What's Your Poison?
Jul 26, 2010•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
“Aspirin and Old Lace?” Okay, it would take a bottle full of pills in a glass of elderberry wine to really harm you, but aspirin can be deadly. So can too much of anything, including water. Dose is key in toxicology, after all, but there are some poisons that can do deadly work in tiny amounts.
Hear about the chemistry of poisons … why Botox may freeze your emotions as well as your face… which animal is most lethal to humans… and how 19th-century poisoners got away with murder – until the birth of forensic science.
Guests:
Deborah Blum – Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer, author of The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
Martyn Smith – Toxicologist, University of California, Berkeley
Joshua Ian Davis – Psychologist, Barnard College, New York
Jamie Seymour – Venom biologist, director of The Tropical Australian Stinger Research Unit, School of Marine Tropical Biology, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia
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