蜜芽传媒

Philip Marsden鈥檚 passion for rocks dates back to his boyhood, when he first discovered the excitement of searching for crystals and fossils. In Under a Metal Sky, he takes us on a captivating journey across Europe through the story of metals, revealing how they became an engine of culture, trade and technology that changed our relationship with the natural world.

In the third episode, Philip reveals how radium shook the world. He explores the early mania for radium when it was first discovered - marketed in hair tonics and face creams - and the first signs that it was also a deadly material. Never before had a metal offered so much possibility and so much danger.

He travels to the mining town of J谩chymov in the Czech Republic, the first source of radium ore and still a spa destination for people seeking a cure from its waters. Just as the discovery of bronze changed the nature of warfare thousands of years before, radium introduced an unprecedented possibility for conflict.

In a series of evocative encounters, Philip Marsden meets one of the last miners in J谩chymov and visits the remains of a Soviet camp where prisoners mined uranium in Stalin鈥檚 race to create a nuclear arsenal. This was where the atomic age was born and this was where the early hopes for radium as some kind of miracle cure-all ended.

Read by Adrian Lukis
Produced and Abridged by Jo Glanville
Editor: Jo Rowntree
Studio Engineer: Jon Calver

A Loftus Media production for 蜜芽传媒 Radio 4