Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making
They knew. They always knew.
Nearly 2,000 years ago, Roman historian Pliny the Elder documented asbestos workers dying from "sickness of the lungs"—watching slaves fashion crude respirators from animal bladders while weaving what he called "funeral dress for kings." The people closest to the dust understood the danger. The people farthest away admired the spectacle, collected the profits, and buried the evidence. That pattern never changed.
Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making traces humanity's 4,500-year relationship with the mineral the ancient Greeks named "asbestos"—meaning indestructible. From Stone Age Finnish pottery (2500 BCE) to the $70+ billion in legal damages paid by modern corporations, we uncover how a material praised for safety became a source of sickness, litigation, and grief.
Each episode explores:
- Ancient origins: The salamander myth that persisted for 2,000 years, the Roman tablecloths that cleaned themselves in fire, the sacred flames kept burning with asbestos wicks
- The industrial cover-up: Internal documents proving companies knew asbestos caused cancer since the 1930s—and suppressed the evidence for 40 years
- Modern consequences: Why mesothelioma claims 3,000 American lives annually, and why $30+ billion sits in asbestos trust funds waiting for victims who never file
- The science of denial: How manufactured doubt delayed regulation for decades, using the same tactics as the tobacco industry—sometimes with the same scientists
Whether you're a history enthusiast, legal professional, medical researcher, or someone seeking answers after asbestos exposure, this podcast reveals the uncomfortable truth: the longest-running industrial cover-up in human history isn't ancient history. It's still happening.
The History of Asbestos Podcast is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano, a nationwide mesothelioma law firm with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims.
If you or a loved one has mesothelioma, visit Dandell.com for a free consultation.
Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making
Latest Episodes
Episode 24: The Paper Trail
In a locked safe at Raybestos-Manhattan Corporation headquarters in Stratford, Connecticut, approximately 6,000 documents sat undisturbed for forty-four years. They were filed alphabetically under a single label: DUST
Episode 23 — The Human Experiments
Episode 23 — The Human ExperimentsGardner’s 81.8% wasn’t an anomaly. It was one data point in a thirty-year pattern. By 1960, at least six independent lines of animal evidence had documented that asbestos causes cancer — st...
Episode 22: The Saranac Coverup
Episode 22: The Saranac CoverupIn 1936, nine asbestos companies funded research at Saranac Laboratory with a contract clause making all results their "property" — publication only "if deemed desirable." When Dr. LeRoy Upson Gardne...
Episode 21: The Asbestos Textile Institute
On March 7, 1957, the Asbestos Textile Institute's Air Hygiene subcommittee voted NOT to fund cancer research. Their minutes recorded three reasons: someone else was studying it, it would "stir up a hornet's nest," and they didn't believ...
Episode 20: The Less Said About Asbestos, the Better
"I think the less said about asbestos, the better off we are." On October 1, 1935, Sumner Simpson—president of Raybestos-Manhattan—wrote those thirteen words to the general counsel of Johns-Manville. This letter, hidden in a vault for 42...
.png)