after all. Even better, he would finally stop coughing and be able to sleep through the entire night. One month later, in August of 2004, a pulmonologist named Dr. Youssef Kaya went to meet a new patient at the Ataturk University Clinic in Erzeroum. The patient was a 19 year old factory worker named Amet. He reported having trouble breathing, a painful cough and intense Fatigue. As soon as Dr. Kaya stepped into the treatment room, he could tell from the teenager's face alone that something was deeply wrong. Amit's skin looked waxy and sickly. It looked like he'd barely slept in days. Ahmed explained to Dr. Kaya that he had been taking TB antibiotics for a full month, but hadn't seen any sign of improvement. He felt weak and run down, and no matter how deeply he tried to breathe, he just couldn't get enough air. Dr. Kaya found this very worrying. If AMET had TB, then the antibiotics definitely should have helped him by now. But since his body was not responding, Dr. Kaya wondered what else might be causing Amet's symptoms. The doctor placed a stethoscope on Amet's chest. The teenager's heartbeat was normal. However, his breathing sounded shallow. Dr. Kaya told AMET that he wanted to run some tests to figure out why the TB medication was not working. He proposed starting with an X ray of Amet's chest, followed by a full body CT scan to provide a more detailed 3D rendering of Amet's organs. After that, Dr. Kaya suggested doing a bronchoscopy, which uses a thin illuminated tube to examine the lungs and airways separately. He also wanted to test Amet's blood, mucus and saliva for disease or infection. Amet told Dr. Kaya that his number one goal was getting back to his job at the factory. So whatever was necessary to make that happen, Dr. Kaya should do it. A few days later, after all the tests had been performed, Dr. Kaya opened a link on his computer to inspect Demet's results. And what he saw made him very concerned. Amet's chest X ray looked speckled, particularly in his lungs. This indicated the presence of small foreign objects in Amet's lungs that shouldn't be there. His CT scan was more detailed. In addition to the foreign objects, it showed small growths in his lungs known as micronodules, which are often caused by respiratory illnesses or infections. And a culture test of his phlegm confirmed that Amet did not have TB. Dr. Kaya had suspected this when Amet's TB treatment didn't have any effect. But it was a relief to see it medically proven. But even so, ruling out TB didn't get Dr. Kaya any closer to figuring out what was causing Amet's symptoms. The cumulative picture provided by Amet's tests indicated that there was some sort of serious infection in his lungs. It just wasn't clear what that might be. So Dr. Kaya canceled Amit's TB medication and replaced it with a more general antibiotic. Dr. Kai hoped this would ease Amet's symptoms, but he knew antibiotics wouldn't fix anything until he identified the infection in Amet's lungs. It wouldn't go away. And it very well might get worse. He just didn't know how much worse. Amet was already struggling to breathe, and less oxygen in his lungs meant less oxygen to his brain. And if that trend continued, things could get very bad very quickly. A few weeks later, Dr. Kaya was scanning the paperwork of the clinic's latest patients when something caught his eye. It was the intake form of a young man named ali. He was 18, only a year younger than Amit, and suffering from very similar symptoms. Struggling to breathe, dry mouth, bad cough, unusual fatigue. Dr. Kaya decided to pay him a visit at the clinic. Maybe Ali could provide a clue as to what was making Ahmet so sick. After introducing himself, Dr. Kaya asked Ali to describe the history of his symptoms. And right away, one detail surprised him. Ali worked at the same garment Factory as Amit. Dr. Kaya wondered why two otherwise healthy young men would have breathing issues or lung infections at their age. Neither of them smoked, and they spent their days doing physical labor, which, in theory, should have made them stronger, not weaker. Taking a seat by Ali's bed, Dr. Kaya asked Ali to walk him through a regular day at the factory. The jobs he did, the machines he used, what he ate, all of it. Ali explained that he started at the factory doing heavy labor, like loading and unloading fabric from the trucks to the machines and back. But over time, he was trained to do more skilled work, putting the finishing touches on garments before they were shipped to shops around the world. Ali and Emet's factory produced contemporary clothing for the latest fashion trends of the 2000s. Some of their factory's techniques were extremely new to the industry, and they sounded pretty strange to the doctor. But as Ali described his responsibilities, Dr. Kaya began to get an idea. And by the end of their chat, Dr. Kaya felt confident that he actually knew what was happening to both Ali and Amit. However, to be certain, he would need to examine samples of Ali and Emmett's lung tissue under a microscope. And so he ordered lung biopsies for both men. Days later, the lung tissue samples confirmed Dr. Kaya's hunch. Both men were suffering from silicosis, a disease more commonly found in minors than garment factory workers. It's a lung disease caused by breathing silica, which is a common mineral in sand, gravel, clay, granite and other rocks. Dr. Kaya had diagnosed cases of silicosis, but only in workers who spent their days in tunnels or moving heavy stone materials and breathing in all kinds of rock dust. He would never have thought textile factory workers would have silicosis, since their product was fabric, not rock. But fashion tastes had changed in Europe and America in the early 2000s. One of the most popular and profitable items that Ahmet and Ali's factory produced was something called distressed jeans, and making them involved a lot of rock dust. To create the hip, faded denim look, workers used a high pressure air compressor to blast sand up and down the legs of a pair of jeans. The silica particles in the sand gradually shredded the denim, giving the jeans a worn in weathered look. Like a lot of factories in Turkey at the time, Ahmet and Ali's workplace was crowded and lacked proper ventilation. This meant the silica particles stayed in the air long after the jeans were sandblasted, and so Amit and Ali breathed these particles in all day and then at night, if they slept on the factory floor, they would continue to breathe in the silica during their sleep. Over time, the tiny crystals of silica scar and harden the delicate tissues in the lungs, making them less effective at processing oxygen. That's why the men's breathing became increasingly shallow. Sadly, silicosis damage is permanent and it often leads to other respiratory illnesses. Lung cancer is a common outcome and there is no cure. Even after Dr. Kaya identified Ahmet and Ali's condition, their health steadily worsened. And in 2008, both young men died from silicosis complications. And they were not alone either. Four other workers at the same factory died as well, and 16 others suffered debilitating lung damage. In March of the following year, Turkey's Ministry of Health banned denim sandblasting and thankfully, sandblasted jeans quickly fell out of fashion. Hey prime members, you can listen to new episodes of Mr. Bolan's medical mysteries early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the app today and also Wondry plus subscribers can listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries ad free. Join Wondry plus today. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@listenersurvey.com from Ballin Studios and Wondry. This is Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, hosted by me, Mr. Ballin a quick note about our stories. They are all inspired by true events, but we do sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and also some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes and a reminder. The content in this episode is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. This episode was written by Brit Brown. Our editor is Heather Dundas. Sound design is by Matthew Cielelli. Our senior managing producer is Nick Ryan. And our coordinating producer is Taylor Sniffin. Our senior producer is Alex Benedon. Our associate producers and researchers are Sarah Bytak and Teja Pelikonda. Fact checking was done by Sheila Patterson for Ballin Studios. Our head of production is Zach Levitt. Script editing by Scott Allen and Evan Allen. Our coordinating producer is Samantha Collins. Production support by Avery Siegel. Executive producers are myself, Mr. Ballin, and also Nick Witters for Wondry. Our head of sound is Marcelino Villapando. Senior producers are Laura, Donna Palavota and Dave Schilling. Senior managing producer is Ryan Lohr. Our executive producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louie for Wondry.
- [30:07]
Keke Palmer
What's up, guys? It's your girl, Keke. And my podcast is back with a new season and let me tell you, it's too good. And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest. Okay? Every episode I bring on a friend and have a real conversation. And I don't mean just friends. I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox. The list goes on. And now I have my own YouTube channel. So follow, watch and listen to Baby this is Keke Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast. Watch full episodes on YouTube and you can listen to Baby this is Keke Palmer early and ad free right now by joining Wondery and where are my headphones? Cause it's time to get into it. Holla at your girl.