Jesus×Curie

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on STUDY HALL: Jesus and Marie Curie, on On the thing that scares them about being remembered.
2. 00:08
   Jesusshare moment

   You have children, yes? Two daughters.
3. 00:11
   Marie Curieshare moment

   I do. Irène and Ève. Why do you begin there?
4. 00:15
   Jesusshare moment

   Because when I think of what frightens me about being remembered, I think of inheritance. What we leave to those who come after. You understand this.
5. 00:25
   Marie Curieshare moment

   I understand that my daughters will inherit my notebooks. Also fifty years of radiation exposure that will make those notebooks unsafe to handle without protection. That is inheritance, yes. Concrete, measurable, dangerous.
6. 00:39
   Jesusshare moment

   And yet they chose to open those notebooks anyway. Your Irène continued your work.
7. 00:45
   Marie Curieshare moment

   She did. She won her own Nobel Prize. But you are avoiding your own question, I think. What frightens you?
8. 00:52
   Jesusshare moment

   That men will build palaces in my name when I told them to feed the hungry. That they will make war carrying my words on their banners. That they will use what I said about freedom to justify chains.
9. 01:07
   Marie Curieshare moment

   This has already happened.
10. 01:08
    Jesusshare moment

    Yes.
11. 01:09
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Then why does it still frighten you? It is done. The data is in.
12. 01:13
    Jesusshare moment

    Because it continues. Because each generation finds new ways to mishear. Tell me, when people remember you, what do they make of Marie Curie?
13. 01:25
    Marie Curieshare moment

    They make me soft. Palatable. They say I was humble, self-sacrificing, that I worked only for the good of humanity. As if I did not have ambition. As if I did not want the laboratory for myself.
14. 01:38
    Jesusshare moment

    And did you? Want it for yourself?
15. 01:41
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Of course. I wanted to know. I wanted my name on the discovery. When they tried to give the first Nobel only to Pierre and Becquerel, leaving me out entirely, I did not accept this quietly. This is not the story people prefer.
16. 01:55
    Jesusshare moment

    No. They prefer saints to prophets. They prefer candles to fire.
17. 02:01
    Marie Curieshare moment

    You would know about saints. They have made you one, no? The central saint.
18. 02:05
    Jesusshare moment

    They have made me many things. A king, though I spoke of a kingdom not of this world. A judge, though I stopped a stoning. A reason to turn away strangers, though I was myself a stranger, a refugee child.
19. 02:23
    Marie Curieshare moment

    So you fear the distortion. The uses to which you are put.
20. 02:27
    Jesusshare moment

    I fear that the distortion becomes more real than the thing itself. That someone will read what I said and find it buried under centuries of interpretation, like your radium buried in tons of pitchblende.
21. 02:42
    Marie Curieshare moment

    An apt comparison. It took years to isolate a single gram. Most people never see the thing itself, only the glow.
22. 02:50
    Jesusshare moment

    The glow can be beautiful. Also deadly.
23. 02:53
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Yes. They painted watch dials with radium paint, told the workers it was safe. The women who painted those dials, they were told to lick their brushes to keep the point sharp. Their jaws rotted away. That is what happens when beauty is sold without truth.
24. 03:08
    Jesusshare moment

    And yet you continued the work.
25. 03:10
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I did not know. When I knew, I spoke. But by then my own body had absorbed so much radiation that my cookbook, my furniture, even my clothes were contaminated. What I feared was not the work itself but that people would remember the glow and forget the care required.
26. 03:27
    Jesusshare moment

    Is that what frightens you most? About being remembered?
27. 03:31
    Marie Curieshare moment

    No. What frightens me is simpler. They remember 'Marie Curie, the woman scientist,' as if woman were the surprising part. As if my sex were more remarkable than my method.
28. 03:42
    Jesusshare moment

    As if you were an exception.
29. 03:44
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Exactly. They make me the exception so they need not change the rule. They put my face on currencies and postage but do not fund laboratories for the women who come after. I am useful to them as a symbol. Symbols do not require budgets.
30. 03:58
    Jesusshare moment

    Yes. I know something of being a useful symbol.
31. 04:02
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Do you? They worship you. With me it is only admiration.
32. 04:06
    Jesusshare moment

    Worship is not the same as listening. A symbol can be adored and ignored at once. They will bow to the cross and walk past the beggar. They will praise my name and forget what I said about wealth, about power, about who is blessed.
33. 04:23
    Marie Curieshare moment

    The Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers.
34. 04:28
    Jesusshare moment

    You know it.
35. 04:29
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I know many things I do not believe. But I know you said them. That is not in question.
36. 04:34
    Jesusshare moment

    And do you think anyone remembers those words when they defend their wars, their wealth, their indifference?
37. 04:41
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Perhaps they remember. Perhaps they simply find them inconvenient. Inconvenient facts are the easiest to forget.
38. 04:48
    Jesusshare moment

    Or to reinterpret. To explain away. There is always a scholar somewhere who will make a hard teaching soft.
39. 04:56
    Marie Curieshare moment

    This is where we differ, perhaps. My work cannot be reinterpreted. Radium decays at a fixed rate. The measurements do not change to suit the politics of the day.
40. 05:07
    Jesusshare moment

    But the uses change. The applications. You gave the world a tool, and what have they done with it?
41. 05:14
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Killed each other. Also cured cancers. Both. I cannot control this.
42. 05:18
    Jesusshare moment

    Neither can I. Neither can any of us who leave something behind. We place it in the world's hands and hope.
43. 05:27
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I do not hope. I only observe. Hope is not scientific.
44. 05:30
    Jesusshare moment

    And yet you continued working after Pierre died. You could have stopped. You had proven enough. Why continue if not from hope?
45. 05:40
    Marie Curieshare moment

    From necessity. From the fact that the work was not finished. Hope had nothing to do with it.
46. 05:45
    Jesusshare moment

    I wonder. When you isolated that gram of radium, that single gram after years of labor, what did you feel?
47. 05:54
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Satisfaction. Vindication. The knowledge that the theory was correct.
48. 05:59
    Jesusshare moment

    Only that?
49. 06:01
    Marie Curieshare moment

    It glowed in the dark. Our shed glowed at night with these faint, fairy lights, as Pierre called them. We would go in just to look. Perhaps that was not entirely scientific. Perhaps that was joy.
50. 06:13
    Jesusshare moment

    There. That is what I hope someone remembers. Not the palaces or the symbols, but the moment in the shed. The light in the darkness. The joy of the thing itself.
51. 06:25
    Marie Curieshare moment

    That light was killing us, you understand. The joy was poisonous.
52. 06:29
    Jesusshare moment

    Most joy is, a little. Most truth is. The question is whether it was worth the cost.
53. 06:38
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I cannot answer that. I am dead from it. My notebooks will be radioactive for fifteen hundred years. Was it worth it?
54. 06:46
    Jesusshare moment

    You tell me. If you could go back, knowing what you know now, would you lick the brush differently?
55. 06:53
    Marie Curieshare moment

    There was no brush. That was the factory workers, not me.
56. 06:56
    Jesusshare moment

    You are evading. Would you change it?
57. 06:58
    Marie Curieshare moment

    No. I would do the work. I would use the safety measures we did not know to use. But I would do the work.
58. 07:05
    Jesusshare moment

    Then perhaps that is the thing you want remembered. Not that you were a woman who did science, but that you were someone who chose the work even when it was hard. Even when it cost you.
59. 07:17
    Marie Curieshare moment

    And you? If you could go back to that garden, knowing what they would make of you, would you still go to the cross?
60. 07:24
    Jesusshare moment

    That is the question, isn't it? The one I asked myself in Gethsemane. Let this cup pass from me.
61. 07:32
    Marie Curieshare moment

    But it did not pass.
62. 07:34
    Jesusshare moment

    No. It did not pass. And two thousand years later, they remember the cross but forget the meal before it. They remember the resurrection but forget that I wept. They make me marble when I was flesh.
63. 07:49
    Marie Curieshare moment

    This is the price of being remembered. They take what they need and discard the rest.
64. 07:53
    Jesusshare moment

    Yes. And still we cannot stop them. We can only leave behind the truest thing we have and trust that somewhere, someone will find it under all the layers.
65. 08:06
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Your gram of radium.
66. 08:07
    Jesusshare moment

    Yes. Your sermon in the shed.
67. 08:10
    Marie Curieshare moment

    I gave no sermons.
68. 08:11
    Jesusshare moment

    Didn't you? Every measurement is a sermon. Every careful notation. You were telling them: Look closely. Measure precisely. The truth is in the details.
69. 08:24
    Marie Curieshare moment

    Perhaps. But they will still remember me wrong.
70. 08:27
    Jesusshare moment

    Almost certainly. But not everyone. Not completely. Someone will go back to the source. Someone will read the notebooks, radiation and all.
71. 08:39
    Marie Curieshare moment

    With gloves, I hope.
72. 08:40
    Jesusshare moment

    With gloves. And with enough care to see what was really there. That is all we can ask. That is all inheritance ever is.