Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. M Hello, and welcome to Criminalia. Well,
Speaker 1: we've been exploring the lives and motivations of some of
Speaker 1: the most notorious lady poisoners in history. I'm Maria Tremarket
Speaker 1: and I'm Holly Fry. And as part of our wrap
Speaker 1: up to this season of Poison, we invited award winning
Speaker 1: journalist and poison expert Deborah Blum to chat with us,
Speaker 1: which she very kindly did. As we mentioned in our
Speaker 1: intro to the last episode, Deborah is the author of
Speaker 1: the New York Times notable book The Poison Spot, as
Speaker 1: well as the New York Times bestseller The Poisoner's Handbook.
Speaker 1: So there was no other guests that we could think
Speaker 1: of having. She had to begin. Yeah, the the absolute
Speaker 1: perfect one. And this is part two of our chat
Speaker 1: with Deborah. So if you missed part one, be sure
Speaker 1: to give that a listen. And now let's jump right
Speaker 1: back into our fun discussion with Deborah Blum all about poison. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna take us back to Arsenic for a minute.
Speaker 1: And you've said before that Arsenic is your favorite poison.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, it may be my favorite poison
Speaker 1: as well after our first season of Griminalia. But I
Speaker 1: was wondering if you would share why you prefer it
Speaker 1: to something like strychnine. Perhaps, I mean, arsenic is still
Speaker 1: my favorite poison. Yeah. The reason when I say that
Speaker 1: people think I sound creepy, I don't understand it because
Speaker 1: it's really really a cool poison. I don't find you
Speaker 1: creepy when you say it at all. You're at the
Speaker 1: right audience here. I've been having such a good time guys.
Speaker 1: Our slicks a naturally occurring element, and uh it's about
Speaker 1: the thirty third most common element in the Earth's crust.
Speaker 1: So and we started making use of it really early
Speaker 1: as a poison. Well, I mean one of the things
Speaker 1: that's really it's got so many interesting layers, and the
Speaker 1: things I like about it are both it's wonderful versatility,
Speaker 1: is a homicidal poison, but also the fact that it's
Speaker 1: really dangerous. Uh as at the park pavilion level. Now,
Speaker 1: there's almost no other poison that you know kind of
Speaker 1: sand bags you on two different levels the way Arsenic
Speaker 1: is because there's an old famous saying in medicine that
Speaker 1: the dose makes the poison, but with arsenic, in fact,
Speaker 1: that's not entirely true. So it's really fascinating. Elemental arsenic.
Speaker 1: It loves to bond with other atoms and and and
Speaker 1: when it bonds with carbon and becomes like something like
Speaker 1: an arsenic sugar, it's not particularly dangerous to us. UM.
Speaker 1: And in fact, we eat a lot of arsenic sugars,
Speaker 1: like our seno bin team which comes up, which is
Speaker 1: in fish, because there's a lot of arsenic and ocean water,
Speaker 1: and we just cabitalize that a way. They actually just
Speaker 1: follow up on that for a minute. There was a
Speaker 1: really interesting study in which they were looking at whether
Speaker 1: pregnant women we're eating enough fish as part of a
Speaker 1: healthy diet because people were avoiding fish because of mercury,
Speaker 1: speaking of poisons UM, and they were able to tell
Speaker 1: that these women had cut out fish because there was
Speaker 1: no sentimenting in there. You're in right, it just wasn't there.
Speaker 1: And so we know that we're exposed to these organic
Speaker 1: arsenic compounds all the time, and they were big nothing um.
Speaker 1: But inorganic arsenic, which you know in chemistry means without
Speaker 1: carbon is all um is really dangerous and the worst
Speaker 1: form of it for us is m arsenic trioxide, which
Speaker 1: if you think about what that means, it just means
Speaker 1: one atom of arsenic with three I mean, yeah, one
Speaker 1: atom of arsenic three of oxygen arsenic three oxygen's trioxide,
Speaker 1: and arsenic crioxide is in fact the poison that was
Speaker 1: called the inheritance powder in the nineteen century. And if
Speaker 1: you go and you look at the labels of pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: bottles for that them that time, that's what you see
Speaker 1: our snic trioxide. And we just cannot handle that at all.
Speaker 1: It gets into your cells, It disrupts the um, the
Speaker 1: part of the cell that is actually metabolizing, provides energy
Speaker 1: the metabolic process and cells. And so it's a broad
Speaker 1: spectrum really lethal poisonous and not that much I mean
Speaker 1: not as poisonous acutely poisonous as strychnine or cyanide. So
Speaker 1: you're talking, you know, in the teaspoon ish and up
Speaker 1: kind of range. It'll kill you because it attacks every cell.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to diagnose, right, So people got in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century got away with arsenic murders all the time.
Speaker 1: And plus that it's odorless and tasteless. It's all these
Speaker 1: wonderful studies from the nineteenth century with scientists mixing into
Speaker 1: vanilla pudding and other things and proving that you know,
Speaker 1: you know, you can put it in anything and people
Speaker 1: can't tell as opposed to something like strychnine or cyanide
Speaker 1: that's really bitter. And until James marsh the chemist about
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century came up with the first super simple
Speaker 1: test to try to detect arsenic in a body, you
Speaker 1: couldn't detect it. So, I mean, it's just such a storied,
Speaker 1: amazing poison from the Borgias into the early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And one of the poisoner speaking of women poisoners in
Speaker 1: my book, is an arsenic murderous Fanny Creighton, right, and uh,
Speaker 1: and she does exactly the kind of things I'm describing,
Speaker 1: you know, she just gets it as a domestic supply
Speaker 1: and kills people that are annoying her in the way
Speaker 1: of money. Um. So you know, even in the twenty
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, when they did have some tools, you
Speaker 1: could still get away with an arsenic murder because it
Speaker 1: looked so much like a natural illness. And I just
Speaker 1: loved the whole devious nous in the way I really
Speaker 1: do it, so I know, right, Like, we had one
Speaker 1: woman this season who mixed it into egg nog and
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, fantastic. Don't you love creative. It's
Speaker 1: a poison that allows poisoners who are devious to be
Speaker 1: so entirely creative. And how they're going to deliver it, right,
Speaker 1: and at what does sore? You're gonna slowly make the
Speaker 1: person sick, or you're gonna try to kill them over.
Speaker 1: I had a arsenic mass murderer in UH Poisoner's Handbook
Speaker 1: in which and what they believe was an angry, vengeful
Speaker 1: baker who had been fired just mixed arsenic into the
Speaker 1: dove for the next day and it was really I mean,
Speaker 1: people just died, right. So although you can do this gradually,
Speaker 1: it can just wipe you right out. And then finally,
Speaker 1: because it is naturally occurring, it turns up in drinking
Speaker 1: water and UH in rice, right, rice is the one
Speaker 1: right that really pulls arsenic and at the part per
Speaker 1: billion level, it does real harm. So the e P
Speaker 1: a standard for arsenic and drinking water inorganic right again,
Speaker 1: UH is ten parts per billion, which sounds like a
Speaker 1: big nothing, but the actual recommendation was three, and so
Speaker 1: the tam parts for billion was a compromise, you know,
Speaker 1: in which utility systems were saying, we think we can,
Speaker 1: you know, without breaking the bank, get this down to town.
Speaker 1: But three would be really impossible. But if you go
Speaker 1: over to countries where it took them a while to
Speaker 1: figure this out, like um taiwan Uh back in the
Speaker 1: I want to say, about thirty years ago had an
Speaker 1: outbreak of something called blackfoot disease. They had arsenic in
Speaker 1: the drinking water at about up to one part per million,
Speaker 1: and it was so destructive to people's circulatory system that
Speaker 1: they developed gangrain in their feet, and which was called
Speaker 1: blackfoot disease. And so we know from actual these unfortunate
Speaker 1: you know, human guinea pig examples of arsenic exposure, that
Speaker 1: arsenic at this very small amount above fifty parts per
Speaker 1: billion can cause real Right. So it is in many
Speaker 1: ways one of the most versatile um and common poisons
Speaker 1: on the planet, and it serves as a reminder to
Speaker 1: all of us that we live on a poison poisoness planet.
Speaker 1: Then we make use of those poisons in all kinds
Speaker 1: of interesting ways, right, and that we need to like
Speaker 1: going back to my point about finding the tools. You know,
Speaker 1: where should I worry? Where should I shouldn't? There's nothing
Speaker 1: better than arsenic. It's the world's great at poison. I
Speaker 1: absolutely came out of our first season thinking the exact Yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely is kind of the star of the season
Speaker 1: for sure. There's no side stepping it. It shows up everywhere.
Speaker 1: It is the number one character. Uh. And I was
Speaker 1: glad that you brought up the Marsh test because of course, Uh,
Speaker 1: that as well as your work talking about kind of
Speaker 1: the beginnings of forensic science, makes me wonder how quickly
Speaker 1: the rise of forensics science stemmed the tide of homicidal poisonings. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's such a good question. So not as quickly as
Speaker 1: you might hope, right, I mean, the Marsh test was
Speaker 1: a really primitive test, right, and which work most of
Speaker 1: the time, but not all of the time. And and
Speaker 1: then then they later came up with refinements on that um.
Speaker 1: But even after the Marsh test, uh came into more
Speaker 1: popular use about mid nineteenth century, people did not know
Speaker 1: how to detect organic compounds, right, organic poisons like cyanide
Speaker 1: or strychnine in a corpse and in Poisonous Handbook. I
Speaker 1: quote this prosecutor from France saying, well, why doesn't everyone
Speaker 1: just kill with plant poisons then, since nobody knows how
Speaker 1: to find them in a corpse, right, I mean, so
Speaker 1: poisoners who are, like I said, really poisons are you know,
Speaker 1: the coldest of killers. I mean, they have to plot
Speaker 1: and plan everything. All poisoning is premeditated, as opposed to
Speaker 1: almost any other weapon. And so you see this really
Speaker 1: interesting shift in the crime statistics in which poisoners shift
Speaker 1: to plant poison's because they're not detectable, right. And it's
Speaker 1: not till thirty to forty years after the March Test
Speaker 1: that we figure out how to detect first nicotine in
Speaker 1: a corpse and we take that on. So we're slowly
Speaker 1: building this knowledge base that then is overwhelmed by the
Speaker 1: tide of industrial chemistry, right, which arises in the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. And this is really the setup for the
Speaker 1: story I tell in Poisoner's Handbook, because I was surprised
Speaker 1: to realize what a very young science, forensic science is, right, Um,
Speaker 1: you know I'd always imagined I mean partly because you know,
Speaker 1: you get this sense from some of the early crime
Speaker 1: fiction in particular that we were right on top of
Speaker 1: this and everyone was running tests. But in fact, the
Speaker 1: for in the United States, the first forensic medicine program
Speaker 1: was started in the nineteen thirties by Galler and Norris,
Speaker 1: and it was the first in the country, followed by
Speaker 1: rob in Boston shortly later. Um, there was no training
Speaker 1: in that. I mean, people didn't even use the term.
Speaker 1: They call it legal medicine, right. Um, so even the
Speaker 1: use of the word forensic science, Um, you know, really
Speaker 1: began in the nineteen thirties, which is less than a
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, in spite of you know, the fact
Speaker 1: that we're building this knowledge, right, I mean, actually forensic
Speaker 1: chemistry was one of the earliest branches of forensic science, right,
Speaker 1: people were not I mean the ability to understand um,
Speaker 1: gunshots and gunshots, batter and bullet rifling is fairly new.
Speaker 1: Blood tests are nude. Of course, DNA analysis much newer. Right. So, really,
Speaker 1: this slow beginning of figuring out the chemistry of poisons,
Speaker 1: the slow beginning was one of the first parts of
Speaker 1: forensic science, but the field itself didn't always start assembling
Speaker 1: itself until the nineteen thirties. And when you look at
Speaker 1: the Nora Skeetler program. You see other people at the
Speaker 1: New York City Medical Examiner's Office, UM, who are blood
Speaker 1: specialists or um plants specialists or right, all of these
Speaker 1: different parts that they're putting together to build a professional field. UM.
Speaker 1: So it's slow, and there's no wonder that you know,
Speaker 1: you can find even arsenic poisoners into the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: because the field is really playing catch up with the
Speaker 1: killers themselves. Welcome back to criminalia. Do you happen to
Speaker 1: have a favorite story from the development of forensic science
Speaker 1: as it relates to poison or or do you really
Speaker 1: kind of like a lot of a lot of the
Speaker 1: I mean, um, so, one of my other favorite poisons
Speaker 1: because it's so efficient, it's carbon monoxide, and I actually
Speaker 1: have two carbon monoxide chapters and Poysoner's handbug um too,
Speaker 1: because it, you know, plays into so many different aspects. UM.
Speaker 1: But one of the carbon monoxide chapters involves this extremely
Speaker 1: failed murder I guess because it makes me laugh. I
Speaker 1: like this story. It's creamely, extremely frustrating and somewhat incompetent
Speaker 1: murder syndicate that forms in the Bronx and UM. The
Speaker 1: early nineteen thirty sort of towards the end of prohibition,
Speaker 1: in which they this group of I mean I wouldn't
Speaker 1: call them nearer to wells, but definitely shady characters who
Speaker 1: are you know, marginally getting along, come up with a
Speaker 1: scheme to um ensure the life of alcoholic garrel, like
Speaker 1: it kind of floats through the speaking that one of
Speaker 1: the moans, and then take out insurance policies on him
Speaker 1: and then have him die, you know, with various different
Speaker 1: schemes that they come up with and cash in and
Speaker 1: the money, and so they pick this Irish alcoholic drifter
Speaker 1: Mike malloy and Mike Malloyd came to be known in
Speaker 1: the New York Press is Mike the Durable, Which will
Speaker 1: tell you why I think this is so funny, because
Speaker 1: they try all of these different ways to kill him,
Speaker 1: you know, poison alcohol and running over him with a
Speaker 1: cab and pouring cold water on him. And I shouldn't leave,
Speaker 1: but it is so hard, right putting him out soaked
Speaker 1: in water in a in a park in February, hoping
Speaker 1: he'll get pneumonia, and and none of it works. He
Speaker 1: just you know, bounces back from every single attempt until
Speaker 1: they finally kill him. I won't give away the Hallwilian
Speaker 1: where with carbon monoxide, and carbon oxide is such an
Speaker 1: efficient killer, right, it works so amazingly well, has this
Speaker 1: fabulous chemical reaction with your bloody which it just shoves
Speaker 1: oxygen out of your blood in a kind of muscle
Speaker 1: man kind of way, speaking of my tendency to animate poisons,
Speaker 1: and right and uh and Getler had really looked at
Speaker 1: all of these different issues with carbon monoxide, in part
Speaker 1: because there had been a charge, a murder charge against
Speaker 1: someone who actually hadn't killed someone with carbon monoxide, and
Speaker 1: he was able to figure that out. And and there
Speaker 1: were people who tried to fake um murders, pretending that
Speaker 1: there had been like a carbon monoxide leak, which and
Speaker 1: he was able to sort that out. So carbon monoxide
Speaker 1: is so interesting because it's so good at what it does,
Speaker 1: and because when you look at how they figured it out,
Speaker 1: it's kind all these amazing stories like Mike Malloy and
Speaker 1: you know a guy who tried to kill his wife
Speaker 1: and um and was caught through chemistry. And so I'm
Speaker 1: especially fond of that as well, just the whole fabulous
Speaker 1: way that you see science Peel apart this long time
Speaker 1: poison um and provide us with tools to protect ourselves
Speaker 1: against it. So carbon oxide is oderless, which makes it
Speaker 1: like arsenic, really dangerous. It's leaking into your room, but
Speaker 1: you don't smell anything, right, you just get sleepy. Um.
Speaker 1: So we add a compound chlora piccron to it now
Speaker 1: so that if, for instance, you know, the gas went
Speaker 1: off on your burner, on your stuff, and you had
Speaker 1: a sleep of gas, you would you smell that weird,
Speaker 1: slightly awkward smell. But that's the chlora piccren, that's not
Speaker 1: the carbononoxide, right, And so we learned from these. It's
Speaker 1: also an example of what we've learned and done better
Speaker 1: in a public health sense. So yeah, that's another I
Speaker 1: like them all, actually loves all the poison. They're so fascinating.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'll say to people, I mean here,
Speaker 1: I am like, you know, walking ball of chemicals, inhaling
Speaker 1: them and drinking them every day, and most of them
Speaker 1: don't do you any harm. So the ones that do
Speaker 1: chemically are really clever. They unlock different locks in your body.
Speaker 1: They take advantage of um, you know, natural symptoms, natural
Speaker 1: systems in an interesting way. Radium deposits to your bones
Speaker 1: because the body processes that like calcium. Thallium is distributed
Speaker 1: by potassium channels, because the body potassiut you know, distributes
Speaker 1: it like potassium. And and the way that poisons can
Speaker 1: take advantage of the Simpson systems that mostly you know,
Speaker 1: protect our health. They're just really interesting, devious chemical compounds.
Speaker 1: And and in a way that probably does make me
Speaker 1: sound creepy, there's a part of me that steps back
Speaker 1: and admires deviousness right related to every one being made
Speaker 1: of chemicals. I was recently researching an incident in sixteen
Speaker 1: sixties Paris, which, of course there was that big debate
Speaker 1: going on in the French academy over whether or not
Speaker 1: it should be allowed for doctors to treat people using
Speaker 1: chemical means. And the whole time I'm reading it, I'm like,
Speaker 1: they're they're already doing it, they just don't call it
Speaker 1: a chemical. Uh So I was glad you mentioned it. Um.
Speaker 1: As we have worked our way through our list of
Speaker 1: poisoning this season, of course, we've been kind of picking
Speaker 1: apart the ways that some of these stories have been
Speaker 1: told over the years, and then comparing that to the
Speaker 1: historical record, to see whether there's really support for it,
Speaker 1: and sometimes there's not. There is clearly a case where
Speaker 1: someone has gotten this reputation when they maybe did not
Speaker 1: deserve it. Um. Have you been surprised by any of
Speaker 1: the instances of poisonings that you've studied over the years,
Speaker 1: either because it turned out poison was not the case,
Speaker 1: or just the way it was it was handled or
Speaker 1: discussed or characterized was a little bit surprising. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things I tackled in Poisoner's Handbook was
Speaker 1: people being falsely accused of poisoning. Right, so there's a
Speaker 1: Mercury poisoner who did not poison his wife, um, but
Speaker 1: was accused of it publicly. Um. There was, as I said,
Speaker 1: a man who was accused of poisoning his one of
Speaker 1: his neighbors and he in that turned out to be
Speaker 1: an accidental death. And so one of the points you
Speaker 1: raise here that I that from my perspective, is really
Speaker 1: important is that, you know, investigations that find innocence are
Speaker 1: just as important as investigations that find guilt. And you know, too,
Speaker 1: we should not just assume that the criminal justice system
Speaker 1: is there to you know, send people to prisoners or
Speaker 1: send them to execution. It's also there in a justice
Speaker 1: sense to take these cases apart and show when people
Speaker 1: work guilty or wherever the story doesn't hold up, and
Speaker 1: and in some cases it it genuinely doesn't. I have
Speaker 1: also thought, you know, about the sort of mythology we
Speaker 1: built around certain poisons and how misleading that can be.
Speaker 1: And and one of those is, of course rice, and
Speaker 1: which was a big hero of Breaking Bad as you know,
Speaker 1: everyone's favorite lethal poison, and gave people the impression and
Speaker 1: I wrote about this too over at Wired, but gave
Speaker 1: people the impression that man, they just had to you know,
Speaker 1: mess around with castor beans or whatever and and gin
Speaker 1: up a little ric in and they could take out
Speaker 1: anyone they didn't know without at all understanding how ricin works.
Speaker 1: And the fact that it's actually lethal in a very
Speaker 1: narrow targeted sense, right, and just really insane uses of it.
Speaker 1: And of course rice and powder. Since when if you
Speaker 1: are you know, an espionage agent, which is where really
Speaker 1: famous rice and killings come from. Um and you carefully injected,
Speaker 1: of course it's going to kill you. But the other methods,
Speaker 1: like you know, rice and pizzas are really nearly as
Speaker 1: dangerous as people like so people partly through you know,
Speaker 1: popular shows like Breaking Back, get these ideas about poisons
Speaker 1: and how they work and and then use them. And
Speaker 1: and that also happened in an interesting way, although it
Speaker 1: is unexpectedly dangerous. There was one of these shows in
Speaker 1: which someone uses vizine to make someone sick at a
Speaker 1: wedding party the wedding um and vizine is really dangerous
Speaker 1: if you swallow it, right, And so there was then
Speaker 1: this rash of visine poisonings. Right. So I think the
Speaker 1: other part of this story is that when we're telling
Speaker 1: poison stories and putting that information out, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: we're trying not to instruct people on how to poison
Speaker 1: other people, right, but you need to be aware that
Speaker 1: they're always going to be people who are going to
Speaker 1: read this um and poisoner's handbook. Actually, and this was
Speaker 1: really appalling to me. I should tell you, Uh ended
Speaker 1: up in a criminal trial of a guy in um.
Speaker 1: He was in the Navy, I think that in San Diego,
Speaker 1: and he tried to kill his wife with salium. People
Speaker 1: wrote me about this when they did the criminal druve.
Speaker 1: The one book he had on his phone was Poisonous handbook.
Speaker 1: So when you look at that chapter, it talks a
Speaker 1: lot about the fact that it's certainly in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: which is a hard to detect poison, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a nineties and that's that's in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: This guy clearly took it into the twenty first century
Speaker 1: thinking he could get away with it, and he got
Speaker 1: the dose completely wrong, right, and so he you know,
Speaker 1: his wife survived and he went to prison. But and literally,
Speaker 1: anytime I was at a party and people say, what
Speaker 1: are you working on, I say, I'm working on a
Speaker 1: book about, you know, something relighted to poison. And people
Speaker 1: would always say to me almost every party, they said, well,
Speaker 1: how would you poison someone. I said to my editor
Speaker 1: at Penguin, I'm like this, this is starting to really
Speaker 1: make me nervous, and she said, I absolutely forbid you
Speaker 1: to ever tell anyone out to poison anyone um. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I was really careful in the book, but people,
Speaker 1: but it is a reminder that when you write about
Speaker 1: these things, or like in the case of breaking Bad,
Speaker 1: when you kind of glorify a particular poison um, you
Speaker 1: can drive this kind of activity and so to be careful.
Speaker 1: That is a fascinating aspect I had not. I mean,
Speaker 1: we think about it and we joke about how Maria
Speaker 1: and I should anyone ever look at our search history
Speaker 1: are going to be like, right, I mean, why are
Speaker 1: you asking how much our stink it takes to kill
Speaker 1: a two hunder pound right, exactly exactly. I've googled it
Speaker 1: more than once. You know, I always thought to myself
Speaker 1: there was a point where I starts the FBI ever
Speaker 1: looked at my searches story, I feel the same entirely homicidal. Right,
Speaker 1: So you are, as we mentioned at the top, the
Speaker 1: director of the Night Science Journalism program. I'm wondering what
Speaker 1: advice you give to up and coming journalists about writing
Speaker 1: on the subject of historical science. And it maybe don't
Speaker 1: tell people how to poison people, but I bet there
Speaker 1: are other lessons also. That's a great question. And you know,
Speaker 1: when I do, when I'm talking to our fellows or
Speaker 1: when i'm you know, talking to other journalism groups, particularly
Speaker 1: talk about the importance of writing about science history. And so,
Speaker 1: going back to when I got my grad degree at Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: my adviser had a joint appointment in journalism and why
Speaker 1: life biology. And when I went there, he said to me,
Speaker 1: you have to study history of science. And I had
Speaker 1: never occurred to me. I had worked for newspapers for
Speaker 1: five years. I was interested in, you know, modern environmental toxicology,
Speaker 1: and um, I'm like, huh. And he said, the most
Speaker 1: important thing about understanding the history of what you cover
Speaker 1: is that you people will not be able to shine
Speaker 1: you on. You know that you're going to interview scientists
Speaker 1: who will say I'm the first person who've ever thought
Speaker 1: of this, and you'll know that's not true because you
Speaker 1: actually know something about the history of the field. So
Speaker 1: one of the things I do when I am talking
Speaker 1: to journalists is I talked not only about my you know,
Speaker 1: philosophical idea that we're always smarter if we know how
Speaker 1: we got here, but about the importance of understanding the
Speaker 1: history of the field, because when you do understand that,
Speaker 1: you really can put what's going on in context right.
Speaker 1: And there's so many examples of that beyond um poison.
Speaker 1: You know, the obvious example today is if you actually
Speaker 1: take a look at some of the things that arose
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighteen influenza pandemic um, they're predictive of
Speaker 1: some of the things we're going through here. They obviously
Speaker 1: we're a long way from a flu shot at that point,
Speaker 1: but mask wearing, social distancing, the hostile response to that,
Speaker 1: the the second wave of that. Right, there's just so
Speaker 1: much that you can look and say to yourself, what
Speaker 1: have we learned and what mistakes are re repeating and
Speaker 1: how could we be smarter about this? And so you know,
Speaker 1: I remind people all the time that, um, there's all
Speaker 1: these amazing facts from history that we've forgotten. Um, if
Speaker 1: you go into an archive. I one of the books
Speaker 1: I did was on the history of the idea that
Speaker 1: love matters, which in science, right, going through this arc
Speaker 1: from the early twentieth century and look in which scientists
Speaker 1: argued that love didn't exist in that relationships between same
Speaker 1: mother and child too just to be called proximity to
Speaker 1: the period where we say, I mean, it was crazy
Speaker 1: to to the other side of that paradigm shift in
Speaker 1: which we say love is. You know, we need a
Speaker 1: solid foundation of love and affection in healthy human development.
Speaker 1: And when I was doing that, I went to the
Speaker 1: archives of the history of American psychology, which are in
Speaker 1: acron Ohio. In that archive. As I was researching this
Speaker 1: changing idea, I found so many scientists who had been
Speaker 1: famous in their time, who are forgotten, who have made
Speaker 1: discoveries about how we think and how we relate to
Speaker 1: each other, that if we just remembered them, if we
Speaker 1: just had that history of time, we wouldn't be making
Speaker 1: some of these mistakes. Again that I mean, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, they were actually looking at the connection between
Speaker 1: affection and intelligence and the importance of right having that
Speaker 1: solid family background in the development of how you think
Speaker 1: and how you thrive in intellectual settings. I mean, when
Speaker 1: I read it, I just thought, oh, I wish right
Speaker 1: that we had not just put that into some archive, right,
Speaker 1: but continue to keep that at the forefront of the conversation.
Speaker 1: So history makes us so much smarter about poison's right,
Speaker 1: but about the world we live in ourselves, and and
Speaker 1: you know, the last thing I'll say about that is
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. You know. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: a failure of the way we teach history in the
Speaker 1: K twelve system, but once you get into like his
Speaker 1: into history, you you just find yourself going, this is
Speaker 1: such an amazing story of who we are. And I
Speaker 1: would like everyone to think that way. On our show,
Speaker 1: normally at the end of every episode we do a
Speaker 1: segment called What's Your Poison, where we make a cocktail
Speaker 1: that is the to the subject at hand. So I
Speaker 1: do not know if you are a drinker or not,
Speaker 1: But if you are or if you're not, what's your poison?
Speaker 1: What's your favorite beverage? Oh, I'm like a journalist. I've
Speaker 1: been drinking in newsrooms for decades. Um So I really
Speaker 1: love some of the nineteen twenties cocktails. Um and and.
Speaker 1: In fact, while I was working on Poisoner's Hand, but
Speaker 1: I like was trying to drink my way through the
Speaker 1: famous cocktails of the twenties, that's all I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: I'm really becoming an alcoholic here um and, because they
Speaker 1: were really interesting cocktails, because a lot of some of
Speaker 1: them were designed to cover up the taste of ethel
Speaker 1: you know, methyl alcohol and boot like bathtub gin and
Speaker 1: some of the really horrible tasting you know, sort of
Speaker 1: homebrews of the nineteen twenties, so oh, different kinds of flavoring.
Speaker 1: So my two favorite cocktails from that period are a
Speaker 1: Sidecar and the Bee's Needs, which is a fairly simple
Speaker 1: cocktail of fresh lemon juice and gin and honey, or
Speaker 1: a simple servant sirrup and you can add some different
Speaker 1: herbs to that, and I highly recommend them their wonderful cocktails.
Speaker 1: I love it, Deborah. We can never thank you enough
Speaker 1: for spending all this time with us. Oh that's so
Speaker 1: nice of you, guys. I mean, this was really fun
Speaker 1: for me. And you have such smart Debra, take a
Speaker 1: minute and thank questions. I really enjoyed it. It was
Speaker 1: really fun for us to Yes, you guys, take care
Speaker 1: out there. You much, deb It's almost impossible to say
Speaker 1: how much we want to thank Debrae for joining us
Speaker 1: and spending a ton of time just chatting about poison
Speaker 1: and poison and more poise and and not even just arsenic, right,
Speaker 1: it was a little bit of like an arsenic fan.
Speaker 1: But uh. We also cannot recommend her books highly enough
Speaker 1: if you have not read them, As is completely obvious
Speaker 1: from listening to her talk. She is so knowledgeable and
Speaker 1: so good at talking about science in a way that
Speaker 1: is accessible for non scientists and really really compelling. Highly
Speaker 1: recommend So we do have one What You're Poison following
Speaker 1: this interview that I'm going to throw over to Holly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so as you as you know, we asked Eva what
Speaker 1: her favorite cocktails were. If you listen last week, we
Speaker 1: you know, you know, we did a sidecar, and this
Speaker 1: time I'm doing a bes knees. Similar to the sidecar,
Speaker 1: you'll see recipes for bees knees that are all pretty similar,
Speaker 1: but with slightly different variations and amounts of of each
Speaker 1: particular component. So you'll see anywhere from one and a
Speaker 1: half to the most. I was two and a half
Speaker 1: ounces of gin. That seems like an awful lot to me.
Speaker 1: I would hit right around to um half an ounce
Speaker 1: to an ounce of lemon juice. Three quarters is where
Speaker 1: I tend to land, and then most call for about
Speaker 1: a half ounce of honey syrup. I like a whole
Speaker 1: ounce of honey syrup because it takes the edge off
Speaker 1: the gin a little bit. For me, I'm not a
Speaker 1: gin person. I'm not either. I was wondering when this
Speaker 1: came up. I was trying to think if I'd had
Speaker 1: these knees before, but because it's gin, it is highly unlikely. YEA, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have had them before, and I it's one of
Speaker 1: those things I'm always like I'm gonna have that. It
Speaker 1: sounds fun, and then I'm like, why did I order this?
Speaker 1: It's not really my drink there I mean, which is
Speaker 1: no shade at all to any bartender that's ever made one.
Speaker 1: It's just gin is not I'm I have one of
Speaker 1: those palettes to whom gin tastes very much like I'm
Speaker 1: chewing on pine bark. Um. A good gin will help that,
Speaker 1: but even so I still get pine flavor. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that's last time I talked about how you can kind
Speaker 1: of switch things up. This is such a simple recipe
Speaker 1: um that for me, it's just becomes a matter of
Speaker 1: like throttling the amount of honey syrup that's in it.
Speaker 1: If you don't have you know, uh, if you did
Speaker 1: not know, honey syrup is one of the easiest things
Speaker 1: on earth to make. It is just like a simple syrup.
Speaker 1: It's one part honey to one part water. You throw
Speaker 1: it in a saucepan and let it just reach a boil,
Speaker 1: so it's completely easy to um for the sugar and
Speaker 1: the honey to dissolve, and then you let it cool
Speaker 1: off in your golden I do very small amounts when
Speaker 1: I make batches of honey syrup like literally a third
Speaker 1: of a cup to a third of a cup because
Speaker 1: I just don't use it in that much stuff. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't, It really doesn't come up a lot doesn't.
Speaker 1: But then it's one of those things that once you
Speaker 1: have it on hand, you'll just start throwing it in
Speaker 1: cocktails and then discovering because one of the things it
Speaker 1: really does is it like warms it up. It just
Speaker 1: gives it this nice extra body and it it um.
Speaker 1: It does take the edge off of things. And if
Speaker 1: there are harsh flavors your your spirits, it will help
Speaker 1: kind of soothe those. Uh. And so for me, it's
Speaker 1: just a matter of adding that bit of honey to
Speaker 1: make this a yummy or drink. So that is the
Speaker 1: bees Knees. And again we cannot say thanks enough to Deborah,
Speaker 1: so we will raise the beas knees in her honor.
Speaker 1: I'll drink the gin just for it, right absolutely, And
Speaker 1: we also want to make sure that we thank you
Speaker 1: are listeners for listening this season. Our next and last
Speaker 1: episode on Lady Poisoners is going to be our review
Speaker 1: of the whole season. But do not fret, we're going
Speaker 1: right into a season two. It won't be about Lady Poisoners.
Speaker 1: It will be about stalkers instead. But we're gonna, we're
Speaker 1: gonna keep right on going, and so in that next episode,
Speaker 1: we are going to cover some of our favorite episodes
Speaker 1: from the season, as well as our favorite cocktails that
Speaker 1: we've had this time around. Thank you again for listening.
Speaker 1: We can't wait to meet back here next week. Criminalia
Speaker 1: is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more pod casts from Shondaland Audio,
Speaker 1: please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H