00:00Thomas Midgley Jr. invented two of the most destructive substances in human history, and
00:05he did it in the same lifetime.
00:07In the 1920s, he gave the world leaded gasoline.
00:10For decades, lead poured into the air from every car on every road.
00:15It poisoned generations of children, lowered IQs across entire populations.
00:20The damage was global and invisible.
00:23Then he did it again.
00:24His second invention, chlorofluorocarbons, quietly tore a hole in the ozone layer.
00:30Scientists later concluded that no single organism in recorded history has done more damage to
00:36the Earth's atmosphere than Thomas Midgley Jr.
00:38While publicly demonstrating that leaded gasoline was safe, he was privately treating his own
00:43lead poisoning.
00:45Then, in 1940, polio left him partially paralyzed.
00:49So he built a machine.
00:50An elaborate system of ropes and pulleys designed to lift him out of bed each morning.
00:55He built it himself, inside his own bedroom.
00:58In 1944, he was found dead, strangled by it.
01:03The man who spent his life releasing invisible catastrophe into the world was killed by the
01:08only machine he ever made for himself.
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