
Most Delicious Poison
The Story of Nature's Toxins―from Spices to Vices
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Narrated by:
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Noah Whiteman
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By:
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Noah Whiteman
About this listen
An evolutionary biologist tells the story of nature’s toxins and why we are attracted—and addicted—to them, in this “magisterial, fascinating, and gripping tour de force” (Neil Shubin).
A deadly secret lurks within our spice racks, medicine cabinets, backyard gardens, and private stashes.
Scratch beneath the surface of a coffee bean, a red pepper flake, a poppy seed, a mold spore, a foxglove leaf, a magic-mushroom cap, a marijuana bud, or an apple seed, and we find a bevy of strange chemicals. We use these to greet our days (caffeine), titillate our tongues (capsaicin), recover from surgery (opioids), cure infections (penicillin), mend our hearts (digoxin), bend our minds (psilocybin), calm our nerves (CBD), and even kill our enemies (cyanide). But why do plants and fungi produce such chemicals? And how did we come to use and abuse some of them?
Based on cutting-edge science in the fields of evolution, chemistry, and neuroscience, Most Delicious Poison reveals:
- The origins of toxins produced by plants, mushrooms, microbes, and even some animals
- The mechanisms that animals evolved to overcome them
- How a co-evolutionary arms race made its way into the human experience
- And much more
This perpetual chemical war not only drove the diversification of life on Earth, but also is intimately tied to our own successes and failures. You will never look at a houseplant, mushroom, fruit, vegetable, or even the past five hundred years of human history the same way again.
©2023 Noah Whiteman (P)2023 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Whiteman's narration is wholly engaging. He isn't as smooth as a pro but is all heart, which will move listeners as much as the science intrigues them. Further, his ability to pronounce all of the words builds confidence with the audience. This audiobook is rigorous and technical but relatable.”—Library Journal
“Humans have benefitted for millennia from the wild variety of healing, intoxicating, delicious or stimulating toxins produced by the biological warfare that pervades the natural world. Whiteman provides a wonderful overview of the diversity and ubiquity of these drugs, giving us an inspiring, entertaining look at both the richness of nature and the clever ways humans—and many other species—have learned to exploit it.”—Edward Slingerland, author of Drunk
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- The Story of Your Body's Atoms, from the Big Bang Through Last Night's Dinner
- By: Dan Levitt
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Every one of us contains a billion times more atoms than all the grains of sand in the earth’s deserts. If you weigh 150 pounds, you’ve got enough carbon to make 25 pounds of charcoal, enough salt to fill a saltshaker, enough chlorine to disinfect several backyard swimming pools, and enough iron to forge a 3-inch nail. But how did these elements combine to make us human?
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One of the Very Best Science Books I have Read
- By TStair on 03-20-23
By: Dan Levitt
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Endless Forms
- The Secret World of Wasps
- By: Seirian Sumner
- Narrated by: Sumner Seirian
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Everyone worries about the collapse of bee populations. But what about wasps? Deemed the gangsters of the insect world, wasps are winged assassins with formidable stings. Conduits of Biblical punishment, provokers of fear and loathing, inspiration for horror movies: wasps are perhaps the most maligned insect on our planet. But do wasps deserve this reputation? Endless Forms opens our eyes to the highly complex and diverse world of wasps.
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Very Interesting Content Great Narration by Author
- By Laura Badcock on 08-31-22
By: Seirian Sumner
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It's Elemental
- The Hidden Chemistry in Everything
- By: Kate Biberdorf
- Narrated by: Kate Biberdorf
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Have you ever wondered what makes dough rise? Or how your morning coffee gives you that energy boost? Or why your shampoo is making your hair look greasy? The answer is chemistry. From the moment we wake up until the time we go to sleep (and even while we sleep), chemistry is at work - and it doesn't take a PhD in science to understand it.
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Great Listen
- By Great and powerful IDE on 12-20-21
By: Kate Biberdorf
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Mythic Plants
- Potions and Poisons from the Gardens of the Gods
- By: Ellen Zachos
- Narrated by: Ellen Zachos
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In Greek mythology, plants were used for tools, intoxication, warfare, food, medicine, magic, and rituals. When Prometheus stole fire from the Olympian gods and gave it to mankind, he hid it in a stalk of giant fennel. Ancient Greeks waiting to question the oracles were given cannabis as part of their cleansing rituals. A quince fruit started the Trojan war. The goddess Demeter was so distraught when Hades kidnapped her daughter that she caused winter to blanket the earth, killing all plants.
By: Ellen Zachos
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Flight Paths
- How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration
- By: Rebecca Heisman
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past century, scientists and naturalists have been steadily unravelling the secrets of bird migration. How and why birds navigate the skies, traveling from continent to continent—flying thousands of miles across the earth each fall and spring—has continually fascinated the human imagination, but only recently have we been able to fully understand these amazing journeys.
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I should have read the description more carefully
- By non de plume on 11-17-24
By: Rebecca Heisman
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Wicked Plants
- The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities
- By: Amy Stewart
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Beware! The sordid lives of plants behaving badly. A tree that sheds poison daggers; a glistening red seed that stops the heart; a shrub that causes paralysis; a vine that strangles; and a leaf that triggered a war. Amy Stewart, best-selling author of Flower Confidential, takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature's most appalling creations in an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend.
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Grows on You Like Kudzu
- By Cynthia on 04-23-13
By: Amy Stewart
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Unnatural Causes
- The Life and Many Deaths of Britain's Top Forensic Pathologist
- By: Dr Richard Shepherd
- Narrated by: Dr Richard Shepherd
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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As the country's top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right - and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?
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Boring!
- By Zoesmydog on 06-21-19
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Pathogenesis
- A History of the World in Eight Plagues
- By: Jonathan Kennedy
- Narrated by: Jonathan Kennedy
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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According to the accepted narrative of progress, humans have thrived thanks to their brains and brawn, collectively bending the arc of history. But in this revelatory book, Professor Jonathan Kennedy argues that the myth of human exceptionalism overstates the role that we play in social and political change. Instead, it is the humble microbe that wins wars and topples empires.
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Devolves into political advocacy
- By Mark Fackler on 04-29-23
By: Jonathan Kennedy
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Pests
- How Humans Create Animal Villains
- By: Bethany Brookshire
- Narrated by: Courtney Patterson
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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A squirrel in the garden. A rat in the wall. A pigeon on the street. Humans have spent so much of our history drawing a hard line between human spaces and wild places. When animals pop up where we don’t expect or want them, we respond with fear, rage, or simple annoyance. It’s no longer an animal. It’s a pest. At the intersection of science, history, and narrative journalism, Pests is not a simple call to look closer at our urban ecosystem. It’s not a natural history of the animals we hate. Instead, this book is about us.
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Amazing Conclusion!
- By Anonymous User on 01-29-23
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Hands of Time
- A Watchmaker’s History
- By: Rebecca Struthers
- Narrated by: Anna Ploszajski
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Timepieces have long accompanied us on our travels, from the depths of the oceans to the summit of Everest, the ice of the arctic to the sands of the deserts, outer space to the surface of the moon. The watch has sculpted the social and economic development of modern society; it is an object that, when disassembled, can give us new insights both into the motivations of inventors and craftsmen of the past, and, into the lives of the people who treasured them.
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Very interesting, while it was about clocks.
- By Nicholas Conrad on 07-05-23
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Written in Bone
- Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind
- By: Sue Black
- Narrated by: Sue Black
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In her memoir All That Remains, internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist Dame Sue Black recounted her life lived eye to eye with the Grim Reaper. During the course of it, she offered a primer on the basics of identifying human remains, plenty of insights into the fascinating processes of death, and a sober, compassionate understanding of its inescapable presence in our existence. Now in this book, Black builds on that memoir, taking us on a guided tour of the human skeleton and explaining how each person's life history is revealed in their bones.
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A very human story by a very believable human
- By Gary on 09-21-21
By: Sue Black
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The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
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Not one boring moment!
- By WRF on 12-22-17
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The Devil's Element
- Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance
- By: Dan Egan
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it’s also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people.
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Exceptionally well crafted
- By DJJ on 03-30-23
By: Dan Egan
The link between spices and poisons.
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Captivating
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i hope this author continues to write
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Most Delicious Poison is a cathartic story for the
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Fascinating Plant Animal Ecology and Co-Evolution
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Fascinating book
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i thoroughly enjoyed this book
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Interesting but not that deep
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I thought I was getting a book about plant science.
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The potential is there….
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