Oh, to taste the food of the past. Strawberry jam made from farm-fresh strawberries. Milk straight from the cow. Cookies baked with freshly churned butter and brown sugar. Because that’s how it was, right? Everything used to be fresher, more pure, unadulterated by preservatives or additives, right? Our latest TPWKY book club pick shows us just how wrong that notion is. Science journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Deborah Blum joins us this week to chat about her book, The Poison Squad, which tells the story of the fight for food safety regulation in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. In our conversation, Blum rips off those rose-tinted nostalgia glasses and reveals that strawberry jam rarely contained strawberries, milk could include a mix of formaldehyde and pond water, butter had borax, and brown sugar was mostly ground up insects. Until one man, chemist Harvey Wiley, stepped up and spearheaded the campaign for food safety legislation, all of these horrific practices of food adulteration were entirely legal. Tune in to learn what Wiley was up against and some of the tactics used in his struggle, including the wild story of the experiment that gave this book its title.
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Ep 106 Turner Syndrome: Let's talk about X
Ep 105 Down in the Mumps
Ep 104 The Bends: Industrial Revolution, baby
Ep 103 Leptospirosis: Don't blame the rats
Ep 102 Arsenic: Paris Green with Envy
Ep 101 Immortality: This Podcast Won't Kill You
Ep 100 Monkeypox: Here we go again?
Ep 99 Salmonella: A hard egg to crack
Ep 98 Folate: Marmite, anyone?
Special Episode: Snake Venom Evolution
Ep 97 Snake Venom: Collateral Damage
Special Episode: Coprolites!
Ep 96 Tapeworm: We encyst you listen
Special Episode: On the Origin of Epidemiology
Ep 95 Tetanus: An inhuman calamity!
Special Episode: Chlamydia, Koalas, and More!
Ep 94 Chlamydia: Double Trouble
Re-Release: Ep 27 Vaccines Part 2: Have you thanked your immune system lately?
Re-Release: Ep 26 Vaccines Part 1: Let's hear it for Maurice
Special Episode: Electricity
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