Speaker 1: Hi, Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and I'm Aaron Allman.
Speaker 2: Updyke, Hi, I'm Matt And this is a crossover episode
Speaker 2: with this podcast.
Speaker 3: Will Kill You and in Defensive Plants.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're very excited. But yeah, it's great because today
Speaker 2: we're gonna be talking about another.
Speaker 1: Poison Poison Cast part two.
Speaker 2: Yes, so if you haven't listened to part one, which
Speaker 2: is called Don't tread on Me, Don't tread on My Monk's.
Speaker 1: Thanks guy, that was great.
Speaker 3: You're welcome to go listen to it.
Speaker 2: It's great.
Speaker 3: It's super fun, both cannon and standalone.
Speaker 1: That was super nerdy.
Speaker 2: Well, you know that's welcome to the show. So we
Speaker 2: have a quarantine.
Speaker 1: What are we drinking? We are drinking throwing deadly nightshade?
Speaker 3: Cheers, cheers.
Speaker 2: What is in throwing deadly nightshade?
Speaker 1: So this is made with gin, blueberry puree, lemon juice
Speaker 1: and elderflower liqueur.
Speaker 3: And it's really and I don't know if it's just
Speaker 3: the theme. I haven't seen your other quarantinies, but you
Speaker 3: always make me the most beautiful.
Speaker 2: We did have a really last Yeah, no, this is
Speaker 2: gorgeous and we wanted to make this one look a
Speaker 2: little bit like the Deadly night Shade. The work very care,
Speaker 2: hence the blueberry. Maybe it is.
Speaker 1: Luckily I made them just like one big one, so
Speaker 1: we'll all die.
Speaker 2: Unless someone has developed a tolerance foreshadowing.
Speaker 1: Because what are we talking about today, Matt, As you
Speaker 1: take a sip, we.
Speaker 3: Are talking about Deadly Nightshade a Tropa bella Donna.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm really excited about that, like I am. I
Speaker 1: can't wait to talk about this and learn about it.
Speaker 2: It's all she's been talking to me about how excited
Speaker 2: she is. It is true the whole day, like, just
Speaker 2: hold it in, don't tell me anything. It's got to
Speaker 2: be all fresh and new.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry you have to. I didn't see any of
Speaker 3: you leading up to this for a while, so I
Speaker 3: was just safe in my own brain.
Speaker 2: You were just bribing with excitement over on your.
Speaker 3: Own Like, I don't know if I'm more excited for
Speaker 3: all of the cool information I learned or the detective
Speaker 3: work finding that information.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of this one cool can't That makes me
Speaker 1: even more?
Speaker 2: I'm intrigued.
Speaker 1: So we should we should jump right in, I guess so.
Speaker 2: In our first crossover episode on Poisons, we talked a
Speaker 2: lot about how there's this fine line between poisons and medicine,
Speaker 2: and that these plants can be viewed as medicinal or
Speaker 2: poisonous depending on who's administering the treatment, how much they know,
Speaker 2: and most importantly, what their intentions are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was your little spiel that you did? Are
Speaker 1: you a physician or a poisoner pretender?
Speaker 2: Are a magician or Yeah? It's very contraved, But but
Speaker 2: I believed you. Yeah, that's the important thing. I'm the
Speaker 2: magician here. But anyway, so yeah, so today we're going
Speaker 2: to return to this theme a little bit with a
Speaker 2: trope of belladonna, which is, as Matt Menton mentioned, the
Speaker 2: scientific name for a plant also known as belladonna, deadly nightshade,
Speaker 2: beautiful death dwall or duale duay, berry, baine wart, Devil's herb,
Speaker 2: good Lord, Devil's cherries, Devil's berries, murderers berry, sorcerers berries,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, which is berry poison, black cherry, death cherries,
Speaker 2: and my absolute favorite, naughty man's cherries.
Speaker 1: That makes two of us almost the name of our quarantine.
Speaker 3: Yes, I didn't want to drink that though.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is a very long list of names.
Speaker 3: I mean you know, I don't find common names to
Speaker 3: be terribly useful, but when you see that many for
Speaker 3: one plant, it's done some stuff over the years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, that's a really good point actually, kind
Speaker 3: of like how the only ants with common names are
Speaker 3: the ones that get into your.
Speaker 2: House, right Ah yeah, God, so smart. But that is
Speaker 2: a really good point, because, yeah, this is a serious
Speaker 2: plant we're talking about, and so it makes sense that
Speaker 2: it has all of these different names, and it was
Speaker 2: really important to designate this plant as being distinct from
Speaker 2: other plants that either looked like it or were in
Speaker 2: the same family of poisonous plants. So okay, just listing
Speaker 2: these names for belladonna, we can see that there might
Speaker 2: not be as much of a divide between good and
Speaker 2: evil and public opinion of this plant as there were
Speaker 2: for Monkshood or wolf Spain. But it's kind of funny
Speaker 2: actually to me that the name seems that the name
Speaker 2: that seems to have stuck with this plant for the
Speaker 2: longest is belladonna, which describes one of the more innocuous
Speaker 2: uses of the plant. And I know that you're all
Speaker 2: you might know this already, but if in case you don't,
Speaker 2: you might. Everyone might be dying to know.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're dying. I didn't notice until very recently.
Speaker 2: Okay, so well, basically, some writer in the fifteen hundreds
Speaker 2: described how Venetian women would put drops of Bella donna
Speaker 2: tincture or juice or something into their eyes to make
Speaker 2: them appear deeper and darker and sexier by dilating the pupil.
Speaker 1: Which we'll talk a lot more about, but like what
Speaker 1: the heck people were like, you got to have that
Speaker 1: big old pupil. It's beautiful.
Speaker 3: I was missing something until you and that just.
Speaker 1: It's why you haven't yet won America's next top model,
Speaker 1: and your pupils aren't dilated enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that well. Also, women would apply it directly
Speaker 2: to their cheeks to give it a rosy glow, like
Speaker 2: the juice from the berries.
Speaker 4: Like the bas Yeah, we'll talk about it all right,
Speaker 4: but so then anyway, So because it was used for
Speaker 4: these reasons, it earned the name Bella donna, which is
Speaker 4: Italian for beautiful woman.
Speaker 2: But before it was used as a beauty enhancer, it
Speaker 2: had much more sinister associations. Let's start back at the beginning.
Speaker 2: A trope of belladonna and I'm just gonna call it
Speaker 2: Belladonna great Okay, was definitely known to the ancient Greeks, Roman, Scots,
Speaker 2: and probably many other cultures since it is pretty widely distributed.
Speaker 2: Its genus name a Tropa actually comes from a Tropos,
Speaker 2: which is one of the three fates with a capital F.
Speaker 2: So you may remember these fates from Disney's Hercules.
Speaker 1: That's the only way I know, as.
Speaker 2: They all shared an eyeball and one of them had
Speaker 2: scissors and would.
Speaker 1: Go and then you're dead, and you're dead. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in Greek mythology, these three goddesses determine the fate
Speaker 2: of every mortal and god, so even.
Speaker 3: Zeus feared that's a powerful yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of these goddesses would spin the thread of life,
Speaker 2: another would measure it out and shape it, and the
Speaker 2: third would decide when it would be cut. This third
Speaker 2: goddess was known as Atropos, the inflexible or immutable, or
Speaker 2: she who may not be turned aside. Wow, yeah, I
Speaker 2: love it, and it's yeah, it's it's pretty appropriate for
Speaker 2: these these plants who are in the genus, because a
Speaker 2: lot of them can cause you to not return to life.
Speaker 1: What a nice way of saying they'll kill you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, borrowing from the ancient name of this plant, a tropa,
Speaker 2: and it's more recent, more innocent name, balladonna, Linaeus decided
Speaker 2: to name the plant a trope of balladonna, so it
Speaker 2: kind of has us both.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's to it, which is amazing. You know, you
Speaker 3: look at synonyms and the amount of revisions plants have
Speaker 3: gone through to have Linaeus give it one and stick
Speaker 3: this whole time. Either people are really into that idea,
Speaker 3: like why would you want to such a name, or
Speaker 3: it just good job. Linaeus is your taxonomic Yeah.
Speaker 1: It is a good name. Though.
Speaker 2: It's a great name because it's like, okay, it tells
Speaker 2: you everything. Not everything, but it tells you a lot
Speaker 2: about what you need to know about this plant, right
Speaker 2: sort of this, yeah, right up front, it'll kill you.
Speaker 3: It'll make you pretty, You'll make.
Speaker 2: It pretty conflicted. Beauty is pain. Pain is beauty. While
Speaker 2: belladonna was used in ancient times as a poison, such
Speaker 2: as for poison tipped arrows, or by King Duncan of
Speaker 2: Scotland to poison an invading army of Danes so Macbeth
Speaker 2: and company could slaughter them in their sleep. It was
Speaker 2: also used in rituals. One of the more infamous of
Speaker 2: these rituals was the celebrations held by the followers of
Speaker 2: the cult of Dionysus, who is the Greek god of
Speaker 2: wine fertility. Yes, cheers to that ritual, madness, et cetera.
Speaker 2: The followers would apparently mix belladonna into wine, so they
Speaker 2: would have these crazy wild trips and lose some or
Speaker 2: all of their sexual inhibitions.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So it was like all of these like orgies, these
Speaker 2: like ancient Greek gorgeous is what sort of helped brought
Speaker 2: to you by by belladana. A side note, like on
Speaker 2: that plant identification through ancient texts is a little difficult, right, They.
Speaker 1: Were actually just eating blueberries and they were like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I swear, I feel totally different. Let's do it.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, but it is there. Just blame it on
Speaker 2: the blueberries.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of different plants that can cause
Speaker 2: symptoms that are similar to this or like this or whatever,
Speaker 2: and so yes, it may have been attributed to this plant,
Speaker 2: but it could have been hen's bane, it could have
Speaker 2: been mandrack, it could have been something else. So we
Speaker 2: don't know exactly. But definitely, Bella donna was used and
Speaker 2: identified and known about in ancient times, so it's a
Speaker 2: strong candidate. I just wanted to, you know, say that.
Speaker 2: But regardless of whether belladonna was used in orgies or
Speaker 2: to poison your enemies or husband, all ancient writings about
Speaker 2: the plant are full of dire warnings about its extremely
Speaker 2: dangerous nature. Yeah, always came with this like warning warning,
Speaker 2: don't grow it, don't eat it, don't plant it, just
Speaker 2: get it, get rid of it. And so there doesn't
Speaker 2: really seem to be a lot of healing done by
Speaker 2: the plant during this time. Okay, In the Middle Ages,
Speaker 2: belladonna started to be called deadly nightshade and its reputation
Speaker 2: for occult rituals grew. Stories from this time say that
Speaker 2: the devil himself was responsible for cultivating and tending to
Speaker 2: the plant, and the only day he forgot to do
Speaker 2: this was Walpurgis Knocked, which is also known as it's
Speaker 2: also known as Saint Walpurgis Knight, So Saint Walpurgis Knight.
Speaker 2: I'm probably pronouncing this wrong.
Speaker 1: I was like, are you saying this as if we're
Speaker 1: supposed to know what it is, we're about to tell
Speaker 1: you what was your costume?
Speaker 2: It takes place on April thirtieth every year to commemorate
Speaker 2: Saint Wolpurgis. You all know, right, Yeah, well she was
Speaker 2: an eighth century abbess who battled pest, rabies, whooping cough,
Speaker 2: and witchcraft.
Speaker 1: Oh I love her.
Speaker 2: Oh well, she did it all time, except.
Speaker 1: The witchcraft thing, like, just let that be.
Speaker 3: I know it right, well, everyone.
Speaker 2: Both for and against me. On this night, which is
Speaker 2: also witches Night, all the witches would gather to wait
Speaker 2: for the arrival of spring, and some of them would
Speaker 2: go to this mountain where they would wait to meet
Speaker 2: or lay with the devil. So this is according to
Speaker 2: stories from the time.
Speaker 3: I want to go to this party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one, well you might end, sorry to say.
Speaker 2: Let me let me just finish this part here. So,
Speaker 2: according to these stories, the plant that the devil had
Speaker 2: forgotten to tend would turn into a beautiful but day
Speaker 2: dangerous woman who would enchant you against your will.
Speaker 1: Why is it always a woman?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is so.
Speaker 3: Darn and chanting.
Speaker 2: A trope of Bella Donna was also allegedly used by
Speaker 2: witches and wizards who would So, Matt, if you're going
Speaker 2: to go to this party. Just this is what you're
Speaker 2: going to have to do.
Speaker 1: Aaron just tinted her hands in a very serious way.
Speaker 3: It was great.
Speaker 2: Yes, Matt listened closely, Matt, Matthew. Witches and wizards would
Speaker 2: rub a mix of this plant, along with a few
Speaker 2: others like hemlock and crazy other ones, onto their thighs
Speaker 2: and genitals before setting off on their broomsticks.
Speaker 3: I'm out, I'm out, I'm out when the sticks come out.
Speaker 2: Seriously, your thighs, thighs and genitals.
Speaker 1: Wait, your thighs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's what holds you up.
Speaker 3: I get the genitals actually, because if you're going all
Speaker 3: in the thighs.
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll just continually like renew. It's like an extra.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's like splinters in the wood. They're like, no,
Speaker 2: we don't want Maybe it protects you.
Speaker 3: Right, right, right, Okay, I don't know. Perhaps it tingles.
Speaker 2: So the topical application of the plant might cause hallucinations,
Speaker 2: and with the sensation of flying being one of these
Speaker 2: potential hallucinations, so that that kind of makes sense about
Speaker 2: you know, broomsticks and flying and so on. But the
Speaker 2: witch's ointment was also supposed to be sexually stimulating, and
Speaker 2: that is what I want to say a little bit about.
Speaker 2: So let's take a minute to just take stock of
Speaker 2: where and when we are. We're in the not right now,
Speaker 2: but I mean in history in the history section.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're in my back bedroom of my house right now.
Speaker 2: Okay, But if we are celebrating Saint Walpurgis night, yes,
Speaker 2: in let's say the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries were
Speaker 2: in Western Europe, Christianity is the prevailing religion in most areas,
Speaker 2: and so you were either a Christian on the side
Speaker 2: of good, or you were evil considered evil yeah, or
Speaker 2: you practiced your religion in secret under the cover of night.
Speaker 2: So witchcraft became this sort of scapegoat term that was
Speaker 2: used as an explanation for why something bad and unexplainable happened,
Speaker 2: and as as an other like this is not like us.
Speaker 2: And so it also was used to put blame on
Speaker 2: whoever was viewed as deserving of blame, often an outsider
Speaker 2: or someone who simply did not conform. This was often women,
Speaker 2: especially hence which especially women who were outspoken or fierce
Speaker 2: didn't act subservient. That type the troublesome one.
Speaker 3: The troublesome the ones you want to poison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly right. But and so those women were to
Speaker 2: be feared and cast out, and so they were said
Speaker 2: to have sex with the devil or with demons, and
Speaker 2: the use of plants like belladonna represented this aggressive female sexuality,
Speaker 2: which was the scariest thing of all to men during
Speaker 2: this time. So of course it became it was like, oh,
Speaker 2: she's I'm sorry, you're not acting like a woman, should
Speaker 2: you know?
Speaker 3: Which which she.
Speaker 2: Must be a witch. So but that makes it one
Speaker 2: of my favorite plants too that it was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes me really have love for it.
Speaker 3: This is going to be the centerpiece to my satan garden.
Speaker 2: Yes, I love it.
Speaker 1: Satan garden commemorated or something that sounds great.
Speaker 2: Well anyway, So whether a tropa belladonna was actually used
Speaker 2: during witchcraft pagan rituals isn't really clear, But what is
Speaker 2: clear is that the plant is largely viewed as being
Speaker 2: on the side of evil during this time, but during
Speaker 2: the next couple of centuries, the superstition surrounding the plant receded.
Speaker 2: So you've already heard about a non witchcraft or non
Speaker 2: poisoning example of the plant's use as a beauty enhancer.
Speaker 2: In Italy during the fifteen hundreds and in the eighteenth
Speaker 2: century during the Age of Enlightenment, doctors began performing thoughtful
Speaker 2: or at least systematic studies on the possible medicinal applications
Speaker 2: of plants such as belladonna, and they found one, and
Speaker 2: then another, and then another, until it seemed like they
Speaker 2: were kind of being just pulling these applications out of
Speaker 2: thin air. One of the first and actually effective uses
Speaker 2: of belladonna was to dilate the pupils, which was helpful
Speaker 2: in eye surgeries. But atropine, which is the extract or
Speaker 2: which is one of the active compounds, was also a
Speaker 2: common ingredient in suppositories, enemas, plasters, injections.
Speaker 1: That's actually, I mean, that's a terrible idea, just in
Speaker 1: terms of its mechanism of action. It's not going to
Speaker 1: do what you okay.
Speaker 2: So it was used on its own as a topical painkiller,
Speaker 2: and was also combined with other poisonous plants, including the
Speaker 2: star of our first crossover with indefensive plants, aconite.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: Together, belladonna and aconite were supposed to be excellent for
Speaker 2: a severe sore throat or a tonsilitis.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would say that, No, it
Speaker 1: would actually make it Worse'll talk about it supposed to be.
Speaker 2: It was hailed as a great cure. And another thing
Speaker 2: that I have listed under my questionable use's bullet point
Speaker 2: is cigarettes with belladonna leaves soaked in opium tincture, which
Speaker 2: were prescribed up through the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3: I think, like the opium just worked so good it
Speaker 3: didn't matter what you were slathering.
Speaker 2: I just like, why would you be prescribed that? I
Speaker 2: mean it would you just carry those around like a
Speaker 2: snoke break.
Speaker 1: Like those two effects would kind of counter each other
Speaker 1: there a little bit. Yeah, I think because because opium
Speaker 1: is going to like slow your metabolism like down, and
Speaker 1: atropine is going to kind of do the opposite of that,
Speaker 1: So it would kind of just like counter the effects
Speaker 1: of opium a little bit, so you would be at
Speaker 1: less risk for like your like stopping breathing and things
Speaker 1: like that. I guess, but it seems like a terrible
Speaker 1: idea not advocating. Well.
Speaker 3: It's funny though, because its cousin is nicotine nicotiana, so tobacco,
Speaker 3: Oh you know, riting family, and we smoked plenty of
Speaker 3: alcohoids when we're we'll get to that obviously.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean it's like, do you want the stuff that
Speaker 3: will kill you slowlyer stuff that might kill you faster?
Speaker 2: Interesting? Yeah, okay, so maybe not as maybe not as
Speaker 2: crazy as I initially thought when I read it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it still seems pretty crazy to me, Like bad,
Speaker 1: bad idea for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems seems like stick to tobacco.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: Another of Bella Donna's compound, scopolamine, was used alongside morphine
Speaker 2: to induce twilight sleep for surgeries and revisiting the dark
Speaker 2: side of the plant. It was also used as a
Speaker 2: truth serum on occasion.
Speaker 3: Still is really Yeah, there's a really interesting documentary about
Speaker 3: scopolamine in Mexico. Yeah, it's it can make you very
Speaker 3: open coercion without showing any outward symptoms that you're is
Speaker 3: that vice?
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, I did watch that a while ago.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really it's intense. It's it's terrifying.
Speaker 2: It is terrifying.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I checked that out again.
Speaker 2: Also, before anyone gets any ideas about this plant being
Speaker 2: an awesome new hallucinogen that grows all over the world.
Speaker 2: Timothy Leary, who is the god of psychedelics. Basically, who's this?
Speaker 2: You know, famous, everyone knows the name.
Speaker 1: No, tell me who he is? I nodded as like,
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, tell me about Okay.
Speaker 2: Timothy Leary is He was a Harvard researcher who studied
Speaker 2: the effects of psychedelics on people. He basically all and
Speaker 2: he tested them himself, like all all kinds. He was
Speaker 2: the turn on, tune in drop out was like his things.
Speaker 2: He was very It was the time of the cultural
Speaker 2: Revolution in the US and the nineteen sixties and seventies.
Speaker 2: He was a big part of that. Okay, So anyway,
Speaker 2: he knew psychedelics for sure. Yeah, and he he allegedly
Speaker 2: said about Belladonna that he had never heard of a
Speaker 2: good Belladonna trip, and it was all terrifying and horrible
Speaker 2: and just lefty feeling awful, not surprised, not recommended. The
Speaker 2: active components of belladonna so mainly atropine and scopalamine, were
Speaker 2: discovered in the early eighteen hundreds, which meant that the
Speaker 2: compounds could be isolated to include in the many medications
Speaker 2: that I mentioned, and also that it could be detected
Speaker 2: in cases of suspected murder that's right. So it turns
Speaker 2: out that belladonna was not an uncommon way off your
Speaker 2: spouse or neighbor or patient. Some did it with a
Speaker 2: plant itself, such as a woman who tossed in twenty
Speaker 2: or so belladonna berries into her husband's blueberry bowl in
Speaker 2: an attempt to sedate him as he was raging out
Speaker 2: against the entire family. And in any case he was
Speaker 2: more than sedated, he died.
Speaker 3: He died.
Speaker 2: Others used the isolated compound atropine, which was pretty much
Speaker 2: only accessible at a certain point to physicians and nurses.
Speaker 2: And have either of you ever heard of the serial
Speaker 2: killer named Marie Generet or Generette?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Maybe she was a Swiss nurse who in eighteen sixty
Speaker 2: eight was convicted of murdering six of her patients and
Speaker 2: attempting to poison two more with atropine. Turns out she
Speaker 2: had been taking atropine for years and had developed a
Speaker 2: tolerance for it, so she had to fake an eye
Speaker 2: condition to get more, which reminds me of the Princess
Speaker 2: Bride when I've developed a resistance aya camp powder. I
Speaker 2: didn't know that you could actually do that to different poisons.
Speaker 2: And somebody actually did that so come funny. But with
Speaker 2: that fresh prescription, she began giving it to her patients,
Speaker 2: but she was eventually caught red handed. And then there's
Speaker 2: the more recent case of the scientists and lecturer of
Speaker 2: biologists I think in Scotland who in nineteen ninety four
Speaker 2: attempted to poison his wife by serving her a gin
Speaker 2: and tonic with a little something extra. After taking a
Speaker 2: few SIPs, she started to feel really sick, so he
Speaker 2: called the general practitioner who had gone home for the evening,
Speaker 2: and he left a message he didn't bother calling emergency services,
Speaker 2: even though she was feeling deathly ill. The message got
Speaker 2: sent to emergency services anyway, and they showed up where
Speaker 2: they diagnosed her as having symptoms of atropine poisoning. It
Speaker 2: turned out that this dude had put atropine in a
Speaker 2: bunch of bottles of tonic at a grocery store and
Speaker 2: then returned home with one. So you put them in
Speaker 2: tonic and bottles of tonic water at the grocery store, Why, well,
Speaker 2: it's a terrible plan. Seven other people around the area
Speaker 2: had also come down with a strange case of atropine
Speaker 2: poisoning after drinking tonic water from this same grocery store.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 2: So on first glance, it seemed like his wife was
Speaker 2: just another victim.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's like, I don't care if multiple people die.
Speaker 1: I just don't want to get caught.
Speaker 2: For Well, the thing is in the other bottles. It
Speaker 2: was a lower concentration of atropine, but in his wife's
Speaker 2: tonic bottle, or like his wife's drink, it was much higher.
Speaker 2: So it was he was definitely making an effort.
Speaker 3: It's interesting that people can show up though and see
Speaker 3: it and go, oh, this looks like atropine poisoning. It's
Speaker 3: enough of a thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll talk about it. This is why I can't wait.
Speaker 2: I'm almost done. Don't worry. Yeah. So this was his
Speaker 2: plan all along, just to be oh, this is a
Speaker 2: random poisoning. And he also was having an affair with
Speaker 2: this younger woman that he was trying to run off with. Anyway,
Speaker 2: So he was convicted, sent to jail, served twelve years.
Speaker 2: He's out, obviously, and after his release he was hired
Speaker 2: as a professor of philosophy and medical ethics.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, why were they Why did they let him out?
Speaker 2: No, attempted murder doesn't get you very far, I guess
Speaker 2: in the court system. I So on that note, Aaron,
Speaker 2: will you tell us what it would be like to
Speaker 2: be poisoned by Belladonna?
Speaker 6: Yes, okay, enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: Okay, were you ready? Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So to tell you about the effects of Belladonna, we're
Speaker 1: going to take a step back so I can tell
Speaker 1: you about the nervous system. Oh okay, giddy's.
Speaker 3: Physically okay.
Speaker 1: So your nervous system, if you're unaware, has two major
Speaker 1: parts to it. The first is your somatic nervous system,
Speaker 1: which is like your muscles in your arms and your legs,
Speaker 1: like what you might think of as your nervous system.
Speaker 1: It's like your sensory nerves and you're bending your arm
Speaker 1: all that stuff. But then there's your autonomic nervous system,
Speaker 1: and that's the part that you might not think about
Speaker 1: because it mostly controls stuff that you're unaware of, like
Speaker 1: your digestion and sweating. Maybe you're aware of sweating, I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm all aware of acts, never enough to control this.
Speaker 1: So the autonomic nervous system, it controls all of that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff in your body, digestion, salivation, blah blah,
Speaker 1: blah okay, And the autonomic nervous system has two major divisions,
Speaker 1: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. So don't like, don't fade
Speaker 1: on me, guys, it's gonna be it's gonna get really fun.
Speaker 1: Like we're gonna talk about like crazy things.
Speaker 2: Happen in an autonomic nervous systm or in the autonomic
Speaker 2: ners sympathetic and ympathetic exactly.
Speaker 1: So the sympathetic nervous system basically think of it as
Speaker 1: fighter flight. Okay, So everybody knows fight or flight, right,
Speaker 1: So if you think about what happens in your body physiologically,
Speaker 1: if you were to get into a situation where you
Speaker 1: would need that fight or flight.
Speaker 2: Response, murder outside my window.
Speaker 1: Exactly, a clown in a maze, all of those things. Okay,
Speaker 1: So think about and tell me, you guys, what kinds
Speaker 1: of things are going to be happening in your body
Speaker 1: in that situation.
Speaker 3: Go Sweat, heart rate, blood, vessel dilation.
Speaker 1: All of these things are great.
Speaker 2: Pee my pants.
Speaker 1: Okay, No, you're actually not going to be your pants.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's my fight.
Speaker 3: Or just you.
Speaker 1: Okay, So absolutely your heart rate is going to increase right,
Speaker 1: Your heart rate is going to increase. It's gonna beat harder,
Speaker 1: and it's going to beat faster. And that's because you
Speaker 1: need to get that blood to your body, right to
Speaker 1: your arms and your legs so that you can run
Speaker 1: away your You said your blood vessels are going to dilate. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: all of the blood vessels that go to your skeletal
Speaker 1: muscles are going to dilate, and all the ones that
Speaker 1: go to your internal organs are going to constrict.
Speaker 3: Is that why I get nauseous if I eat and run?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Probably? Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't do that a lot, by.
Speaker 1: Way, because like your stomach is like, we don't need
Speaker 1: this right now, Right, you don't need to digest the
Speaker 1: sandwich that you just ate because you need to focus
Speaker 1: on running away from a murderer. So awesome, sweating is
Speaker 1: probably gonna happen after the fact, right, So it'll actually
Speaker 1: be probably, I mean, sweating is a complicated one, so
Speaker 1: let's ignore it.
Speaker 2: What about hearing the blood in my ears?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's just because your part is pumping so
Speaker 1: hard and so fast, right, so your part is like
Speaker 1: going crazy, and so you can hear the blood rushing
Speaker 1: to your ears. You're not going to pee your pants
Speaker 1: until after the threat is gone.
Speaker 2: Here's why Lenge accept it.
Speaker 1: All of your all of the smooth muscles around your
Speaker 1: GI tract and your bladder are actually going to relax
Speaker 1: because you don't need digestion right now. Right No paris,
Speaker 1: no Paracelsus. But all of your sphincters are going to contract.
Speaker 3: So that's why you poop yourself.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna poop yourself. All of your poop is
Speaker 1: going to be held right in. All of your pea
Speaker 1: is going to be because the last thing that you
Speaker 1: need when you're confronted with something is to pee. It
Speaker 1: could be that like immediately upon seeing something, you could
Speaker 1: like things could void before they contract, or what happens often,
Speaker 1: what happens often, and what my high school biology teacher
Speaker 1: actually told us about. He was not a great human,
Speaker 1: but he was a great biology teacher. He said that
Speaker 1: what he used to do was like at Notsberry Farm
Speaker 1: or whatever, when you have those haunted scary houses. He
Speaker 1: worked at one of those in high school or something
Speaker 1: like that, and he said that he would scare people
Speaker 1: right in front of the restroom because then they need
Speaker 1: to be really bad, and so then it would stimulate
Speaker 1: their sympathetic response really fast, but then they would quickly
Speaker 1: realize that they don't need it, and then the parasympathetics
Speaker 1: would take over, and then it would release everything and
Speaker 1: they'd beat themselves right in.
Speaker 3: Front of their Oh my, oh wow, that is power.
Speaker 3: It's that we probably should not have just given to
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 2: But if I were a high school student working at
Speaker 2: a corn scary maze or whatever.
Speaker 6: I.
Speaker 1: Hearing that story is part of what made me interested
Speaker 1: in biology. You know.
Speaker 2: It's like, whoa, oh, Nancy, I just did it for the.
Speaker 1: Okay, So anyways, all of that, all of those reactions,
Speaker 1: that's your sympathetic response. So fight or flight sympathetic. That's
Speaker 1: what's happening when you're under serious dress. Okay, fight or flight, anxiety, attack,
Speaker 1: et cetera. What about the rest of the time. The
Speaker 1: rest of the time, your parasympathetic nervous system is your friend.
Speaker 1: This system is your rest and digest. Okay, feed and breed.
Speaker 1: No one's grosser because like breed. But yes, you could
Speaker 1: say that too. So you can think of the actions
Speaker 1: of the paras sympathetic nervous system as basically almost exactly
Speaker 1: the opposite of the actions of the sympathetic nervous system.
Speaker 2: You're peeing all the time, exactly.
Speaker 1: So if your sympathetic nervous system is increasing your heart rate,
Speaker 1: your parasympathetic is slowing it down. If your sympathetic is
Speaker 1: blocking parastosis in digestion, then your parasympathetic is promoting it.
Speaker 1: If the sympathetic is constricting your sphincters, then the parasympathetic
Speaker 1: is letting them fly, right, okay, exactly Okay. So the
Speaker 1: parasympathetic nervous system's actions are mediated by two things. Basically,
Speaker 1: a neurotransmitter that's called acetylcholin, which is like a little
Speaker 1: molecule that's released at the end of a nerve, and
Speaker 1: the receptor where acetylcholine binds. Okay, and that receptor is
Speaker 1: called a muscarinic receptor. Who muscarinic like a muscle. Think
Speaker 1: of it that way, even though muscle receptor, even though
Speaker 1: it's not on muscles.
Speaker 3: These are the little jumps in between the nerves.
Speaker 1: Exactly right, yeah, okay. These two divisions of your autonomic
Speaker 1: nervous system parasympathetic rest and digest sympathetic fight or flight.
Speaker 1: They work together and most of the time, in most
Speaker 1: organ systems. It's your parasympathetic that's kind of in control, right,
Speaker 1: because you're not most of the time under serious like
Speaker 1: fight or flight stimulation.
Speaker 3: I hope not.
Speaker 1: But if you were to block the sympathetic nervous system,
Speaker 1: then the parasympathetic would be even more pronounced, so your
Speaker 1: heart rate would go down even more, et cetera. Right,
Speaker 1: if you were to block the sympathetic response, and if
Speaker 1: you were to block the parasympathetic, then your sympathetic would
Speaker 1: take over. So both of these things are acting kind
Speaker 1: of all the time. It's just a matter of which
Speaker 1: one is in control and taking over makes sense? Yeah, yeah, cool.
Speaker 1: Now you're an expert on the nervous Congratulations everyone. So
Speaker 1: why did I spend so much time talking you through
Speaker 1: how the nervous system works.
Speaker 2: I have a feeling it has to do with Belladonna.
Speaker 1: You're just as smart aarin? Did you, like, do you
Speaker 1: have a doctorate or something? Because you're so smart here?
Speaker 2: So glad you mentioned it.
Speaker 1: Okay, doctor, you're right. So it turns out that the
Speaker 1: compounds in belladonna that make it so dangerous directly affect
Speaker 1: your parasympathetic nervous system. Specifically, they are what's called a
Speaker 1: muscarinic receptor and antagonist, which is a fancy mouthful of
Speaker 1: a word that basically means it blocks the effects of
Speaker 1: the parasympathetic system. So it's blocking rest and digest which
Speaker 1: means what system takes over.
Speaker 2: Sympathetic exactly, it's yeah.
Speaker 1: And so those compounds which you mentioned already are atropine, scopolamine,
Speaker 1: and there's another one called hyociamine or daturine whatever. Atropine
Speaker 1: and scopolamine are the most important.
Speaker 2: Who cares about this other one?
Speaker 1: Not me? So having atropine or scopolamine in your system
Speaker 1: basically means that your sympathetic nervous system, the one that
Speaker 1: makes you freak out, have anxiety, fight or flight, is
Speaker 1: now unopposed and can take over the workings of your body.
Speaker 1: So you guys, tell me what kind of symptoms are
Speaker 1: we going to see?
Speaker 2: Dilated pupils, Yeah, lots of heavy breathing, Yeah, heart rate
Speaker 2: really going fast exactly.
Speaker 1: So your heart rate's going to increase like crazy, No
Speaker 1: more peeing, no more peeing, right, all your sphincters are
Speaker 1: going to be shut up real tight. So it can
Speaker 1: cause constipation, and it can cause urinary incontinence. Your pupils
Speaker 1: are going to dilate. And that's because if you think
Speaker 1: about in a fight or flight situation, you need to
Speaker 1: be able to get as much light into your eyes
Speaker 1: as possible to like see what's going on. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: if you're in arrest and digest, your eyes are like
Speaker 1: it's cool, Like we'll just be here, check right. It Also,
Speaker 1: what it also affects is that your parasympathetic nervous system
Speaker 1: is what controls the near far focus of your eyes,
Speaker 1: which is called accommodation, and so blocking the parasympathetic effect
Speaker 1: doesn't allow you to accommodate, so it can actually cause
Speaker 1: blurry vision in addition to this pupillary dilation.
Speaker 2: Oh so that was another thing that women who use
Speaker 2: it too much in their eyes would go blind or
Speaker 2: lose the ability to see absolutently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you lose the ability to accommodate. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: it's fun. So yeah, that's sort of the main effects
Speaker 1: of atropine. There's actually there also are central nervous system effects,
Speaker 1: which we didn't necessarily talk about the central nervous system
Speaker 1: effects of your parasympathetic or sympathetic nervous but because atropine
Speaker 1: can cross your blood brain barrier. It can also affect
Speaker 1: your brain, which is why it can cause hallucinations, confusion,
Speaker 1: all kinds of crazy things. There's actually a really funny
Speaker 1: little poem I don't know saying, can I guess what
Speaker 1: it is? Yeah? Do it?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 2: Hot as a hair, blind as a bat, dry as
Speaker 2: a bone, red as a beat, and mad as a hen.
Speaker 1: Mad as a hatter, actually as a hen, mad is
Speaker 1: a hatter because hens are not really that crazy, but hatters,
Speaker 1: people who made hats.
Speaker 3: You played, Zelda, hens are crazy.
Speaker 2: These are crazy. But also the hatter is really crazy,
Speaker 2: and I guess the maskmaker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yes, that's exactly the same. Yes, yeah, And
Speaker 1: what's cool is that we kind of went through already
Speaker 1: all of those specific things.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You're blind as a bat because your pupils are dilated
Speaker 1: and I lost, you've lost accommodation. You're red as a
Speaker 1: beat because all of your blood vessels like to your
Speaker 1: skin and your muscles are now dilated, so you've got
Speaker 1: tons of blood rushing to your skin, which makes you
Speaker 1: red and also hot as a hair. And you're dry
Speaker 1: as a bone because your parasympathetic nervous system is what
Speaker 1: causes salivary secretion, so now you have no saliva, which
Speaker 1: is also why I don't think it would be a
Speaker 1: good treatment for sore throat because it actually can cause
Speaker 1: a very sore throat. Atropine, because you have no saliva,
Speaker 1: do you want to be dryer? And mad is a
Speaker 1: hatter because it crosses the blood brain barrier and can
Speaker 1: cause hallucinations. Again.
Speaker 3: Wow, so that just opened up. That's why I love
Speaker 3: coming here because it takes all these cool things about
Speaker 3: the plants and just puts it into context.
Speaker 1: It's so cool. So atropine is the most potent of
Speaker 1: these compounds, but it actually it still today is used
Speaker 1: sometimes medically, so we use it in emergency situations to
Speaker 1: treat braidedcardia or a very very heart rate because it's
Speaker 1: going to end up stimulating your heart rate. I don't
Speaker 1: know how often it's actually used for real, but I
Speaker 1: do know that it's like, if you look at a
Speaker 1: crash cart at a hospital, they do have atropine on hand,
Speaker 1: so there you go.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: It also can be used in the case of organophosphate
Speaker 1: insecticide poisoning. Because this is really cool and I get
Speaker 1: into it because entomology, but huh, organophosphates act kind of
Speaker 1: on the same on the same receptors, and they cause
Speaker 1: them to be constitually active, and so this can kind
Speaker 1: of help reverse those effects, but only on the muscarinic receptors.
Speaker 1: This is probably too much anyways. It can be used
Speaker 1: to treat organophosphate insecticide poisoning.
Speaker 3: I think it's oh, I mean rural area, right.
Speaker 1: It's a very real thing that somebody could be poisoned
Speaker 1: by that. It's not gonna help like it'll basically it's
Speaker 1: just symptomatic relief for that.
Speaker 3: Just getting you to the hust that'll to get you, yeah.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. Scopolamine is actually still used as a treatment
Speaker 1: for sea sickness or motion sickness. They give it as
Speaker 1: a transder transdermal patch because it also can cross a
Speaker 1: blood brain barrier, so can help with nausea and things
Speaker 1: like that. And treatment of atropine overdose is with a
Speaker 1: drug called physostigmine, which basically just helps so the neurotransmitter
Speaker 1: acetylcholine that I mentioned. The drugs that you treat atropine
Speaker 1: with just increase the amount of that available so that
Speaker 1: you can kind of overcome the effects of atropine. So
Speaker 1: it doesn't reverse atropine necessarily. It just helps you sort
Speaker 1: of overcome the effects so that you can then get
Speaker 1: better faster.
Speaker 3: Healing people is a bizarre sport.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, tell me about it. So, yeah, I have
Speaker 1: some info on how much it might take to kill you. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: not much.
Speaker 3: Just for a friend, just for a friend, just for fun.
Speaker 1: So uh, Atropine specifically was the one that I found
Speaker 1: the most information about. Atropine can basically start incapacitating people
Speaker 1: at about ten to twenty milligrams dosage. And I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you, Matt and maybe we'll talk about this,
Speaker 1: because I couldn't find probably could have if I looked harder,
Speaker 1: how many milligrams of atropine are in like a berry
Speaker 1: or a plant.
Speaker 3: Shouldn't ask me that because I do not know.
Speaker 1: I don't know either.
Speaker 2: I saw that numbers totally, that like some children could
Speaker 2: die after eating a handful like a few berries, right.
Speaker 1: I saw that like it could be between like point
Speaker 1: five and one point two percent, But I don't know
Speaker 1: how many milligrams that equates to.
Speaker 3: Let's rewind, I do know an answer to that, which
Speaker 3: is the safe bet, but it's it varies from plant
Speaker 3: to plant, honestly depending on how it's growing too, so
Speaker 3: there's to give a standard would be rough, but yeah,
Speaker 3: there is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So anyways, into twenty milligrams can incapacitate you. It
Speaker 1: could probably kill a child, but the lethal dose for
Speaker 1: an adult human is usually between ninety and one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty milligrams of pure atropine. So again not sure
Speaker 1: exactly how many berries, but we're not advocating that you
Speaker 1: kill anybody with atropine, so let's not even get into it.
Speaker 2: Just don't don't, don't, don't do it, don't touch the planet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you survive, So if your dose is not lethal,
Speaker 1: which it's obviously not always lethal, symptoms generally, like the
Speaker 1: onset is pretty quick within like an hour or a
Speaker 1: couple of hours, but they do get better within like
Speaker 1: three to four days, and then there really isn't any
Speaker 1: permanent loss of function. Okay, you're doing it all the
Speaker 1: time exactly, Yeah, but yeah, there's also huge individual variation
Speaker 1: in your susceptibility to atropine, which so it totally makes
Speaker 1: sense that people could become used to it because it
Speaker 1: basically is just blocking this specific receptor. So what your
Speaker 1: body will do is just make more receptors. Okay, so
Speaker 1: if you use it all the time. It's the same
Speaker 1: thing with opiates your body. Like that's why you go
Speaker 1: from like a low dose to like straight up heroin, right,
Speaker 1: is because you your body makes more receptors and then
Speaker 1: it becomes less effective and then you need a stronger dose.
Speaker 3: So yeah, amazing. That puts a lot of things into
Speaker 3: context here.
Speaker 1: But now, like we need to know, Matt, why on
Speaker 1: earth do plants make this stuff?
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have the same darn answer for you. I
Speaker 3: think every time we do one of these, but it's
Speaker 3: to not get eaten.
Speaker 2: It seems reasonable.
Speaker 3: No, But this one actually took me down a really
Speaker 3: fun rabbit hole, which I always appreciate because it forces
Speaker 3: me to take a different perspective on things, to ask
Speaker 3: different questions and and and like just the kinds of
Speaker 3: questions that I had to ask to get to the
Speaker 3: answer to this. It was fun. And I didn't hoe
Speaker 3: my advisor doesn't listen to this, just put it that
Speaker 3: way a few days. No, it's fine, I didn't. I
Speaker 3: don't I know how to balance my time darning, all right,
Speaker 3: So all right, So many names for this plant include
Speaker 3: the word nightshade, and did you know there's a whole
Speaker 3: night shade family. You did? Awesome. Anyone who gardens to
Speaker 3: any sort of degree probably comes across that word at
Speaker 3: some point or another. Because a lot of our favorite
Speaker 3: fruits and tubers, or I guess we call them vegetables,
Speaker 3: they're fruits and tubers.
Speaker 2: Tubers, fruits and tubers.
Speaker 3: From this family. So deadly nightshade is a cousin of tomatoes, potatoes, aubergines,
Speaker 3: and or egg plant fancy tomatillos. Yeah, it's a big family.
Speaker 3: A lot is going on, but a lot of the
Speaker 3: same toxic compounds are shared by this family, which is
Speaker 3: why you don't eat raw potatoes. You do not eat
Speaker 3: unripe or literally any other part of the tomato plant.
Speaker 3: They're they're well defended to a large degree.
Speaker 1: It really makes sense that you don't eat raw potatoes
Speaker 1: because that's the root, and the root generally has the.
Speaker 3: Most well defended because that's the thing that's getting them
Speaker 3: through to next year.
Speaker 2: And this family is solin Acea solin ace.
Speaker 3: Yes, so it's native to Europe and parts of North
Speaker 3: Africa as well as Western Asia. So this is like
Speaker 3: a nice Eurasian It shares that with a lot of
Speaker 3: other plants that have been found useful just because of
Speaker 3: history of human settlement and cultivation. But it has been
Speaker 3: naturalized and introduced throughout the world. I don't think it's
Speaker 3: terribly weedy. In fact, most of what I read says
Speaker 3: it's actually kind of hard to cultivate. It can be picky,
Speaker 3: which is interesting. But it is a plant of disturbance.
Speaker 3: It likes edges, nothing too sunny, nothing too shaded, a
Speaker 3: little bit more nutrients in the soil. So this makes
Speaker 3: sense that it would be involved in human history. You
Speaker 3: think humans leave a mark on the landscape, even paleolithic humans.
Speaker 3: We're disturbing the landscape, right, and certain plants probably followed
Speaker 3: them around whenever they did that. Inevitably, you see a
Speaker 3: plant enough, you're going to experiment it with it a
Speaker 3: little bit, you'd expect, right, So this probably came into
Speaker 3: play way earlier than people were even keeping records of it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: which is fascinating because I always think about all of
Speaker 3: the work that must go into playing with and experimenting
Speaker 3: with plants through the ages. Right, But if certain ones
Speaker 3: are just kind of sticking around human settlements, yeah, of
Speaker 3: course we're going to come into contact with it. It's
Speaker 3: not a very long lived plant, which I think is
Speaker 3: pretty interesting. It can live up to forty eight years
Speaker 3: in the wild, which really tells you it's at home
Speaker 3: in these transitional environments. It gets done what it needs
Speaker 3: to get done, and a short amount of time makes
Speaker 3: the best use of its time. And what better way
Speaker 3: to optimize your life, your short life on this planet
Speaker 3: than to protect yourself with some nasty, nasty chemicals. Y, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that makes sense. Yeah, plants have two options, really, chemical
Speaker 3: and physical. And physical is very costly, right. It takes
Speaker 3: a lot of energy and carbon to produce spines, thorns, needles,
Speaker 3: those sorts of things. Yeah, Chemicals, if you grow in
Speaker 3: a nutrient rich area, especially one with high D nitrogen,
Speaker 3: you can make alkaloids really easily. And so that is
Speaker 3: probably one of the main selective pressures that drove this
Speaker 3: plant to be just horrendous for you, right. And so
Speaker 3: it's also very fleshy. It's not something that guards itself
Speaker 3: with woody tissues. Again, that's costly. They don't live very long.
Speaker 3: They're perennial, they die back every year. Again, more emphasis
Speaker 3: for that selection pressure for toxic compounds cool. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: fun to think about this because you know they can't
Speaker 3: get up and run away, so poison whatever's chewing on
Speaker 3: you. You want to make sure it either doesn't do that
Speaker 3: again or has no opportunity to do that again. So
Speaker 3: I've heard botanists call this the most one of the
Speaker 3: most toxic plants in the Western hemisphere.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: I've also heard botanis say it's one of the most
Speaker 3: toxic plants in the Eastern hemisphere.
Speaker 5: So go figure one plus one, whatever hemisphere you find
Speaker 5: yourself on, avoid it. But again, thinking about all of
Speaker 5: the plants in the night shade family, it's a lot
Speaker 5: of these chemicals are not unique to deadly night shade.
Speaker 5: It's just really good at it and happens to hang
Speaker 5: around people very often.
Speaker 3: Like sort of these calcareous rocks. So it does really
Speaker 3: well in Europe, which might explain some of the more
Speaker 3: you know, Mediterranean European themed anecdotes being kind of predominant there.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just does well. And like I said, it's kind
Speaker 3: of fleshy, which is kind of cool. It's a beautiful plant.
Speaker 3: I wish I didn't have a picture all the ones
Speaker 3: in my book. They they don't recommend growing it very often,
Speaker 3: so it doesn't show up in a lot of the
Speaker 3: beautiful gardening illustrations, but it is a beautiful plant. People
Speaker 3: here it. So the issue with common names is sometimes
Speaker 3: they can apply to a lot of different plants, and
Speaker 3: you want to make sure that if someone serves you
Speaker 3: a night shade, if it happens to share one with
Speaker 3: a less toxic one. The good news is most of
Speaker 3: them that are called night shade don't mess with them,
Speaker 3: but people confuse it with another one. Bittersweet night shade,
Speaker 3: which is a vine, has tiny little purple flowers and
Speaker 3: it looks like a yellow traffic cone coming down from
Speaker 3: the bottom, very reminiscent of a tomato flower. Right, Okay,
Speaker 3: bella downa looks nothing like that. It's actually very different
Speaker 3: for this family. It's not buzz pollinated, which is what
Speaker 3: tomatoes and aubergines I keep seeing bee. Yes, well, be
Speaker 3: so buzz pollination is really cool. With the bees coming,
Speaker 3: they land on the cone and they have to vibrate
Speaker 3: at a specific frequency to release the pollen. They're in
Speaker 3: these little chambers. And so there's plants that are at
Speaker 3: like a c sharp. There's plants that are eating like
Speaker 3: an e minor that sort of thing. I don't know
Speaker 3: what tomatoes are. They might be like in a sea,
Speaker 3: but there it's really fun to watch because if you sit,
Speaker 3: you'll watch and you'll see it like spray down onto them.
Speaker 3: Bella Dona does not do that. It's got these beautiful
Speaker 3: sort of burgundy maroon bell shaped flowers that come down
Speaker 3: freely pollinated by a variety of larger insects. Very pretty
Speaker 3: plant though, I mean, if it's something that you're aware of,
Speaker 3: cautious around, respectful of, it would make an actual, very
Speaker 3: interesting addition to any garden, like.
Speaker 1: A beautiful center piece to your satan.
Speaker 3: They can get pretty impressive and height six point six
Speaker 3: feet is the tallest part, which is really impressive for
Speaker 3: an herbacious plant, and that probably, you know, packs some potency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you imagine.
Speaker 3: And the fruits themselves, the ones that probably get the
Speaker 3: most attention despite the whole plant being pretty awful for you.
Speaker 3: Is a berry. It's an actual berry, just like tomatoes.
Speaker 3: Tomatoes are berries, eggplants are berries, right. It's a fleshy,
Speaker 3: pulpy fruit with lots and lots of seeds in there,
Speaker 3: so the berries start green and ripe into black, and
Speaker 3: they do have are said to have a sweet taste
Speaker 3: to them. So a lot of children make very bad
Speaker 3: mistakes because they don't it's not like you're eating something bitter.
Speaker 3: They eat a few, then they're dead.
Speaker 2: And would it numb your tongue or anything even to
Speaker 2: give you an indication of like, you know how you that's.
Speaker 1: No, so because it doesn't. So the muscarinic receptors are
Speaker 1: only in the parasympathetic nervous system, not the somatic nervous system,
Speaker 1: which is your sensory and.
Speaker 2: So it would muscle once you ingest it, and it
Speaker 2: would be started to digest before it took effect.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and it wouldn't affect any sensory nerves or
Speaker 1: anything like that. So you wouldn't have any numbness, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have any tingling, you wouldn't have any muscle spasms
Speaker 1: because it's not affecting any of that stuff. So the
Speaker 1: first symptoms that you'd probably have would be things like
Speaker 1: dry mouth. Yeah, like that flushing fever. That's one of
Speaker 1: the first ones.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, as we discussed, not all parts of the plant
Speaker 3: are equally toxic. Plants are going to prioritize certain organs
Speaker 3: over others, mainly their roots and their reproductive structures, and
Speaker 3: there's kind of a descending level of toxicity. Accordingly, the
Speaker 3: roots have the most, upwards of one point three percent
Speaker 3: of them is made up of toxic compounds. There's a
Speaker 3: whole suite which I'll get to. Leaves is one point
Speaker 3: two percent, stalks, so stems point sixty five percent, flowers
Speaker 3: point six percent, and berries, oddly enough, point seven percent,
Speaker 3: and the seeds are only point four percent. That also
Speaker 3: makes sense, So berries, you don't want anything that shouldn't
Speaker 3: be eating them to eat them. But you also need
Speaker 3: to eventually get your seeds out into the environment, right,
Speaker 3: so don't load them with toxic things. I also found out,
Speaker 3: interestingly enough, that these toxins are expressed in everything from
Speaker 3: the nectar to the pollen as well. And they're not
Speaker 3: alone in that a lot of plants have toxic nectar.
Speaker 2: I have heard about people becoming sick or maybe dying
Speaker 2: after eating honey.
Speaker 3: Mad honey, you are from Appalachia, I am you would
Speaker 3: deal with that. Actually, So anytime they say don't honey
Speaker 3: your honey bees next to rhododendrons, because rhododendrons have a
Speaker 3: pretty nasty toxin that builds up the honey, and you
Speaker 3: had mentioned feeding it to soldiers to knock them out.
Speaker 3: I think it was the Romans. Don't quote me on
Speaker 3: this would leave infect hives with mad honey. They would
Speaker 3: feed these bees on rhododendron and leave them on the
Speaker 3: routes of the other soldiers, wait till they gorged themselves
Speaker 3: on it, and then just come in and slay them
Speaker 3: as they were on the ground, all nerved out.
Speaker 1: We're gonna quote you on that, quote me on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. I don't know if it is the
Speaker 3: Greeks of the Romans, like it's one of those two
Speaker 3: were doing I probably both, I believe it, right. But
Speaker 3: the interesting thing is a lot of organisms can get
Speaker 3: away with eating these plants, right. It's very confusing to
Speaker 3: have something so terribly toxic to something like you and I,
Speaker 3: but seeing a little bird go up and go no problems, right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So that really set me down this rabbit hole, because
Speaker 3: I know nothing about any sort of metabolic process that
Speaker 3: would be able to cope with this. You brought it
Speaker 3: up last time we talked. I think it was on
Speaker 3: my podcast about how insects kind of overcome this with
Speaker 3: some chanmation and stuff. But it's fascinating because these are small,
Speaker 3: brightly colored berries. Birds birds are number one the seed
Speaker 3: disperser of this plant. So I went, huh, what's going
Speaker 3: on there? And it's not just atropine that they're producing, right,
Speaker 3: they're also producing compounds like hyoscyamine, scopolamine, and solanine, which
Speaker 3: a lot of them other So there's a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff to deal with there, which tells me there's a
Speaker 3: lot of things that it doesn't want eating it. But
Speaker 3: whatever has to deal with that has to cope with that.
Speaker 3: So I went about trying to figure out what it
Speaker 3: is about birds that lets them deal with this on
Speaker 3: any great degree. And there's a lot of really fascinating
Speaker 3: ecology here. Interest in how animals cope with toxic plants
Speaker 3: actually comes up way more than I realized, and it
Speaker 3: comes up from the food industry, right, because if an
Speaker 3: animal can eat a lot of something, or eat something
Speaker 3: and doesn't immediately die from it, can it build up
Speaker 3: in that animal? And then when we consume the byproducts
Speaker 3: of that animal, can that hurt us? So famously, fish, yeah,
Speaker 3: mercury and fish Lincoln's mother was said to be killed
Speaker 3: by milk sickness, which is actually from drinking the milk
Speaker 3: of cows that have been feeding on a certain type
Speaker 3: of plant that grows like crazy around here. Oh, white
Speaker 3: snake root.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 3: Yes, So this is a big concern that we've known
Speaker 3: about for a very long time, and it comes up
Speaker 3: quite a bit. So there's a lot of unfortunate experiments
Speaker 3: where they just feed toxic things to animals and see
Speaker 3: what happens.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So in searching for how birds are able to cope
Speaker 3: with eating these berries, I found a thing about tropain
Speaker 3: alkaloids and birds, which that's the sweet of compounds that
Speaker 3: night shades are producing. They're called tropain alkaloids, and alkaloids
Speaker 3: are across the board, very bioactive molecules, very rich in nitrogen.
Speaker 3: And so they wanted to know what was going to
Speaker 3: happen because obviously, again they've observed that a lot of
Speaker 3: animals can eat this stuff. Large animals, of course, just
Speaker 3: because it takes a lot to bring down a cow
Speaker 3: versus a medium sized human. But birds are pretty small,
Speaker 3: even if it's a hen. And so they noticed birds
Speaker 3: were eating these They're dispersed by birds. What's going on here? Well,
Speaker 3: they took a bunch of different kinds of hens, which
Speaker 3: I realized that there are mostly hens that are like
Speaker 3: egg producers and ones that are meat producers. And they
Speaker 3: just fed them varying levels of plant materials containing that
Speaker 3: class of compounds which I think they use detera, which
Speaker 3: deteramine was one of the ones you mentioned. They're named
Speaker 3: after these plants, which is great, but they fed them regardless.
Speaker 3: It's the same compound. They're just trying to see what
Speaker 3: concentrations does it effect. And it turns out that poultry,
Speaker 3: specifically so chickens, these gulliforms appear to possess an atropine
Speaker 3: hydroxylase like enzyme that inactivates tropaine alkaloids. What yeah, that's
Speaker 3: so cool, blew my mind. So, yes, they're bringing them in.
Speaker 3: They do affect them at increasing doses, but they can
Speaker 3: eat a lot more than you would expect for an
Speaker 3: animal that size.
Speaker 2: Aaron's mine is blown.
Speaker 1: My mine is fully blow because I mean that must
Speaker 1: like that has to mean that birds, at least poultry,
Speaker 1: that they have evolved with exposure to these compounds, like
Speaker 1: from the beginning, right.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to test you, what are chickens as
Speaker 3: like a type of class of birds. No, I don't
Speaker 3: chickens fall.
Speaker 2: Under They're not pesseriformis.
Speaker 3: No, They're which is the small, little perchy birds.
Speaker 2: But it's like the most SCIOs. It's the only one
Speaker 2: I can think of right now. They're galliformis right, which
Speaker 2: is peasants. Job, I have no idea.
Speaker 3: I'm across the room. Just double that noise up. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there we go. So they are in the same group
Speaker 3: as pheasants, and in the wild, pheasants are said to
Speaker 3: be the most numerous birds scene feeding on this plant.
Speaker 3: So at some point in the lineage of the pheasants
Speaker 3: they realized that there's a delicious berries out there. Evolutionarily speaking,
Speaker 3: they have a history dealing with this.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, Oh my god, that is cool.
Speaker 3: That I never expected to track down that kind of
Speaker 3: connection out of a medical agro Yeah, journal, that was
Speaker 3: really cool to find it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: But it gets even better, Oh my god. Right, So again,
Speaker 3: it still affects them. It's not going to kill them outright, right,
Speaker 3: the more they're eating, the worse it's gonna get.
Speaker 1: They're just able to basically break down the atropine or
Speaker 1: the alkalol.
Speaker 3: To some extent. Right, So feeding on higher amounts or
Speaker 3: feeding for longer increased the chances of mild diarrhea, which
Speaker 3: is interesting, going back to what you said about it
Speaker 3: actually shutting it down. But it may not be atropine.
Speaker 3: It might be one of the other classic compounds. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but it actually gave the birds mild diarrhea.
Speaker 1: Just a little bit.
Speaker 3: From a plant's perspective, do you want seeds sitting in
Speaker 3: a gut for a very long time or do you
Speaker 3: want them to get removed from their thing, move the.
Speaker 1: Distance and stop it right now.
Speaker 3: So not only do you have birds that can eat
Speaker 3: your berries, give them the poops, and you've pretty much
Speaker 3: ensured that they get just far enough away to make
Speaker 3: your seeds find a new spot full of nitrogen rich
Speaker 3: poop to growing.
Speaker 1: You guys, are you hearing this because I want to
Speaker 1: do another PhD?
Speaker 3: Don't do it, But.
Speaker 1: Like, what the heck.
Speaker 3: That is that plants are fascinating?
Speaker 1: Are fascinating? I feel so sad for my life that
Speaker 1: I lived with a plant blindness for so long.
Speaker 3: We're carrying it.
Speaker 1: God for you.
Speaker 2: Matt with belladonna, which is kind of ironic, but it's
Speaker 2: so we're dilating our eyes and our minds and our minds.
Speaker 3: So long term exposure, elevated exposure gives the birds the
Speaker 3: case of the diarrheas, but breeding frequency was not affected,
Speaker 3: and the effects tended to be transient only for the
Speaker 3: duration of the study and did not appear to affect
Speaker 3: their health in the long run whatsoever. And to be
Speaker 3: honest with you, this plant is not numerous enough on
Speaker 3: the landscape to ever become an issue for any wild
Speaker 3: bird to begin with. So being relatively uncommon is actually beneficial.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: They find some food. It's a quick, easy meal. They
Speaker 3: eat it, gives them a little diarrhea, they poop the
Speaker 3: seeds out. The plant's happy, the bird's happy. No one's
Speaker 3: worse for the wear. If this plant were to become
Speaker 3: common and birds were to gorge themselves on it, you
Speaker 3: might be hearing a different evolutionary story.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So a tropa like I mentioned also has the toxic
Speaker 3: pollen and the toxic nectar, which brings up a lot
Speaker 3: of questions about pollination. So what they found was that
Speaker 3: the alkaloid content in both the nectar and the pollen
Speaker 3: is significantly higher than it is in other species. Investigated,
Speaker 3: which is interesting. So tropa is really expressing a lot
Speaker 3: of these in weird tissues, but the selective selection hypothesis
Speaker 3: is only part of the alkaloid spectrum is being produced,
Speaker 3: so they don't think it's getting the full complement of
Speaker 3: that chemical cocktail. But on some level that the plant
Speaker 3: just can't help produce it. But it could also help,
Speaker 3: you know, protect from potential you know, pollen thieves, nectar thieves,
Speaker 3: things that want to eat their pollen. So it's this
Speaker 3: trade off, right, there's no like one size fits all solution.
Speaker 3: You can't be the most beneficial thing across the board.
Speaker 3: So you know, okay, you heard a few pollinators here
Speaker 3: and there, you hurt your seed dispersus temporarily, but it's working. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's working. So yeah, it's this idea that not everything
Speaker 3: an evolution should be thought of as hierarchical or being
Speaker 3: better than the other. It's just if it works, it works, right.
Speaker 3: It just can't be less beneficial than it is beneficial.
Speaker 3: I think the most important thing to remember here is,
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, it's a matter of
Speaker 3: variation within a species when it comes to toxicity. And
Speaker 3: you had mentioned someone had said there has been no
Speaker 3: case of a good trip on belladonna, but plenty of
Speaker 3: other members of this family are toyed around with and
Speaker 3: used to one degree or another for recreational purposes. And
Speaker 3: plants are very plastic organisms again because they can't get
Speaker 3: up and move. So keep in mind that across the board,
Speaker 3: the dose is going to depend on where it's growing,
Speaker 3: how it's growing, what conditions the soil are, like how
Speaker 3: much light it was getting all of those things. And
Speaker 3: to pick up one berry and give it to someone
Speaker 3: and say, oh that was fine. You could pick up
Speaker 3: the next berry and that would be the last berry
Speaker 3: anyone ever ate. So in recreating with any of these
Speaker 3: in any way, yeah, don't eat it. But it is
Speaker 3: interesting to mention that even if you're trying to grow
Speaker 3: these plants, there's nothing saying you can't try to grow
Speaker 3: these in your garden. You know, be cautious, right, right right,
Speaker 3: And there's a reason you don't see it being sold
Speaker 3: very often.
Speaker 2: Grow at your own risks.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's a fascinating plant though, And I'm really happy this
Speaker 3: was the one we jumped on.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, me too. I feel like we picked
Speaker 1: our first two poison casts like two of the coolest there.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the thing though, every time I feel
Speaker 2: like you go digging, I know, it becomes this amazing
Speaker 2: fun story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so thank you so cool it is. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: that was the most fun Matt. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you both so much for having.
Speaker 1: Me, and thanks everybody for listening. Hopefully you guys enjoyed
Speaker 1: it as much as we did.
Speaker 2: Please follow us on all the social media's.
Speaker 1: Yep where this podcast will Kill You on Facebook and Instagram,
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Speaker 2: Check us out on our website This podcast will kill
Speaker 2: You dot com.
Speaker 1: On our website you'll find all of these sources that
Speaker 1: we use for each episode, the books and the articles
Speaker 1: that we use for research if you'd like to read.
Speaker 3: And what about them drink mixes also.
Speaker 1: Those those those will be on our TV, Instagram, our Facebook,
Speaker 1: our Twitter, etc. Like If you follow us, you'll see
Speaker 1: our recipes.
Speaker 2: And thank you to Bloodmobile, who provided the music for
Speaker 2: this episode in all of our episodes. And finally, wash
Speaker 2: your hands.
Speaker 1: And don't eat strange berries.
Speaker 3: This is just a plug for plant Idea. It can
Speaker 3: help save your life. A