00:09 - We are here with

00:10 - doctor Bob Musil, president and CEO of the Rachel Carson Council.

00:14 - Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring in 1962.

00:17 - What was the significance of that book?

00:21 - Oh, wow.

00:22 - There were many significances, but I think people should understand that

00:26 - Silent Spring, which is known primarily for Rachel's incredible exposé

00:31 - of the widespread use of DDT, a toxic chemical around the country,

00:37 - was actually a bestseller, and Rachel had had

00:39 - three different bestsellers before that.

00:43 - So it was this the talk of the town.

00:46 - It was all over the place, and she was a beloved author,

00:49 - so it had impact and significance

00:53 - because she was a bestselling author.

00:57 - But it came out at a time

01:01 - where in the United States

01:03 - there were just chemicals being sprayed all over the place to kill mosquitoes,

01:07 - fire ants, gypsy moors, the rivers were burning in Ohio.

01:12 - It was really pretty dreadful pollution going on.

01:15 - And when this book came out,

01:18 - it touched people in a way

01:20 - across the country that just lit a flame under the environment movement

01:26 - and probably as importantly,

01:29 - it influenced the administration of John F Kennedy,

01:34 - who at a raucous press conference, they're saying, Mr.

01:38 - President, Mr.

01:39 - president, we're hearing a lot about pesticides.

01:42 - And are you going to be doing anything about that?

01:44 - And he said, y you're. Yes. Yep.

01:47 - You must be talking about Mrs.

01:48 - Carson's book, Silent Spring.

01:50 - We're going to be forming a task force about that.

01:54 - That task force

01:57 - went through, validated all of the science, all of the assertions

02:02 - and claims and Silent Spring and began a process of undoing DDT

02:07 - and other chemicals that ultimately led to a whole series of things

02:10 - like saving the birds and the animals and so on.

02:14 - So that there's two big things I say,

02:18 - worldwide recognition and setting off an environmental movement

02:22 - where people read this and just went, I got I got to do something about it.

02:25 - I got to be involved.

02:27 - And the president himself setting up

02:30 - a series of reforms that led to all of that.

02:34 - We now think of this environmental legislation of the 1960s and 70s.

02:38 - Now, how did Rachel first learn about

02:41 - the health effects of pesticides?

02:44 - Whoa.

02:47 - Well, you know, it's sort of an interesting story that people,

02:50 - you know, don't realize that Rachel Carson was a government bureaucrat.

02:55 - That like the scientists today in the government,

03:00 - those who are still there, she worked for the U.S.

03:04 - Fish and Wildlife Service and was an editor, a marine biologist.

03:08 - She reviewed, edited, and dealt with every important

03:12 - piece of scientific research and articles and so on that came out.

03:16 - And therefore she was also friends with a guy doing all that research

03:22 - who happened to be a leading ornithologist and birder named Jan Robbins,

03:27 - whose Field Guide to the Birds,

03:31 - was a major bestseller.

03:34 - So he's up at Patuxent Research Center in Maryland,

03:38 - where they're doing this research on the long term effects.

03:41 - So Rachel visits, goes birding with him, knows him, gets all, learns all about it.

03:46 - This is in 1945,

03:50 - not 1962, when Silent Spring came out

03:54 - and she tried to write an article about it.

03:56 - She did,

03:58 - and she submitted it to Reader's Digest,

04:01 - the biggest, best known popular magazine in every home at the time.

04:06 - And in 1946,

04:09 - they said to Rachel Carson, sorry, no thanks.

04:13 - It's too boring. We're not going to.

04:16 - And so that's how she learned.

04:18 - But unfortunately for us, we

04:21 - didn't learn widely and take action

04:25 - about these dangers until Rachel,

04:28 - until Silent Spring came out in 1962.

04:32 - So that's how she knew.

04:33 - That's basically how she learned all sorts of things, because she was connected

04:38 - with every important government scientist, every leading environmental scientist,

04:43 - and Red gathered that information and had the ability to write about it

04:49 - in ways that were compelling and would draw in readers and audiences,

04:54 - as if she were an influencer.

04:57 - You talked about how the general public and the president both

05:00 - felt like they needed to act after an act about,

05:05 - stopping these pesticides after the release of this book,

05:08 - how did the pesticide companies feel about the release of Silent Spring?

05:14 - Well.

05:16 - They were concerned, that is,

05:21 - they tried to prevent tried to prevent the publication of the book.

05:25 - They threatened lawsuits.

05:27 - They're also involved in hiring,

05:31 - paid scientific.

05:35 - Quacks, I would say

05:37 - guys in white coats who literally were doctors and so on,

05:40 - like the type who went on TV then and told you

05:43 - that cigarets were smooth and good for you.

05:46 - And they went around not only attacking the science of the book,

05:51 - but Rachel directly with ad hominem or ad

05:54 - feminine attacks on,

05:58 - on her womanhood,

06:00 - that she was a spinster,

06:03 - which is sort of code in those days for not very womanly.

06:08 - And one guy in a white coat on TV with big dark glasses

06:11 - says how can a woman without children

06:16 - tell us about the future?

06:18 - That was pretty much the reaction, but fortunately,

06:24 - Carson had planned for these attacks

06:27 - and had worked with high level scientists and folks who wanted to see this word

06:32 - get out with a plan, in effect, a strategy

06:36 - of how to make this book popular and how to resist these attacks

06:40 - from all over the place.

06:41 - And as Richard connected up with influential people in Washington, powerful

06:44 - women like Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, Frances Perkins,

06:48 - who'd been the secretary of Labor

06:50 - under FDR, wealthy women, the publisher of the Washington Post,

06:54 - gathered in luncheons, plotted along with her publicist,

06:58 - on how to turn this

07:01 - into a bestseller and be ready for these attacks.

07:05 - And they were vicious.

07:07 - Prior to the release of this book, what did environmental protection

07:10 - look like in the United States at the time?

07:15 - Well, it was there,

07:16 - I should say, when we say Rachel came along with Silent Spring and ignited

07:21 - the modern environmental movement and expanded it,

07:25 - what we mean is that

07:28 - it was basically called conservation

07:30 - rather than environmental environmentalism, etc.

07:35 - so that had been going on at least since the days of Teddy Roosevelt,

07:40 - who also belonged to the local Audubon

07:43 - Society, washed birds from the white House and invited in

07:48 - scientists, activists from Audubon showed the first films of birds

07:53 - in the white House, ultimately passed the migratory

07:58 - Bird Act of 1918, which,

08:03 - was the first big legislation to protect,

08:07 - widespread destruction of species, in this case, millions of birds,

08:11 - mostly in Florida, but elsewhere egrets, herons,

08:15 - plumed birds that were shot by guys and little boats with Gatling guns

08:20 - and and they were all used to to decorate women's hats

08:25 - with beautiful feathers, sometimes the entire bird.

08:28 - And so women organized and by them millions and were the ones

08:33 - who created a movement or outcry that led to totally wrote Teddy Roosevelt.

08:38 - That led to these early conservation efforts.

08:41 - There also were all the moves to create national parks to protect,

08:47 - forests and the like.

08:50 - But I think it's fair to say that most of what we had

08:53 - before Silent Spring was in the world of conservation,

08:57 - understanding the mountains, the wilderness, the bunnies, the trees.

09:02 - What changed with Silent Spring and Carson was that she wrote about elegant.

09:08 - Really, and explained that we were all part of of nature,

09:12 - that all of those chemicals went into the water, went into the food, the air.

09:16 - They came into us.

09:18 - They circled through the whole ecosystems.

09:21 - And so whether you were a bird of fish

09:23 - or a mosquito or a human being, it would affect you.

09:27 - And so the connection between toxic chemicals,

09:31 - not just harming bugs or animals

09:33 - and us was what really created this powerful connection

09:39 - between those what had been two wings. So

09:42 - that's

09:43 - why we call it sort of the modern environmental movement.

09:47 - before we get too far,

09:48 - let's talk about how Rachel Carson got to this part of her career.

09:52 - She was born on May 27th, 1907, in Springdale, Pennsylvania.

09:57 - How did her childhood and upbringing in the suburbs of Pittsburgh

10:00 - affect her interest in nature?

10:04 - Whoa. Well,

10:06 - we have to picture outside Pittsburgh is looking

10:08 - somewhat different than it does now.

10:12 - She was born on a small farm without running water. And.

10:18 - Basically,

10:21 - she wandered around there and with her mother,

10:23 - who was a brilliant, highly educated woman,

10:28 - who had a deep interest in nature and sharing that with kids,

10:33 - in this case, Rachel, her favorite and brightest daughter.

10:38 - And so she would wander around and with her mom and then alone,

10:45 - looking at the birds and the bees and all of that stuff.

10:48 - And she was, you know, alone, pretty much, and, somewhat introverted.

10:54 - Her whole life or diffident, shy, whatever.

10:57 - So she often would talk about how animals are my friends,

11:01 - and we'd write little stories about them that her mother encouraged.

11:06 - And so really quickly,

11:09 - she got Rachel to submit

11:13 - the essays to the best known, widely read,

11:18 - children's children's magazine of the time called Saint Nicholas Magazine,

11:23 - that published stories by Robert Louis

11:26 - Stevenson and Herman Melville and later other well-known authors like Rachel.

11:31 - But she was winning literary prizes at age

11:34 - 11, silver medal for that,

11:37 - etc..

11:40 - And so she started

11:42 - both this sense of awe and wonder

11:46 - for nature and everything in it.

11:49 - And careful observation and loving it, and then writing about it at a very

11:56 - early age.

11:57 - She also,

12:00 - being an imaginative child,

12:04 - one of the things that

12:05 - that touched her and it's amazing she was walking in the rocky hills

12:10 - around there and came upon the fossil of a fish,

12:17 - and she looks and says,

12:20 - look at that.

12:21 - How in the world could a fish have been floating around near Springdale,

12:27 - leading her to a fascination with what must have been a sea?

12:32 - What must have been the totally different, landscape environment?

12:38 - And so it began.

12:39 - Her interest in the sea and in evolution

12:44 - and other creatures at a very, very early age.

12:49 - So that she went to, you know, she went to the local school.

12:53 - She was always the top student, always a little lonely.

12:55 - People thought she was maybe a little aloof

12:58 - until they got to know her because she had a

13:00 - a wicked sense of humor and played field hockey and stuff like that.

13:05 - But I think,

13:09 - she wanted

13:10 - to move along not too far away,

13:13 - after high school where she was the valedictorian, of course.

13:19 - And she went off to Chatham College

13:21 - in Pittsburgh, then known as the Pennsylvania College for women.

13:25 - It was a in the best

13:29 - church related women's college you could get, in which her mother

13:33 - made sure that she would go to a place like this and also visited every weekend.

13:39 - So Rachel did not have a social life,

13:41 - or she would come home on the train, her mother would come over.

13:45 - But it is there that,

13:49 - first

13:51 - with a,

13:53 - a female female mentor,

13:55 - friend and exciting English teacher named Grace Croft

13:59 - and her pictures of Rachel sitting on the bench with Rachel.

14:02 - College students,

14:03 - I don't think get to do that these days with their English professors.

14:07 - I'm not sure.

14:08 - And she won prizes again in writing and so on.

14:14 - But she came under the influence,

14:18 - the thrall, if you will, of a charismatic

14:22 - young science biology professor named Mary

14:26 - Scott Skincare, who was glamorous and wore cool clothes

14:30 - and all that kind of stuff and was a brilliant teacher and scientist.

14:34 - And so she had a heavy influence on Rachel,

14:38 - who got more and more interested, learn what she was doing.

14:41 - She married skincare up at Woods Hole and the kinds of trips and research,

14:46 - and so she changed her major

14:49 - and decided that, you know, she could write.

14:52 - She knew how to write.

14:53 - She'd been winning prizes.

14:55 - What do you write about?

14:57 - And she talks about having finally found

15:01 - something to write about.

15:03 - And that was the sea, the ocean and the critters in it.

15:07 - She went up to Woods Hole, saw her first sea life

15:10 - when they dredged up starfish and other stuff.

15:13 - She wept when she first some,

15:16 - mullets jumping up out of the water.

15:19 - And how incredible it was with these creatures.

15:23 - And that is what led to three bestselling books

15:27 - and then ultimately to Silent Spring.

15:31 - So it's,

15:33 - it's a journey that

15:35 - that leaves Pennsylvania.

15:38 - But she also comes back there.

15:40 - I mean, I just think it's interesting or fun for people to know.

15:44 - I lived in Pennsylvania, quite a while.

15:48 - I'm a birder.

15:49 - That's what we call it.

15:50 - Birdwatchers.

15:51 - So understand it's not just some

15:54 - silly little thing, and would go birdwatching,

15:58 - look basically up Hawk Mountain.

16:01 - Excuse me.

16:03 - In Pennsylvania and

16:06 - Rachel did the same thing.

16:08 - Went up there from Washington,

16:12 - and she just has a few little

16:15 - unpublished essays about her trip there.

16:19 - Evidently, she didn't see much in the way of Hawks or wasn't all that impressed.

16:23 - I mean, I've been there, and unless you're a master birder, these little brown

16:27 - specks come flying over and the Rangers say, you know, Sharpie on five.

16:32 - But there is ratio atop this mountain

16:37 - and writing and thinking about how

16:39 - there is an ocean of air above her

16:43 - and an ocean below her, in that the limestone rocks

16:48 - on which she is sitting and looking at the hawks are the product

16:52 - of eons of evolution,

16:55 - of creating this limestone at a for a minute, for a little things

16:59 - in the ocean that have calcium and begin to form rocks.

17:03 - It is such an amazing,

17:06 - imaginative, scientific journey

17:10 - that reveals why Rachel Carson found every creature, every person,

17:17 - a unique,

17:19 - important,

17:22 - individual, whether a person or a species.

17:24 - And that,

17:27 - she wrote about just for examples in her very first book,

17:30 - Under the Sea within, about a,

17:35 - A sandpipers called Sandra Lang.

17:38 - And one of the heroes of the book is Blackfoot, the sandpiper and

17:44 - she is aware that when you watch for Sandra Ling

17:49 - and many people on the East Coast by the shores have done that,

17:51 - they're the little mechanical looking ones

17:53 - that zip in and out of just the edge of the well, getting clams and so on.

17:58 - Blackfeet black nose.

18:00 - No other creature on Earth

18:04 - has evolved, has

18:08 - been created, can

18:10 - live in that ecosystem, and has the ability to zip in and out

18:14 - and eat little crabs and then migrate to the Arctic to reproduce

18:18 - and then go down to Central America in an incredible 12,000 mile journey.

18:23 - That is the kind of thing that Rachel Carson is thinking about,

18:28 - whether she's in Pennsylvania, Hawk Mountain

18:31 - along the Atlantic coast, where she did much of her work for her ocean books.

18:36 - And then she

18:37 - turned that ability, that feeling that power, into Silent Spring,

18:41 - which otherwise would have been a pretty boring screed

18:45 - on pesticides and chemicals.

18:48 - Was there a stigma at the time, against women in science?

18:52 - Was that something that was common for the time?

18:58 - I'm not sure we have enough time

18:59 - to cover the stigmas against women.

19:04 - Immense and,

19:08 - you know, Rachel ended up a

19:10 - bureaucrat at Federal Bureau of Sciences.

19:12 - I really should say.

19:13 - But you working in the government, people are surprised to know that

19:16 - Mary Skincare, her mentor and friend.

19:19 - Brilliant, brilliantly educated,

19:22 - could not get a job and ended up working

19:25 - in the federal government precisely for that reason.

19:29 - And when Rachel finished her dissertation was great.

19:33 - I was working on her dissertation and her graduate work at Hopkins.

19:36 - She was supporting her family. Her mother,

19:40 - ne'er do well parts of the family.

19:42 - And her scholarship wasn't enough to pay for it all.

19:45 - She had to stop.

19:46 - She couldn't afford it.

19:47 - But then,

19:49 - she knew at the end in the depression.

19:51 - But still, there was not a market for women scientists, women professors.

19:57 - I mean, it's not that there weren't a couple here and there.

20:01 - And in small women's college is not the big

20:05 - fancy men's colleges.

20:08 - So she talked with Mary Skincare, who said you should talk

20:12 - to the federal government.

20:13 - And I'll introduce you to Elmer Higgins, who helped me.

20:17 - And so

20:19 - she knocks on the door, meets Homer.

20:22 - He hires her,

20:24 - sent her down to North Carolina to write a report.

20:29 - The work the Bureau of Fisheries was doing down there.

20:31 - She comes back with this thing, hands it to him.

20:35 - He looks at it and says, oh, Rachel, this will never do.

20:41 - Got a little twinkle of this.

20:44 - She was like, oh, really?

20:45 - And he says, yes, it's too good.

20:49 - This is literature.

20:51 - You need to send it to the Atlantic Monthly

20:54 - in New York, and I'll get you a contact there.

20:57 - After fiddling with her while she did get a book contract

21:01 - and launched this career.

21:05 - But she first started writing.

21:06 - She used the name Rachel Carson,

21:10 - not Rachel Louise Carson.

21:12 - Rachel Carson.

21:14 - She didn't want people to know it was a woman.

21:17 - And sometimes when people met her, it hadn't seen her.

21:21 - Oh, well, I didn't know that you were a nice little lady with

21:26 - red hair. I was just.

21:28 - Yeah, there were a lot of stigmas,

21:31 - but that's.

21:32 - It was the basics.

21:34 - And worse than now with it still continues.

21:37 - You know,

21:39 - the glass ceiling has been,

21:41 - broken here and there, but it's not gone.

21:44 - When and how did Rachel Carson die?

21:48 - Oh, well.

21:55 - She died here in Washington, in Silver Spring, Maryland.

21:58 - The Washington area

22:01 - of metastatic breast cancer.

22:06 - And the quick.

22:07 - It's not only sad and tragic that she suffered so much while

22:11 - she was trying to write Silent Spring, but that she was lied to her doctors.

22:16 - We were just talking about stigmas and women oncologists.

22:21 - Cancer surgeons in those days did not believe

22:24 - that women should know or understand what's happening to them.

22:27 - It's above their, beneath their paygrade, whatever it.

22:31 - And so they,

22:34 - discovered a malignant tumor and didn't tell her that it was spreading

22:39 - and just said things will be fine. And,

22:45 - that it's just so outrageous, such malpractice,

22:48 - and that it's hard to believe.

22:51 - But that was the sense they had of women.

22:54 - They couldn't understand.

22:55 - It would just make things worse if they knew they really, you know, that

22:58 - the cancer had spread, so they just didn't tell them.

23:01 - And so that's how she died.

23:05 - And while she was

23:07 - dying, writing sounds spring

23:11 - and caring for her grand nephew who have been orphaned.

23:15 - And Rachel ends up

23:19 - in her 50s, not only with cancer,

23:21 - writing Silent Spring and trying to care

23:25 - for a rambunctious little boy.

23:28 - But she was dying and she knew she was, she said to her friends and colleagues.

23:33 - She said, I want you to start a group, an organization,

23:37 - to carry on my work.

23:40 - And that is the Rachel Carson Council that still exists.

23:44 - I am not Rachel Carson.

23:48 - But I sort of follow in her flats

23:51 - and high heels and her very close

23:55 - friend, colleague Paul Krone back at the U.S.

23:59 - Fish and Wildlife Service, a woman named Shirley Briggs

24:03 - is the one who actually took the iconic picture of Rachel Carson, a

24:07 - top Hawk Mountain where she's looking with binoculars over the ridge

24:14 - for Hawks.

24:15 - But it also shows clearly

24:19 - a woman with vision looking to the future.

24:23 - And as I say to young people when I'm talking to them,

24:26 - she was looking for a new generation,

24:29 - for waves of people to carry on her work.

24:32 - And you are they

24:35 - doctor Bob Musil, president and CEO of the Rachel Carson Council.

24:38 - Thank you for your time.

24:40 - Thank you very much, Ellen.