18 Americans were injected with plutonium — the deadly element used to fuel the atomic bomb — without their knowledge or consent.
The first was Ebb Cade, a 55-year-old African American man from Tennessee. After a car accident in March 1945, he entered the hospital expecting treatment for broken bones. Instead, he became a human test subject. Scientists secretly injected plutonium into his bloodstream, then removed teeth and pieces of bone to study how the radioactive material moved through the body.
Cade eventually slipped out of the hospital before he was formally discharged. He relocated out of state and died eight years later — never knowing what had been done to him.
His case was just the first. Seventeen more followed, as America’s quest to understand radiation — and to win the nuclear age — turned unsuspecting patients into experimental subjects.
Now, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Eileen Welsome — author of The Plutonium Files — joins host Natasha Zouves on The Truth of the Matter to reveal what really happened.
Who chose these patients — and why? What connection did the experiments have to Robert Oppenheimer’s Los Alamos lab? And how close did the U.S. government come to erasing this chapter of its own history?
This is the untold story of The Plutonium Files — and the Americans who were used, without consent, in the name of national security and science. The Truth of the Matter with Natasha Zouves isn’t just another podcast — it’s a fight to uncover what powerful institutions want hidden. From secret human experiments the government carried out on unsuspecting citizens to toxic cover-ups poisoning communities, Emmy and Murrow Award-winning journalist Natasha Zouves brings you the stories people in power don’t want told.
Each week, we expose evidence buried in archives, amplify the voices of those who’ve been silenced, and hold the powerful accountable. From radioactive “oatmeal experiments” on children, to cancer causing chemicals destroying farms, to veterans erased from history — these are the stories that matter.
This is journalism that refuses to look away. The Truth of the Matter is about transparency, and justice for the people left behind.
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truthofthematterpod/
Find Natasha Zouves:
https://www.instagram.com/natashazouves/
@natashazouves
https://www.facebook.com/natashanzouves/
WATCH part 1 of our conversation with Dr. Lisa Martino Taylor, where she delves into the oatmeal experiments carried out on children, and pregnant women given radioactive cocktails at top universities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_FRM3Gm46M&t=23s
READ the full St. Louis investigation: https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/military/did-government-poison-st-louis/
WATCH the St. Louis investigation part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7_-G_q3wEc&t=1s
WATCH the St. Louis investigation part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upYvUe6hWEk&t=817s
You can find “The Truth of the Matter” wherever you listen to your podcasts:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2iQ85VHlMmBfLBaTtSp8tF
