Speaker 1: Hi, I'm erin Welsh, and I'm erin Allman Updike, and.
Speaker 2: I'm Matt and dais Yay, I'm back.
Speaker 1: Our favorite.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: And this is a crossover edition of this podcast Will
Speaker 3: Kill You and in Defensive Plants. Yeah cool. Well, we're
Speaker 3: very excited to have you, Matt, and we've been looking
Speaker 3: forward to recording another Poison cast for a long time.
Speaker 2: I know these are so much fun and it's just
Speaker 2: fantastic to be back. So thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so what are we doing this week? Guys?
Speaker 1: This week we're doing Risin.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, one of my all time favorite exotic plants.
Speaker 2: We'll call it that.
Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't know it was an exotic plant.
Speaker 2: I mean, where do you draw the line for exotic.
Speaker 2: It's a distance metric. I think from like where your
Speaker 2: front doorstep Issa, And to me, this qualifies.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's fun.
Speaker 3: Well, by the end of this episode, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 3: that everyone out there it's going to be their favorite
Speaker 3: poison Exotic Plant episode, et cetera, et cetera. Right, I agree,
Speaker 3: Can we promise that this early on?
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like this is one of the
Speaker 2: weird areas where I can actually feel confidence.
Speaker 1: So sure, yeah, let's make that claim.
Speaker 2: Let me have this.
Speaker 1: Do we have any business before we jump right in?
Speaker 1: I have one piece of business.
Speaker 3: That's why I'm asking, okay, go ahead, share with the
Speaker 3: class air.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to make one correction from one of
Speaker 1: our more recent episodes, the toxoplasmosis episode. We got an email,
Speaker 1: and this is an important point of clarification that I
Speaker 1: wanted to make. Cats are not contagious for their entire
Speaker 1: life with toxoplasmosis, So when cats get infected, they only
Speaker 1: shed toxoplasma for like a few weeks of their life
Speaker 1: and then they're immune for life. And I think that
Speaker 1: maybe didn't come across in our episode, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to make that clear, and thank you to the people
Speaker 1: who emailed us to clarify that.
Speaker 2: Right, All right, okay, Well then unexpected things.
Speaker 1: Moving back to poisons.
Speaker 3: Yes, what time is it?
Speaker 1: It's quarantiney time.
Speaker 3: It almost got me there. I was like, well, seven
Speaker 3: thirty also means it's quarantini time. Definitely seven thirty somewhere
Speaker 3: it's quarantine time somewhere. Cool.
Speaker 1: So what are we drinking this week? Aaron?
Speaker 3: We are drinking the ticking time bomb, and it's named
Speaker 3: this for reasons that will become clear later in the episode,
Speaker 3: but for now, let's talk about what's in the ticking
Speaker 3: time bomb.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about it is.
Speaker 3: Basically, it's hot buttered rum. Yes, so you have some rum,
Speaker 3: you make a little mix of like butter and spices,
Speaker 3: and then you drop that into the rum. Add some
Speaker 3: hot water. Boom. It's really delicious.
Speaker 1: It sounds weird to put butter in your rum, but
Speaker 1: it is very tasty.
Speaker 2: It is really well, y'all are blowing my mind. I
Speaker 2: did not know that that was a possibility, a thing
Speaker 2: that you could do. Yeah, but this is a great
Speaker 2: winter drink.
Speaker 3: It is. Yeah, it's perfect. Okay, So I mean everyone's
Speaker 3: got there, Quarantini, and now we just have one last
Speaker 3: piece of business, which is the episode itself.
Speaker 1: Well, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, we'll take one quick break before we get started.
Speaker 3: There are so many reasons that I'm excited for this episode,
Speaker 3: and the very top reason is one that we kind
Speaker 3: of talked about as we were coming up with Quarantini names,
Speaker 3: and that's the etymology of Risin. Because I didn't realize it,
Speaker 3: like it took me researching this episode to understand the
Speaker 3: links between Risin and Ricinus, the species or the genus name,
Speaker 3: and another creature that is very near and dear to
Speaker 3: my heart. So anyway, we'll get into that in a second.
Speaker 3: The second reason that I'm super excited about this episode
Speaker 3: is because the history of Ricin is like pretty long,
Speaker 3: like much longer than I thought, and super interesting and
Speaker 3: has a couple of murders along the way, yes, at
Speaker 3: least a couple.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the best final reason is because I feel like
Speaker 3: it's been so long since we have done this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it has too long.
Speaker 3: Especially like I mean, we did aspirin earlier this year,
Speaker 3: but we haven't done a poison in a really long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so true.
Speaker 3: I feel like my plant blindness has really gotten out
Speaker 3: of control.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can sense it from here, So let's
Speaker 2: let's get on this.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: I remember during our episode or after our episode on
Speaker 3: Kittrid and we talked about how basically the world is
Speaker 3: crashing around us and everything's going extinct, and you were like,
Speaker 3: plants are at the biggest risk of all and I
Speaker 3: was like, no, my plan blindness.
Speaker 2: And I tried to preface that with like all of
Speaker 2: the hand wavy hand motions and goofiness and even like
Speaker 2: picturing the accent.
Speaker 1: But Sarah didn't. She was like, you guys, come on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was just pure anger.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's understandable.
Speaker 2: It is true. Plants are leading the extinction charge and
Speaker 2: it's it's frightening.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, so there's our second correction of the episode already.
Speaker 2: Oh no, and I was the cause?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, okay, all right, So basically what I
Speaker 3: want to do for this section of Risin is to
Speaker 3: break it down into two parts, and that hopefully should
Speaker 3: then lead into your discussion about biology erin cool and
Speaker 3: the reason that we're doing this episode. Okay, so we've
Speaker 3: established that the poison ricin, actually we haven't established this.
Speaker 2: Get to the establishing part.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the poison Risin comes from the castor bean plant
Speaker 3: Riscinus or ricinus communists, which is also what is used
Speaker 3: to produce castor oil, which is just like as far
Speaker 3: as that, before this episode, I was like, oh, it's
Speaker 3: that old timey oil.
Speaker 1: That's it, old timey oil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And up until this episode, I just thought it
Speaker 2: was an unfortunate overlap in naming. And then I was like, oh, oh,
Speaker 2: it's the same.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, yeah. Yeah. So okay, So this section, I'm
Speaker 3: going to talk about the history of the plant itself,
Speaker 3: starting with its uses as a medicine in the form
Speaker 3: of castor oil, and then wrap up with how it
Speaker 3: was used as a poison in the form of ricin.
Speaker 3: So I think I'll start off where I usually do,
Speaker 3: which is in ancient Egypt. Yes, and basically archaeologists have
Speaker 3: found that people have been using this plant for thousands
Speaker 3: of years, so they've found castor bean seeds and ancient
Speaker 3: Egyptian tombs dating back to four thousand BCE. And then
Speaker 3: in ancient times, like in ancient Egypt, in the Middle East,
Speaker 3: it was known by various names, including Palma Christie because
Speaker 3: of the red leaves the plant, which we're supposed to
Speaker 3: look like the hands of Christ. It was known also
Speaker 3: as the African wonder tree because of how fast it
Speaker 3: grew or it grows. Yeah, and so it's this fast
Speaker 3: growing quality that actually landed it and mentioned in the
Speaker 3: Bible as probably the tree that sprung up overnight to
Speaker 3: shade Jonah from the sun. It's a story I'm not
Speaker 3: familiar with. But yeah, it's also called the mole plant
Speaker 3: because it has compounds that deter moles. Matt, maybe you'll
Speaker 3: tell us more about that.
Speaker 2: Sure, You're like, maybe we'll google this right now.
Speaker 3: And the common name for the plant, the castor being plant,
Speaker 3: actually came about accidentally, so people confused it with another
Speaker 3: shrubby plant, vitex agnes castis, but the name stuck. So okay,
Speaker 3: So all that's interesting enough, little bits of trivia that
Speaker 3: hopefully you'll take home with you. But I was so
Speaker 3: excited for the etymology of ricin and the castor being
Speaker 3: plant because of the science name for the plant rissiness
Speaker 3: communists is where we get the word ricin, and Carl
Speaker 3: Linaeus happened to choose this name communists the second part
Speaker 3: because it was found worldwide, and he chose Ristinus because
Speaker 3: ricinus is the Latin word for tick, and Calais thought
Speaker 3: that the seeds were shaped and looked like a tick,
Speaker 3: specifically the European sheep tick or the castor bean tick.
Speaker 3: I've also seen it called, and I was just like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, Exode's your cinis is the tick that
Speaker 3: I literally studied in Europe?
Speaker 1: What oh how fun.
Speaker 2: I made a little noise when I read that, and
Speaker 2: I was like noon, and I.
Speaker 3: Was looking at pictures of the seeds, the castor being seeds,
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh man, that's it's like not
Speaker 3: you know, it's not far off. It does kind of
Speaker 3: look like a slightly engorged exodes rissiness tick.
Speaker 2: It's great if you have someone with them in their garden,
Speaker 2: pick one up, put it in your pocket, and then
Speaker 2: just go like, ah, I think I just found a
Speaker 2: tick on your floor, and pick it up and show
Speaker 2: it to them and just have them lose it for
Speaker 2: a little bit. I've never done that.
Speaker 3: Before, Sinister. That's a very specific thing to imagine. That's
Speaker 3: something that you've never done before, Matt.
Speaker 2: Imagine what anomology could do for you.
Speaker 3: Okay, So now that my favorite revelation is over, should
Speaker 3: we just like stop and go right onto biology or
Speaker 3: do you want to hear more about it?
Speaker 2: Are we just done here at the end of history? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, ticks, plants and poison and that's it.
Speaker 1: I mean, never have we had an under ten minute
Speaker 1: history section air And let's get.
Speaker 3: Real listen, our episodes just get longer and longer. Okay,
Speaker 3: would it even be an episode of this podcast? Will
Speaker 3: kill you? If I didn't mention the Ebbers Ebers Papyrus
Speaker 3: that it would not yep. I think every time we've recorded,
Speaker 3: we've talked about it. Yeah, so just as a refresher.
Speaker 3: The Ebres Papyrus is the ancient Egyptian medical treatise from
Speaker 3: about four thousand years ago, and in the this Ebers
Speaker 3: Papyrus Ebers Papyrus, cast or oil makes several appearances. It
Speaker 3: was prescribed for various illnesses, mostly skin related. Also, it
Speaker 3: was mentioned as use for oil lamps, as a lotion
Speaker 3: to prevent headliced as a laxative and purgative. So in
Speaker 3: ancient Egypt, people would actually mix the oil with beer
Speaker 3: to you know, like get rid of everything, just evacuate.
Speaker 1: Like what they use for before you get a colonoscopene.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, yeah, and so that's why we did hot
Speaker 3: buttered brum, to be honest, because oil oil oil in
Speaker 3: the drink.
Speaker 2: A few more of these and it might not be
Speaker 2: too far off the symptoms.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it is a ticking time bomb.
Speaker 3: You gotta go. Oh, so thank you for reminding me.
Speaker 3: The ticking part is because rissiness and the link between
Speaker 3: ticks and castor being plant. So that's the first part
Speaker 3: the ticking time bomb part of it. Will I'll get
Speaker 3: into that also. Okay, So even though people were ingesting
Speaker 3: the oil, the dangers of the oil were known about
Speaker 3: somewhat and so it wasn't used that frequently and some
Speaker 3: cultures didn't use it at all to like, you know,
Speaker 3: ingest and so during this time, the plant didn't spend
Speaker 3: too much time out of these roles, out of these
Speaker 3: like medicinal or useful roles in terms of either topical
Speaker 3: treatment for skin conditions or oil for lamps. And at
Speaker 3: a point like so it became super widespread, but then
Speaker 3: cultivation in much of Europe apparently kind of died out,
Speaker 3: except in places like Greece, and then the plant started
Speaker 3: to be harvested from Jamaica or parts of Asia, and
Speaker 3: so that was like sort of from the I don't know,
Speaker 3: fifteen hundreds down to the late eighteen hundreds. And then
Speaker 3: what happened was the twentieth century comes around, and then
Speaker 3: we have this huge boom in technology, and particularly in
Speaker 3: the development of cars and other heavy machinery, you know,
Speaker 3: or improvements in trains that needed big engines, and these
Speaker 3: engines needed to be more efficient, so in order to
Speaker 3: be more efficient. These super powerful engines needed a lubricant
Speaker 3: that could be liquid at cold temperatures but then remain
Speaker 3: thick at hot temperatures. And it turns out that if
Speaker 3: you add castor oil to the existing lubricants, it would
Speaker 3: increase the temperature range over which these engines could operate,
Speaker 3: and so it made them much more efficient and you
Speaker 3: could build much more powerful engines. Huh, which is really
Speaker 3: cool without castor oil? Who knows? And so what.
Speaker 2: Are like weird resurgence in the popularity of something?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so in this is really what you know,
Speaker 3: some papers suggest kind of paved the way for airplanes,
Speaker 3: or at least allowed them to develop. And you know,
Speaker 3: in World War One, for instance, if okay, actually do
Speaker 3: me this picture a pilot from World War One.
Speaker 2: I got a red bear thing going on right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's got like, you know, a scarf around his
Speaker 3: neck kind of flapping in the wind. He's got that
Speaker 3: little like leather cap and goggles and stuff. Totally that
Speaker 3: wasn't just like fashion. That was function because apparently the
Speaker 3: castor oil lubricant would just like spray all over the cockpit,
Speaker 3: and so the silk scarf was to wipe his eyes
Speaker 3: as goggles's face and also like the the windshield or
Speaker 3: whatever you call it in a plane.
Speaker 1: I would say probably still call what isn't that interesting?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: We have a painting of my grandpa in his flight
Speaker 1: outfit and it looks just like that with his hat
Speaker 1: and the goggles and the scarf and everything.
Speaker 2: If only I could ask him, be like, what's it
Speaker 2: like to be sprayed with castor or?
Speaker 1: She was not in World War One?
Speaker 2: That's well, they still.
Speaker 3: I think that they had better control over it.
Speaker 2: I think they had cockit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, So then you know this was used heavily
Speaker 3: during World War One and then World War Two. Of course,
Speaker 3: you know, using planes to drop bombs and shoot things
Speaker 3: and whatever else increased a ton and so the US
Speaker 3: was like, hey, we're going to run out of castor oil,
Speaker 3: so they were encouraging farmers in the Midwest to grow
Speaker 3: castor bean plants. Then they realized is that this pollen
Speaker 3: caused like a huge increase in hay fever and asthma,
Speaker 3: and so people were like getting sick everywhere, and they
Speaker 3: were like, yeah, we got to dial this down. So
Speaker 3: also castor oil was used medicinally during throughout like up
Speaker 3: all through World War Two, and also in ways that
Speaker 3: are a little bit less than medicinal. So even though
Speaker 3: this isn't the poisons, this kind of feels a bit
Speaker 3: more like poison section. Let me just explain this. So parents,
Speaker 3: parents would give their kids a small spoonful of castor oil,
Speaker 3: sometimes for purging or as a punishment apparently, oh god.
Speaker 3: And then in Italy during World War Two, Mussolini and
Speaker 3: his fascist militia would force feed up to a leader
Speaker 3: of castor oil, sometimes mixed with gasoline, to people who dissented.
Speaker 3: What so that would result in internal burns, extremely painful diarrhea, dehydration,
Speaker 3: and death for most people.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So even though castor oil was like a medicine, it wasn't.
Speaker 3: You know. Here's that whole thing about too much of
Speaker 3: a good thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, magic, a physician, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: That's disturbing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But the good news in terms of well, in
Speaker 3: terms of that, I guess if there is good news
Speaker 3: is that as the medicine advanced throughout the twentieth century,
Speaker 3: less harsh purgatives and laxatives were developed, and castor oil
Speaker 3: kind of just like fell by the wayside. But that's
Speaker 3: only one half of this story. Ooh, okay, are you
Speaker 3: ready for the reason for this episode the poison as
Speaker 3: part of it. Yeah, yeah, risin. It's very human that
Speaker 3: archaeologists believe that they have detected the use of risin
Speaker 3: as a poison thousands and thousands of years before they
Speaker 3: could detect medicinal use of the plant. So in a
Speaker 3: cave in South Africa, researchers found a ball of beeswax
Speaker 3: that also had risin in it, And the archaeologists think
Speaker 3: that this bees wax, which is approximately thirty five thousand
Speaker 3: years old, what thirty five thousand years old, was used
Speaker 3: to attach stone points to arrows and and they also
Speaker 3: found in this cave, the same cave a stick that
Speaker 3: was around twenty thousand years old that was thought to
Speaker 3: be used to apply risin to spearheads.
Speaker 2: Yeoh right, human nature.
Speaker 3: If that really was like used for that purpose, that
Speaker 3: would be the earliest known use of poison period. Like wow,
Speaker 3: it will probably use poison forever.
Speaker 1: But yeah, wow.
Speaker 2: Dude, that's super interesting.
Speaker 1: Where did you say they found this in? What part
Speaker 1: of the world?
Speaker 3: South Africa?
Speaker 1: Wow, that is so interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, let's see. Okay, So airlik stumbled upon the
Speaker 3: possibility that you could build up an immunity to risin
Speaker 3: and other toxins by feeding animals tiny doses over time
Speaker 3: and gradually ramping up. He tested it where you could
Speaker 3: get them to be resistant to a dose of risin
Speaker 3: that was eight hundred times more than like the deadly dose,
Speaker 3: if that makes sense. Yeah, not saying that, yeah, but
Speaker 3: the lethal yes, exactly, the lethodos.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But this was not a new idea. So in parts
Speaker 3: of India farmers had been doing that to their cattle
Speaker 3: for hundreds of years. Nice, but yeah, Erlik was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I have this new idea. And other medical uses of risin,
Speaker 3: not just castor oil, were developed as researchers learned more
Speaker 3: about the mechanism of action. So it's been used as
Speaker 3: a tumor suppressant and in other ways that I'm sure
Speaker 3: you're gonna talk about Aaron. Oh cool, all right. So,
Speaker 3: just as World War One and World War Two afforded
Speaker 3: castor oil the opportunity to shine as a lubricant for
Speaker 3: plane engines, these wars let risin share a bit in
Speaker 3: the glory as well. During World War One, it's not good.
Speaker 3: During World War One, the US looked into using ricin
Speaker 3: as a weapon, a bioweapon, of course, mostly by coating
Speaker 3: bullets or shrapnel or like whatever with the toxin. The
Speaker 3: resulting shrapel that's dark. It's very dark.
Speaker 1: That's really dark.
Speaker 3: So here's a quote from one of the researchers on
Speaker 3: this particular research project. It is not unreasonable to suppose
Speaker 3: that every wound inflicted by a shrapnel bullet coated with
Speaker 3: risin would produce a serious casualty, i e. A casualty
Speaker 3: much more severe than from the bullet without the risin.
Speaker 3: Many wounds which would otherwise be trivial would be fatal.
Speaker 2: Dang, isn't that I mean, from knowing the plant, not surprising.
Speaker 3: But that is dark, right, Yeah, it's yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 3: very dark. Okay, so believe it or not. This weaponization
Speaker 3: of risin was actually frowned upon and was found to
Speaker 3: be against international laws and could only be used. It
Speaker 3: was ruled that it could only be used if the
Speaker 3: Germans used some weapons first, so it could only be
Speaker 3: using retaliation.
Speaker 2: Just kind of messed up, but okay, sure, so.
Speaker 3: Of course they could keep developing.
Speaker 1: That's what it means is they can keep doing research
Speaker 1: on it just your case.
Speaker 3: And this also didn't stop the US from investigating how
Speaker 3: risin could be aerosolized because aerosolization apparently wasn't viewed as
Speaker 3: a poison like that wasn't viewed as a poisoning event. Understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sorry. We can aerosolize this and spray it
Speaker 1: all over a whole city of people, but don't worry.
Speaker 1: That's not poisoning them.
Speaker 2: That's magical.
Speaker 3: I don't yeah, I'm not sure what was happening. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In any case, Fortunately, rice and dust wasn't found to
Speaker 3: be an effective or efficient aerosolized weapon because breathing it
Speaker 3: in wasn't as toxic as ingesting it or having it injected,
Speaker 3: and so efforts to develop it were abandoned. Also, it
Speaker 3: would be really difficult to like yet the amount that
Speaker 3: you needed and like disperse it over an area like
Speaker 3: it's just yeah. So anyway, fortunately, but then in World
Speaker 3: War Two, the word had gotten out about ricin because
Speaker 3: countries everywhere were trying to develop it as a weapon,
Speaker 3: and people got like pretty far with this, especially in
Speaker 3: the US, where they were able to make this like
Speaker 3: super concentrated deadly powder that they called agent w oh,
Speaker 3: but yeah, why w I can't remember. I think I
Speaker 3: saw it somewhere and I forgot. I'm sorry I saw it.
Speaker 3: I thought, I think interest But now it's gone. Now
Speaker 3: it's way out of my head. But yeah, so the
Speaker 3: agent W was like way, it was like way too
Speaker 3: much work. So they were like, now we're not doing this.
Speaker 3: There are way easier, you know, toxic things that we
Speaker 3: can make.
Speaker 2: Oh totally yeah, yeah, low hanging fruit.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and then also the other thing is at
Speaker 3: the time, and I don't know about now, but at
Speaker 3: the time, at least, there was no remedy for still true.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, for risin. There you go. But okay, So,
Speaker 3: biological warfare was banned in nineteen seventy in the US,
Speaker 3: and in nineteen seventy five that also included toxins, and
Speaker 3: so since then, risin as a substance alone has been
Speaker 3: highly regulated in the US. Okay, So that's in the US,
Speaker 3: But what about abroad? Well, okay, the USSR was reported
Speaker 3: to have continued developing risin as a bioweapon throughout the
Speaker 3: seventies and eighties, and it would end up making some
Speaker 3: headlines during this time.
Speaker 1: Oh I know what you're going to talk about I.
Speaker 3: Think might but surprised is this is the only thing
Speaker 3: I knew about Risin before, pretty much saying going into
Speaker 3: this episode, yeah, I just and I was like, it
Speaker 3: wasn't even sure entirely. So the more I read about it,
Speaker 3: the more I was like, what is happening? Okay? I knew, like,
Speaker 3: the only thing I knew was that Risin was used
Speaker 3: in some kind of spy murder and there was an umbrella.
Speaker 2: All right, Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: I think that you should serve this drink with an
Speaker 1: umbrella in it.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying I didn't even think about that when.
Speaker 1: That, and I think it's a pretty good idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: So in the nineteen seventies, Bulgaria was part of the
Speaker 3: Eastern Bloc, so the USSR, and as you might expect,
Speaker 3: opposition or descent to the communist state was pretty risky business.
Speaker 3: It was going to get you disappeared? Was it? So?
Speaker 1: Sinisky?
Speaker 2: I tried to say it three more times really fast, though.
Speaker 3: So there was this Bulgarian writer named and I. I
Speaker 3: have listened to YouTube videos about the news and I've
Speaker 3: heard it pronounced two ways. So I'm going to say
Speaker 3: it both ways. At the beginning, Giorgi Markov and Georgi Markova.
Speaker 3: I think it's Georgia most likely. Yeah, yeah, But anyway,
Speaker 3: so Giorgi Markov was initially friends actually with the President
Speaker 3: of Bulgaria, but then he eventually got disillusioned with communism
Speaker 3: and he moved to England where he continued to be
Speaker 3: a prominent novelist, and he wrote about and spoke about
Speaker 3: these criticisms that he had of the Bulgarian government, and
Speaker 3: he would go on TV and stuff like that as
Speaker 3: a BBC correspondent.
Speaker 2: No no, no, yeah.
Speaker 3: So his former friend, the President of Bulgaria, Todar Jikov,
Speaker 3: decided that Markov should be silenced because he was insulting
Speaker 3: the citizens of Bulgaria and they might take offense to
Speaker 3: what he was saying. But really he was like, he's
Speaker 3: saying mean things about me, and I want him to
Speaker 3: be killed.
Speaker 2: He is my ex best friend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so he wanted to kill Markov in a
Speaker 3: way that wouldn't be easily traced to the Bulgarian government,
Speaker 3: and so he worked with KGB to develop a method,
Speaker 3: and they ended up deciding that what they would do
Speaker 3: is take some ricin and put it in a tiny,
Speaker 3: tiny pellet that could be surreptitiously somehow injected into Markov,
Speaker 3: and then the coding surrounding this pellet would wear off
Speaker 3: or like burn off, and then the ricin would then
Speaker 3: start to disintegrate and go through the body and poison you.
Speaker 3: So they tested this out with a horse and a prisoner. Oh,
Speaker 3: with mixed results. Yeah. The horse died and the prisoner
Speaker 3: did not.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, not what I was expecting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then they were like, okay, fifty percent chance
Speaker 3: of working. Good enough, Let's let's try it out, go
Speaker 3: for gold. Yeah. So on September seventh, nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 3: Georgi Markov was waiting for a bus at the Waterloo Bridge,
Speaker 3: and as he was sitting there, he felt a sting
Speaker 3: on the back of his thigh and he turned to
Speaker 3: see a man apologize to him, walk away, pick up
Speaker 3: his umbrella, and leave in a taxi, and reportedly he
Speaker 3: had a foreign accent. This person who was saying goodbye
Speaker 3: and left in this taxi, and Markov went on to
Speaker 3: work and was like complaining to a coworker like, hey, man,
Speaker 3: like the back of my leg really hurts. There's a
Speaker 3: little bit of blood there. It was this weird incident
Speaker 3: that happened, and I don't know, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: it was kind of weird. And then by that night
Speaker 3: things were getting much weirder because he was experiencing symptoms
Speaker 3: like muscle cramps, dehydration, fever, and he eventually went into
Speaker 3: the hospital, but the doctors were like, we don't know
Speaker 3: what's going on. Maybe it's some sort of weird infection.
Speaker 3: You know, your white blood cell count is going up
Speaker 3: and up and up, and you're not getting any better.
Speaker 3: And then four days after this incident he so on
Speaker 3: September eleventh, he died of cardiac arrest and initially his
Speaker 3: death was attributed to septuicemia because his leucacyte count was
Speaker 3: thirty three thousand, two hundred very high. Yeah, But at
Speaker 3: the same time, his status as a dissident was well
Speaker 3: known and so this was ruled a mysterious death and
Speaker 3: Scotland Guard was like, uh, we're looking into this. So
Speaker 3: they ordered an autopsy and sure enough they found I
Speaker 3: think on an X ray a tiny, tiny metal pellet, huh,
Speaker 3: measuring one point five to two millimeters in diameter, one
Speaker 3: point five two millimeters in diameter buried in his thigh
Speaker 3: like almost to the muscle, and there was a tiny
Speaker 3: hole in the middle of the pellet where aboutzero point
Speaker 3: two milligrams of risin had been placed, apparently because they
Speaker 3: or they could test for the residue. And the whole
Speaker 3: thing had been coated in a waxy material that was
Speaker 3: designed to melt at ninety eight point six degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 3: or thirty seven degrees celsius human body temperature. So this
Speaker 3: pellet was injected into Markov either by a spring loaded
Speaker 3: pen or umbrella or something like that, probably the guy
Speaker 3: who left in the taxi, hence common name of this
Speaker 3: murder being the umbrella murder.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, geez, this is so interesting. I did not
Speaker 1: know that there was a metal pellet involved. That was
Speaker 1: silly of them. If they had just used something that
Speaker 1: was radio lucent, they never would have gotten caught. What
Speaker 1: something that doesn't show up on an X ray?
Speaker 2: Nice, right, all right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, so then I was reading though, like, so
Speaker 3: this is a really fascinating read. It was like a report.
Speaker 3: It wasn't the autopsy report, but it was the one
Speaker 3: of the physicians so I think had examined Markov and
Speaker 3: then one of the physicians who was who had done
Speaker 3: the autopsy or the medical examiner who had done the autopsy,
Speaker 3: and he talked about how he they had cut out
Speaker 3: the little sections of the thigh on both sides of
Speaker 3: the thighs, the back of them, and the one that
Speaker 3: had had like the bruising and the red mark, and
Speaker 3: he was looking at it and he he saw like
Speaker 3: a pin pushed to the head in it, and he
Speaker 3: was thought, Oh, it's my you know, my coworkers just
Speaker 3: doing that to keep the piece of tissue in place.
Speaker 3: But then he like touched it to make sure and
Speaker 3: it rolled and he like caught it on the table
Speaker 3: and was like, what is this.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I don't know, like some some places have
Speaker 3: said X ray some places anyway, but bizarre.
Speaker 2: It's still like the human ingenuity that goes into.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's like it's really creepy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating up until the whole killing
Speaker 2: thing and then you're like, oh, it's gross, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah yeah. After news of this was made public,
Speaker 3: it turns out that this was not the first time
Speaker 3: that this method of assassination had been attempted, and it
Speaker 3: wouldn't be the last either go figure. Yeah, so there
Speaker 3: was another dissident, another a dissonant from Bulgaria had heard
Speaker 3: about Markov's death on the news, and he at the
Speaker 3: time was living in France and he was like, h hey,
Speaker 3: something very similar happened to me a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 3: He was like, oh, I was near the some place
Speaker 3: and I felt someone bump into me and like a
Speaker 3: sharp pain and stinging, and I felt like a little
Speaker 3: bit bad. But yeah, and he went to the doctor
Speaker 3: and got an X ray and sure enough they found
Speaker 3: a tiny little pellet in his back. But this guy
Speaker 3: had experienced just some like some of the symptoms like
Speaker 3: a fever, but he was still alive. Like this was
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks before Markov had been assassinated, And
Speaker 3: so they removed the pellet from his back and they
Speaker 3: were like, the risin. This is how they actually could
Speaker 3: could see the full structure of it, because the ricin
Speaker 3: was still inside the little or mostly inside the little pellet,
Speaker 3: because the waxy outer surface hadn't melted because it was
Speaker 3: mostly in, like it was too close to the surface
Speaker 3: of his skin. Wow. Yeah, so that's wild. It's yeah,
Speaker 3: it's bizarre. And then in nineteen eighty one, there was
Speaker 3: another assassination attempt same way, this time on a Polish
Speaker 3: double agent who was working with both the CIA and KGB,
Speaker 3: and he was found out at the KGB, so he
Speaker 3: fled to the US. He was at the grocery store
Speaker 3: a couple of years later, just mining his own business,
Speaker 3: and then he gets shot by an air pellet gun
Speaker 3: and gets super sick, but recovers, and then he passes
Speaker 3: a suspicious looking kidney stone which turned out to be
Speaker 3: the rice in peltane. No way. Yeah, it like went
Speaker 3: into his kidney or something. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And there are at least a couple other instances that
Speaker 3: I could find.
Speaker 2: That made me like a little squeamish that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So these are sort of like isolated assassination attempts.
Speaker 3: But risin has also been used in more like I
Speaker 3: would say, larger bioterrorism plots as well, and also important
Speaker 3: to say reportedly. The reason I say reportedly is because
Speaker 3: it hasn't been like the use of risin hasn't been
Speaker 3: traced to any attack in particular, but there have been
Speaker 3: some stockpiles of ricin that have been found, or of
Speaker 3: castor beans or castor seeds, but like it would be
Speaker 3: nearly impossible to deliver with any efficiency, Like you would
Speaker 3: need literal tons of ricin, which would be very difficult
Speaker 3: to produce, and you would be difficult to target like that.
Speaker 3: The dispersal area would be very limited. Again it would
Speaker 3: be the inhalation and so on. But it could still
Speaker 3: be used to create chaos or in target attacks, as
Speaker 3: had been suspected in a couple of supposed rice in plots.
Speaker 3: So there was one that I read parts of a
Speaker 3: book about called the wood Green rice in plot in
Speaker 3: the UK in January two thousand and three. Oh wow, recent, Yeah,
Speaker 3: And so there were five North African men who were
Speaker 3: arrested for their involvement in an alleged rice in ring
Speaker 3: and they were all acquitted except for one. This was
Speaker 3: so you have to remember this was a couple of
Speaker 3: years after nine to eleven, not even a couple years,
Speaker 3: like a year and a half, and tensions were running
Speaker 3: super high. And so this case that had been brought
Speaker 3: to the in court in the UK was the people
Speaker 3: were spending tons of time, tons of money, and they
Speaker 3: really wanted like we're being very successful at finding and
Speaker 3: then getting rid of would be terrorists and it was
Speaker 3: very shaky. Evidence that they had was like a couple
Speaker 3: of castor seeds, castor bean seeds. That's it basically. And
Speaker 3: there were I mean, there were other like alleged poisons
Speaker 3: and recipes and stuff like that, but for the most part,
Speaker 3: it seemed like the people who had been arrested were
Speaker 3: not in the know anyway. And so later in that
Speaker 3: same year, like it was like a year for ricin
Speaker 3: Man because in October in the US, a rice in
Speaker 3: containing envelope was discovered at a South Carolina maile processing facility.
Speaker 3: Like there was actual leedicine in this I remember, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: And then and you probably remember it because of this
Speaker 3: next part, which is that a month later a similar
Speaker 3: like newly identical envelope showed up at the White House.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yea yeah.
Speaker 3: So there was definitely risin on the South Carolina envelope,
Speaker 3: but it seems less conclusive that there was risin on
Speaker 3: the White House envelope. But the but the envelopes were
Speaker 3: basically the same, and they contained similar messages and they're
Speaker 3: both signed by Fallen Angel. They did make that the
Speaker 3: new trucking regulations for the number of hours in the
Speaker 3: sleeper berth to be reduced or sorry, yeah, to be reduced.
Speaker 3: So it had recently changed from eight hours in the
Speaker 3: sleeping berth to ten, and Fallen Angel was like, no, no,
Speaker 3: let's get it back to eight.
Speaker 1: So they were like a trucking supervisor and they were
Speaker 1: worried about the efficiency of their workers.
Speaker 3: Or something, I think something like that. So yeah, and
Speaker 3: so nothing happened. I mean, no one got sick anywhere.
Speaker 3: I don't think the trucking regulations were changed, and no
Speaker 3: one got poisoned with ricin. So but it was definitely like,
Speaker 3: of course, as you can imagine two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: like tensions running extremely high.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit so little tense back then.
Speaker 3: I mean, ricin has been used as a poison for
Speaker 3: thousands and thousands and thousands of years, and it seems
Speaker 3: to have made the headlines like fairly recently, I guess
Speaker 3: if we're talking about two thousand and three. But a
Speaker 3: lot of these same like isolated cases. And as I
Speaker 3: keep saying, like, oh, it would be very inefficient to
Speaker 3: create there, to use ricin as a weapon, blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: But Aaron, should we be scared? What does that actually
Speaker 3: do to you?
Speaker 2: What does it am dying to know.
Speaker 1: Don't die. Let me tell you. We'll take a quick
Speaker 1: break and then we'll jump into it. Every paper about
Speaker 1: the biology of risin starts with the same sentence, So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read it to you. Risin is a heterodimeric
Speaker 1: type two ribosome and inactivating protein. Duh, there's your whole answer.
Speaker 1: Well at you need everything you need to know about risin? Okay,
Speaker 1: I swear every paper started with that same sentence. What
Speaker 1: does that mean? It means that risin is a toxin,
Speaker 1: and in this case, it's a protein toxin. So it's
Speaker 1: a peptide.
Speaker 3: Is that unusual? Uh?
Speaker 1: No, it's not unusual. A lot of yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of So it's actually a very similar protein instructure to
Speaker 1: a protein that we've are sorry, it's a very similar
Speaker 1: toxin in structure to a toxin that we've talked about
Speaker 1: very recently, and that is shiga toxin.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So these are these are toxins that are made
Speaker 1: of two peptides strung together by bonds, so two different
Speaker 1: strands of protein.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And these two strands of peptide work in this way.
Speaker 1: They are kind of like a rocket ship at least
Speaker 1: how I think a rocket ship works. So you know
Speaker 1: how when a rocket ship launches, there's the part that
Speaker 1: like launches the rocket ship into outer space, and then
Speaker 1: there's the like spacey part that goes out of the
Speaker 1: launcher and does the space thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, I've seen a third exactly.
Speaker 1: Okay, So those two pieces, the launchy part and the
Speaker 1: spacey part, Matt can't handle.
Speaker 3: The way I'm describing.
Speaker 1: That is the same way that this risin toxin works.
Speaker 1: There's a what's called the B part, and that's the
Speaker 1: launchy part. So that part of the toxin is what
Speaker 1: allows for this toxin to enter into our cells. So
Speaker 1: it binds on too carbohydrates, so sugars on our cell
Speaker 1: surface and launches the A part of the toxin into
Speaker 1: our cells.
Speaker 2: What yeah, like a virus almost.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it gets engulfed like in a little vacuole,
Speaker 1: just like a virus would in some ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: And then that part inside of the cell interacts with
Speaker 1: the ribosomes. So that first sentence it told us it
Speaker 1: was a ribosomal inactivating protein. So the ribosome is in
Speaker 1: these little balls inside of our cells that are made
Speaker 1: of RNA and protein that are integral in protein synthesis.
Speaker 1: So this toxin inactivates ribosomes, which means it blocks protein synthesis.
Speaker 1: That's like the main function of a cell. If that's
Speaker 1: really Yeah, if a cell can't make protein, a cell
Speaker 1: can't function and the cell will die. So in effect,
Speaker 1: it causes irreversible cell death. Wow.
Speaker 2: I mean like, hey, I'm uh, I was there to
Speaker 2: stop sell things. Yeah, all of them, all the things.
Speaker 3: Exactly real quick? Is there reversible?
Speaker 1: No? No? But there could be reversible ribosome inactivation.
Speaker 2: That's that's zombies. Okay, that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh what.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that is how ricin functions as.
Speaker 2: A toxic Pretty cool, right, pretty wild?
Speaker 1: Okay, that was fun. I've never used rockets as an
Speaker 1: analogy before.
Speaker 2: And you did it so well.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: You know, I followed A to B two C it.
Speaker 1: Okay, man, you learned what that really like. Complicated scent
Speaker 1: means general dimeric, so it's two different parts ribosome inactivating. Cool.
Speaker 1: Now you can read every paper about risin. What does
Speaker 1: it mean when you are exposed to ricin? What does
Speaker 1: that actually look like? Like? You kind of mentioned Aaron
Speaker 1: There are a number of different ways that you can
Speaker 1: get exposed, right. The most common though, it would be
Speaker 1: eating a castor bean. Yeah, quick question, is it a
Speaker 1: bean or would you call it a bean or a thief?
Speaker 2: A seed?
Speaker 1: Okay, is a bean not a seed?
Speaker 2: I just associate beans with FABEESI so like one type
Speaker 2: of family from the fruit of them. But I mean
Speaker 2: they're shaped like beans, but they're all seeds at the
Speaker 2: end of the day.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, okay, Yeah, eating a bowl of castor beans
Speaker 1: would be the easiest way to get exposed to risin,
Speaker 1: So don't do that. You will definitely die if you
Speaker 1: ate just a few Here's what would happen. Since the
Speaker 1: toxin would be entering your GI tract as like its
Speaker 1: first point of entry, most of your symptoms at the
Speaker 1: first are going to be GI symptoms. So we're talking nausea, vomiting, diarrhea,
Speaker 1: intense abdominal cramping, abdominal pain. These are usually the first
Speaker 1: onset of symptoms and they're very rapid, so we're talking
Speaker 1: within a few hours of being exposed. Those are the
Speaker 1: kind of symptoms that you're gonna have, and in general,
Speaker 1: if somebody has ingested castor seeds and they don't have
Speaker 1: those symptoms within twelve hours, they're probably safe.
Speaker 2: Makes sense. Yeah, for reasons i'll talk about later.
Speaker 1: Oh cool, I'm excited. I just thought it was like
Speaker 1: they pooped them out by then.
Speaker 2: But it has a lot to do with that. Okay, Yeah, But.
Speaker 1: These symptoms progress throughout your body as the toxin leaves
Speaker 1: your GI tract, gets into your bloodstream and starts affecting
Speaker 1: other organs. Because that launcher part of the protein, that
Speaker 1: B side of the protein, it is very nonspecific, so
Speaker 1: it'll attack any cell that it can, essentially, so as
Speaker 1: it moves through your bloodstream, it'll start causing damage to
Speaker 1: your liver, and it can cause liver failure, your kidneys,
Speaker 1: it can cause kidney failure. Most people end up dying
Speaker 1: from hypovolemic shock. So shock is when your blood you
Speaker 1: basically don't have enough blood perfusing your organs, and there's
Speaker 1: a number of different ways that that can happen. In
Speaker 1: this case, it's from volume loss. So I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if that's because you're bleeding out of like every orifice,
Speaker 1: or if it's just because it's causing such damage to
Speaker 1: your cells that you are losing volume from your blood.
Speaker 2: Plasmah literally like letting the air out of the balloons
Speaker 2: kind of.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Question, Okay, so you are bleeding out of every orifice.
Speaker 1: Well, you don't bleed out of every orifice, but you
Speaker 1: can have very bloody diarrhea and nausea because this is
Speaker 1: causing cell death. And anytime that you have cell death,
Speaker 1: like you're going to have blood probably as why. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's ingestion, and and the poisons, like the murders
Speaker 1: that you talked about were via injection, which is also
Speaker 1: a little bit different, so that ingestion is the most
Speaker 1: common root, but it's not what keeps the Biowarfare Division
Speaker 1: of the United States Government up at no court. So
Speaker 1: you can also so get ricin poisoning like you mentioned aaron,
Speaker 1: from injection or inhalation. The difference we'll talk in a
Speaker 1: second about the difference in potency of risin between all
Speaker 1: these different methods, but the difference there's also a big
Speaker 1: difference in how your symptoms manifest as you might guess
Speaker 1: since you're starting with different organ systems essentially, so if
Speaker 1: you start with an injection of risin, like in the
Speaker 1: case of the umbrella murders. Then the first symptoms that
Speaker 1: you're going to have are localized symptoms where that injection happened,
Speaker 1: so muscle pain, and you actually can have necrosis, so
Speaker 1: tissue death of the muscle where it was injected. And
Speaker 1: then that toxin will travel through your lymphatic system to
Speaker 1: your lymph nodes and cause necrosis of your lymph nodes.
Speaker 2: You need those, you need those.
Speaker 1: Then it can get into your bloodstream and end up
Speaker 1: causing widespread organ failure, so you'll get overall weakness, you
Speaker 1: can get fever. You also often get vomiting. I think
Speaker 1: it because it has action on protein synthesis in cells.
Speaker 1: It probably has an especially bad effect on rapidly dividing
Speaker 1: cells like in your GI tract. So that's probably why
Speaker 1: you see the vomiting really commonly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how do like So there's these differences in symptoms
Speaker 3: between ingestion and injection, and then I'm sure you'll talk
Speaker 3: about inhalation, and so those things like the ingestion and
Speaker 3: the inhalation kind of makes sense to me, like if
Speaker 3: you're working with in terms of why they would know
Speaker 3: these symptoms. But the injection part is that simply from
Speaker 3: the murders.
Speaker 1: That's a good question. I mean, I would guess so
Speaker 1: like I don't. I mean, I think once it's in
Speaker 1: your bloodstream, it's going to probably have similar effects on
Speaker 1: your organs as it would once it's in your bloodstream
Speaker 1: from ingesting it, if that makes sense. So like a
Speaker 1: liver infected with risin is gonna look probably like a
Speaker 1: liver infected with risin, no matter or how it got infected. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: It's tissues, it hits first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, yeah, okay, yeah, But that's a good question.
Speaker 1: And similar to ingestion, this is very rapid symptom onset
Speaker 1: in the case of injection, so very rapid. Within a
Speaker 1: few hours you're starting to have that muscle pain, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But explains why these victims were able to get to
Speaker 2: work and have wherewithal. It wasn't like a neurotox and
Speaker 2: they just.
Speaker 1: Exactly, yes, precisely WHOA. And then the scary way, of course,
Speaker 1: the bioterrorism fear is inhalation. And what's interesting about inhalation.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting, Aaron that you said it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: very efficient. I can think of a couple reasons why
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be very efficient. One is that it actually
Speaker 1: doesn't cause the widespread multi system disease that we see
Speaker 1: with the other two methods. It's localized to your lungs
Speaker 1: when you get infected. Don't ask me why, Like how
Speaker 1: it can't make it into your bloodstream and go everywhere
Speaker 1: so many other things I don't know, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to the effects are localized to your lungs. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, your lungs are pretty dang important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so does it cause necrosis in your lungs?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it causes equally deadly symptoms. So the first
Speaker 1: symptoms that you'll have are like cough and flu like symptoms,
Speaker 1: and then you'll get respiratory distress, pulmonary edema. Eventually you
Speaker 1: still will get hypotension, so like your blood pressure will
Speaker 1: fall and you'll end up dying and you can't breathe,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But yeah, you don't see it as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell. You don't see it affecting other
Speaker 1: organs as much. But what's interesting, and I think this
Speaker 1: is probably one of the reasons arin there's two reasons
Speaker 1: why it probably isn't that efficient. One is that the
Speaker 1: severity of the disease very much depends on the particle size.
Speaker 1: So small small particle are going to have a much
Speaker 1: more drastic effect than larger particles because they make it
Speaker 1: down deeper into your airways, and larger particles are going
Speaker 1: to have less of an effect, and in some kinds
Speaker 1: like very little effect. And so I think probably to
Speaker 1: purify the exact type of risin, like the particle size
Speaker 1: of risin that would be extra deadly, is probably difficult.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about that.
Speaker 2: Good question.
Speaker 1: And then also there have actually been no confirmed reports
Speaker 1: of a human ever getting inhaled ricin poisoning.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, husible, Yes, okay, so there's one like maybe
Speaker 2: case report from the forties where they think maybe a
Speaker 2: group of.
Speaker 1: People could have been killed by risin inhalation, but not definitively,
Speaker 1: and that's the only one.
Speaker 3: What were the circumstances surrounding.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I didn't read about it. I thought
Speaker 1: you might talk about it, so I didn't want to
Speaker 1: by that.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so all of this information that we have
Speaker 1: about the effects, it's from monkeys. Oh that's said, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's said.
Speaker 2: Anyways, I don't want people to die either, But monkeys,
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: So how much does it take to kill you? How
Speaker 1: much rice? And does it actually take to kill you?
Speaker 1: That's the next question. Uh, as little as five hundred
Speaker 1: micrograms microgram.
Speaker 2: That's a small amount.
Speaker 1: That is a I try to quantify how small.
Speaker 2: This is, Okay, to see it on your face, it's small.
Speaker 1: A quarter teaspoon of sugar, that's your smallest measuring spoon
Speaker 1: is one gram. Okay, so half of that an eighth
Speaker 1: of a teaspoon is a half a gram. Okay, that
Speaker 1: is five hundred thousand micrograms. So one of that can
Speaker 1: kill you.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's incomprehensibly small. But that's by like injection
Speaker 1: or I think in the by inhalation as well, if
Speaker 1: it was like the right kind of inhaled ricin. But
Speaker 1: nobody has purified risin sitting around in your lab. So
Speaker 1: what about castor beans? How many castor bean seeds do
Speaker 1: you have to ingest? Turns out not many, it's like three, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it can be as low as like two or three,
Speaker 1: because even though you have to ingest like a thousand
Speaker 1: times more, there's so much per seed. I guess, uh
Speaker 1: that you can die from just a few seeds. Cool, Okay, cool.
Speaker 3: I read some like instances of because the seeds are
Speaker 3: sometimes used as jewelry, like bees bracelets, And there were
Speaker 3: a couple of case reports I came across of, like
Speaker 3: a girl who was chewing on her bracelet and one
Speaker 3: of the seeds, like and she she recovered.
Speaker 1: But yeah, why would you give it to a child?
Speaker 3: I mean I think she was like fifteen.
Speaker 2: Have you ever been to any air I mean you
Speaker 2: you both spend time in Panama or gone to any airport,
Speaker 2: especially in a tropical country. And you've seen those beads
Speaker 2: there they're red with black. Yeah, I have a same
Speaker 2: story there. So these are extremely common.
Speaker 3: Are you?
Speaker 1: But those aren't? Those aren't.
Speaker 2: No, they're not. But we'll talk about those too, Okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at abrim.
Speaker 2: Abrin a precatorious.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, they're pretty Yeah, yeah they are. Well, so
Speaker 1: that's what happens if you get exposed. That's how much
Speaker 1: it takes to kill you. If you do get exposed,
Speaker 1: like if you eat a spoonful of castor seeds on
Speaker 1: a dare, then you're ridiculous, But go to the doctor.
Speaker 1: There's no cure, there's no anti toxin it's all supportive care.
Speaker 1: There is, however, very cool research going on with ricin
Speaker 1: that I want to chat about real briefly because I
Speaker 1: think it's awesome.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: First of all, there are a couple of different vaccines
Speaker 1: that are under development. That's how scared the US government
Speaker 1: is of a risin attack.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah. At least two different vaccines have undergone at least
Speaker 1: phase one trials.
Speaker 2: That's inhuman pretty significant.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, wow, And it's only for military, Like, they're
Speaker 1: never gonna give this to civilians because there's no situation
Speaker 1: in which it makes sense to do that, right, So
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in that. Actually, what I am interested
Speaker 1: in is the fact that people are trying to use
Speaker 1: risin as a cancer therapy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, judging by what you told us, this makes some sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, because risin inactivates ribosomes and inhibits protein synthesis, it
Speaker 1: has very strong effects on rapidly dividing cells like tumor cells.
Speaker 2: What do you know?
Speaker 1: So, in theory, if you can get risin into tumor cells,
Speaker 1: you can kill tumor cells really easily. Problem is that
Speaker 1: launchy part, the B part of risin is really nonspecific.
Speaker 1: So how do you get it to only target tumor
Speaker 1: cells and not your whole body cells?
Speaker 2: Is it tiny little beads and an umbrella.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of is tiny little particles, nanoparticles. So
Speaker 1: people are trying to conjugate or attach the a part,
Speaker 1: the toxic part of risin, to tumor specific particles that
Speaker 1: will only target tumor cells. And then you can make
Speaker 1: a highly specific, targeted, super super toxic compound to kill
Speaker 1: cancer cells without affecting other cells in your body. How
Speaker 1: cool is that? So I'm not sure if anyone has
Speaker 1: managed to do it, like how far the research has come.
Speaker 1: There's at least a few papers that I found that
Speaker 1: are like, you know, we're working on it, and we've
Speaker 1: like we've conjugated it and it works at least in
Speaker 1: a petri dish. So that's very very cool. And what's
Speaker 1: cool is that. But people are trying to do this
Speaker 1: with other types of toxins as well. But plant toxins
Speaker 1: MATT are like really toxic.
Speaker 2: They're so bad.
Speaker 1: They're like way more toxic than bacterial and fungal toxins
Speaker 1: in general.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a lot of it has to do
Speaker 2: with plants tend to be more on the menu than
Speaker 2: bacteria and other microbial organisms that make sense, and they
Speaker 2: can't run.
Speaker 1: They can't run. Yeah, we always come back to that,
Speaker 1: I know. So yeah, so if they could work, if
Speaker 1: this could work, then you could potentially have a drug
Speaker 1: that's super potent and very specific. So I think that
Speaker 1: that's really incredible. So it's very cool work that's going
Speaker 1: on in the field of rice in cancer research.
Speaker 2: In a few days, actually, maybe after the holiday season,
Speaker 2: I'll have an article coming out with a similar concept.
Speaker 2: So stay tuned for that.
Speaker 3: Ooh cool.
Speaker 2: Oh, just a subscribe to the blog.
Speaker 1: I can't wait.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, anyways, that's the biology of risin.
Speaker 2: Fascinating, good and terrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, any additional questions I.
Speaker 3: Have, So a lot of my questions revolve around why. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I think that's where Matt you come in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, take one quick break and then Matt tell us
Speaker 1: all about how these plants are trying to kill us.
Speaker 2: I can't wait. After hearing all of this, it's easy
Speaker 2: to think that this is something that would be extremely regulated,
Speaker 2: at least in this country. We regulate a lot less
Speaker 2: harmful substances that plants produce. But it turns out that
Speaker 2: this plant riceness communists. The castor being is readily available
Speaker 2: in most garden centers. I see it all the time
Speaker 2: planted in town. People love to grow this plant because
Speaker 2: it is a beautiful plant. Really yeah, yeah, which is
Speaker 2: why you mentioned only a couple seeds were found. I
Speaker 2: was like, I probably have a couple of castor bean seeds.
Speaker 2: Am I a terrorist? Now you can buy them at
Speaker 2: the store, right. So, castor bean is a plant that
Speaker 2: we've established has an incredibly long history with humans. It's
Speaker 2: thought to have been indigenous to the southeastern Mediterranean, base
Speaker 2: in eastern Africa and India, so some of these stories
Speaker 2: about Egypt makes sense. But because of the aforementioned long
Speaker 2: history with humans, it's been spread all around the globe
Speaker 2: and anywhere there's a climate that can support it, it's
Speaker 2: growing in some capacity. It's a member of a family
Speaker 2: of plants called the spurge family. You four be ace
Speaker 2: and as we're recording this, some of you probably have
Speaker 2: plenty representatives in your house in the form of a Poinzetta.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: The spurge family is amazing, and it's also extremely toxic
Speaker 2: in most cases.
Speaker 1: I know you can't let your cats eat points at Uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, points that it gets overplayed as being toxic. But
Speaker 2: for cats, you definitely don't want them to eat it,
Speaker 2: But your kid could make a mistake and be totally
Speaker 2: fine with it. So the people freak out about it
Speaker 2: with their kids. The points at us are fine, most
Speaker 2: of the others aren't. The spurg family is huge. It's
Speaker 2: incredibly diverse. Uh and we could have a whole podcast,
Speaker 2: probably devoted to just that. So what I will say surge.
Speaker 3: Spurs spurge, Spurge mean, Oh no, is.
Speaker 1: It like a splurge like it's such a fancy family.
Speaker 2: It might have something to do with the latex and
Speaker 2: and the fact that you probably shouldn't eat them. Let
Speaker 2: me actually look that up right now.
Speaker 1: Aaron always asks hard questions.
Speaker 2: I just oh, entomology, No, this is I'm really glad
Speaker 2: you did. Okay. So spurge happens to have Latin roots
Speaker 2: in the word expurgerree, which means to cleanse or to purge,
Speaker 2: which actually has roots in the fact that a lot
Speaker 2: of the toxic latex is from euphor bac. The Spurge
Speaker 2: family were used as purgatives. Oh that's amazing. So in
Speaker 2: thinking about starting to do these crossover podcasts with you all.
Speaker 2: I thought that my role in all of this was
Speaker 2: to always come in and go they just don't want
Speaker 2: to be eaten. That this is a story of anti herbivy,
Speaker 2: And in every instance I've had fun learning that it's
Speaker 2: not that simple or straightforward, and in this case, the
Speaker 2: story really comes down to seed dispersal.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh okay, cool, I'm excited for this.
Speaker 2: So Risiness produces two types of flowers. There's the male flowers,
Speaker 2: which actually kind of look like the alveoli of your lungs.
Speaker 2: They're just little, tiny, highly branched and they all end
Speaker 2: in little pockets of anthers that carry the pollen on
Speaker 2: the wind. Hence the hay fever issue. This is a
Speaker 2: wind pollinated plant. And the female flowers are these have big,
Speaker 2: chunky ovaries that are covered in spikes and the stigmas
Speaker 2: stick out just enough to capture pollen on the breeze,
Speaker 2: and then afterwards the fertilization occurs, the ovaries swell into
Speaker 2: these big tick like seeds and they have this amazing
Speaker 2: primary dispersal syndrome that is termed ballistic. So the capsules
Speaker 2: dihest to a point in which the tension just causes
Speaker 2: them to rip open along their seams and they catapult
Speaker 2: the little tick like seeds out into the environment.
Speaker 1: Are these the ones that you can walk along and
Speaker 1: touch them and they poof?
Speaker 2: It's not that much you're thinking of the impatience. This
Speaker 2: isn't that intense, but it's still enough to get these
Speaker 2: fairly large seeds a decent distance from the parent plant, which,
Speaker 2: when you think about it, you don't want your children
Speaker 2: growing up in the same soil you are. They're going
Speaker 2: to be competing for all of the same nutrients and
Speaker 2: needs that the parent plant are, so the farther they
Speaker 2: get away, the better. But the plant has another trick
Speaker 2: up its sleeve. Now, the reason this is a story
Speaker 2: of seed dispersal is because there is a preferred and
Speaker 2: optimum seed disperser for risiness. Can you guess.
Speaker 1: It's got to be something that's not affected.
Speaker 2: By potentially Is it a bird?
Speaker 1: Is it a lizard?
Speaker 3: Is it a small mammal of some sort?
Speaker 2: It is not a mammal, but it is small. It
Speaker 2: is a bug in the generic sense. The seed dispersers
Speaker 2: for risin are ants. Yes, this is what we call
Speaker 2: a mir Macocerus species. Mirrormes is the root word for ant,
Speaker 2: and cockery is the root for dispersal, So ant dispersed seeds.
Speaker 2: If you look at the weird little ticks right where
Speaker 2: the tip narrows to the top of the actual seed,
Speaker 2: you'll see this fleshy little structure. It's called an eliosome.
Speaker 2: It's full of fats and proteins, and it oftentimes will
Speaker 2: have chemicals that are very attractive to ants. If you
Speaker 2: want to mimic this in the forest, all you need
Speaker 2: is some canned tuna. For some reason, a lot of
Speaker 2: the proteins are the same. Don't ask me why. It's
Speaker 2: disgusting to do Meermorcacherie experiments sometimes. But this brings up
Speaker 2: the question is why would you want something to disperse
Speaker 2: your seeds but also make your seeds so darn toxic. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's to protect them so that only the ants are
Speaker 2: getting them. So they're big, they're fleshy. A lot of
Speaker 2: seeds are edible. It makes sense that animals would want
Speaker 2: to eat them.
Speaker 1: And isn't that part on the end the elizon like
Speaker 1: super like isn't that nutritious too?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it potentially all of it could be a
Speaker 2: nutritious meal, and that's really bad if you want your
Speaker 2: seeds to germinate and grow into your offspring. So the
Speaker 2: biggest threats to seeds of this size come in the
Speaker 2: form of vertebrates. So evolution, through all of this selective
Speaker 2: pressure of seed predation, has imbued these seeds with ricin
Speaker 2: to counteract any potential threat other than an ant.
Speaker 1: Taking this amazing so wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so this is truly like protect thine offspring,
Speaker 2: invest in the future.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because when you think about it's got
Speaker 1: to be expensive to produce toxins like this, right, So
Speaker 1: you think, why would a tiny seed need something so
Speaker 1: potent and powerful that it can kill a full grown
Speaker 1: human in just a couple of seeds, Because plants produce
Speaker 1: a lot of seeds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exact all those seeds.
Speaker 1: But to be able to kill a human with a
Speaker 1: few seeds, you're producing a really potent toxin. Why make
Speaker 1: something so strong that like, but it's oh, that's just so.
Speaker 2: Say a plant, a mature plant would produce fifty two
Speaker 2: one hundred seeds. A human would be dead within a
Speaker 2: few hours of eating ten of those, or any animal
Speaker 2: hypothetically speaking, So make a few more than you need,
Speaker 2: make sure they're super toxic, and you pretty much take
Speaker 2: care of all the issues from that point on. My god, wow,
Speaker 2: But ricin isn't alone in producing these proteins at all.
Speaker 2: In fact, this is identical nearly identical to the toxin
Speaker 2: produced by the aforementioned abron abroice precatorious, which is in
Speaker 2: the legume family. It's a fabaseia. It's native to Asia.
Speaker 2: But the red one, little red beads with the black
Speaker 2: spots that you see in jewelry, and they're beautiful, but
Speaker 2: same deal, even just from people eating them, but also
Speaker 2: the people that make those seeds. They're piercing them with needles,
Speaker 2: and if it goes through the seed and then into
Speaker 2: your finger, there's been instances of death or at least
Speaker 2: severe illness cause from the bead making factory or companies.
Speaker 2: I guess for that.
Speaker 1: WHOA, Yeah, I have.
Speaker 3: A question real quick about these seeds in general, is
Speaker 3: how much does the amount of toxin vary either within
Speaker 3: a plant or like latitudinally or geographically or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Those are all incredible questions and I can't answer most
Speaker 2: of them. But I do know that the rice and
Speaker 2: content of an actual castor being seed varies from about
Speaker 2: one to ten percent, so.
Speaker 1: Like one to ten percent of the mass of the
Speaker 1: seed is risin.
Speaker 2: I believe that's the case. Yeah, these are pretty potent. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and we talked a little bit earlier about being able
Speaker 2: to eat them and have them just passed through. So
Speaker 2: if you have an animal, and this varies from especially
Speaker 2: within mammals and especially with birds, not everything chews, and
Speaker 2: some things just have such large teeth that they're not
Speaker 2: going to do much damage to a smaller seed. This
Speaker 2: is a little hypothetical, but a lot of the seeds
Speaker 2: that produce this rice and like compound or protein similar
Speaker 2: to this can pass through your gut unharmed if they
Speaker 2: are not crushed. Crushing the seed destroys the seed, but
Speaker 2: if it can pass through a gut unharmed, then it
Speaker 2: can pass through a gut on harmed. That's not a
Speaker 2: real threat to this. So a lot of plants will
Speaker 2: make the seeds toxic, but not the fleshy fruit around them. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the elizome is totally fine for the air themselves to consume.
Speaker 2: Birds could hypothetically eat these seeds and pass them through unharmed,
Speaker 2: but it's the chewing, especially the mastication of mammals that
Speaker 2: they really want to avoid because that's that's the end
Speaker 2: of that seeds, any potential it might have had.
Speaker 1: So could we just like pop them like pills and
Speaker 1: be okay?
Speaker 2: I mean it's not that's a bored evening if you're
Speaker 2: resorting to that truth or there. Yeah, And so the
Speaker 2: I love that these proteins have a specific affinity for
Speaker 2: animal cells because it just goes to show you that
Speaker 2: the proof is in the pudding. The plant I'm putting
Speaker 2: big air quotes here, knows what it's trying to avoid. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and evolution does not do anything necessarily wasteful in that
Speaker 2: department when it comes to reproduction.
Speaker 1: Fascinating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I mean, like you said, one to two
Speaker 2: beans has been enough to kill smaller, especially smaller mammals.
Speaker 2: So you think about what's going around chewing on this
Speaker 2: fourth floor.
Speaker 1: And these plants, you can just like if we walked
Speaker 1: around the neighborhood, could you show me.
Speaker 2: These Oh yeah, yeah, I know a bunch of people
Speaker 2: around our neck of the woods here that have them
Speaker 2: in their garden. And the amazing part too, is the
Speaker 2: plant itself isn't all that toxic, especially for a spurge.
Speaker 2: They do produce these they call them folier phenolics, but
Speaker 2: that's mostly just to get rid of the tiny little
Speaker 2: caterpillars and moths. There are some specialists that do eat
Speaker 2: the foliage itself, but all of this comes down to
Speaker 2: ensuring the reproductive effort is conserved and more likely to
Speaker 2: make it to the next generation. So this one's all
Speaker 2: about sex for this Plantah.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: So what is the like you said, it grows everywhere
Speaker 3: that the climate is right for it. What is that climate?
Speaker 3: And is it more of like an urban guy or
Speaker 3: a rural guy or anything and everything between.
Speaker 2: I think it's a disturbance lover really, what it comes
Speaker 2: down to it and that would make a lot of sense. Again,
Speaker 2: so many of the useful plant species that humans have
Speaker 2: stumbled across over the ages, our plants that do well
Speaker 2: in disturbance, so edge habitat, clearings, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: And so this.
Speaker 2: Plant is extremely visible on the landscape. It is gorgeous.
Speaker 2: That's the reason it's got such horticultural value nowadays. It's
Speaker 2: got these beautiful palmate leaves that get massive. Oftentimes the
Speaker 2: whole plant itself is like a deep burgundy. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a very attractive plant, and it looks really exotic. Like
Speaker 2: we mentioned that at the beginning, it truly looks like
Speaker 2: something that doesn't belong here. But it's despite hailing from
Speaker 2: you know what I would consider like Mediterranean or scrubby
Speaker 2: arid habitats. If you give it a warm enough season
Speaker 2: and good draining soil, it'll do well in most countries.
Speaker 2: Over the summer, it grows so fast. As we mentioned that,
Speaker 2: it does well in the gardens. You just treat it
Speaker 2: mostly like an annual in temperate climates. And going back
Speaker 2: to the mole plant name, turns out farmers used to
Speaker 2: just sprinkle seeds down into mole holes and hopes that
Speaker 2: a mole would eat one or two of them and
Speaker 2: that would take care of their mole problems.
Speaker 3: Did it work?
Speaker 2: The thing with a lot of animals is they're not
Speaker 2: as dumb as humans are sometimes and they tend it.
Speaker 2: Whether it's a sense they have they can smell it,
Speaker 2: or there's just an instinct there. I don't think it's
Speaker 2: an effective way to take care of your mole issues,
Speaker 2: but moles are eating pests, so you shouldn't be trying
Speaker 2: to kill mole. But I think this is another great
Speaker 2: addition to the devil garden that we have planned for
Speaker 2: the future. Yes, because it's easy to grow, it's got
Speaker 2: a lot of impact visually.
Speaker 1: We need a lot of visual impact in our and you've.
Speaker 2: Really got to mess up big time to have it
Speaker 2: harm you. And that's another important message to drive home
Speaker 2: here is you know that's the upside of plants. They're
Speaker 2: sessile beings. They're not getting up and chasing you like
Speaker 2: a triffid. Uh should say the triffid?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the trees. No.
Speaker 2: There's a whole wonderful science fiction book called The Day
Speaker 2: of the Triffids, and I highly recommend it to anyone
Speaker 2: listening right now. It is a charming sci fi and
Speaker 2: I hope The Apocalypse goes as well as that book
Speaker 2: makes it up.
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to read it.
Speaker 3: But the Dream Apocalypse, Yeah, this is a big call
Speaker 3: for people to just get to know the plants in
Speaker 3: your backyard.
Speaker 2: There's no reason this plant shouldn't be grown or enjoyed
Speaker 2: in and around the home. You just learned to not
Speaker 2: eat the seeds, and plants aren't going to get up
Speaker 2: and attack you. They're not, you know, for the most part,
Speaker 2: setting off volatile compounds that are hurting you without you
Speaker 2: really having to come into contact.
Speaker 1: Happening or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's uh pretty far out in the field.
Speaker 1: So oh fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was a cool journey down a road with
Speaker 2: a plant that I thought I knew.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, what a fun episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love the rabbit holes that go down with
Speaker 2: you too. It's it's always.
Speaker 3: A good time as long as it's not a mole
Speaker 3: hole with full of cast of being paster seeds waiting
Speaker 3: at the end.
Speaker 2: Well we're smart moles now, yeah.
Speaker 1: We're smart moles.
Speaker 3: I love this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to mention something back to the quarantine
Speaker 3: that I realized I completely like, didn't mention again the
Speaker 3: whole taking time bomb aspect. Was the little waxy coated.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's what I guess, But I guess and
Speaker 1: he didn't say that out loud.
Speaker 3: I just felt like I should connect the dots. Also,
Speaker 3: a big shout out to Amanda who suggested that name.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Amanda, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: That was fun.
Speaker 3: Great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: I'm excited for our next crossover. Oh yeah, whenever that.
Speaker 1: We're going to have a second on this season that works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just let me know.
Speaker 3: Oh, sources, sources, I've got, I read a few. I'll
Speaker 3: put all of these on the website, but I want
Speaker 3: to shout out a couple in particular. One is by
Speaker 3: Martha Hale called Risin from Pharaoh's to Bio Terrorists and Beyond,
Speaker 3: and that was a really great overview of the history
Speaker 3: of risin. And then there was the report or the
Speaker 3: discussion of the autopsy that I mentioned, and that was
Speaker 3: by R. Crompton called Georgi Markov Death a Pellet. And
Speaker 3: then there was that book about the so called Riisin
Speaker 3: ring in the UK in two thousand and three called
Speaker 3: Risin exclamation Point. So we'll put all of these on
Speaker 3: the website, and yeah, what do you guys got?
Speaker 2: So I'll send you a more complete list. But the
Speaker 2: three main papers I drew from for my contribution here
Speaker 2: were plant Defense against herbivery and Insect Adaptations by war
Speaker 2: at All, General Mechanisms of Plant Defense and Plant Toxins
Speaker 2: by Metholfer and MAFII. I apologize if I butchered that one.
Speaker 2: And cedealaiaisome mediates Dispersal by ants and impacts germination and
Speaker 2: Resinus communists by sas Dharan and Van Katsen at all awesome.
Speaker 1: I have a number of papers on the sort of
Speaker 1: toxicology and clinical aspects of risin. That paper that I
Speaker 1: found on talks and being used as an anti tumor
Speaker 1: agent is by Diaz at all from twenty eighteen, and
Speaker 1: then there's another review from twenty fifteen just about like
Speaker 1: the status of risin as an anti tumor agent. All
Speaker 1: of our sources from every episode. A complete list is
Speaker 1: posted on our website at this podcast will Kill You
Speaker 1: dot com under the episodes tab.
Speaker 3: Thanks to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode
Speaker 3: and all of our episodes.
Speaker 1: And thank you to Matt for coming on as a guest.
Speaker 1: We love having you. It's the most fun.
Speaker 2: Thank you both for having me. It is always a
Speaker 2: pleasure to be here. Find me on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you don't already listen to In Defensive Plants,
Speaker 1: you should definitely check it out.
Speaker 3: What are your handles, Matt?
Speaker 2: All of them are at in Defensive Plants. If you
Speaker 2: just google it you will find it.
Speaker 3: I promise there you go. Google's our friends. Thank you
Speaker 3: also to all of you listeners out there listening to
Speaker 3: us ramble on about all the things things that could
Speaker 3: kill you. Yeah, we love doing it and you let
Speaker 3: us keep doing it, So yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2: Can I just say that you have managed to cultivate
Speaker 2: such an incredible fan base. I absolutely adore hearing from them.
Speaker 2: They always reach out and tell me that they love
Speaker 2: everything that they've learned from us, and they want us
Speaker 2: to keep doing it. Is so nice to hear from
Speaker 2: your fans. They're very nice people.
Speaker 3: Also nice use of the word cultivate.
Speaker 2: I keep doing that on my own shows. While I
Speaker 2: keep saying, oh, put intended, I got to just stop.
Speaker 2: Embrace it. Lean in well with that.
Speaker 1: Wash your hands, you filthy animals.
Speaker 2: Don't eat those seeds.