It’s not what *I* would have done, but you do you.

Not all things are as dangerous as they initially appear. For example, we’ve all seen those classic pranks that used to float around early YouTube where people get others to sign a petition banning dihydrogen monoxide — aka water.

However, this feels a bit different. Galen Winsor was a physicist who advocated for deregulation of the nuclear industry. In his view, we were all making a big stink about the dangers of nuclear power, and in order to reach our full potential, we needed to radiate, baby, radiate!

As evidence for his claim that radioactivity isn’t as harmful as we make it out to be, he decided that he was going to go on TV and eat some uranium. Yes, really. Here’s the recording — his whole intro is pretty interesting, but you can just skip to 3:50 if you want to see him eat the stuff.

Physicist Galen Winsor eats uranium on live television in 1985 to show that it’s “harmless”. pic.twitter.com/3L15tsRGGM

— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) January 14, 2025