Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and this is This Podcast Will
Speaker 1: Kill You. Welcome back to another of our tp w
Speaker 1: k Y book Club episodes, where we get to interview
Speaker 1: authors about their amazing books covering wide ranging topics insideience
Speaker 1: in medicine, and when I say wide ranging, I really
Speaker 1: mean wide ranging.
Speaker 2: So far, we've.
Speaker 1: Gotten into uncovering the origins of American gynecology and exploring
Speaker 1: what can happen when a single molecule in our brain
Speaker 1: goes awry, and we've got so much more that we're
Speaker 1: going to cover this season, like misogyny at MIT, the
Speaker 1: fraught future of Phosphorus, the post COVID pandemic Playbook, and
Speaker 1: so much more. If you'd like to take a sneak
Speaker 1: peek at the books that'll be featured in this season's
Speaker 1: book club episodes, head over to our website This Podcast
Speaker 1: Will Kill You dot Com and click on our bookshop
Speaker 1: dot Org link under Extras that'll take you to our
Speaker 1: bookshop dot Org affiliate page, where you can find our
Speaker 1: podcast book lists, including our book club list, which features
Speaker 1: books we've covered in this season and last, as well
Speaker 1: as future books we'll be covering later this season. Speaking
Speaker 1: of which, if you have a suggestion for a book
Speaker 1: club episode, we'd love to hear it. The best way
Speaker 1: to get that to us is to send a message
Speaker 1: via the contact us form on our website. One last
Speaker 1: thing before we get into the topic of today's episode,
Speaker 1: and that is a simple request from the Errands to
Speaker 1: our listeners. If you're enjoying the podcast, let us know, rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe. It really helps us out. Okay, finally, onto
Speaker 1: the book of the week. Today, we're sinking our teeth
Speaker 1: into The Most Delicious Poison, the Story of Nature's Toxins
Speaker 1: From Spices to Vices by doctor Noah Whiteman, who is
Speaker 1: a professor of genetics, genomics, evolution, and Development at the
Speaker 1: University of California at Berkeley, as well as the director
Speaker 1: of the Esseg Museum of Entomology there. Most Delicious Poison
Speaker 1: is an engrossing journey through the relationships that humans have
Speaker 1: formed with animal and plant derived substances, substances that we
Speaker 1: use to heal, to harm, to self medicate, to hallue, ucinate,
Speaker 1: to escape, to enhance. Throughout the book, doctor Whiteman expertly
Speaker 1: weaves stories of these toxins, tracing their evolutionary origins and
Speaker 1: ecological roles and examining how humans first experimented with them.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've come across the phrase the dose makes
Speaker 1: the poison, referring to the idea that basically everything has
Speaker 1: the potential to be toxic. It just depends on how
Speaker 1: much you consume. So many substances like water, for instance,
Speaker 1: are toxic and large enough quantities, but don't necessarily possess
Speaker 1: the dual nature inherent to so many toxins, where they
Speaker 1: can act as both medicine as well as poison. Like
Speaker 1: digitalis derived from foxgloves, is used in important medications that
Speaker 1: can slow the heart, but can also slow the heart
Speaker 1: too much i e. Stop the heart i e. Kill
Speaker 1: someone depending on the dose or opiates derived from opium.
Speaker 1: Poppy plants are powerful painkillers that revolutionized medicine when first
Speaker 1: introduced in the form of morphine, but are also powerfully
Speaker 1: addictive and have led to an enormous and devastating public
Speaker 1: health crisis, impacting millions of lives around the world. This
Speaker 1: catchy phrase provides an opportunity to explore the nature of
Speaker 1: poisons in more depth, because whether or not something is
Speaker 1: poisonous depends not just on the dose it's not just
Speaker 1: the dose that makes the poison, but it's also the recipient.
Speaker 1: Take milkweed. To monarch butterflies, they're a food source, but
Speaker 1: to most other animals they're a dangerous snack, leading to nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, seizures,
Speaker 1: heart rhythm changes, or heart rhythm reduction. How and why
Speaker 1: is milkweed different for monarch butterflies. We'll get there, but
Speaker 1: maybe we could add a second principle of toxicology to
Speaker 1: the dose makes the poison to reflect this variability in
Speaker 1: how poisons affect us. How about poison is in the
Speaker 1: eye of the beholder. We can learn so much about
Speaker 1: our own humanity and history by exploring our relationships with
Speaker 1: these plant and animal derived toxins, and doctor Whiteman is
Speaker 1: here to guide us, and he makes an excellent guide,
Speaker 1: not just for his expertise on all things toksin related,
Speaker 1: but also for the personal experiences he shares with his readers.
Speaker 1: So with that, I think we should just jump into
Speaker 1: this interview. Thank you so much for joining me today,
Speaker 1: doctor Whiteman. I thought your book was absolutely fascinating and
Speaker 1: so thoughtful, and I really appreciated the way that you
Speaker 1: wove in your own personal stories and experiences and connected
Speaker 1: those with the stories of the poisons that you were telling.
Speaker 1: So the full title of your book is Most Delicious Poison,
Speaker 1: the Story of Nature's toxins from Spices to Vices, which
Speaker 1: I love. By the way, great title, But can you
Speaker 1: tell me a bit more about what that title means,
Speaker 1: like what makes poisons delicious?
Speaker 2: Sure? Well, first of all, Aeron, thank you for having
Speaker 2: me on your podcast, which the title of which I love.
Speaker 2: This podcast will kill you because my book is a
Speaker 2: little bit about that. The title of the book is
Speaker 2: really the first part is from Shakespeare, and one can't
Speaker 2: go wrong with Shakespeare. So Most Delicious Poison is from
Speaker 2: the play Anthony and Cleopatra, And there's a scene in
Speaker 2: the play where Cleopatra is a opining for Anthony because
Speaker 2: he's away at war, and she instructs her handmaiden to
Speaker 2: bring her the mandrake tonic mandra Gora as it was
Speaker 2: called then, so that she could sleep away Anthony's absence.
Speaker 2: So she knew that it would allow her to sort
Speaker 2: of escape her circumstances, her worries, her anxiety, her love, sickness,
Speaker 2: and she said bring me my most delicious poison. So
Speaker 2: Shakespeare knew, you know, as anyone who was alive at
Speaker 2: that time, presumably in England, knew that certain plants that
Speaker 2: were growing in the English countryside had the power to
Speaker 2: do things to one's brain and body that was more
Speaker 2: than just you know, kind of the usual. And the
Speaker 2: mandrake was one of them. And so the dual side,
Speaker 2: the poison, the medicine, you know, the spiritual practice, the
Speaker 2: poison that use all of us can relate to this.
Speaker 2: So this seems to be something universal at least since
Speaker 2: the time of Shakespeare. And now we know, of course
Speaker 2: far far you know earlier that to be human, I think,
Speaker 2: means to do a dance with these chemicals that evolved
Speaker 2: not really for our purposes, but that we take advantage
Speaker 2: of for various purposes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, follow that thread of curiosity, for better or
Speaker 1: sometimes worse, I guess, depending on the dose.
Speaker 2: Right, So the delicious poison part illustrates the duality that
Speaker 2: is inherent I think in all of it. And it's
Speaker 2: sort of going back to the dose makes the poison,
Speaker 2: as you know, the Paracelsus is maxim But yeah, so
Speaker 2: I thought, well, it's hard to beat Shakespeare. So borrowing
Speaker 2: you know three words from him, you know did does
Speaker 2: encapsulate I think what the book is about.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break, will be back before you
Speaker 1: know it. Welcome back, everyone, I'm here chatting with doctor
Speaker 1: Noel Whiteman about his book Most Dangerous Poison. Let's jump
Speaker 1: back into some questions. So you mentioned in the book
Speaker 1: that you were motivated to write this book after the
Speaker 1: death of your father. How did this book take shape
Speaker 1: and how did his life and death influence the threads
Speaker 1: that you followed while writing.
Speaker 2: My dad was a naturalist, as I talked about in
Speaker 2: the book, and I think my kind of love of
Speaker 2: nature and wanting to be ensconced in it, wanting to
Speaker 2: understand it was definitely enhanced by him and his own
Speaker 2: abilities and interests. As all children do, they mimic their parents,
Speaker 2: they take advantage of what their parents know, and I
Speaker 2: certainly did that. And it was a way that he
Speaker 2: spent time with my brother and I when we were
Speaker 2: kids as well on the weekends and on vacation and
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. But he was also had alcohol
Speaker 2: use disorder. I was going to say he was an alcoholic.
Speaker 2: That is sort of the old terminology, and now it's
Speaker 2: referred to as alcohol use disorder, as most drug use
Speaker 2: disorders are. So those few handfuls of drugs that are
Speaker 2: commonly associated with different use disorders would be things like
Speaker 2: opioid use disorder, methamphetamine or emphetamine use disorder, cocaine use disorder,
Speaker 2: and a few others marijuana use disorder. And then layered
Speaker 2: on that is the fact that yeah, so he had
Speaker 2: was at alcoholic disorder, which was is a progressive disease.
Speaker 2: So if it's not treated right, so people need more
Speaker 2: and more alcohol in order to feel normal. And so
Speaker 2: his use of this chemical to kind of keep his
Speaker 2: demons away, it turned out, was similar to what I
Speaker 2: was studying in my lab, even though I didn't plant
Speaker 2: it that way, and it was only in hindsight that
Speaker 2: I realized this. But we were studying interactions between toxic
Speaker 2: plants and the animals that eat them. Interestingly, some require
Speaker 2: eating them in order to complete their life cycle, some
Speaker 2: insects in particular, So we were studying the monarch butterfly,
Speaker 2: whose caterpillars feed on toxic milk weed plants in order
Speaker 2: to complete their development, and they've co evolved with these
Speaker 2: milk weeds in such a way that the caterpillars actually
Speaker 2: store the heart poisons that the milk weed plant makes,
Speaker 2: which are called cardiac glycosides, and they keep those in
Speaker 2: their bodies throughout their life, including through metamorphosis and as adults.
Speaker 2: So they get this dose of poison from the caterpillar stage,
Speaker 2: you know, when they're feeding a milk weed, and then
Speaker 2: they carry those poisons in their bodies when they're flying around.
Speaker 2: And so that's why monarchs are brightly colored. That evolved
Speaker 2: as a signal to predators, particularly birds, to leave them alone.
Speaker 2: So the bird brain selected for those bright colors in
Speaker 2: the monarch, and large part it wasn't the monarch you know,
Speaker 2: you know, they're not they didn't evolve that way to
Speaker 2: make us happy. They're pretty, but they're actually those the
Speaker 2: colors that they have, which are bright cinnamon, orange, black,
Speaker 2: and polka dot white, those are warning colors in nature
Speaker 2: that re evolve over and over and over. And that's
Speaker 2: because of the animal mind, you know, in large part,
Speaker 2: the bird mind and bird brain, I should say. So
Speaker 2: when he was sort of at the very end of
Speaker 2: his life, I was, you know, in my lap, pushing
Speaker 2: these experiments to try to understand the genetic basis for
Speaker 2: how the monarchs are actually able to resist the these
Speaker 2: toxins that they store, because most insects are poisoned by
Speaker 2: these chemicals. And so when we figured that out, which
Speaker 2: involved the use of crisper, the gene editing technology, and
Speaker 2: using fruit flies as sort of models to study this
Speaker 2: in we're doing very very high tech, intense work. And
Speaker 2: then my dad succumbed to complications from alcohol use disorder,
Speaker 2: and so that's when, you know, it was sort of shocking.
Speaker 2: Even though at some level it was this was going
Speaker 2: to happen, the question was exactly how and when. And
Speaker 2: he had completely estranged himself from our family at that point,
Speaker 2: which was very sad and stressful, so that when he
Speaker 2: died it was sort of this big change, you know,
Speaker 2: in my day to day kind of worry and thinking
Speaker 2: about what was going on, and that allowed me to
Speaker 2: have some time to reflect on Wow, really they were
Speaker 2: similar things. My dad using alcohol made by yeast, you know,
Speaker 2: to keep enemies at bay, and sort of my own
Speaker 2: work in my life, you know, studying a species that
Speaker 2: was doing something similar to keep its enemies at bait.
Speaker 2: Just that the enemies are really different. One was sort
Speaker 2: of choosing to do it, or at least went down
Speaker 2: that path right, and the other is innate in the
Speaker 2: case of the monarch, And so the similarities and differences
Speaker 2: were sort of woven together in my mind, and I
Speaker 2: hadn't known it really up until that point. So it
Speaker 2: was it was an awakening his death I think of
Speaker 2: reflecting on, you know, human use of chemicals, which I
Speaker 2: had not studied really except very tangentially in my lap.
Speaker 2: So that's a long answer, but it's you can see
Speaker 2: that that it's it's this dance is a little complicated
Speaker 2: in both cases, but there is this commonality between them.
Speaker 1: And as you talked about, humans aren't the only ones
Speaker 1: to sort of co opt these toxins with the monarch,
Speaker 1: butterflies and the milkweeds. I love that story. But humans
Speaker 1: also aren't the only animals to self medicate. So could
Speaker 1: you talk about some of the research examining possible instances
Speaker 1: of self medication in either the animal or the prehistoric world.
Speaker 2: Sure, so, you know, one of the in the first
Speaker 2: chapter of the book, I focus on the sunflower family,
Speaker 2: the astorac just as a way of getting people to
Speaker 2: kind of understand how this book is going to go down.
Speaker 2: And the two themes that we regularly that I regularly
Speaker 2: revisit even in that chapter as you bring up, are
Speaker 2: the fact that animals self medicate, so that includes things
Speaker 2: as perhaps Mundane is a sparrow, so they are known
Speaker 2: to arrested sparas are known to line their nests with
Speaker 2: sprigs of wormwood artemisia, and scientists have shown that experimentally
Speaker 2: that that protects the nestlings from natural enemies like ticks
Speaker 2: and mites and things that would feed on their blood.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting, and it just so happens that the
Speaker 2: study was done in China. The sparrow the species is
Speaker 2: a rusted sparrow, and the same species of Artemisia is
Speaker 2: actually put on around door frames and hung from porches
Speaker 2: at a particular time in China that is associated with
Speaker 2: this dragon boat festival, and it's meant to sort of
Speaker 2: ward off you know, evil spirits or whatever, and maybe
Speaker 2: pests too, you know. So it's like the two things
Speaker 2: are mirroring each other. And then one of the other
Speaker 2: examples I give is chimpanzees in Africa where they're native
Speaker 2: in central Equatorial Africa, that they use this plant called Vernonia,
Speaker 2: which is another member of the sunflower family. And what
Speaker 2: people anthropologists have observed them doing and primatologists have observed
Speaker 2: them doing, is they will take these it's almost like
Speaker 2: a bush like daisy. They'll take the you know, stems
Speaker 2: of it and then to the bitter pith and then
Speaker 2: you know, skind of suck out the juices and then
Speaker 2: throw the stems away. So they're not they're not eating
Speaker 2: the stems and it doesn't look like they're doing this
Speaker 2: for nutrition at all. And one of the reasons is
Speaker 2: that plant vernonia is used by people to make food
Speaker 2: but also in medicine, and it's called bitter leaves and
Speaker 2: it's actually used to make this It's an ingredient in
Speaker 2: this stew called endo lay, and the bitter leaves are bitter,
Speaker 2: and so you really have to cook them, you know,
Speaker 2: in order to eat them. And so the chimpanzees what
Speaker 2: the primatologists showed that the vernonia bitter pith chewing is
Speaker 2: associated with, you know, seasonal variation in worm intestinal worm burdens.
Speaker 2: So they're doing this bitter pith chewing when worm burdens
Speaker 2: are high, and that seems to treat them seems to
Speaker 2: reduce the impact of the worms and their body. Now,
Speaker 2: the other mirroring thing is that local people who are
Speaker 2: living near these chimps, but not just there all over
Speaker 2: you also use vernonia as a medicine to treat various ailments,
Speaker 2: including various infectious diseases. So we see this kind of
Speaker 2: repeated pattern over and over that animals are doing it,
Speaker 2: we're doing it in our case. It's culturally transmitted information.
Speaker 2: That's the big difference, I think, and I'm not saying
Speaker 2: it's not in chimps, but I don't think we have
Speaker 2: evidence of that yet if it exists. And then the
Speaker 2: same patterns are mirrored in other places where great apes
Speaker 2: occur in nature. In Southeast Asia, orangutans use a tree
Speaker 2: in the Dressina genus, and so do local people to
Speaker 2: treat infections. So the orangutans seem to use it for
Speaker 2: skin infections, and people use it for a variety of things.
Speaker 2: And there's a sappin in which is a particular kind
Speaker 2: of chemical that's been shown to be present in the
Speaker 2: Dressina juice that may be the active ingredient that is
Speaker 2: acting pharmacologically. And then maybe the most interesting story is
Speaker 2: you know some of the and this, I would say
Speaker 2: is the most difficult to determine if it's really sort
Speaker 2: of a cause effect thing in terms of why they
Speaker 2: were doing this. But they're a very close relative of
Speaker 2: our species. Homo sapiens, which we call modern humans, is
Speaker 2: an extinct lineage that was either a subspecies or species
Speaker 2: or divergent population depending on who you're talking to. But
Speaker 2: this was what are known as the Neanderthals, Homo neanderthal
Speaker 2: ensis or Homo sapiens neanderthal ensis, depending on right was
Speaker 2: it a subspecies or not, And that's sort of a
Speaker 2: splitting of hairs thing. But we know that this lineage
Speaker 2: left Africa before Homo sapiens did and then arrived in
Speaker 2: Europe and Asia, and you know, it was pretty divergent
Speaker 2: from humans that were evolving in Africa at the same time,
Speaker 2: you know, had left sort of butted off and formed
Speaker 2: a new lineage. And they were in Europe before modern
Speaker 2: humans were, for example. But eventually modern humans made their
Speaker 2: way to Europe co existed with the Neanderthals innerbred with them.
Speaker 2: So people who are of European descent almost everyone has,
Speaker 2: you know, somewhere around three percent of the genome is
Speaker 2: Neanderthal genome, but that species as a whole has gone extinct,
Speaker 2: and the only vestiges besides the pieces of our DNA
Speaker 2: many of us that have that are skulls and skeletons
Speaker 2: that were left in caves. And so there's a cave
Speaker 2: in Spain called elc Drone where a number of Neanderthal
Speaker 2: skeletons have been identified and the genomes of those individuals
Speaker 2: have been sequenced completely in the case of this one cave,
Speaker 2: and there's this one Neanderthal in that cave named I
Speaker 2: call him Sid in the book, just kind of as
Speaker 2: a way of, you know, kind of keeping track of
Speaker 2: what we're talking about. And Sid's was an adult male Neanderthal,
Speaker 2: and he had an absessed tooth based on his you know,
Speaker 2: the information that anthropologists got from the cave and the
Speaker 2: other thing they did this is amazing. He had dental
Speaker 2: calculus on the back of his teeth, like all of
Speaker 2: these skeletons did. And what scientists did is they analyzed
Speaker 2: what was in that calculus and they found remnants of
Speaker 2: the food that Sid and the other Neanderthals were eating.
Speaker 2: And not only that, but they sequenced the DNA of
Speaker 2: whatever was in the mouth of Sid and his friend,
Speaker 2: you know, whoever else was in the cave with him
Speaker 2: who died, they weren't necessarily contemporaneous, and what they found
Speaker 2: were typical food stuffs that people would expect to Neanderthals
Speaker 2: already known to be eating at that time in the
Speaker 2: other mouths. But in Sid's mouth they found something very unique.
Speaker 2: They found evidence that Sid had been eating or consuming
Speaker 2: drinking chemicals that were from yarrow, from this another member
Speaker 2: of the sunflower family, the astracy, and one of the
Speaker 2: chemicals is called chemazuline. And you know, yarrow is used
Speaker 2: as a medicinal by lots of different peoples around the
Speaker 2: world and has been medicinally important as a plant, and
Speaker 2: chemazuline is a profin which has sort of a structure
Speaker 2: that's very similar to ibuprofen. So it's possible that chemazuline,
Speaker 2: there's some evidence that it's actually used as an anti
Speaker 2: it was used as an anti inflammatory, and still is
Speaker 2: that it has those properties. Okay, So that's one thing.
Speaker 2: And the infection that Sid had is known because the
Speaker 2: DNA of that pathogen was sequenced. When they sequenced the
Speaker 2: genome of CID which is also amazing, and then microbiome
Speaker 2: that was in his mouth, and then there was evidence
Speaker 2: that he was eating bark from a poplar tree, and
Speaker 2: poplar trees are produce a lot of something called salicilic acid,
Speaker 2: which is a chemical that is very similar to the
Speaker 2: chemical that's an aspirin acetyl cl selic acid is just
Speaker 2: a stylated clicelic acid okay, and salicilic acid on its
Speaker 2: own also as anti inflammatory affects, just like actasalicelic acid
Speaker 2: or aspirin does. They found that in his mouth. Then
Speaker 2: they also found DNA from penicillium mold, which is the
Speaker 2: mold that produces the antibiotic penicillin. So none of the
Speaker 2: other Neanderthals in the cave had this stuff. And they
Speaker 2: from the genome sequence, they figured out that sid had
Speaker 2: some gene variants that allowed him to taste and discern
Speaker 2: at a very high level bitter chemicals in food and drink,
Speaker 2: and so some humans also are tasters or not tasters
Speaker 2: of these bitter compounds. So this is why some people
Speaker 2: are really sensitive to things like cilantro or mustard greens
Speaker 2: and Brussels sprouts and some aren't. Some don't care something
Speaker 2: it's fine, some hate it, right, And so Sid was
Speaker 2: a taster. So what this meant was Sid knew what
Speaker 2: he was doing. He wasn't just eating this stuff because
Speaker 2: he didn't know what it was. That's the idea anyway,
Speaker 2: that's inferred by this fact that he had the genetic
Speaker 2: variance that might allow him to taste really bitter things. So,
Speaker 2: putting all of this together, the anthropologists have suggested that
Speaker 2: Sid was self medicating. And that is old evidence, fifty
Speaker 2: thousand year old evidence that perhaps our ancestors, our closest relatives,
Speaker 2: we're doing what we do now that every single person
Speaker 2: has done right and the home remedies are maybe that's
Speaker 2: what Sid was using, what his family, his ancestors were doing.
Speaker 2: So how far back can we go? And that's where
Speaker 2: the great ape thing becomes interesting, because our closest living relatives,
Speaker 2: those great apes, also do it. So then we put
Speaker 2: all this together, we say, well, this seems to be
Speaker 2: maybe millions of years old, this practice right in the
Speaker 2: primate lineage and our specific great ape lineage.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break, and when we get back,
Speaker 1: there's still so much to discuss. Welcome back everyone, I've
Speaker 1: been chatting with doctor Noah Whitman about his book Most
Speaker 1: Dangerous Poison. Let's get back into things. It is so fascinating.
Speaker 1: There are sometimes doing the podcast where I think I
Speaker 1: want to go back and get another PhD in this,
Speaker 1: and then I'm like, talk myself out of it immediately.
Speaker 1: But like, that is definitely an area that I could
Speaker 1: would love to explore more. But as you discuss, there
Speaker 1: is also tremendous diversity in just the number and kind
Speaker 1: or types of toxins that plants can produce. Can the
Speaker 1: type of toxin produced tell us anything about what it's
Speaker 1: used for or the species that a plant it interacts with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, as you say, you know, plants and fungi
Speaker 2: and bacteria and our chaia, and you know even animals
Speaker 2: and protus are all capable of making chemicals that are toxic.
Speaker 2: And you know, one of the things to think about
Speaker 2: is like, well even oxygen is toxic, right, So what
Speaker 2: is a toxin? And for the purposes of the book,
Speaker 2: the way I think about it is, you know, is
Speaker 2: the organism making it to defend itself or to manipulate,
Speaker 2: you know, another organism, the behavior of another organism, either
Speaker 2: to repel it or attract it. And you know, a
Speaker 2: toxin isn't going to attract something necessarily, but a toxin
Speaker 2: could manipulate the mind of something. And so like a
Speaker 2: citrus plant will put caffeine that it makes in the
Speaker 2: nectar to manipulate the minds of bees. And it's not
Speaker 2: like the plant is thinking. It's not conscious. Plants don't
Speaker 2: have brains. They're not conscious in the same way we
Speaker 2: define an animal that has a right. So that's one thing.
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean they're not sensing the environment or responding
Speaker 2: to it, because of course they are all the time,
Speaker 2: so they have very sophisticated environmental sensing equipment. But they've
Speaker 2: been selected to do this. That means they've the ones
Speaker 2: that do it have been favored to do it. And
Speaker 2: the mutations that occur in the gene pathway, in the
Speaker 2: metabolic pathways that are encoded by genes that encode enzymes
Speaker 2: right that make the metabolism happen, those are the things
Speaker 2: that have been selected on those random variants that tweak
Speaker 2: the chemical structures, and the ones that survive better leave
Speaker 2: more offspring are the ones that pass those traits on
Speaker 2: to the next generation. That's Darwinian evolution, right, We know
Speaker 2: that that is how most of these chemicals arose, and
Speaker 2: they are making these ornate often very expensive chemicals in
Speaker 2: terms of energy and also just what's in them. So
Speaker 2: a lot of them have a nitrogen atom in them,
Speaker 2: at least one that's expensive because they could be putting
Speaker 2: that into making pollen or seeds depending on the organism,
Speaker 2: or spores or eggs in the case of an animal.
Speaker 2: Why are they making Why are they doing this? And
Speaker 2: we know that when you prevent them from doing it
Speaker 2: by knocking the genes out or you know, the opposite,
Speaker 2: taking the chemical and sprain it on a plant that
Speaker 2: doesn't make it, like say caffeine. If you put caffeine
Speaker 2: on a tomato leaf, they're very well defended from herbivores,
Speaker 2: including the ones that can normally attack tomatoes. So all
Speaker 2: of this evidence you know when you knock them out,
Speaker 2: when you knock the genes out that make the toxins
Speaker 2: in plants and you put them out in nature, they
Speaker 2: don't do very well. They get attacked by insects and
Speaker 2: other animals. So we know that they serve that function.
Speaker 2: They protect the plant from being eaten and that allows
Speaker 2: them to have more pollen and seeds than they would otherwise. Right,
Speaker 2: because they have they can protect that tissue that is
Speaker 2: allowing them to photosynthesize, that's allowing them to make more
Speaker 2: seeds in pollen. So it's this defense usually that has
Speaker 2: evolved in the plants against natural enemies, and the natural
Speaker 2: enemies have been the ones doing the natural selection. They're
Speaker 2: the selective agents, as we say, so we can only
Speaker 2: think about it in the context of this kind of
Speaker 2: coevolved system. But eventually some animals overcome that and even
Speaker 2: use the chemicals that the plants are making to their
Speaker 2: own devices, like the monarch butterfly. So when if we
Speaker 2: step way back, we can say that many of the
Speaker 2: plants that are out there, the species that are out there,
Speaker 2: the diversity of plants, and you know, if we look
Speaker 2: at their chemicals, they're so diverse among those plants, right,
Speaker 2: each one is sort of making a different set. And
Speaker 2: then yes, there's some similarity among plants that are closer
Speaker 2: related to each other and the chemicals they make, but
Speaker 2: there's also diversity that's constantly being born in the chemical
Speaker 2: structures as time goes on, as evolution proceeds. And then
Speaker 2: the same is true in the animal side. You know
Speaker 2: that they're colonizing these plants, they're having to overcome these
Speaker 2: things and evolve ways of dealing with them and sometimes
Speaker 2: even using them. So this chemical dance has produced all
Speaker 2: of these diverse chemicals over deep time, this co evolutionary
Speaker 2: dance in the plants and the other organisms that are
Speaker 2: making them. So that's that's I would say the most
Speaker 2: important thing to realize is that these chemical this chemical
Speaker 2: diversity isn't there, you know, because of us. We can
Speaker 2: benefit from it by tapping into this you know, war
Speaker 2: of nature, but the chemical diversity itself is there to
Speaker 2: serve the needs of the makers.
Speaker 1: I love that point because I think that we're so
Speaker 1: of course, most of us are so human centric that
Speaker 1: we think about but what about humans? But what about us?
Speaker 1: But what about us? And I think that it goes
Speaker 1: to show that some of these plant derived pharmaceuticals we
Speaker 1: forget their you know, their plant origins. But there are
Speaker 1: some amazing, serendipitous stories of how we discovered certain drugs,
Speaker 1: very effective drugs, like I think one in your book
Speaker 1: that you mentioned is Humoran and Warfarin and cattle. Do
Speaker 1: you have a favorite drug origin story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one that I didn't really know about before
Speaker 2: I started writing the book, but is it really interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the blood thinner warfarin that is a very important
Speaker 2: anti cregulent drug, is also a rat poison and is
Speaker 2: a big problem right now because if people leave out
Speaker 2: rat poison, you know, in their backyard, and a rat
Speaker 2: eats it but doesn't quite die, a bird of prey
Speaker 2: might eat that rat and become poisoned. So this is
Speaker 2: actually a big problem and I don't think people should
Speaker 2: be using rat poison. But my favorite origin story really
Speaker 2: is probably curari, which is a concoction. So that's a
Speaker 2: general term for a concoction that is used as an
Speaker 2: air poison all over northern South America and the Caribbean.
Speaker 2: So curari is not just one thing. And these are
Speaker 2: concoctions that were recipes basically passed down the generations, and
Speaker 2: they're derived from different plants, mostly in the Amazonian rainforest.
Speaker 2: And one of them is called tube kurari and that
Speaker 2: was simply because the qurrari was stored in bamboo when
Speaker 2: it was shipped to North America and Europe where it
Speaker 2: was analyzed. But indigenous peoples were in that case in
Speaker 2: Ecuador were using tube kurrai as an aero poison for
Speaker 2: hunting mostly but also in warfare, but mostly in hunting
Speaker 2: and blow darts. And the German explorer Alexander von Humboldt
Speaker 2: in his diary along with Amy Boone Plant his companion,
Speaker 2: they described their encounter in I think Brazil with an
Speaker 2: indigenous man who was the man who was making the
Speaker 2: kirai in that village that he happened to be in,
Speaker 2: and he was having a conversation with the kurari maker.
Speaker 2: But he described the place where he was making it
Speaker 2: as similar to a pharmacy that you would encounter in
Speaker 2: Europe with you know, with very sophisticated filters and vessels
Speaker 2: and you know, lots of very particular ways of doing things.
Speaker 2: And then the man who was making the karari said
Speaker 2: that they called the silent death. You know. His claim
Speaker 2: was that it was far superior to gunpowder because it
Speaker 2: was quiet, you know, it was didn't make a sound,
Speaker 2: and so you could could shoot a prey in the
Speaker 2: tree with a blow dart and it would hit the
Speaker 2: animal and then you know, maybe thirty seconds later. Because
Speaker 2: what became determined was that the chemical in that qurrai
Speaker 2: was paralyzing the animal. And the animal was still alive
Speaker 2: when it fell to the ground, but paralyzed, couldn't breathe right,
Speaker 2: eventually died. So these concoctions were used all over you know,
Speaker 2: northern South America and the Amazonian basin and were very valuable.
Speaker 2: They were traded, they were coveted things, these aero poisons.
Speaker 2: But that tube Kurari that was eventually shipped in the
Speaker 2: twentieth century to be analyzed, and in both Canada and Europe,
Speaker 2: it was sort of discovered that okay, this tube curari
Speaker 2: had a compound and alkaloid, that tubocurarin, that became the
Speaker 2: first muscle relaxant that allowed general anesthesia to proceed in
Speaker 2: the modern way that we think about during surgery. So
Speaker 2: it was a stabilized kind of anesthesia that wasn't just ether, right,
Speaker 2: which would knock you out. But the problem was if
Speaker 2: the muscles weren't relaxed during surgery, it made it very
Speaker 2: dangerous for the patient and very difficult for the surgeon.
Speaker 2: Right you can imagine why if the muscles are reacting
Speaker 2: to being cut, that's not a good thing.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So this this currari totally relaxed the skeletal muscles and
Speaker 2: allowed surgery to be performed in a way that was stable,
Speaker 2: so etherized and curized. And so that's probably my favorite
Speaker 2: origin story because it arose from indigenous knowledges. They knew
Speaker 2: it was paralyzing the animals, that's why they were using it,
Speaker 2: but not just it. It's like many things, but this
Speaker 2: one specific one actually had. It played an enormous role
Speaker 2: in the development of modern medicine and eventually led to
Speaker 2: the ventilator because if you are paralyzing the skull of
Speaker 2: muscles during surgery, as anybody knows, you have to be
Speaker 2: put on a ventilator and have to have artificial respiration, right,
Speaker 2: So it led to the development of all this technology
Speaker 2: that we take for granted now. But it's important to
Speaker 2: remember that this was really only going in the nineteen
Speaker 2: forties or so, right, so before that it was this
Speaker 2: is why surgery is still dangerous, but it was a
Speaker 2: lot more dangerous then. So that's probably my favorite story.
Speaker 1: It's a great story, and we oh, like modern medicine,
Speaker 1: modern surgery owes so much to various plant compounds like
Speaker 1: kirari and morphine is another one that you mentioned, but
Speaker 1: one of the most jaw dropping and mind blowing facts
Speaker 1: that I read in your book is that mammals have
Speaker 1: been making morphine long before plants and salsilic acid we
Speaker 1: make our own. But what the heck is going on? Why? How?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I would say that this is still a pretty
Speaker 2: controversial topic in just in terms of the science, but
Speaker 2: as I review it in the book, I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: convinced that you know, based on the published studies, that
Speaker 2: mammals do make salsilic acid for whatever function. We don't
Speaker 2: know yet, Actually we don't know. And the reason that
Speaker 2: we think this, it's like, yes, it could be the
Speaker 2: microbiome making it or something, right, but in studies with
Speaker 2: like mice, you know where they really control well the
Speaker 2: diet and things like that, they are still making it.
Speaker 2: So you can even have notobiotic mice, which means mice
Speaker 2: that don't have a microbiome, so they're sterile. But the
Speaker 2: morphine thing, I think is actually more interesting because we
Speaker 2: have receptors for morphine that are called the endorphin, and
Speaker 2: the endorphins are these peptides, which means they're they're amino
Speaker 2: acids that are kind of linked together. Right in chains
Speaker 2: not super long because they don't fold into proteins, but
Speaker 2: all proteins are made of these chains of amino acids too,
Speaker 2: So shorter ones are just called peptides, and endorphins are those.
Speaker 2: They're peptides of amino acids, made of amino acids, and
Speaker 2: they bind to the endorphin receptors. And so say if
Speaker 2: I had a paper cut in my hand, endorphins would
Speaker 2: be released, right, so I would initially feel pain, but
Speaker 2: then the pain gets dulled, and that dulling is in
Speaker 2: part due to the release of these endorphins. Okay, so
Speaker 2: they are the pain sort of preventing molecules that allow
Speaker 2: us to calm the pain down. And morphine binds to
Speaker 2: those receptors too, And it was thought that morphine is
Speaker 2: only found in the opium poppy, and the opium poppy's
Speaker 2: relatives make similar compounds, but nothing quite gets to morphine
Speaker 2: except in the opium poppy, and the pathway, the metabolic
Speaker 2: pathway to make morphine is well characterized in opium poppies,
Speaker 2: and we roughly know, you know, when the different relatives
Speaker 2: gained the ability to make the precursors and things like that.
Speaker 2: So it's pretty ancient And it turns out this researcher
Speaker 2: in Saint Louis, this late scientist, discovered some evidence that
Speaker 2: the brains of mammals and other body parts contained morphine.
Speaker 2: He could even find it in the urine of some animals.
Speaker 2: And you know, this was actually older evidence, and people
Speaker 2: were sort of like, yeah, well, it's just what they're eating,
Speaker 2: or you know, they're getting it from the diet. If
Speaker 2: they're cows, they're probably eating poppies or things like that,
Speaker 2: or maybe it's the bacteria and their guts making it
Speaker 2: or transforming some chemical into a morphine like chemical. But
Speaker 2: he went a step further and actually looked at this
Speaker 2: in mice. So he had mice that were which are
Speaker 2: mammals like us, and should do mice make it? Because
Speaker 2: if we make it, maybe mice make it. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: something that is more conserved across the tree of life,
Speaker 2: you know. And he had these notobiotic mice that didn't
Speaker 2: have microbiomes. He delivered them via cesarean section so that
Speaker 2: they're very controlled mice that don't have a microbiome. They
Speaker 2: have a diet that's very very controlled. And sure enough,
Speaker 2: those mice in the urine also had morphine. It's like, where,
Speaker 2: so is this just a byproduct? Like what is going on?
Speaker 2: How do they do this? People were skeptical still, so
Speaker 2: he went a step further and had some human cell lines.
Speaker 2: The means they're just the cells. They were also notautobiotics,
Speaker 2: so you know, going to great lengths to make sure
Speaker 2: there are no bacteria or other microbes living in the
Speaker 2: culture with them or other cells, and he gave them
Speaker 2: a very simple precursor that eventually leads to the production
Speaker 2: of morphine in the opium poppies. So he gave those cells,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of fe the cells this precursor, and
Speaker 2: sure enough they make morphine. So it's very clear that
Speaker 2: human cells. Those were human. I think it was it
Speaker 2: was a brain tumor cell line. But this was shocking.
Speaker 2: I think that that they found morphine was able to
Speaker 2: be made by these particular cells. And then they proposed
Speaker 2: that maybe it's in the brain. Maybe maybe it actually
Speaker 2: is used somehow by the body as a molecule to
Speaker 2: do the the you know, to make these nervous systems work.
Speaker 2: But it's still unclear actually what it's doing. We don't know.
Speaker 2: So that's the bottom line is that it's it's in
Speaker 2: low amounts, but is it in amounts that are biologically meaningful?
Speaker 2: I think that's still a little controversial. Even is it
Speaker 2: just a waste product of some other metabolic pathway. We
Speaker 2: don't know, so I think there are many mysteries still.
Speaker 2: But it's shock. It's shocking, Yes, that I would say
Speaker 2: with some confidence that you and I made morphine today.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: I just keep thinking about it. It's like so tantalizing,
Speaker 1: like why but why but why? I just keep thinking
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: But well, we're making endorphins. We know why that is.
Speaker 2: So maybe morphine is a similar thing, except it's a
Speaker 2: small molecule, you know, so it might be a little
Speaker 2: bit easier for it to get through different parts of
Speaker 2: our bodies, right, So that that's something else to think about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And morphine, you know, is just one of many,
Speaker 1: many different types of compounds that are addictive to humans
Speaker 1: or can be addictive to humans. And a big focus
Speaker 1: of your book is on addictive compounds and your father's
Speaker 1: addiction struggles. As you mentioned, do all addictive compounds work
Speaker 1: on the human brain, I'll say, in the same way
Speaker 1: to create those addiction pathways, and Ken this is a
Speaker 1: two parter. Sorry, but can we predict whether a newly
Speaker 1: discovered toxin would be addictive or psychedelic or what effects
Speaker 1: it's likely to have just based on its structure?
Speaker 2: Well, I think in many ways, yes, you could say,
Speaker 2: this chemical what receptors does it bind too that we
Speaker 2: know of? Right, Like, we could figure that out pretty easily,
Speaker 2: and that is in fact, how a lot of drugs
Speaker 2: are designed now, you know, like where are they going
Speaker 2: to bind? And are they going to compete with another receptor?
Speaker 2: Are they going to compete with a neurotransmitter? Are they
Speaker 2: you know, what are they? Where are they binding? So
Speaker 2: I think that part is not completely understood in terms
Speaker 2: of being able to predict, but we could we can
Speaker 2: get close. Like fentanyl was sort of you know, this
Speaker 2: pipuriodine structure that forms the basis of it that was
Speaker 2: used sort of because Jansen discovered that, you know, morphine
Speaker 2: has at its base this piperiodine ring too, you know,
Speaker 2: so could he exploit that and make a synthetic version
Speaker 2: that was sort of had properties that were made it
Speaker 2: advantageous to use, And yes it did, but it also
Speaker 2: had the problem of being really really really potent, and
Speaker 2: so fentanyl is just the latest way in the opioid crisis, right.
Speaker 2: But going back to your question about addiction, well, I
Speaker 2: think the first thing to say is I'm not an
Speaker 2: addiction specialist, so that's one thing. But if you take
Speaker 2: something like alcohol use disorder and compare it to opioid
Speaker 2: use disorder, there are similarities and differences in the neural
Speaker 2: circuits involved. The same is true for something like methamphetamine
Speaker 2: use disorder. But what they have in common is, you know,
Speaker 2: very often it's either that sort of dopamine or opioid
Speaker 2: endogenous opioid in other words, endorphin based systems that are involved.
Speaker 2: Not always, but they're they're usually involved, right, So there's
Speaker 2: some some problem with those two pathways, usually in the
Speaker 2: brains of people who become addicted to things. So that's
Speaker 2: one of the things that I think most addiction specialists
Speaker 2: would agree that the people who are most prone to
Speaker 2: developing the use disorders, whether it's alcohol use disorder, opioid
Speaker 2: use disorder, something like methamphetamine use disorder, are people who
Speaker 2: come from childhoods where there was adverse events, abuse, or neglect,
Speaker 2: or all three trauma of some kind. So this book,
Speaker 2: this Gobbor mates book. It's in the Realm of Something Ghosts.
Speaker 2: I can't remember the full title, but it's a great
Speaker 2: book because he talks about this. He sort of breaks
Speaker 2: it down into the systems that get set in place
Speaker 2: as infants through early childhood. Right, These dopamine systems, the
Speaker 2: opioid system the systems that are allowing our bodies and
Speaker 2: brains to work properly, to respond to stimuli properly. But
Speaker 2: they need feedback, They need interaction with the people around
Speaker 2: us in order to develop properly. They need that kind
Speaker 2: of stimulation, right, They need to feel we need to
Speaker 2: feel safe in order to properly develop. And when that goes,
Speaker 2: when that's out of whack, then there becomes the need
Speaker 2: for external you know, sort of external stimulation or damping
Speaker 2: down of those pathways. So it's a really rough way
Speaker 2: of describing it, but I would say that people begin
Speaker 2: to use these drugs, they take them, like most people
Speaker 2: who take prescription opioids do not become do not develop
Speaker 2: opid use disorders. Right, So why do the people who
Speaker 2: develop them develop them? What do they have in common?
Speaker 2: And one of the things they have many of them
Speaker 2: have in common, are these early childhood issues with their environment,
Speaker 2: and so they're sort of set on a trajectory where
Speaker 2: they're open to developing these use disorders very easily. And
Speaker 2: that's also true for alcohol use disorder. So there's a
Speaker 2: genetic component too though, so we know that in some cases, yes,
Speaker 2: if you have certain opiid receptor variants, you are more
Speaker 2: prone to developing a use disorder. You may be more
Speaker 2: prone to developing alcohol use disorder and an opioid use disorder.
Speaker 2: So that's interesting too, and there's some debate about that
Speaker 2: as well, like does it crossover, which kind of gets
Speaker 2: at your question. But the psychedelic thing is interesting because psychedelics,
Speaker 2: broadly speaking, are just those chemicals that are binding primarily
Speaker 2: in terms of how we think about a psychedelic to
Speaker 2: a set of serotonin receptors in the brain, a subset
Speaker 2: of them, and they are not addictive in that in
Speaker 2: the ways that you and I have been talking about.
Speaker 2: So there's no use disorder known that really is going
Speaker 2: to come from a psychedelic experience, so you don't people
Speaker 2: don't get addicted to them in that kind of same sense,
Speaker 2: And what addiction is is sort of like, you know,
Speaker 2: how do we define that most people would define it
Speaker 2: as you know, using a chemical in this case in
Speaker 2: a way that causes us harm or we want to stop,
Speaker 2: but can't you know? So that there's the inability to
Speaker 2: stop using something and the continued use of it is
Speaker 2: causing problems in other areas of our life. Now you
Speaker 2: could say I'm a addicted to caffeine. Is that a problem? No?
Speaker 2: Does it cause problems in my other parts of my life? No?
Speaker 2: It enhances other parts of my life. So is that
Speaker 2: an addiction? And I think that's why the word use
Speaker 2: disorder is better than addiction because it right it sort of,
Speaker 2: it narrows it down a little bit more as a
Speaker 2: problem because it's affecting your other aspects of your life,
Speaker 2: whether it's your health or your well being.
Speaker 1: You mentioned caffeine. Coffee is my particular favorite root of caffeine,
Speaker 1: getting caffeine in my body. I have been drinking French
Speaker 1: press coffee for well over ten years. But now after
Speaker 1: reading your book, I'm having second thoughts. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about why we should consider filtering our coffee?
Speaker 2: Sure so? And these are just from the published litera
Speaker 2: scientific literature. I'm not a nutritionist. I can't give dietary advice.
Speaker 2: I'm not a physician, so keep all this in mind, okay,
Speaker 2: And I wrote about it in the books from the
Speaker 2: perspective of changing my own behavior, my own decisions I
Speaker 2: made based on my reading of the literature, So keep
Speaker 2: that in mind. So I'm not telling you or your
Speaker 2: listeners what they should be doing. I'm not giving that advice.
Speaker 2: But I personally will not drink regularly out of a
Speaker 2: French press or drink unfiltered coffee in large quantities ever. Again,
Speaker 2: and the reason is, it's a long story, but to
Speaker 2: boil it down, so to speak, it was actually boiled
Speaker 2: Scandinavian coffee, which is unfiltered. It's a way that coffee
Speaker 2: was traditionally made in Scandinavia, including Finland. And an initial
Speaker 2: set of epidemiological studies came out that were strange. They
Speaker 2: were showing that, particularly for men, there was a higher
Speaker 2: risk of cardiovascular disease and risk of death among people
Speaker 2: who drank coffee. Now this was strange because we know
Speaker 2: from huge, much larger and much more recent epidemiological studies
Speaker 2: that drinking coffee is protective at in terms of reducing
Speaker 2: death risk. Like that that is the case, and we
Speaker 2: don't know in terms of cause and effect or exactly
Speaker 2: what's going on. But you know, a lot more is
Speaker 2: known now than was known then. These early studies, which
Speaker 2: were done in the middle part of the twentieth century
Speaker 2: where people were still drinking boiled coffee and Scandinavia, triggered
Speaker 2: some interest in what was causing that potentially instead of
Speaker 2: just like life factors that were associated with people who
Speaker 2: drank coffee, right, So they wanted to know, is there
Speaker 2: something in this coffee that is causing higher risk of
Speaker 2: heart attack basically, and if they picked it up in
Speaker 2: the study, it was scatatistically significant. So it wasn't just
Speaker 2: like a little thing. It wasn't just a little blip
Speaker 2: in the data. It was concerning enough where they invested
Speaker 2: a lot of money in trying to figure out and
Speaker 2: time what was going on. And so in countries kind
Speaker 2: of all over they started digging into this and what
Speaker 2: they found was a set of chemical that are in
Speaker 2: coffee beans that are they have this name capistol and coweol,
Speaker 2: and they are a group of terpenoids. They're dieterping alcohols.
Speaker 2: That's the technical kind of class that they're in. And
Speaker 2: these are fat soluble very lightweight molecules that like being
Speaker 2: dissolved in things like lipids. And what they do is
Speaker 2: it turns out that that those two chemicals were probably
Speaker 2: the reason that they detected this higher cardiovascular risk in
Speaker 2: people who are drinking unfiltered coffee basically. And what they
Speaker 2: do is these two chemicals they are not themselves cholesterol.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's not like you're eating cheese or
Speaker 2: you know, you got to watch your diet because of that, because, right,
Speaker 2: our shrimp have a lot of cholesterol. No, the LDLC,
Speaker 2: which is the cholesterol that's kind of known as the
Speaker 2: bad cholesterol, although that's also a little bit of a misnumber, right,
Speaker 2: but the LDLC cholesterol is the cholesterol level that doctors
Speaker 2: are tracking, whether in when they decide to give you
Speaker 2: a statin or not. Okay, so this is the stuff
Speaker 2: that is forming plaques, that's causing athlosclerosis and that sort
Speaker 2: of thing. You know, The idea is that lower is
Speaker 2: better in terms of you know, life extension. So what
Speaker 2: they noticed was cafaestell and kawi alf. You if I
Speaker 2: gave that to you, just the same amount that you
Speaker 2: would get in say, drinking four cups of French press
Speaker 2: coffee your cholesterol levels if you hadn't been drinking French press,
Speaker 2: so I couldn't do this to you. But if you
Speaker 2: hadn't been drinking French press, you could measure the increase
Speaker 2: and you would see an increase of maybe ten to
Speaker 2: fifteen percent of the LDLC in the weeks two weeks after,
Speaker 2: you know, continuing to drink it. And so they did that.
Speaker 2: You know, they isolated these compounds. It's definitely them that's
Speaker 2: causing it, and they're filtered out by a paper filter.
Speaker 2: They're also filtered out by the formation of what's called
Speaker 2: a filter cake of the grounds of coffee themselves. Because
Speaker 2: these diterping alcohols caffistan call wee all bind to small
Speaker 2: particles in the coffee that you during the grind process, right,
Speaker 2: that are made during the grind process, and then during
Speaker 2: the brewing process. If there's not something to catch those
Speaker 2: small particles, those small particles will make it through into
Speaker 2: the brew, which of course they do in a French
Speaker 2: press because that thing you plunge through is just a
Speaker 2: really rough mesh filter, right, So it's catching some of
Speaker 2: the grounds, but you know, a lot most of the
Speaker 2: smallest particles are making the way through, which means most
Speaker 2: of the available caffistan call we all is also making
Speaker 2: it through, and the amount that's available depends on the bean.
Speaker 2: Robust and Arabica have different amounts of the caffistan callwe all.
Speaker 2: How much it's roasted has an effect, Okay, But roughly speaking,
Speaker 2: if you have an Arabica bean, it's going to have
Speaker 2: a decent amount of caffistan caullwie al in it, and
Speaker 2: if you don't filter it, you're gonna raise your cholesterol
Speaker 2: because of it. At least that's how I interpret it.
Speaker 2: All this littera and I did a deep dive, and
Speaker 2: the nutrition literature is fascinating because there are these studies
Speaker 2: where what they got to do with the graduate students
Speaker 2: was make coffee six ways from Sunday and then measure
Speaker 2: the kaffistall colwieol in it. It's just so funny. But
Speaker 2: what's clear is that an auto drip, because it's water
Speaker 2: gently kind of dripping down on the grounds, it's kind
Speaker 2: of retaining the structure of all of those grounds. Right,
Speaker 2: even though the gold mesh filter absolutely would let the
Speaker 2: diet tirping alcohols through the little poor and the mesh, right,
Speaker 2: but what's trapping them is that all of the coffee
Speaker 2: grounds themselves. And so that's why a gold mesh filter
Speaker 2: will work to filter out most of the caffistan callie
Speaker 2: all in an auto drip, but not a pore over
Speaker 2: because you're swirling the grounds around in the poor over,
Speaker 2: aren't you right? You're taking that kettle and moving them around,
Speaker 2: swirling them around, so the particles will get through the
Speaker 2: gold mesh and a pour over, but not a paper filter.
Speaker 2: So this is like I cannot believe, this is where
Speaker 2: I ended up in the book, like a lot of attention,
Speaker 2: but you know, I like going down these rabbit holes.
Speaker 2: And if you think about cholesterol levels, you know, the
Speaker 2: two most potent inducing chemicals in our diet for LDL
Speaker 2: cholesterol are these two chemicals. And the way they work
Speaker 2: is they bind to a receptor in your body that
Speaker 2: tricks your liver into making more LDL cholesterol. That is
Speaker 2: what happens. So really stepping back, thinking like if there's
Speaker 2: one public health message, you know, and I can't give
Speaker 2: it because I'm not an epidemiologist or a physician, but
Speaker 2: for myself, just for my own health, you know, this
Speaker 2: was the most salient thing and I stopped drinking French
Speaker 2: press too, and I used to only drink it. And
Speaker 2: of course LDL cholesterol levels vary a lot between people
Speaker 2: for lots of reasons, including genetics and diet. Right, not
Speaker 2: in the broadest sense, but for me, I thought, this
Speaker 2: is a simple thing I could do just to keep
Speaker 2: it down. It really depends on the person, you know, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't want to make an or arching statement about this,
Speaker 2: but the literature is clear. The scientific literature is clear
Speaker 2: about this. In my mind, it has been muddied and
Speaker 2: not well communicated, is what I would say.
Speaker 1: You ended your book with a look towards the future
Speaker 1: and the possible consequences of biodiversity loss as it relates
Speaker 1: to toxins. What are we at risk of losing as
Speaker 1: we bulldoze forests or fragment habitat or let the warming
Speaker 1: climate burn or desiccate tracts of biodiverse land.
Speaker 2: Well, the sad news is we are going to lose
Speaker 2: the future pharmacopeia, right, and not only that, we're going
Speaker 2: to lose the biodiversity that's making those things. Where the
Speaker 2: war of nature is raging at its strongest is in
Speaker 2: the tropics, and these beautiful studies that were done in
Speaker 2: the middle part of the twentieth century. This ecologist did
Speaker 2: sort of a transect, you know, sort of measuring alkaloid
Speaker 2: levels across different biomes from the poles to the equator,
Speaker 2: and then they had these controls in equatorial zones that
Speaker 2: had mountains, so there's less diversity at the tops of
Speaker 2: the mountains right than at the base and lowland tropical forests,
Speaker 2: and so that kind of mimics the latitudinal gradient that
Speaker 2: von Humboldt discovered. This mirroring by the way, in terms
Speaker 2: of species numbers and how diverse things get. They're more
Speaker 2: diverse at the equator and less diverse at the poles,
Speaker 2: more diverse in lowland tropical forests than at the upper
Speaker 2: limits of the mountains. And they saw the alkaloid diversity
Speaker 2: parallel that so plants on average produce more alkaloid diversity
Speaker 2: than in the tropics and the lowland tropics than they
Speaker 2: do at the tops of the mountains per species, and
Speaker 2: also towards the poles. And so the interpretation was that
Speaker 2: the interactions between species are stronger in the tropics and
Speaker 2: where there's more diversity, where it's warmer for a longer
Speaker 2: period of time or stable warmth basically. And so these
Speaker 2: cradles of biodiversity that harbor most species also harbor most
Speaker 2: of the toxins, most of the chemical diversity that we
Speaker 2: have on the planet that have access to now and
Speaker 2: in the future, and so and those lands are largely
Speaker 2: controlled by indigenous people, who are also the most endangered
Speaker 2: you know, cultures in the world in terms of their
Speaker 2: just their being right and their languages, their cultures, all
Speaker 2: of that, they're the least empowered. And so the other
Speaker 2: thing that's interesting, just as a general rule, not just
Speaker 2: in the tropics, but indigenous lands hold maybe fifty percent
Speaker 2: of the carbon sequestering capacity of the terrestrial realm. And
Speaker 2: so I didn't think I'd end up here, but it
Speaker 2: was sort of like forget about the pharmacopeia, just thinking about,
Speaker 2: you know, the future of the planet is really in
Speaker 2: the hands of indigenous people and empowering them. And if
Speaker 2: we do that, so many things get solved, Like their
Speaker 2: existence is fortify right, their rights are guaranteed, and then
Speaker 2: the rest kind of hitches along for the ride, is
Speaker 2: what I would say. So human rights kind of becomes
Speaker 2: like the focus of the book at the end, but
Speaker 2: you know, it's sort of like, yeah, the other stuff
Speaker 2: is sort of just tagging along. But you know, the
Speaker 2: future pharmacopeia for our descendants is going to be there
Speaker 2: in the tropics. Yes they're drugs. New drugs will come
Speaker 2: out of the temperate zones too, but most of them
Speaker 2: are going to come out of the tropics still, you know,
Speaker 2: for natural drugs, and yes, synthetic drugs with AI and all,
Speaker 2: this definitely very promising. You know, directed evolution, there's all
Speaker 2: kinds of new ways of thinking about making synthetic drugs
Speaker 2: and that's going to be very important. But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, if you just look at the approved cancer
Speaker 2: drugs anti cancer drugs, more than half are from plants,
Speaker 2: so that that's still true, and so there's untapped potential.
Speaker 2: People's lives have been saved by tax all I guarantee
Speaker 2: you of some of your listeners. So this really hits
Speaker 2: home for people when you think about that, right, think
Speaker 2: about the next tax all that is somewhere in the
Speaker 2: Atlantic forest in Brazil and some tree that exists in
Speaker 2: a tiny population, is it going to be there? You know?
Speaker 2: And that's the thing. It's like, this is this is
Speaker 2: something that we can control that we have the we
Speaker 2: have right. The fate is in our hands.
Speaker 1: Doctor Whiteman, thank you so very much for taking the
Speaker 1: time to chat with me. Honestly, I feel like we
Speaker 1: could have talked about poisons all day and I would
Speaker 1: have loved it. For any of you out there that
Speaker 1: feels the same way and wants to learn even more
Speaker 1: about toxins, check out our website this podcast will Kill
Speaker 1: You dot com, where I'll post link to where you
Speaker 1: can find most dangerous poison, as well as a link
Speaker 1: to doctor Whiteman's lab website. And don't forget you can
Speaker 1: check out our website for all sorts of other cool things,
Speaker 1: including but not limited to, transcripts, quarantine and Placibrita, recipes,
Speaker 1: show notes and references for all of our episodes, links
Speaker 1: to merch our bookshop dot Org, affiliate account, our Goodreads list,
Speaker 1: a first hand account, form, and music by Bloodmobile. Speaking
Speaker 1: of which, thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music
Speaker 1: for this episode and all of our episodes. Thank you
Speaker 1: to Leana Squalacci and Tom Bryfogel for our audio mixing,
Speaker 1: and thanks to you listeners for listening. I really hope
Speaker 1: you liked this bonus episode and our loving that the
Speaker 1: TPWKY book Club is back again for another season. A
Speaker 1: special thank you, as always to our fantastic patrons. We
Speaker 1: really appreciate your support so so much. Well, until next time,
Speaker 1: keep washing those hands, m