The Normals | Episode 2

2026-04-14

Download

Last time on The Normals, we learned that in the 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) wanted to recruit many healthy volunteers for basic research. Two peace churches, the Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren, had an excess of healthy human volunteers. The “Normals” recruited from these Anabaptist churches were surprisingly happy, even as they went through sometimes painful procedures. In this follow-up episode, we hear about how the sources of normal human subjects changed in the 1960s and why NIH researchers felt they nee...

Last time on The Normals, we learned that in the 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) wanted to recruit many healthy volunteers for basic research. Two peace churches, the Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren, had an excess of healthy human volunteers. The “Normals” recruited from these Anabaptist churches were surprisingly happy, even as they went through sometimes painful procedures.

In this follow-up episode, we hear about how the sources of normal human subjects changed in the 1960s and why NIH researchers felt they needed to expand their search for normal people. We also learn about the first death in the program and the shifting motives on the parts of the researchers and volunteers. Final episode drops next Tuesday, April 21.

All Normals episodes

In this episode:

Laura Stark, history professor at the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University
Ken Naas, former Normal patient
Cindy Jansen, former Normal patient
Dale Horst, former Normal patient
Sarah Crespi, Science Podcast senior host and producer

Additional resources:

The Normals: A People’s History of Modern America in Five Human Experiments by Laura Stark

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Comments (3)