Papajones is serving up the tastiest deals on the freshest pizza, all made with the juiciest vine ripened Spanish tomatoes. Fresh dough never frozen, made from just six clean and simple ingredients. Order now and get a delicious pizza from just ten pounds. Papajones. Better ingredients, better pizza. Selected original pizzas, exclusive additional toppings in 6th of April 26th, minimum delivery fee, 99p, participating stores terms apply. Hey, it's Molly Webster. I have a surprise for you. Next month, myself and producer Mona Medgalker are going to do an AMA about our Snail Sex Tape episode. You can ask us anything about snails and the behind the scenes of making an episode work. How long did it take us to make? How did we come up with the sound effects? Why are snails and slugs related? The AMA will be on April 16th and in order to come, you have to be a member of the lab. So go to radiolab.org slash join right now, sign up, use the code word snail to get a discount on your membership. And also, if you sign up now, you get a snail enamel pin. If you're already a member of the lab, come to the AMA. Thank you for listening. Can't wait to see you there April 16th. Hey, this is radiolab. I'm Latif Nasser. And ever since I came to this country, the United States and became a citizen here, one thing you notice is that everyone is always arguing about who gets to decide. There's this constant power play in this country between the federal government and the state governments. And it's like, no matter what issue you are looking at, whether it's immigration or climate change or AI regulation or a million other things, somehow there's this question of who gets to decide who gets power over what. And honestly, I just get so tired of that conversation. It feels super important. It's obviously very high stakes, but it can get so tedious and technical and just makes your eyes glaze over. So today, I want to play for you a story that when I first heard it, it just made that question pop out at me in a completely different way. It made that question actually interesting. And it told it in a way that was actually a little bit scandalous. We originally released this episode back in 2013. I'm excited for you to hear it or rehear it. The episode is called Sex, Ducks and the Founding Feud. Enjoy. Wait, wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC. Today on the podcast, Robert, we're going to talk constitutional law, federalism, and the intricacies of international treaty practice. Oh, God. You ready? No, no, no, no. It's going to be good. It's going to be good. It's going to be good because I have health. Hey, guys. Hi, Kelsey. Hello. Kelsey Badget has reported this segment and just listen to how it starts. So the story starts with a betrayed spouse. Oh, you see. Oh, it's much better. I'm coming back to my seat. Get some popcorn. My name's Duncan Hollis. He's not the betrayed spouse. Nope. I'm a professor of international law here at Temple University in Philadelphia. And I'm Nick Rosencrantz. And not him, either. I'm a professor of law at Georgetown. I'm also a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute. So Mrs. Bond. That's her. That's our betrayed spouse. Caroline Bond. 36. Lives in a suburb of Philly. Discovered that her husband was having an affair with her neighbor. Actually, it was worse than that. This woman is her best friend. Not only that. She finds out that her friend is pregnant via her husband. He got her pregnant. Oh, my God. And this is her best friend and her husband of 14 years. She was quite upset, distraught, enraged, I would imagine. Yeah. Carol made threats. There were confrontations. The other woman is named Merlinda Haynes, by the way. And eventually, Caroline Bond. She did what anyone would do. She got a bunch of toxic chemicals and... I do it all the time. And she tried to poison her best friend. Repeatedly. Oh. The backup for a second. Where would she have gotten the chemicals from? She worked, I believe, at a lab. She works for a chemical company. I think it's Roman Haas. So she's a biochemist. She's actually a microbiologist. But she grabs some chemicals from her office. I think she also orders some off the internet. Amazon.com. But they're pretty serious chemicals. Like what? Well, one was arsenic-based and in large enough doses, and when I say large doses, I'm talking teaspoons, not gallons. It can cause serious injury and can be fatal. So anyway, she took these chemicals. She went over to her best friend's, or, well, her former best friend's house. And she spread them on the doorknob and on the mailbox. The door to her car. And they're visible, I guess. I guess you can see them. So the best friend is in fault. Nope. Local police tell her to take her car to a car wash. They said, oh, it could be drugs. Get the car washed off. They kind of just blow her off. But it keeps happening. Over the course of like half a year, this happens 24 times. 24 powder attacks. According to the court briefs, the police were just not being very responsive. She called them over a dozen times, and they tested it to see if it was cocaine. But once they figured out it wasn't, they didn't really do anything. So finally, she tells the post office. And it was the post office that actually sent out postal inspectors, and they set up a hidden camera. And they videotaped Caroline Bond in the act. They get it on tape? Mm-hmm. That's how they identify her as the person putting the chemicals on the mailbox. I didn't know the post office did stuff like that. To be honest, I didn't either. That's so, I think of them so differently now. Yes. And I think if there's a moral to the story, it is do not mess with the males. They take that very seriously. Actually there's a whole lot more going on than just messing with the male. Because of what happens next. So according to Nick Rosencrantz, generally things like assault or attempted murder. Those are state crimes. In most circumstances, the federal government can't charge you with murder. The post office, that's a federal institution. So when they caught Caroline Bond, they kicked this up to the federal attorney, who then went ahead and brought a federal case. And here's the thing, they ended up charging Caroline Bond with violating the International Chemical Weapons Treaty. What? We should be clear, the victim got a tiny thumb burn and ran cold water on it and was fine. So this is, we're not, this is, this is not murder. Well that makes this all the more odd. Very odd. When I poison someone, the last thing I'm thinking about is violating an international treaty. We should never have you over for lunch. But no really, why would they charge you with that? I don't understand. Well if you actually read the treaty. The statute simply says that it's a crime to use a toxic chemical for other than a peaceful purpose. That's the exact language. And that guy, that's John Bellinger. I served as the legal advisor for the Department of State under Secretary Condoleezza Rice. And John says that even though it sounds a little weird, this is exactly what this treaty was meant for, for people using chemicals. Highly toxic chemicals. For non-peaceful purposes. You're right. And that's what happened here. Imagine if she had killed a bunch of postal workers. Then. I don't think anybody would complain. But to charge her with an international treaty violation, it just seems, it seems too big for the little lady. It was really odd to her lawyers too. I bet. They're like, look, in the Constitution you have laid out what the federal government could do. This is not one of those things. You can't just take a treaty and use it to reach into the very local life of a normal person. Huge overreach. Sneaky, frankly. And now this case is before the Supreme Court. Boom. And it's become an ideological battle that goes way beyond Carol Ann Bond, her cheating husband or her adulterous best friend. And I would argue that this case is weird as it is. Raised some really important issues about how the world is changing and about one of the most fundamental questions that is at the heart of America. I really believe that. Well you have to defend that position. What do you mean? Let me take you back to the beginning, okay? Sure. My name is Joseph J. Ellis. I am a historian. I've written a book called Founding Brothers and my most recent book is called, what's it called? Revolutionary Summer. You are a modest man. So Joseph Ellis has written a, he's a pulled surprise with many authors, written a bunch of books about the founding of our country, Revolutionary War. And there is a scene in one of his books. It's a book called American Creation. It didn't sell as many as Founding Brothers. It doesn't matter to me because it has this one passage that when I read it, I was like, wow, I've never thought of this country that way. But this sets a scene. You want to be real specific. It's September. September 1787, Philadelphia. You know, it's abominably hot. Yet all these great men crammed into a state house. I mean, George Washington. This guy is a stud. Six foot three, war hero. This guy is overwhelming. Alexander Hamilton was there. Hamilton, he would have got the highest grades on the LSATs. I'm telling you, this guy was really smart. Even Ben Franklin. Yeah. Who's pushing 81 at this point. Franklin's there. Oh. They all came together to try and figure out like, how do we do this? Like, if you think about it, it was a puzzle because you've got these 13 colonies, which are really like sovereign nations. They were loosely organized into a federation that was about to go bankrupt. So they had to do some things. They're like, okay, let's bring them together into a union. How do we do that without a king? It was a crazy experiment. I mean, one thing you got to realize that at that time in American history, the average person was born, lived out his or her life and died within a 30 mile radius. They don't have cell phones and they don't think about themselves as Americans. They thought of themselves as Pennsylvanians, South Carolinians, Bostonians. There is no real national ethos. So that's one problem. Second problem. The founding fathers could not agree. They could not agree on the most basic question. If there's not a king, who's in charge? Right? The so-called sovereignty question. And on the one hand, you had a guy like Alexander Hamilton who got up there and was like, why do we even need states? What's a state? All right? What we need is a federal government that is big and strong and powerful. That's Hamilton, baby. Hamilton wants a president elected for life. Hamilton wants a senator elected for life. On the other hand, you had the Thomas Jefferson School of Thought, which was like, no, no. We just got out of a monarchy for Christ's sake. And the only way we're not going to get back in one is if we keep the government small, restricted, and... All domestic policy belongs in the hands of the states. Sound familiar? Jefferson likes anything in which the government's not going to be doing much. So you had these two very different philosophies and the way Joe sees it... If you let Jefferson have total power, we'll end up at anarchy. If you let Hamilton have total power, you're going to end up with a totalitarian state. At the convention, the two sides went back and forth. And anytime a Hamiltonian-type proposal hit the floor, some of the states would say, Boooo! No. And they'd shoot it down because they did not want some big government telling them what to do, especially when the 800-pound gorilla in the room was slavery. So they couldn't agree at all. And into this mess, walks our hero. James Madison. Madison, you know, like, Madison's five, two, one, twenty. Madison. He's the kind of guy that, you know, stands in the corners during a dance. He would call him a nerd. Madison! You might call him a pragmatist. Madison wants a clear decision about sovereignty. Yeah, like, for example, on local matters, who gets the final say? The states or the federal government? Just give me some clarity. And he's not going to get it. And he comes to that realization at the very end. Because at the end of the convention, they have this document. I mean, he wrote the original blueprint. And now there's this new document so riddled with compromises that, according to Joe, the basic question he wanted answered wasn't. The who's in charge question was left kind of vague. On all sorts of matters, I mean, who regulates money in banks? Who gets to tax what? Who decides whether new states will be slave states or free states? Who's vague? And initially, according to Joe, in a letter that Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson, he's like, come on! He's very disappointed. He thinks the document's going to fail and the country's going to fail. He doesn't think this is going to last. But then, Joe says, in his writings, you start to see a shift. He starts to think differently. He starts to say, oh yeah. Wait a second. This could work precisely because it's unclear. And we found what he calls a middle station. Where everyone can see what they want to see. I mean, people come out of the convention, go back to their states, and the guy in South Carolina says, don't worry about slavery. The 10th Amendment's going to tell us that they can't do that. The guy in Pennsylvania says it's just a matter of time before we end slavery. The Constitution becomes successful because the people don't agree on what it means. That according to Joe was Madison's epiphany. The Constitution isn't a set of answers. It's a framework for argument. This is a document which allows us to continue to discuss and debate the core issues that we face. The issues of the presidency, the sovereignty question, the real resolution of the sovereignty question is never achieved. And it eventually leads to the Civil War. What I find kind of neat about this is that argument that happens in modern politics all the time about states' rights or the size of the government, which can feel like a random argument for me at times. Suddenly to know this, I mean, if you buy what Joe's saying. It's not random at all. This is an argument that was actually literally written in to our founding document. In some sense, we as a country are the product of that argument. Of course, not everybody agrees with Joseph Ellis. There are people who think that the founding fathers had a very specific thing in mind. And if you just go back to their debates and to what they said to each other, that you can find the real only deep logic for the Constitution. We did. But the fact that they disagree with Joe in some sense, doesn't that kind of make Joe's point? And read this document in 10 different ways? Yes. Everyone always argues always. No, just to pick up the thread. I mean, after the Civil War, the argument changes. It gets centered. But the union is still an experiment. Yeah. Massachusetts can still do their business differently than Colorado, differently than Vermont. And the jostling between the federal government and the state government doesn't end. It just gets a little quieter. Thank heavens. Unless you're a duck. Ducks right after this break. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Guys, it's tax season. Are you as stoked as I am? No. No, of course you aren't. Because taxes can be super stressful. I know that I'm going to owe money. And so I'm avoiding all the emails from my accountant. I'm not alone. 88 percent of Americans reported financial stress at the start of 2026. So it's normal, but it doesn't mean you have to white knuckle your way through when life feels overwhelming. Therapy can help. BetterHelp makes it easy. It says by matching you with one of their over 30,000 licensed professionals tailored to your needs. And if it's not a perfect fit, you can switch at any time. And look, a therapist can't fix your money problems, but they can help you address shame, guilt, avoidance, get matched with a qualified professional on BetterHelp. You can sign up and get 10 percent off at betterhelp.com slash radiolab. That's better. H-E-L-P.com slash radiolab. Did you ever wonder what it's like to live alone, hidden in the woods, not speaking to a single soul for 30 years? Or wander the desert, uncover a hidden well, and die to the bottom of the deepest waterhole for 2,000 miles? The Snap Judgment Podcast takes you bare with amazing stories told by the people who live them with an original soundscape that drops you directly into their shoes. Snap Judgment, listen to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Just before the break, we were talking about how this whole country, the experiment that is the United States of America, has left us jostling between the federal government and the state governments. And Calci Padgett is about to tell us what all that has to do with ducks. So it's spring of 1919, rural Missouri. You've got Frank McAllister, the attorney general of Missouri. He's out there with a bunch of friends, and they're pointing their guns at the sky and shooting ducks. One after another, after another. They end up shooting all in all 76. He knows he can do this, because he's the attorney general of the state, he knows all the laws of the state, and he knows it's his right to shoot whatever duck is flying in the sky of Missouri. It's the state law that you... That's the state law, you can shoot the ducks. So they're out there having this great time, they're having this great hall, they've gotten all these ducks, and then out of nowhere, Ray Holland, the federal game warden, shows up and he says, no, you can't do this, you can't shoot these birds. They're not your property. McAllister says, you, you're wrong. This is a matter for the state, you know, it's our sovereignty, we never gave this over to the federal government. He must have been like, I don't think the federal government has anything to say to me about a duck that was born here, at least I found it in the sky here, I shot it here, it died here, and I'm going to eat it here. So this is my duck. But the game warden says, no, it's not your duck, and he arrests them all, setting up a landmark confrontation. Because here's what had happened. Two years earlier, the administration of Woodrow Wilson was sitting there wringing their hands, thinking all these people are killing birds at like a nonstop pace. And if this didn't stop, you know, there was some concern at this period that we were going to, you know, we were going to hunt these things to extinction. You know, we might not have any migratory birds at all. Problem is the courts had already told the federal government, this is purely a local matter, you can't make federal hunting laws. But then somebody in the administration has this really great idea, or a really evil idea, depending on how you look at it. Maybe if we can get Canada to cooperate with us, we can do this by a treaty. Because there's this clause in the Constitution that says treaties are the supreme law of the land. So maybe if we make an international treaty, then the states will have to go along. Frank McAllister, he sues and this goes all the way up to the Supreme Court. It lands before Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the more famous justices of the Supreme Court. And he basically says the treaty power is something that was given to the federal government, don't limit this. This treaty is good. And the treaty and the legislation are upheld. So score one for the federal government. Score one for the federal government. And in there, you actually have Holmes talking about what the Constitution is. He was this what? Thrice wounded Civil War veteran. And he actually invokes the language of the Civil War saying, we spent all this sweat and blood to figure out what kind of nation we were going to become for birds. He invokes this language and basically says whatever we had debated in the past, could the states regulate slavery without federal interference? And Holmes says no. The side who fought that argument, they lost. All this talk about birds and, you know, state versus federal has everything to do with our Poisoner, Carol Ann Bond. This case is the precedent upon which the federal government says that they can prosecute Carol Ann Bond because Oliver Wendell Holmes said that treaties are the supreme law of the land. I don't know. I'm still, I'm still of the mind that this is a sneaky bit of business by the, by the federal government. I mean, it's not sneaky if you're a duck. I feel I must speak on behalf of the ducks here. But no, forget your ducks. This is a Pennsylvania lady doing a Pennsylvania adultery in a Pennsylvania mailbox with a Pennsylvania mood. I mean, there's nothing, there's no birds flying overhead. This is an all Pennsylvania crime. But you know who wasn't doing a goddamn thing about that? Pennsylvania. Oh, but just to take your side for a second, Robert, please. If you really think about it, you know, and the way that Nick Rosencrantz thinks about it, this is really troubling. This decision seems to say that theoretically the federal government's power is potentially infinite. Because like, say John Kerry, who's our Secretary of State right now, he goes and makes treaties. Say he's talking to Zimbabwe and we agree that we want to have a treaty about educational standards for children. So we come home and we write a law that says all children must go to public schools. But then that would outlaw homeschooling for children, which is a clear local state matter. But now suddenly the federal government has a power to do that. Which just seems odd. The idea that the president, the Senate and Zimbabwe can increase Congress's legislative powers. Here's how John Bellinger responds. Is it a theoretical possibility that the federal government might try to go and do that? I suppose it's theoretically possible. But there's no evidence that that happened here. There's no evidence that that has happened in the hundred years since Missouri versus Holland. He would say, look, consider the practical impact that a decision might have that would cut back on the president's treaty power. Other countries are already highly suspicious of the United States' ability to deliver on its treaty commitments anyway. John would say, why would any other country want to make a treaty with us if Kansas could back out at any time? And how do you deal with a question like global warming if everybody is allowed to be left to their own devices? That's a tough one. The reality is... That's duck and haul us again. We live in a globalized world. Whether it's dealing with things like climate change, terrorism, shipwreck, cybercrime, increasingly, these are things we can no longer regulate just within a particular local community or a local society. And on some level, if we now find ourselves in this world where I can get on the internet and spend hours and hours playing World of Warcraft with people in Yugoslavia, and yet I've never really talked to my neighbor that's just down the street, why wouldn't we all have the same laws? But I think the flip side of your question is fine, the world is very interconnected, but are there still some things that are local? Are there some things left where we could say the federal government doesn't need to be able to reach this? And more than that, Nick says that having a bunch of different communities that are governed by different rules all under the same nation actually has a bunch of benefits. Competition, the idea of laboratories of democracy that the 50 states will all try different things as to regulating guns near schools, as to regulating whatever it is, and maybe some state will hit on something brilliant. And if they do, then it will spread and be replicated. And that theory has been borne out in a lot of different areas. When the feds decide that they're going to come up with a one size fits all national solution, that's the end of the experiment. So by the way, what happened to Carolyn Bob? Well, she went to jail. She's in jail. She's still in jail. No. She's out now. So she could go to court and find out whether this thing was... Yeah. That's cool. She could show up. What about the poison-y? What happened to her? The poison-y, she changed her name, she moved away, she's unsearchable now. Good. Good. I hope she moved to the best. Is she still living with the guy that gave her the baby? No. No, no, no. So you see, Carol, even though she went to jail for six years, she stayed with her husband. No way. Really? Yeah. She stayed with the man who had a baby with the other lady? Yeah, that she tried to poison that lady about. She stayed with that guy. See, that's the thing. Law is interesting, but love, that's complicated. Love is greater than treaties. Thank you, Kelsey. Thank you. Kelsey Padgett, Robert Krowich, Jadaboum Rod. Yeah. Let's have her here again. So a couple months after we released this episode, the Supreme Court did indeed make a decision in Carol Ann Bond's case in a unanimous vote. The court decided that Carol did not violate the Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty. But you might remember, that was not the question that courtwatchers were hoping the court would answer. What they were hoping to get an answer on was, can the federal government use a treaty to make laws about crimes that would normally be within a state's jurisdiction, like poisoning? This decision did nothing to answer that question. So lucky for us, we can keep arguing about it for another hundred years. That's it for this episode. Catch you next week. And in the meantime, please don't poison your friends. Hi. I'm Belen, and I'm from San Diego, California. And here are the staff credits. Radio Lab was created by Jadaboum Rod and is edited by Shora Miller. Lulu Miller and Luchas Nelson are our co-hosts. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Quartina, David Gable, Rebecca Lacks, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Kinju Nyanasambandham, Matt Keelke, Ian Keewen, Alex Neeson, Sara Kari, Sarah Sandbach, Anissa Vizza, Arian Wack, Pat Walters, Molly Webster, Jessica Young, with help from Rebecca Rand. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Pujol-Mazzini, and Natalie Middleton. Hi. I'm Adina. I'm calling from Greensburg. Leadership support for Radio Lab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Fundational support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Whether it's news from around the world or the latest from your neighborhood, New Yorkers engage with WNYC studios for the information and connection they can only get from our programming. Be a part of that conversation through your business's support. Learn more at sponsorship.wnyc.org.
