Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: this is the Artifact, a new short form series from
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on particular objects, ideas,
Speaker 1: and moments in time. In this episode, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about a concept quite familiar to fans of spy
Speaker 1: movies and space operas, a false tooth that contains a
Speaker 1: deadly poison. Fans of Frank Herbert's Doone may best remember
Speaker 1: this innovation as a piece of technology. The doctor You
Speaker 1: implants in Duke Letto's mouth, telling him that he need
Speaker 1: only break the tooth open to exhale his poison onto
Speaker 1: Baron Harkonen and kill them both in a last act
Speaker 1: of defiance. Of course, the homicidal aspects of the invention
Speaker 1: don't work as well as intended for Letto, but we
Speaker 1: see variations of the suicidal principle here in other films
Speaker 1: as well. In the second season of The Mandalorian un
Speaker 1: Imperial Captain bites open a false tooth that electrifies them
Speaker 1: to death. Variations of the poison tooth also appear in
Speaker 1: the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the James Bond franchise. The
Speaker 1: concept is intriguing, but is there any reality to it?
Speaker 1: Certainly cyanide capsules have been used by captives and would
Speaker 1: be captives, most notably in the case of multiple high
Speaker 1: ranking Nazis after the close of World War Two, But
Speaker 1: did they ever store one in a false tooth? Writing
Speaker 1: for Atlas Obscura, and Eric Grundhauser spoke with Vince Hoton,
Speaker 1: curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: On the topic, and Hoden indicated that he had never
Speaker 1: come across any evidence of their existence. While glass capsules
Speaker 1: of cyanide, a fast acting poison, were sometimes hidden in
Speaker 1: the tips of pins and other items, or even temporarily
Speaker 1: secreted in the mouth, the false tooth idea presents too
Speaker 1: many problems. Not only would it prove dangerous to carry
Speaker 1: around in your head, but the capsule size required to
Speaker 1: carry uh an advisably lethal dose of ionide was typically
Speaker 1: too large for such concealment. Plus, there are simply better
Speaker 1: places to secure such a deadly secret. Herman Goring, for instance,
Speaker 1: is thought to have kept a cyanide capsule hidden in
Speaker 1: his navel or possibly his rectum, for eleven months during
Speaker 1: his Nuremberg War crimes trials before using the capsule in
Speaker 1: n Some historians, however, proposed that Goring's pill was simply
Speaker 1: slipped to him, and, as Bob Poole reported for the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Times in two thousand and five, a former
Speaker 1: American g I named Herbert Lee Stivers claimed responsibility for
Speaker 1: passing the capsule to Goring, believing it to merely be
Speaker 1: medicine hidden in a pin. But hollow teeth used in
Speaker 1: espionage were also a reality, designed to carry microfilm and
Speaker 1: other very small items of value. For example, during World
Speaker 1: War Two, German spy Nikolai Hansen kept an invisible ink
Speaker 1: capsule hidden inside one of his teeth. In the end,
Speaker 1: the poison tooth seems to be a mash up of
Speaker 1: two realities, poison capsules that were sometimes hidden in the
Speaker 1: mouth and could be crushed between the teeth to release
Speaker 1: the poison, and false or hollow teeth used to conceal
Speaker 1: very small items of spycraft. It's an imagined item, a
Speaker 1: fictional artifact, but it emerges from the real world. Tune
Speaker 1: into additional editions of the artifact each week, hosted by
Speaker 1: either Joe or myself. As always, you can email us
Speaker 1: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of I
Speaker 1: heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
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