The Daraprim price rise is a sharp reminder that market decisions carry human costs that spreadsheets do not capture. The 1809 Cabinet duel, meanwhile, is proof that political dysfunction is far from a modern invention.
There is something about the 21st of September that attracts people who are, shall we say, very confident in their decisions.
The Five Thousand Percent Man
On 21 September 2015, Martin Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per tablet. Overnight. That is a 5,455% increase on a life-saving drug, and the backlash was immediate and enormous.
Shkreli seemed, by all available evidence, genuinely confused by this. Which tells you quite a lot. This episode unpacks both the decision and its human cost, and the national debate it ignited in America about pharmaceutical pricing and who, exactly, the system is designed to serve.
Two Men, One Heath, Several Pistols
Step back to 21 September 1809, and things are only slightly less alarming. British Foreign Secretary George Canning and War Secretary Viscount Castlereagh resolved a Cabinet dispute the old-fashioned way: they went to Putney Heath and shot at each other.
Both men were serving Cabinet ministers at the time. Both resigned after the duel. Both, in one of history’s more enjoyable footnotes, went on to have thoroughly distinguished careers. The episode has the full, wonderfully strange story of how two of Britain’s most senior politicians concluded that pistols were the appropriate escalation route for a professional disagreement.
An Election With a Twist
On 21 September 2018, Eswatini held legislative elections. All candidates stood as independents, because political parties have been banned in the country since 1973. It is an absolute monarchy, and the episode takes a curious, careful look at what elections actually mean when the framework around them works so differently from anything most of us recognise.
Eight Hundred Grams of the Future
Finally, 21 September 1983: the FCC approved the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, the first commercially available handheld mobile phone. It weighed 800 grams and cost nearly $4,000. Nobody involved could have known quite what they were approving the beginning of.
Four stories, one date. Power, pricing, politics, and a very heavy telephone. If you want to understand how a single day can quietly contain all of that, and why small, strange decisions tend to carry consequences that only become visible much later, the episode is exactly ten minutes of your time.