Poison

[00:00:00] Astonishing Legends Network. Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here. But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me. Welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Killari. And I'm Ed Vukola.

[00:00:19] And Ed doesn't know this yet, but this week I'm making him taste all my food before I bite into it. If he lives, I'll think about eating it.

[00:00:28] And I'm doing this because nothing scares me more than the idea that each piece of food, every sip of water, and the very breath that fills your lungs could be tainted with some kind of horrifying death compound. Better known to most people as poison.

[00:00:44] And poison can really fuck up your day. They can paralyze, suffocate, stop your heart, and cause gruesome, fatal muscle spasms, which are all pretty top-tier horrible ways to go.

[00:00:55] Beyond my paranoia that I'll be secretly sentenced to an agonizing death by friend or foe, or Ed, we all have to worry about being poisoned just by existing in the world. In 2022, the latest year we have complete numbers for, there were 15 murders committed via poisoning.

[00:01:13] That's pretty scary. I don't want to be one of those, but the chances it will happen to me are pretty low. The really scary number is how many preventable or accidental poisoning deaths there were in 2022. 102,958. And those numbers are going up all the time.

[00:01:32] Total poisoning deaths increased 1% from 102,001 poisoning deaths in 2021. And they have increased to over 8 times the poisoning deaths of 1999's total. So, this week, pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink, and make sure no one drops anything deadly into it.

[00:01:53] This episode's got plenty of poison, and I'm just realizing we forgot the antidote. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much for joining us again. We are one week away from the season three finale.

[00:02:19] This time, we're going to try to just take two weeks off to prep more episodes instead of four, so we can get you more scared all the time than you've ever been scared before. At least more quickly than you've ever been before.

[00:02:33] Yeah, more scared more quickly. And some of that is thanks to our incredible subscribers making that possible. We just got four more this week alone, which was really cool. I think that's one of the best weeks we've had since the beginning. First like three or four weeks. Yeah.

[00:02:51] Four new sweet, sweet peas have arrived. And one of them signed up at the I'm Terrified level, so they will be a producer on the show next time we update the list and go over it on air. So thank you very much for that.

[00:03:05] And before we get started, we just want to do a little more five star review quarter because you guys have been the best about giving us five star reviews. Like we said, four star reviews. Fuck on out of here. We only need five star reviews.

[00:03:20] We only want five star reviews. We want to deserve five star reviews and we keep getting good ones. So we're going to keep reading them. This first one here is from July 25th from Jerry the Robot five stars better than your favorite.

[00:03:35] I regularly ditch my favorite podcast mid listen when I see a new scared all the time drop. I think Ed and Chris were teaching my kids how to swear. So, yeah, dude, you're welcome. Jerry the Robot.

[00:03:49] I hope they use their swears sparingly or for good for good in general or for good for good. I'm sure they will. I'm sure you are a great parent if you're sharing the joy of scared all the time with them. So thank you very much, Jerry the Robot.

[00:04:05] Ed, would you like to give us another five star review? Yeah, I'm going to go back to around Christmas 2023. OK, all right. I feel like I love the newbies, but I like the oldies too. So I'm going to do two. I'm going to pop off two really quickies.

[00:04:17] OK, one from December 18th. We got there's no way to say this name. It's letter XRDVBG. Exert the bug. Great. They write five stars. Great show. I really enjoy this show and look forward to more episodes. Short and sweet. That's exactly all you got to do.

[00:04:37] I love the longies, but that's also fantastic. And then another shorty right next to them. Oh, this was from December 27th from Ed Fred 23. It's not me. I didn't write this shit. Sure, sure. I would never use this name. Ed Fred 23.

[00:04:51] Great podcast. They write good take on a fairly heavily covered theme. Really like the perspective and hosts. Thanks, guys. Fun. Listen. I wonder what that was back in December that we that was a heavily covered topic. I don't know. Couldn't tell you. Could be anything. They liked it.

[00:05:08] Yeah, it could be anything. Five stars for Minerva Rose. Spooky vibes with your new best friends. She writes, if you're too busy trying to keep your life from falling apart to actually make friends and hang out with these hypothetical friends. This is an excellent podcast to listen to.

[00:05:24] Ed and Chris tackle the terrifying topics that keep people up at night. But with the wit and humor that makes sitting through episodes about human cannibalism and floating to a lonely death in space enjoyable. Oh, wow. Even though the topics can keep you up at night,

[00:05:38] Ed and Chris create the same vibe of watching a scary movie in the dorms with your besties when you should be writing your 10 page paper. We'll always recommend. Well, that just melts my heart. That's exactly what we're trying to do here.

[00:05:52] And Minerva, I'm the one writing the 10 page paper, so you don't have to. So I'm glad you guys are enjoying them. Thank you. Continue to like, share, subscribe. And I think that's pretty much it. Ed, I'm excited for this episode. Yeah, I'll save more for later.

[00:06:10] Perfect. Well, let's get on with this poisonous episode. So today we're talking poison. And I know we sometimes start with a little personal anecdote about something related to the topic of the week, but I don't have one for this. With the exception of food poisoning,

[00:06:27] as far as I know, I've managed to avoid being poisoned. Ed, have you as well, I assume? Or have you poisoned yourself? I have never been poisoned. I don't believe I've poisoned myself. I mean, we're drinking while recording this, so I guess we are poisoning ourselves.

[00:06:45] Yes, we're going to get to that in just a second. But no, never personally. I have a strong suspicion that I've poisoned at least one husband and probably some animals. Okay, that's a personal anecdote. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I said, it's going to be bleeped.

[00:06:59] So fuck that person. Well, the details will be bleeped. But yeah, Ed knows a person who probably poisoned some people. Didn't you also tell me when I was telling you that this might be the topic? Didn't you tell me that there was a guy in Connecticut?

[00:07:13] Not just a guy. And we may have talked about this in a previous episode, but if you Google my name, probably before my name even comes up, you're going to get a different Edward Vukola who poisoned the water supply of a town in Connecticut.

[00:07:27] And I actually pulled up some articles here. If you want to read about this guy, please. So again, not personal. It's definitely a personal anecdote to another Edward Vukola. This is again, ladies and gentlemen, this is 100% not Edward Vukola, the host of the show.

[00:07:41] This is a very different Edward Vukola who we don't know. I'm just going to read a couple of different headlines. So this is out of NBCConnecticut.com. The headline is Bridgeport firefighter fired after alleged acid incident. Then I will pull up Connecticut Post.

[00:07:57] Firefighter accused of poisoning neighbor's water line is fired. Then I'll pull up... Wait, so what exactly did this guy do? Did he acid attack somebody? Look, the next headline might answer that for you. Okay. From the Valley Independent Sentinel, the headline is man dumped acid in water supply.

[00:08:17] Oh, okay. There we go. All right. So he did, it was both. It was an acid attack and the acid in this case was used to poison the water supply. Yeah. So anyway, there's like six or seven more that I might've been clicking on.

[00:08:29] So let's just take a look here. New Haven Register says a veteran Bridgeport firefighter charged with dumping poison acid into his neighbor's water line has been fired. Fire Chief Brian Rooney says Edward Vukola, and then this is a quote, brought discredit to the department

[00:08:47] and was fired for violating the city's ethics code as well as city rules. This is the city rule of not pouring acid into your neighbor's water supply. Yeah. Amazingly, that sounds like it's on the books. Yeah. The Connecticut Post reports that the 52 year old Vukola,

[00:09:02] a 22 year veteran was placed on paid administrative leave following his September 5th arrest by Shelton police on the attempted criminal assault of a person over 60 and reckless endangerment. A lot to unpack here. One, was fired. Two, I guess wasn't, was just put on paid administrative leave?

[00:09:21] Three, attempted criminal assault on a person over 60 is weirdly the hyper specific law. Yeah. And then following reckless endangerment. So Jesus, he is free on a $25,000 bond and he's currently hosting a podcast. Now it's different guy. Authorities say Vukola had ongoing problems

[00:09:40] with his neighbor and at one point poured poisonous and highly corrosive muriatic acid on his water supply fittings. Jesus. Neither Vukola nor his attorney could be reached for comment. Yeah. So yeah, interestingly enough, there is an Ed Vukola with quite the history of poison.

[00:09:59] Well, I take it back about not having any personal anecdotes. You came through strong on the personal anecdote front. This is great. Well, yeah. So I have, you know, who shall remain unnamed, who definitely poisoned a husband and got away with it. Thankfully.

[00:10:18] And another one who straight up didn't get away with it. Well, that's I'm not going to be able to top that intro at all. So I will move us on to the reason that Ed and I have not become poisoning statistics yet. And the reason that most people

[00:10:35] haven't become poisoning statistics yet, even though those numbers I mentioned in the beginning are so, so high is because those numbers are heavily weighted in drug and alcohol poisoning. We don't necessarily think of drugs and alcohol as poison, but they are. We more commonly call a drug poisoning

[00:10:53] a drug overdose. And those account for 97 percent of poisoning deaths, which is why those numbers have gone up eight times the 1999 numbers because of opioids, which now account for three out of four drug overdose deaths in America. Bummer. Yeah, big bummer. I don't know about that stuff.

[00:11:16] So that's one poison we're pretty safe from. Although people who were listening when I had my tooth issue will remember I was so easily prescribed opiates. Over prescribed. Over prescribed opiates. They did sort of help, but yeah, that was my only brush with them.

[00:11:33] And I took them mostly as prescribed. I took two extra so I could fall asleep sitting up. So maybe not exactly as prescribed, but generally we're safe from opiates. Alcohol poisoning is a different story. That's how we get through this show. As Ed pointed out,

[00:11:51] we're both drinking right now. Neither of us are particularly heavy drinkers. I think it's fair to say, but we do both consume alcohol on a pretty regular basis. And alcohol has been around about 9000 years. It was about 9000 years ago that humans, specifically the Chinese. At it again.

[00:12:11] At it again. They really, as far as history goes, they were booze, fireworks. They hit everything first, honestly, I think. And yet not the fork. Oh, that's true. They were so drunk. Yep, that's probably it. So it was about 9000 years ago that they developed what is now

[00:12:30] one of the most common forms of poison in the world, booze. The first documented alcoholic beverage was a wine-like drink made from fermenting rice, honey, and fruit. These days there are, I mean, name however many dozens, hundreds, ranging from relatively low strength beers

[00:12:46] with a 4 or 5% alcohol by volume up to a 96% alcohol by volume vodka made exclusively in Poland. More on that flamethrower fuel in a couple of minutes. Drinkable alcohol, which is technically known as ethyl alcohol or ethanol, is different from most poisons that we think of in that

[00:13:10] instead of a slow and painful death, our bodies respond to this poison and when we drink, our brains release dopamine and serotonin which are the main happiness chemicals in our brain, which is why in addition to alcohol's sedative properties, drinking usually produces feelings of euphoria.

[00:13:28] Our inhibitions drop and we have fun. Alcohol has gained a reputation as a social lubricant, a truth serum, a way to relax, and in many forms it also tastes great. I think Ed's drinking sort of a watery beer right now. Of course, light. I'm drinking a freshly brewed

[00:13:48] double IPA from Stone Brewing Company and it tastes great. It has taste a little bit of tangerine, a little bit of pineapple, and I love all kinds of alcohol for that reason, mezcal, bourbon, beer, wine. It all expresses different tastes and flavors in different ways

[00:14:06] from the same very simple, very basic ingredients and I think there's something kind of nice about alcohol that's been around in cultures across the world going back centuries. You hear that sponsors? Hit us up. That's the kind of copy we could be writing for you

[00:14:26] and that's just off the top of the dome. This is where I will say that I think one of my favorite beer experiments comes from a brewery called Dogfish Head in Delaware on the East Coast. They brewed a beer once called Midas Touch. I think they might actually

[00:14:44] have been a brewery. They had a brewery who had dug up mead, like jars of mead. I forget where in the world it was but they had dug up these jars of mead and they had scraped the, not the resin, but like the leftover traces

[00:15:00] of alcohol from the inside of these mead jars and they had figured out what the ancient culture had used to make that mead and then Dogfish Head recreated that recipe for a beer called Midas Touch. They take pains to say it's not the exact formulation

[00:15:20] because the exact formulation doesn't taste very good to the modern tongue. Oh no. But I think it's really cool that you really just take or wine is even simpler. I mean we've been making wine the same way for thousands of years. There's even a book

[00:15:40] that's well worth checking out if you're interested in the topic at all, where they say we're not encouraging anyone to drink. Everyone should make their own choice about whether or not they drink. There's nothing wrong with being straight edge or not drinking or anything like that.

[00:15:56] In fact, we're about to get into a whole lot of reasons that you probably shouldn't drink because it's a very common way to get poisoned and I think the science of alcohol poisoning is worth noting because it is so common. It stands for a male as rapidly consuming

[00:16:18] five or more alcoholic drinks within two hours or a female consuming four drinks within two hours. That's it? That's it. That's the definition of binge drinking which can affect people differently like depending on how much you weigh and how much food is in your stomach

[00:16:38] and how fast your metabolism is, you know, consuming five drinks in two hours. If you're a kid or something, if it's like an actual drink like a cocktail, I imagine you're in trouble. Yeah. Did you ever watch Party Down, the original not like the one

[00:16:55] they redid a couple years ago or like the legacy sequel from a year or two ago? I'm talking about like the original. When Ken Marino drinks like tries to drink the whole bottle of Jack Daniels or whatever immediately gets alcohol poisoning and it's one of the funniest things

[00:17:12] that's so funny to me because he's just like people are kind of ignoring him too. He's like, call an ambulance. Yeah. Call an ambulance. There is a college alcohol poisoning story I want to tell. I think it fits a little bit better

[00:17:29] a little bit later in the show and it is somewhat reminiscent of Ken Marino's mistake in that show. But one of the reasons that alcohol poisoning is so dangerous, is because basically when you're binge drinking, you can consume a fatal dose of alcohol

[00:17:46] before your body and brain shuts down and you pass out. Which means even after you're unconscious, your stomach and intestines continue to release alcohol into the bloodstream which is filtered through your liver and broken down into dangerous byproducts that can kill you while you are unconscious.

[00:18:06] And it's not the actual ethanol molecule that's dangerous. I'm not trying to explain chemistry. Oh no. Never one of my better subjects. But as far as I understand and there's probably someone in our audience who can tell us that this is wrong or whatever,

[00:18:24] but I think this is close to it. The byproduct that ethanol is broken down into by the enzymes in your liver is called acetaldehyde which causes cell and tissue damage, inhibition of cell repair functions, blocking of different protein synthesis and on top of that

[00:18:42] a large amount of oxygen is required to metabolize ethanol which can result in low blood oxygen if too much alcohol is consumed which can cause your heart to beat faster to try to pump more oxygen through your body which can cause a whole host of other problems.

[00:18:56] So basically ethanol when consumed in high quantities can cause a sort of domino effect laundry list of problems which is why our bodies have so many different ways to deal with it. But the problem with puking is that booze depresses your gag reflex

[00:19:16] so the risk of choking on that vomit increases if you pass out and even if you manage to get all of your puke into a receptacle other than your own lungs you're still not out of harm's way because vomiting can cause you to experience severe dehydration

[00:19:32] which can lead to low blood pressure, you can experience seizures, hypothermia from low body temperature and even brain damage from alcohol consumption. So booze as a poison no fucking joke Ed. Yeah that's why I'm not going to drink to excess tonight or drink whole bottles of anything.

[00:19:50] And on top of all that of course it's worth mentioning that this kind of poison is also physically addictive meaning the body can become dependent on alcohol to function. The podcast can become dependent on alcohol to function. That's true yeah, the podcast can become dependent on it

[00:20:10] but cold turkey can actually kill you if you're an alcoholic it can kill you to quit cold turkey because you can have seizures when your body doesn't get the alcohol that it has become physically dependent on. So all that to say watch your drinking

[00:20:24] especially I thought this would be fun to do during the alcohol poisoning section of the show here. Watch your drinking especially if you're sipping on one of the 10 most potent spirits in the world. Now I thought because I know Ed had party phases in college

[00:20:42] that I would have tried more of these in my day. I haven't. I'll give you a spoiler alert right now. It starts number 10 is Bacardi 151. So everything else on this list is stronger than Bacardi 151. The thing that a lot of you probably

[00:21:00] used as the base of like jungle juice. Yeah we're not even I mean I guess some of you probably I'm sure we're going to get to Everclear which was also a pretty common base so this list comes from Food and Wine magazine published September 19th 2023.

[00:21:16] So it's possible that an even boozy or booze has been produced since this list came out. But like I said you know this list goes crazy because number 10 is Bacardi 151 which comes in at 151 proof or 75% alcohol. It's made in Puerto Rico and was discontinued in 2016.

[00:21:36] The article says that this famously flammable spirit was many people first foray into dangerously high octane cocktails as well as flaming shots. As Bacardi itself notes on its website quote as a company we care for our customers health and well-being. And since there are so many other

[00:21:55] premium Bacardi rums to try we felt it was best for everyone to let Bacardi 151 slink away into the night and transform into the shadowy creature of legend it has become. That's the official copy? That's the official copy. Wow. Yeah if you've never tried 151

[00:22:16] I guess you never will unless you find an old bottle. RIP God bless. But again just to put this list in perspective the most drinkable alcohol on this list is referred to by its own makers as a shadowy creature of legend. So it gives you a good sense

[00:22:35] of how strong 151 was. Yeah also like number 10 on the list was people who yeah like their conscience got the better of them where they were like listen we were sitting around the boardroom going what are we doing? Yeah what are we even doing? They retire this willingly. Yeah.

[00:22:56] I'm sure they made money off it. I mean every college bar in the world has a bottle of 151 or did. Now they have to replace it with a new bottle. Spit take. Number nine on this list is another rum I'd never heard of this one.

[00:23:11] It's made in Jamaica. 80% alcohol 160 proof John Crow baddie rum. B-A-T-T-Y rum. Jamaican white rum the article says may be familiar to you but this one is ellipses pause for effect different. It's so strong that even the name serves as a warning. It's a pro vulture better

[00:23:35] known in the United States as the turkey vulture whose diet of decaying meat necessitates a stomach of serious strength just like this rum. Wow. So wow you know crazy. So first rum on the list a shadowy creature of legend second rum on the list

[00:23:57] inedible even for turkey vultures and I love it there was a meeting where they were like all right this is a turkey vulture like sure you don't want to call it survive if you can. Yeah I will say it's I guess it's sort of a

[00:24:13] it's a veiled warning because most people aren't going to know what a John Crow vulture is. Yeah yeah that's not really in your face future court case we're like we try to tell them well read enough you know number eight Balkan 176 vodka proof 176 88% alcohol made in Bulgaria

[00:24:35] and as I would wager to guess most alcohol made in Bulgaria is probably going to pack a punch. This article says if you can find a bottle of this potent elixir don't treat it as you would a more typical vodka a classic martini for example

[00:24:51] would end your evening before it really even began and likely and likely put a serious damper on the rest of the weekend too. So one martini with Balkan 176 will fuck up your week weekend. Wow not something that you want to have at a wedding I guess.

[00:25:09] Yeah so Bulgaria I'm sure we're going to get Siberian bum wine must be coming up next. Yeah well we are three drinks into this list and we are at a one will ruin your weekend level of booze. Number seven Pinscher Shanghai strength vodka which is 177 proof or 88.8% alcohol.

[00:25:31] They're basically saying that like the point of Shanghai level like whatever you said Shanghai strength means like your chances of being Shanghai go up to 100 percent. I believe so. I believe Wow wow. That's the name of it or that's what these idiots in the magazine wrote.

[00:25:49] No that's the name on the bottle Pinscher Shanghai strength. Wow. Now interestingly this is a vodka made in Scotland which is not a place that I think of as like a real vodka heavy country. But the makers of this botanical vodka say their powerful formula

[00:26:05] is intended to be used as a concentrate vodka concentrate. How's that for an invention. I've been I've been to Glasgow and like yeah if it was between Edinburgh and Glasgow like Glasgow is a city that would make this a single bottle supply 65 shots compared to the usual 26.

[00:26:23] The article notes good luck finding it however a quick online search found a single source in the US and they're charging around a hundred dollars for a liter bottle. Here's a question is it provide more shots because you like it would kill you to do whole shots

[00:26:39] like there's because the serving size is suggested to be half a shot or something. I suspect that it's not Felix's magic bag they're not going to have a bottle that just keeps pouring. No I think it's I guess it's probably about you want to take

[00:26:54] about a third of a shot would be the strength of a traditional shot. Well let's hope somebody read the article from Habsburg's you're in really good company Habsburg gold label premium reserve absinthe. This is 89.9 percent alcohol or 179 proof made in the Czech Republic. The article says Habsburg's

[00:27:14] absinthe blend might not be the same version enjoyed by Van Gogh the most famous of absinthe drinkers but rest assured it has inspired some quote artistic behavior hit a perfect world you'd sip this with a bit of water slowly dripped through a sugar cube held

[00:27:31] by one of those gorgeous art deco spoons that were designed for the purpose. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. I've never had it but I went to a party for a couple years in a row like a Halloween party where the host did have like a proper

[00:27:45] absent station where they would have the little flame and they'd have the sugar cube and they put it through that and strain it and everything that was a pretty good pretty cool experience. Yeah I had absinthe as far as I can remember that I had in Italy

[00:28:01] in a bar right at the base of Il Duomo the cathedral dome in Florence and it was prepared for me by a guy who at least claimed to have won the some award in Australia as bartender of the year and I had two of these absinthe

[00:28:19] drinks that he made me and don't remember the rest of the night. So it was very good but very strong. I don't know that it was Habsburg gold label but it was a good time. Number five we're halfway through the list now we're hitting the real

[00:28:35] high strength shit River Antoine Royale Grenadian rum 180 proof or 90 percent alcohol made in Granada drawing from the centuries old tradition of pot stilling a slower more flavorful method of distillation that occurs in a wide bottomed and thin necked still as opposed to column distillation this

[00:28:56] strong clear rum can be sipped on the article notes slowly and not in great quantities please and also used to craft powerful cocktails so another rum not you know doesn't sound super exciting I feel like at that point when you're getting up to

[00:29:13] the 90% alcohol I don't know what flavorful rum is in that you're just tasting booze it's interesting I mean what's your experience with because I fucking love them but I know it's gonna ruin your life especially as old as we are now I love tiki bars

[00:29:27] just love them love tiki drinks and you know every one of those drinks is just filled with like a crazy concoction of insane rums and stuff so it sounds like this one sounds particularly like I bet you it's in a bunch of tiki drinks yeah I think

[00:29:42] that's probably what it's for especially because the next one when they say craft powerful cocktails one thing they don't say that it's used for is powering vehicles which this next one can be used for number four Bruichladdich X4 quadrupled whiskey 184 proof 92% alcohol made in Scotland

[00:30:05] based on the 17th century method of quadruple distilling Bruichladdich X4 is billed as the highest proof single malt ever made Asian new oak casks to enhance the flavor again I doubt it yeah the X4 can also as proven by a pair of BBC journalists power a sports

[00:30:29] car it speeds over 100 miles an hour I'm glad it's got on top gear yeah but good luck finding it this is a serious challenge to get your hands on probably because they're fucking putting it in gas tanks yeah it's running a Siberian like tractor right now it's not

[00:30:48] for use of any other way yeah it's not if you're just doing you know one third size shots of it it probably would be around but yeah it's in a Siberian tractor and harvesting grain used to make more of it so number three golden

[00:31:06] grain 95% alcohol 190 proof made in the goddamn United States of America okay from the same makers as Everclear and nearly identical in Constitution golden grain is a key ingredient in drinks with names like the screaming purple Jesus and instant death okay I'm glad you were so

[00:31:29] blasphemous leading into it yeah so get people going about this company exactly they're like look you're gonna take this first drink called spit on the grave of Christ and then we'll follow that up with you're dead here's a shocker it's illegal in some states just like

[00:31:51] Everclear which is number two on the list this is probably the highest proof liquor that most people have ever had and it does kick around colleges I was given some Everclear in college and told that it was a vodka shot and did a shot

[00:32:05] of it and almost vomited on the spot Everclear was a base I used to live with a guy named Earl from Sioux Falls South Dakota and he would use Everclear as the base of the jungle juice in our neighborhood in Austin brutal just

[00:32:18] brutal stuff I mean it is like drinking gasoline it is intense it's 95% alcohol 190 proof the article notes that it spawned a 90s alt rock band and many brutal hangovers it's another one that should not be consumed on its own much more smartly employed as a base for

[00:32:36] limoncello or other liqueurs bitters as well interesting I do like limoncello but if you ever have someone's like homemade limoncello which you can get from Italian friends or Polish friends yeah yeah you got a sip those and be like is this gonna ruin my life like

[00:32:50] yeah cuz it's kitchen without lemon on the front and you're like oh it's pretty delicious but then you're like what did you make this out of yeah fucking kerosene my aunt and uncle once brought back they went on a vacation in France and they brought back some like

[00:33:04] essentially bathtub booze from this French farmhouse where they stayed and I remember it was Christmas and they had they brought it out as kind of like a hey isn't this neat maybe we'll make some drinks with it and nobody touched

[00:33:18] it and so I poured some into some egg nog that I was drinking look I don't know spiked egg nog is a thing right yeah but with lemon flavored booze no no no not lemon flavor just it was just like a bathtub oh gotcha gotcha it was

[00:33:30] just like some you know and when I poured it into the egg nog it like it didn't bubble but it were like reacted with the egg nog just curdled immediately yeah it was disgusting it was it was like I don't know what it did

[00:33:43] or what it even was but it was very strong and did not go really all that well with egg nog so yeah sounds like it ruined it number one on the list I'd never heard of before and I'm going to mispronounce this because my Polish

[00:33:57] isn't very good but number one is pulmos spiritus recti for kawane recti recti for kawane you pulmos live it wrecked your life yeah 192 proof 96% alcohol made in Poland the article says this Polish made vodka the name translates to rectified spirit is the

[00:34:20] strongest spirit for sale in the US one sampler told the New York Post quote it's like getting punched in the solar plexus so strong enough to feel like you're getting hit it's best employed as a base for liqueurs infused with herbs

[00:34:36] of fute not so much for drinking on its own which the article notes is a terrible life decision so there you have it the 10 easiest ways to have ethyl alcohol poisoning to quickly get ethanol poisoning yes and if that's not enough

[00:34:55] for you if you're like you know what I want to try something a little bit worse than ethanol poisoning there are two other alcohols that can wreck you they're both less likely to be ingested than ethanol but sure why not let's say you

[00:35:09] have a actually bleep that we should we probably should introduce these things that can kill you by saying that but there are two other alcohols that people are poisoned by and they're both pretty miserable there's isopropyl alcohol which you probably know of as like rubbing alcohol cleaning products

[00:35:27] whatever and then there's also methanol which is a common ingredient in antifreeze which goes in your car if you're not as much of a gearhead is Ed over here wait what's the problem with methanol solvent well speaking of am I crazy wasn't like what was that booze that

[00:35:45] they'd they were like oh it has it has fucking antifreeze in it fireball wasn't fireball like taking off the market in every country but America because they were like there's antifreeze in this well google that fireball recall for antifreeze 2022 there's that's got to be

[00:36:02] a fucking urban legend there's no way well okay according to fireball whiskey's frequently asked questions yeah they are frequently asked questions fireball is 100% safe to drink it does not contain any antifreeze at all and the suggestion is ridiculous sadly this is the media's

[00:36:16] way of crafting headlines but simply not true I mean CBS News is the next article whiskey pulled over antifreeze ingredient but not in the US well I will say something I learned methanol is found in small doses in most alcohols now

[00:36:32] let's see why it says okay so yes Finland Sweden and Norway pulled it off store shelves after finding it contained too much propylene glycol and propylene glycol is in yeah here we go in this article it says it's been approved for use in the US in limited

[00:36:48] quantities it's found in scores of everyday products from food to certain toothpaste people are not getting poisoned by soft drinks or ice cream it won't happen with fireball either the FDA allows about 50 grams per kilogram of propylene glycol in foods Sazerac says it's fireball whiskey uses less

[00:37:05] than an eighth of that amount all right fine I guess you're sucking around fireball you're trying to get that fireball sponsorship but I heard it and I'm not wrong I'm not crazy it was a thing that exists not crazy not crazy well let's start with isopropyl alcohol

[00:37:19] because that is something that sometimes kids are dared to drink or whatever it's twice as potent as ethyl alcohol even three and a half to eight and a half ounces of isopropyl alcohol can be deadly to humans so please don't drink

[00:37:31] it even on a dare symptoms of isopropyl alcohol poisoning include many of the same symptoms as ethyl alcohol poisoning dizziness low blood pressure stomach pain rapid heart rate low body temperature slurred speech slow breathing nausea vomiting unresponsive reflexes throat pain or burning and coma

[00:37:49] my god don't drink it kids don't drink it or adults there is a very funny story that there's a comedian Ian finance has a very funny story about he's sober now but there was a moment where he really relapsed and he talks about how he ended

[00:38:03] up like drinking hand sanitizer on an airplane I saw people so I what was I doing I was working in New Haven or something and there was there was hand sanitizer this is like during Kovat after Kovat would have you and it was like hand sanitizer on construction

[00:38:18] sites but they had to like remove it every night because fucking lunatics would come in and take the bags of hand sanitizer and they would like pierce a hole in the side and like drink it and they would pass it around like a

[00:38:29] fucking conch like a conch cell my god and they would drink you know and they would get like fucked on hand sanitizer you got to really love being a drunk I guess to do that yeah I mean then to bring it home after that to put on the

[00:38:43] truck and bring it home with a beach instead of living on the job site well for as much as isopropyl alcohol can fuck you up the king of deadly alcohol is methanol and that's because your body processes methanol differently than ethanol and isopropyl alcohol your liver

[00:38:58] breaks down methanol not into acetic acid which is bad enough but into formic acid formate and formaldehyde which listeners will remember from our buried alive episode as responsible for killing more than a few people who weren't quite dead before being buried I

[00:39:15] like that it's the body's like ripcord where it's like are you drinking what fucking pull the ripcord let this guy die yeah like there's nothing I can do for you pal yeah you're dumb you're done formic acid is deadly because it deprives cells of oxygen so if you

[00:39:30] ingest too much methanol you'll experience what Wikipedia describes I think somewhat charitably as a quote decreased level of consciousness which sounds a lot like dying to me but you'll also lose coordination experience vomiting abdominal pain and blindness and that that thing about blindness

[00:39:54] made me pause because I've heard stories about people going blind from drinking moonshine yeah we've all heard that that seems like it was ever present in like growing up that was just synonymous with it yeah and so I was like well wait a

[00:40:07] second is moonshine methanol or why do we people even make it if it's that deadly so it turns out it's not a different kind of alcohol moonshine is ethyl alcohol or it's supposed to be the problem is that most alcohol is made by

[00:40:21] fermenting sugars right so whether it's fruit or corn or whatever you're making your booze with you're blending it with strains of yeast that convert that sugar into ethanol the problem is that other strains of yeast that you don't want in your booze just different

[00:40:38] strains of wild yeast have a different kind of enzyme that breaks the sugar down into methanol instead so the danger of drinking bathtub booze or moonshine that's been fermented in an uncontrolled environment is that these wild yeast can be introduced accidentally and the

[00:40:55] resulting liquor can be deadly you got to close that door man a couple wild yeast can walk in a couple bad apples yeah what you guys making in here something to kill a guy and it's like no and it was like do you want to when I

[00:41:07] visited my dad in Pahrump Nevada the hotel that he put me up at was a terrible hotel and it was right next to a plaza that had two stores in it a gun store right next door to a rum distillery and the rum distillery took

[00:41:25] my wife and I on a tour of the distillation process and they I forget what they called it exactly but it was essentially open vats of rum distilling then they weren't covered or anything and I was like huh that seems a little

[00:41:41] unsanitary and they were like it's the traditional way yeah so also this alcohol is so aggressively high it's like it'll burn any germs that come into contact with it yeah or a wild yeast will jump in and be like what are we

[00:41:54] doing it was like I don't know wild yeast scram we've made a mistake wild yeast my old yeast is like that's what I am I am mistakes baby I am mistakes personified and I'm here to help you guys lose your business anyway to bring

[00:42:10] this all back around to the numbers the statistics the hard news the good news is that deaths due to alcohol poisoning decreased 16% since 2020 for a total of only 2,238 deaths in 2022 alcohol poisoning deaths for males outnumber those for females by three to one so

[00:42:30] even though women require less require less to binge they die much less frequently yeah so Ed when we talk about we've never been poisoned you've probably had one or two near alcohol poisoning right no even though I drank I drank like mad dog and shit all the

[00:42:47] time but I always knew I'm surprised mad dog wasn't on the list no I don't think mad dogs that high it'll just I think it's just a alcohol to cost ratio is incredibly good if you're a frugal drinker fair but I don't think no I

[00:43:00] mean I the number of times I blacked out in college was I don't know never yeah well you and I like you and I both I'm sure my in-laws are listening to this or my parents and it is true that Ed and I are not really heavy drinkers

[00:43:15] never passed out I've never passed out I've never even actually gotten sick oh I got sick I got fucking sick I threw up I know this to be true because I can't quietly puke I've talked about on the show yeah so I'd always very

[00:43:28] self-conscious but anytime I got sick enough where I was spinning and stuff I was like blah like crazy loud whatever all that noise is that Jesse loves I hate puking so much that I think it actually helped me have a healthier relationship with alcohol

[00:43:42] because I didn't drink enough to vomit really yeah I hate puking a bunch too but it still led to a healthy relationship with my toilet bowl I got to know I was hugging that thing all the time in college yeah yeah Ed and I

[00:43:55] are responsible drinkers but in college and this whole story might get cut depending on how we feel about it by the Ed because I don't I don't want to make too much light of alcohol poisoning but I did experience a friend's alcohol

[00:44:12] poisoning in college that was one of the most disgustingly memorable nights I've ever had and reminded me that drinking too much is always a fool's errand so this friend's name will get bleeped or we'll call him something else he's doing fine now by the way so

[00:44:30] we can laugh about it and this is a very like I said this is a gross story so if you don't like gross stuff if you don't like the top of the fear tier let's say maybe skip past it there's chapters on

[00:44:40] this for a reason so we all lived at this apartment in college Ed and I have talked about it before I don't know if we've talked about it by name but it was a two-bedroom apartment that had four sometimes five people were living in six

[00:44:53] if Ed was sleeping on the couch that week the living room was partitioned in two so that one half of the living room was a bedroom and the second bedroom was also partitioned into I was basically sleeping in the closet of that

[00:45:05] room on a mattress on the floor the kitchen was disgusting there were holes in the stove it was a mess of a place but this one guy who lived with us he was the hardest partier of the crew you know and I I had never really

[00:45:18] experienced heavy drinkers before until one night at college this guy broke out a bottle of Jameson and started challenging people to see how long they could drink from the bottle directly how many seconds and he beat everyone at like 10 seconds or 11 seconds of just straight

[00:45:35] sipping whiskey not even sipping slugging and so Ed I don't know if you were there you weren't there for the end of this story you may have been there for the beginning of this story I definitely wasn't there for the end but

[00:45:46] knowing me if I was there for the beginning he'd be like how many seconds and I would I just know me I'd go fucking none passes to the next person I have no interest in whatever this is yeah I just did this like two nights ago

[00:45:58] with darts I still I'm still that way we were at a party at mr. disclaimers place oh oh I was actually drunk there when I broke that bulb with my head I broke it on the kitchen counter on the island

[00:46:08] and then I went I stood up right into a fucking light might have been the same night but this friend of ours starts drinking and by the time we're all ready to leave he didn't want to go but it was pretty clear that he needed to go he

[00:46:20] needed help getting down the stairs he was pissed off he was accusing us of kidnapping him we got outside and the T the subway in Boston was closed so we called a cab and I remember he didn't want to get in the cab so he threw his

[00:46:33] glasses into the street and said that he couldn't leave because he was blind it was dangerous for him to leave so we got his glasses back and we get in the cab but the driver is like don't let your friend puke in my car and we were

[00:46:46] like no sir let's like please just get us home so we keep our buddy upright we have like a plastic cup from somewhere we were holding under his mouth just in case and it's pouring pouring rain just downpour and about five minutes from

[00:47:00] our apartment he can't hold it in anymore so we asked a taxi to pull over he flops halfway out the door pukes in the street and the taxi driver is like that's it get out of the car so we all get out hiking through this torrential

[00:47:13] downpour soaking wet we get back to the apartment we bring him up three flights of stairs yeah it was a walk up it was a walk up every one of the places we talk about were walk-ups yeah and we get him into the apartment and he immediately

[00:47:25] starts puking again so we get him to the bathroom so he can puke in the toilet and he gets angry he starts swinging the plunger at us to keep us from getting puked at and he's like you're not gonna keep us back and he then threw the

[00:47:38] plunger out the window because the bathroom had this like weird it was like a wall it's like a window into like a shaft yeah well I think the building used to have a dumbwaiter like it used to be someone's house and then it was

[00:47:50] split into apartment buildings so it was the dumbwaiter hole he threw the plunger down the dumbwaiter and sits on the toilet puking and then he starts shitting he starts shitting and puking at the same time we call that walking like a dumbwaiter and if you ever look how

[00:48:04] that dance goes you'll better understand what I'm talking about yeah at this point it's like 3 in the morning and everyone is exhausted everyone else is drunk and everybody kind of heads to bed but I was super nervous because I'd heard all these stories in dare about

[00:48:19] like if someone's puking you don't want them to choke you got to make sure they're okay don't make like make sure they don't pass out and the door to my bedroom slash closet was open directly across the hall from the bathroom so

[00:48:32] I could basically lay in my bed and keep an eye on this guy and make sure that he was alive and he was okay so I'm laying there with the bathroom door open and my bedroom door open staring at a passed out guy covered in puke and

[00:48:47] shit every time I got up to see how he was doing he'd shove me away eventually the Sun started to come up and I passed out when I woke up I was like oh fuck I hope he's okay he wasn't on the toilet

[00:49:00] anymore we all checked he was in bed he was breathing he was okay he didn't get up until well into the afternoon and we were all sitting in the living room watching music videos and I remember we just hear him starting to stir and then

[00:49:15] he goes oh who's shit in my bed because he had dragged himself into bed covered in shit oh my god train spotting situation yes so he was the one who had shit in his bed he was okay but it was I mean he was alcohol-poisoned he

[00:49:31] couldn't eat for a few days he had trouble keeping water down like it was it was bad and it was a real you know it's very funny and we laugh about it now but it was a real like ooh-hoo-hoo it can you this could go sideways real

[00:49:45] quick well those are the ages to do it yep yep so anyway enough about booze that's no way to end that's oh well yeah well it happened and I don't know it happened he's alive we're alive don't drink too much kids we're having

[00:50:00] fun but you don't want to go through any of this it's it's terrible drink in moderation everything in moderation but anyway I guess I say anyway because I suspect most people probably clicked play on this episode wanting to hear more about death and murder and killers and

[00:50:16] deadly poisons and assassinations yeah that's why I stuck around yes so I found an article you know you know I'm a history head you know I like diving into the background of these things are you gonna go in the history of mr. yuck are

[00:50:29] you gonna get into mr. yuck no mr. yuck does not make an appearance in this episode oh I'm glad I'm bringing it up then although I do think mr. yuck would make a great piece of art for this episode yeah perhaps yeah I think it's

[00:50:42] mr. yuck I don't know if everybody has mr. yuck where they're from but it was a sticker with like the poison control center like phone number right and and you would put it was a green face kind of making like a like I'm sure there's

[00:50:55] an emoji that makes the same face as mr. yuck and you put it on like rat poison or bleach or whatever to show kids like don't drink this don't eat this yeah exactly yeah I don't it's apparently it's out of Pittsburgh is where it

[00:51:10] started so maybe not everyone got mr. yuck it was out of Pittsburgh mr. yuck is a trademark graphic image created by UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and widely employed in the United States in labeling of substances that are poisonous if ingested huh I did not know

[00:51:25] that about mr. yuck the Pittsburgh poison center was the first place to use mr. yuck so me and mr. yuck Pennsylvania exports yep fantastic call me mr. yuck cuz this boy is from Pennsylvania yeah all right so to start our discussion of deadly poisons used

[00:51:44] for murder and mayhem I'm quoting here from an article in Popular Mechanics magazine published October 4th 2020 by author Meg Neal poison has long been a murderous tool for emperors pharaohs and kings around 1550 BC Egyptians scribbled numerous recipes for poison in hieroglyphics into the Ebers papyrus one

[00:52:08] of the earliest known medical documents it's in fact the most extensive and best-preserved record of ancient Egyptian medicine known with nearly 700 magical formulas folk remedies and poisons contained within it the exact source of the papyrus is unknown but it was said to have been found between the

[00:52:27] legs of a mummy in the LCC district of the Theban necropolis which is either the best or worst place to find a mysterious scroll sounds kind of awesome yeah I do like that the scroll had folk remedies medicine in poisons yeah cuz

[00:52:44] it's just I want to see the like abacus of what did it do did it fix their leg it killed them and they're just like slide the thing over to poison yeah all right what about next what do they do now they feel a little better

[00:52:58] folk remedy yeah well we'll get to some of that some of it in a bit but it seems like a lot of determining what was poison and what helped you was pretty much that process it was let's try a bunch of stuff and see what kills you

[00:53:11] and what doesn't but this thing the ingredients in here are actually like kind of boring but it has some of the best spells and recipes this side of homunculi just want to want to share a few ancient Egyptian medicine ideas from the Ebers papyrus so for burn wound

[00:53:31] protection it says to use a frog warm the frog in oils and rub the afflicted spot or warm an electric eels head in oil and apply that to the burn site so what these are two animals who are gone

[00:53:48] what the fuck did we do leave us a lot like where are you taking that frog yeah well in an electric eels head it seems like they must have connected the idea of like a burn to the idea of the shock from an electric eel somehow like

[00:54:03] one way or another that kind of makes sense but a frog the frog frogs are just they just done dirty all the time in this show they're constantly like put in a cauldron like we would we want to listen to something where like frogs

[00:54:17] could help you with something and I was like there's no fucking way that's dumb like Russian oh yeah yeah it was the frogs keeping milk from spoiling for the Russian yeah so frogs are getting tossed into all sorts of shit is like I don't

[00:54:29] know maybe a frog will do it but I do wonder is it is it a full electric eel that you just grab its little head and wipe it on there or is it like you got to remove the head yeah I don't unclear

[00:54:40] unclear I would imagine you would have to remove the head if you're gonna try to warm the head in oil oh sure sure sure sure all right so next on the list a migraine cure so check this out next time your head hurts give this a shot

[00:54:53] rub a frog on it pop a frog on it put a frog in your mouth no to cure a migraine you use a clay effigy of a crocodile with herbs stuffed into its mouth firmly bound to the head of the patient by a

[00:55:06] linen strip Wow there's no way you walk out of that feeling like this is this is not embarrassing for everyone involved the linen strip is inscribed with the names of Egyptian gods and this treatment was said to get rid of the ghosts and

[00:55:20] demons causing your migraine pain that is amazing that is how long do I need to keep this toy of a crocodile on my head yeah until the ghosts leave idiot why are you even asking me and it can take a long time so be patient well I don't

[00:55:36] want to go to the bazaar like this or whatever they wherever they go in Egypt I don't know so this next one I can't imagine was a common problem but this was it's a very complicated remedy to heal abnormal eyelashes whatever that means

[00:55:52] hey the Egyptians I mean if Hollywood taught us anything they have like serious eyeliner right yeah so maybe the eyelashes and like that type of stuff is important to the culture at the time and so to the point where if it's abnormal and this remedy doesn't work

[00:56:07] you gotta just draw some on well I suspect in this case by abnormal they mean growing abnormally like causing some sort of pain maybe it means in grown but the cure here is Christ Almighty what a what a walk around the

[00:56:22] block this is so you want to heal your abnormal eyelash you combine mer as in gold frankincense and mer lizards blood bats blood and then tear out the hairs the abnormal eyelash ears and put there on in order to make him well so you're

[00:56:39] tearing out the hairs and you're then you're applying the mer lizards blood and bat blood then use a mixture of incense ground in lizards dung cow's blood donkey's blood pigs blood dogs blood stags blood like a calyreo and incense to prevent the hair from growing

[00:57:00] back into the eye after being pulled out you're not you're the dear to remove the hair all this shit goes on it yeah you had to kill an entire farm yeah like prevent this one bad eyelash from coming back plus lizards yeah plus

[00:57:15] lizards yeah maybe just get some yeah get some eyeliner I don't know ignore it this is crazy that is the craziest thing like you were building you're making a monkey light in someone's eye yeah I don't it seems to me now look I'm

[00:57:29] no I'm no ancient doctor but they knew what salt water was and I feel like salt water cure so many things how do they not just decide like I don't know drip some salt water on that eyelash instead of you know old McDonald's

[00:57:45] farm town massacre that you have to do well that's why the song is old McDonald had a farm because they came and fucking killed everything on his farm yeah and left them desolate nothing left just to fix that eyelash dude yeah that's outrageous holy shit my

[00:58:00] favorite incantation though that I found to cure a stuffy or runny nose the papyrus suggests the following incantation spit it out thou slime son of slime grasp the bones touch the skull smear with tallow give the patient seven openings in the head serve the god

[00:58:23] rah thank the God thought then I brought thy remedy for thee thy drink for thee to drive away to heal it milk of a woman who has born a son and fragrant bread the foulness rises from out the earth the foulness the foulness the

[00:58:41] foulness the foulness and this is to be spoken over the milk of a woman who has born a son and fragrant bread and then you put that combination I guess it says put in the nose Wow so okay that's I mean son of slime son of slime I'm

[00:58:59] never gonna not remember that like son of slime is the bet maybe the best thing we've ever uttered on the show but yeah I don't know this is a little bit like go out and do for Hail Mary's a little

[00:59:09] bit for me in terms of a claretin it is not no yeah it's also sounds like sludge metal lyrics or something yeah or like Egyptian beat poetry yeah spit it out thou slime son of slime yeah everybody's snapping at it yeah as they do the

[00:59:26] incantation well my nose is unstuffed so something worked oh my god so those are some of my favorite incantations from the papyrus to continue along with the article it's believed that the first known Egyptian Pharaoh Menes experimented with deadly toxins as did the last Egyptian Pharaoh Cleopatra who

[00:59:48] supposedly took her own life with a poison asp which is a kind of snake although I would like to point out that listeners of the show know from our spiders episode that there's no such thing as a poisonous snake there are venomous snakes poisonous refers to

[01:00:04] substances that cause harm when ingested or touched such as toxic plants or animals while venomous is the term used to refer to animals that bite or sting to inject their toxins directly into the body maybe she had one that you rubbed

[01:00:17] and not to be pedantic but I want to point out that you do learn something if you listen to this piss and shit filled show yeah and if you weren't listening we'll remind you of the thing we said that you should have learned from

[01:00:30] experimenting with poison also killed the father of Chinese herbal medicine a guy named Shen Nung now from what I could find Shen Nung is more of a mythical figure than a real guy but there is at least one book that's said

[01:00:44] to have been written by him not entirely sure what his deal was in terms of being real or fake but I did want to share some additional details cuz at least the mythical version of this guy is crazy so according to Mythopedia

[01:00:59] Shen Nung was born around 28 BC and it was clear that there was something special about Shen Nung from the day he was born the most obvious sign that he didn't exist he was born with two horns upon his head in a transparent stomach

[01:01:14] excuse me so he was sort of like krang from from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles well no krang was just a brain I think whatever the fuck krang rode around in was this guy right right right Shen Nung also was said to have gained the ability

[01:01:31] to talk within three days of his birth so take that baby Einstein books this guy this transparent stomach man was jibber-jabbering real quick and he could plow entire fields by himself by the age of three Wow he's like Bam Bam or whatever the fucking Flintstones

[01:01:51] character is as Shen Nung grew older he realized that most of the people in his village were sickly weak or starving and soon came to the conclusion that it was because they subsisted on a poor scavenged diet of clams fruit and the

[01:02:05] occasional bits of meat deciding to help them he put his transparent stomach to use and began eating all the different types of plants around him to experiment with their effects on his body which is big of him but I don't really know why

[01:02:20] he had to have a transparent stomach to do that yeah that's just an upgrade I guess Shen Nung then categorized the plants into three different groups superior plants which were non-toxic and edible medium which were plants with mild ill effects but with medicinal uses and

[01:02:36] inferior which were straight-up poisonous plants after taking a year to try hundreds of different kinds of plants Shen Nung shared his findings with his neighbors and taught them how to farm so they would have a steady source of nutritious food unfortunately

[01:02:53] his luck ran out when he ate a particularly poisonous plant the yellow flower of a weed that caused his intestines to rupture in his see-through stomach what to say guts the best thing about having to see through stomach is people can go hey right there hey buddy

[01:03:08] do you see this yeah you gotta go to a hospital or whatever the equivalent is you got to invent medicine right now quick that doesn't look good as a reward for his selfless and heroic deeds Shen Nung was awarded a place in the Jade

[01:03:24] Emperor's Heavenly Court now I feel like he should of course he deserves that spot on the Heavenly Court but I feel like he gets negative points because I don't know if he wrote down which plant it was that burst his intestines there

[01:03:39] doesn't seem to be record of what plant it was and I feel like we should know yeah it seems like that would be a plant that you'd want your farming neighbors to avoid yeah put up a do not touch sign yeah whatever the hieroglyph for that

[01:03:51] would just be like a stomach exploding a little little guy yeah and a guy with like big wide bug eyes this feels like a good place to pause to go over some of the most common plant poisons in nature I don't think any of them are the

[01:04:10] mystery plant that killed the see-through man but they are important to know so hemlock big one favorite of the ancient Greeks yeah poison hemlock comes from a large fern like plant that bears a dangerous resemblance to the carrot plant it was readily available for

[01:04:28] treating muscle spasms ulcers and swelling but unfortunately causes paralysis and respiratory failure in large doses Athens used it so much that it was the drug of choice for capital punishment known as state poison and I believe was it Socrates had to drink

[01:04:46] hemlock I mean when they sentenced him to death maybe in that play you read hold on let's see Socrates hemlock I'm pretty sure so crates yes Socrates was sentenced to die by drinking poison hemlock the more you know hemlock causes a frothing spasming death so not

[01:05:05] something that you want to eat although a lot of the poisons on this list cause frothing spasmodic death so don't touch any of them the next one this next plant you might remember from again our homunculus episode the mandrake root hell yeah what's up mandrake the

[01:05:25] mandrake root is a somewhat human shaped root like if you pull it up it kind of looks like it's like thick and wire the kind of like ginger but it does kind of have the shape of a person a lot of times and it was used in homunculi

[01:05:39] recipes to create life but that's not all it was used for people also made use of mandrake root as a sedative it was a hallucinogenic and an aphrodisiac superstitious medieval denizens believe that when the vaguely human shaped root was pulled from the ground the plant

[01:05:56] gave a piercing shriek that would drive anyone that heard it to madness or death so that's not something that I found out about in our homunculus episode it seemed like it was fairly easily accessible but if your plant was screaming when you pulled it from the

[01:06:11] ground guess that's bad news that's a red flag it's how they do it in Harry Potter when they pull them out they scream oh really and Harry Potter when they do when they do like the potions class or the fuck they're in okay where

[01:06:23] they have to like use mandrake when they pull them out they scream if you don't have little ear things in they can like scream or something I'm not sure I never read Harry Potter just another reason that Ed is everyone's favorite host of

[01:06:34] this show oh boy because I'm sure you're gonna have a hundred people email and be like it wasn't a potions class it was fucking whatever the third common plant based poison nightshade the main ingredient in witches brews or a main ingredient in witches brews a single

[01:06:50] leaf or a few berries of nightshade could cause hallucinations and a few more would be a lethal dose yeah nightshade is that game that we talked about in the show where I would be in your apartment the way the apartment we just

[01:07:04] talked about and I would stay all night playing Skyrim or whatever yes yeah nightshade when you were like join the Assassin's Guild or whatever like you would get nightshade to use on people yeah nightshade I think was the first kind of mystical poison I became aware

[01:07:18] of I remember I wrote a story I don't remember what the story was about but I do remember I wrote like a short story in fifth or sixth grade and I thought I was so cool for naming it nightshade and that was the thing was that the

[01:07:30] character was making so it's a common popular poison used in lots of pop culture I didn't know this though medieval women use the juice of the berries to color their cheeks and they would even put a few drops of juice on their eyes because it would cause their

[01:07:45] pupils to dilate and give them a lovestruck look and that's why this deadly poison is also called Bella Donna or a beautiful woman oh yeah all right aconite is the next plant on this list this toxic plant also called monks hood or wolfsbane was used by indigenous

[01:08:05] tribes around the world as arrow poison and was so deadly that growing it was forbidden in ancient Rome in the Middle Ages aconite was one of the ingredients in a potion used by witches to give them the feeling of flying so I guess this also caused hallucinations wolfsbane

[01:08:22] was also in Skyrim well look at this you learn from the podcast you learn from video games anywhere but our crumbling school system and the final easily somewhat easily accessible plant poison strychnine derived from a bitter tasting tree native to India this toxin was

[01:08:41] known since antiquity in Asia and was used in many traditional medicines it eventually made its way to the west in the 1700s where it became a rat poison much like a lot of the other poisons on this list a lethal dose causes muscle contractions and ultimately death by

[01:08:56] respiratory arrest all these poisons were used in medieval times and by Roman times poisoning had become so rampant that an ancient Roman law called the Lex Cornelia was issued and it outright forbade toxic tinctures from being created as with any attempt to make

[01:09:17] things illegal though it only made the problem worse six Roman emperors met their end due to poison including Claudius who was murdered by his own wife Agrippina to advance the position of her son Nero who then turned around and poisoned his stepbrother in order to

[01:09:35] take the throne yeah I mean Nero is a piece of shit right I mean anybody who rises to power through illegal tincture use yeah is probably a bad person well if all of his friends in school hadn't busted on him and called him nerdo oh

[01:09:48] wow maybe he would turn into a better guy you nerd oh and then fucking nerd oh yeah they called Caligula fucking uncool iglia I was trying to keep it as clean as nerdo what those are all terrible jokes but look we're trying

[01:10:04] folks we're trying we're trying to stay awake no king was haunted by poison more than King Mithridates Mithridates Mithridates no king was haunted by poison more than King Mithridates the sixth who ruled pontos which is modern day Turkey over 2,000 years ago this guy

[01:10:24] this guy fucked himself he was terrified of being assassinated by poison right and this was not unwarranted because his mother had poisoned his father so he kind of grew up in the shadow of a pretty bad poisoning situation sure Mithridates became obsessed with finding

[01:10:42] what he called a universal antidote and according to this article in new scientists another article in new scientists this one from 2008 Mithridates systematically tested every known antidote on condemned prisoners oh no so these poor motherfuckers are getting poisoned with one thing after another

[01:11:02] and then Mithridates is like here try this this is what I was talking about what I said it seems like most of this science was just like kind of trial and error yeah I'm assuming a lot of these guys didn't have trials until until

[01:11:13] this was used on them yes true he soon learned that while you know one particular remedy worked best against snake bites another would be more effective against scorpion stings and when it came to plant poisons something different was needed to counter each of

[01:11:28] them he spent years trying to establish which worked best and then when he finally felt like he had a hold on all this he combined each of these antidotes into a single universal antidote other people suggest that the Persian physician so pirates we're just gonna

[01:11:46] we're just gonna walk by that we're just gonna cruise on by the fact that that guy got a fucking ice cream sundae of every scoop you can get and was like we're good to go well no no I'm so I'm I'm saying that he combined them into

[01:11:58] this universal antidote some people suggest it was actually a Persian physician named Zopyrus who sent Mithridates the recipe and a prisoner to test it on either way an ultimate antidote was developed it included extracts from around 50 plants a legless lizard and musk from a beavers scent

[01:12:22] glands which is one of the most disgusting phrases I feel like I've ever heard the only thing more disgusting than that is the person who was like preceded it with I got something for you yeah look I got something for that all right don't worry

[01:12:36] I'll be right back there's no way musk from a beavers scent glands is pleasing to the scent glands of a human being well that's actually what Chanel number five is probably in any case this was all mixed into a palatable paste and flavored with honey this concoction

[01:12:54] became known as Mithridatum and Mithridates took it every day what in an attempt to build up immunity to poison now I left out there is a whole wild history of this sort of universal antidote became the backbone alpha brain yeah yeah it was gorilla brain

[01:13:16] supplements for the Middle Ages every king every physician like had their own version of it eventually it was sold across the world again different kinds people were obsessed with this idea that you could have this you know I guess now it might be considered sort of a

[01:13:35] snake oil kind of thing but back then they would create this cure-all basically from all these different plants and lizards and to distill the research I did into this down into one pretty simple sound bite let's just say the main ingredient and most of it was

[01:13:51] opium just made you feel good and or made you pass out and rest yeah there's something else they're doing the heavy lifting yeah it's not the thing on with the largest font on the front of the box but it is really doing heavy it's doing

[01:14:05] the work for you heavy lifting heavy lifting it's a little wacky that this was used preventatively it's like if I really didn't want to get sick with something that would require penicillin to fix it mm-hmm I wouldn't take penicillin every day wouldn't I just

[01:14:20] take super small amounts of poison every single day to build up a tolerance to poison yeah well that's what Rasputin did right I think Rasputin at least you know in lore the real Rasputin supposedly took you know what we would call you some micro dose of different

[01:14:35] poisons every day to build up an immunity to anybody that might try to poison him but the ironic part and I think this is actually the proper use of irony is that eventually a Roman general named Pompeii invaded Pontos which is the land that Mithridates was the ruler

[01:14:53] of and during this invasion Mithridates said you know what fuck it I'm gonna try to kill myself using poison but he'd been so successful at making himself immune that the poison didn't work and he had to ask one of his soldiers to

[01:15:08] run him through with a sword ooh so anybody out there who's thinking about trying to make themselves immune to poison just be very sure that you aren't planning on killing yourself in battle that way how do you um how do you spell Pompeii this Pompeii is P-O-M-P-E-I

[01:15:26] yeah so that's Pompeii oh actually Roman general Pompeii yeah and he's the one who it was him versus Caesar in that civil war oh worth like crossing the Rubicon and all that shit oh yeah okay Pompeii I was wrong and I hate that I

[01:15:39] know that because it's gonna it opens me up to some kind of like your Roman Empire joke so well here's what I'll be thinking about once a day for the rest of my life the phrase Pompeii and circumstance-y been put in my head as a

[01:15:55] meme only to myself and then of course there were the Borgias who were perhaps the medieval masters of death by poison if you're not familiar with the Borgia clan I don't know why we would do a whole episode on them but we probably

[01:16:10] could there were a lot of them and they were all super fucked up at terrible people the long and short of it just so this next part makes sense if you're not familiar with the Borgias is that they were a noble family they were

[01:16:22] originally from Spain they established roots in Renaissance Italy and they threw a lot of cloak and dagger and bribes and murder became prominent in religious and political affairs throughout the 14 and 1500s the house of the Borgias produced two popes and a whole host of other political and church

[01:16:40] leaders and they would do anything to hold on to power including poisoning nearly everyone who crossed them according to this new scientist article Rodrigo Borgia who became Pope Alexander the sixth his son Duke Cesar or Caesar there's an e at the end of it I

[01:16:57] don't know Duke Caesar or Cesar and his daughter Lucretia are infamous for poisoning dozens of Cardinals bishops and nobles although the article notes historians think Lucretia may have been wrongly accused so okay well the articles covering its bases yeah just in case the Borgia descendants file a

[01:17:17] lawsuit for for defamation of character defamation yeah witnessing this state of affairs the Venetian ambassador reported that every night quote four or five men were discovered assassinated every night dude this is Venice in Italy yes well you know there's an Italian saying and I

[01:17:35] can never remember in Italian but essentially it translates to in English I hate that person and I hope they die tonight and I think it's so funny like the immediacy that that like there's just nothing in the English language that has that kind of urgency yeah so I

[01:17:50] wonder if that you know just that was being said a lot in Venice during this time yeah and then like those hopes that yeah well there's actually there's another famous Italian phrase that will come up in just a second but the Venetian ambassador reported that every night four

[01:18:04] or five men are discovered assassinated bishops priests and others so that all Rome trembles for fear of being murdered by the Duke the family experimented with a bunch of the toxins that we listed already strychnine aconite others they experimented on animals and the poor and kept their

[01:18:23] vials in the basement next to their own beds I don't love this it always ends up he's poor poor people I know this fucking getting if you're a prisoner to low wages actual prisoners and prisoners to low wages ended up you know getting experimented on in this

[01:18:38] world I will say for all the flaws of modern society generally and I'm speaking very broadly the poor have it a little better than they did during the Middle Ages when they truly were not considered human beings well there's yeah we don't have a caste system

[01:18:53] well a recognized caste system yeah but that's political we won't go there what's not political is that the Borgias eventually arrived at their own deadly formula known as Cantarella its contents are a mystery to this day though it is thought to have been a mix

[01:19:11] of arsenic and blister beetles again I feel like arsenic's probably doing the heavy lifting yeah the Borgias modus operandi was to mix Cantarella into the wine of unfortunate dinner guests and then turn up dead weeks or months later a length of time carefully predetermined

[01:19:29] by the poisoner this was so skillfully executed that the phrase tasting the cup of the Borgias became a euphemism for a sudden or mysterious death oh wow wow wow so if you told that you wanted her to taste the cup of the Borgias oh no I

[01:19:47] wouldn't say I would ever say that but I would say I imagine may have stood across from a coroner and said I think these people tasted the cup of the Borgias and they'll go ma'am you shouldn't even be in here ma'am please

[01:20:02] leave you've poisoned at least one of our doctors several of their pets several of their pets so I wanted to wrap up the episode by taking a look at five of the deadliest poisons currently known to man because we have developed some real shit-kicking poisons way worse than

[01:20:18] Cantarella way worse than anything that people in the Middle Ages were using I mean there's two I bet I can guess right off the bat go guess go give me your guess I'm gonna guess ricin yep it's one of them from Breaking Bad yep and

[01:20:32] I'm gonna guess cyanide cyanide is actually not on this list but cyanide yeah is a real bad one cyanide is a deadly one I will say we will tell you a little bit about these poisons researching them probably put me on a

[01:20:44] list everything we do on this show puts you on a list yeah we're on enough lists already so we're not gonna share anything about where to find them or how to make them and I will just say researching them alone was difficult because most of the publicly available

[01:20:58] information about these substances is fairly vague on purpose I bet yeah you have to go to like a weird website called like asking for a friend calm something yeah and I don't have a Tor browser to use the dark web so first and foremost probably no surprise botulism

[01:21:15] the deadly botulinum toxin produced by the bacteria clostridium botulinum this bacteria flourishes in low oxygen environments particularly in improperly stored foods which can include everything from vegetables like green beans spinach mushrooms and beets fish including improperly canned tuna even fermented salted and smoked fish

[01:21:41] meat products ham sausage you could grow this shit in just about anything and it's usually kills people by accident because they improperly preserve their food there becomes a low oxygen content and this botulism bacteria can spread like crazy Wow it's the involuntary

[01:21:58] manslaughter of poisons yes and and it's a bad one so the toxin created by botulism blocks nerve function by preventing the release of acetylcholine which is the chemical messenger essential for muscle contraction which is why and I only learned this recently small amounts of botulism toxin

[01:22:20] are actually used in cosmetic procedures where they're known as the brand name Botox no Botox is actually an insanely deadly poison we just use it in small amounts because what it does is that when you inject it into your facial muscles to smooth out your wrinkles what

[01:22:39] it does is that it blocks the nerve signal to those muscles causing them to relax and then your wrinkles go away that is crazy that someone was like I got to use for this shit yeah and then someone was like no way Dave and then

[01:22:52] he's like hey don't kill the chemical messenger so I looked it up that deserved more than a guy the the doses used in a Botox session are typically in the range of 20 to 100 units per session depending on the area being treated and

[01:23:08] those units are again this is where things get really vague because obviously they don't want to tell you what amounts are deadly and not but those units are very small amounts measured in nanograms and comparatively to those 20 to 100 units it would take about 2,500 to 3,000 units administered

[01:23:28] intravenously or intramuscularly to kill a person okay so way below the lethal dose but still like you said crazy that somebody was like you know what we use this for yeah one of the most deadly poisons in the world hey you

[01:23:42] know it's bad if it makes your entire body freeze up but if it's just those unsightly wrinkles around your eyes that's that's fine yeah do you want to look young forever then use a little bit of this do you want to be young forever

[01:23:56] use a lot of this yeah well and so check this out if you were to be exposed to a deadly amount if you wanted to stay young forever your symptoms would appear within 12 to 36 hours they would include fatigue weakness vertigo followed by blurred vision dry mouth

[01:24:15] difficulty swallowing and speaking vomiting diarrhea constipation and abdominal swelling can also occur the bacteria will then progress to weakness in the neck and arms after which the respiratory muscles and the muscles of your lower body are affected there is no fever and importantly no loss of

[01:24:35] consciousness which means if you are suffering a fatal dosage of botulism toxin you will remain conscious as your body stiffens and your lungs just stop working and you'll be overwhelmed by a fiery sensation that will start in your lungs as you suffocate and fill your

[01:24:55] entire body as you die trying to force your body to breathe that sucks it won't that sucks it's real bad real bad make sure you properly store your food yeah don't fuck around with food storage when you if you ever watch kitchen nightmares

[01:25:09] and you see Gordon Ramsay go into one of the really poorly organized like freezers and he's like it's raw it's raw you're going to kill someone this is what he's talking about this is why it's fucking raw I have my food handlers license so I

[01:25:25] had to take all those classes about the danger zone and how long things can stay out and when you put stuff in the walk-in freezer you have to make sure that things that you know don't drip based on what shelf you put them on and stuff

[01:25:38] yeah the second toxin on this list is as Ed guessed ricin which is extracted from the beans of one of the most common plants in the world the castor plant the oil that you extract from the beans of this plant is the same oil sold as castor

[01:25:52] oil it can be used as a laxative a wound treatment a moisturizer there's some research that suggests it can be used to cause a woman to go into labor if she's having trouble going to labor there's it can be used for all kinds of things and

[01:26:06] it's been used that way in folk medicine across the world forever there's even mention of castor plant and castor beans in the Eber's papyrus that we discussed earlier where we learned about son of slime it's totally safe to use when heated

[01:26:21] to remove the toxins when it's not it can be insanely toxic and a lot of cultures have been aware that something in the castor plant is poisonous because it has made people sick for just as long as it's been used as a you know a

[01:26:37] tincture for laxatives or healing or whatever and it really wasn't until the late 1800s that scientists started studying the castor plant to understand what was going on and it wasn't until 1888 the first sample of ricin was created from castor bean extracts and it was discovered that the poison

[01:26:55] contained within the castor plant is one of the most toxic substances on the planet sure now this poison disrupts the body at the cellular level inhibiting protein synthesis by deactivating ribosomes so essentially if you ingest even a tiny amount of ricin your organs

[01:27:14] will begin to fail shit that's what it does it basically shuts your body down it's a slow agonizing death excruciating pain violent vomiting severe diarrhea and one of the most famous instances of ricin poisoning was a bit of spycraft that occurred on September

[01:27:32] 7th my birthday 1978 yeah you know your birthday what's December 7th is remembered for September 7th oh December not December 7th well everyone now knows that I've been getting you a present on the wrong month no you haven't I think you it doesn't matter

[01:27:49] you've remember Ed has remembered my birthday everyone he's a wonderful friend yeah because of my Google calendar not because of my ears on September 7th 1978 Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was jabbed in the leg in public on the Waterloo Bridge in London by a man using

[01:28:05] a weapon built into an umbrella oh great the penguin which fired a small pellet of ricin into Markov's leg this guy suffered terribly for four days and died the assassin was never caught but I did find this interesting in 2021 a Danish TV documentary made by journalist

[01:28:26] Ulrich Scott tracked down the prime suspect Francesco Guglielmo alias agent Piccadilly and interviewed him before he died a very lonely death in 2021 at his circus no not not not at his circus alone in his apartment and they didn't find his body for a week oh boy but I

[01:28:48] don't want to put dirt on his name and I haven't seen the documentary but from the research I did the doc seems to suggest that this guy killed multiple people he was also a sexually deviant fascist art thief and notorious swindler we should

[01:29:03] watch the doc then I know fun interview probably not a real fun friend definitely not fun as an enemy clearly then the third most deadly poison we know today and I should say these aren't really in any particular order I think

[01:29:17] there's some debate as to which of these are worse than others partially because this third poison doesn't work as like a nerve toxin or anything the third on this list is polonium 210 which is a radioactive element that emits deadly alpha particles and is considered by

[01:29:36] some to be the perfect poison because the radioactive alpha particles go undetected by radiation detectors which most commonly just detect beta and gamma radiation so if you just have a radiation detector it'll slip by it'll slip right by the effects on humans are also

[01:29:58] difficult to diagnose making it an unobtrusive and insidious toxin and this shit is dangerous dangerous dangerous dangerous dangerous most countries don't even have the ability to produce polonium 210 because you need to have a well funded and well staffed nuclear program but just one gram of polonium 210 is

[01:30:23] enough to kill 50 million people okay we got to make sure that's you know really regulated one gram yeah one gram a gram that is nothing no I get it no I mean I've I've complained to drug dealers in the past like this barely feels like a

[01:30:39] gram and one gram can kill 50 million and additionally make another 50 million people sick once ingested or inhaled polonium 210 ravages the body from within causing catastrophic cellular damage if you've ever seen the HBO show Chernobyl Chernobyl yeah there's a really great depiction of what happens

[01:31:01] it's fucking foul I mean it's it's a great show but holy smokes they do a good job of making that really hard to watch yeah now polonium poisoning in in this case doesn't melt the flesh quite as much because you're not being exposed to

[01:31:16] as much of it but the victim of a polonium poisoning will experience nausea vomiting hair loss your organs will fail you'll be consumed by what is described as unimaginable pain and even when treated quickly death from multiple organ failures is almost inevitable I found this really interesting according

[01:31:35] to Al Jazeera the first person believed to have died of polonium poisoning was Irene Joliot-Curie the daughter of scientists and chemists Marie Curie to whom the discovery of polonium is attributed like her famous mother Irene Joliot-Curie earned her fame in science and shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry

[01:31:56] with her husband in 1935 for the discovery of artificial radioactivity Joliot-Curie spent her life researching radioactivity and other dangerous materials but it came at a price because in 1946 she was diagnosed with leukemia after being exposed to polonium in an incident in which a capsule containing

[01:32:16] the element burst in her laboratory oh my gosh she was sick for nearly a decade before she finally died in France in 1956 I mean what is it was it just radium like the radium girls that is that's I mean that's radiation poisoning

[01:32:31] it's different than just yeah which I guess you are describing radiation poisoning but man oh man that is a sad story for a live episode or something yeah yeah I know what you're talking about I mean a lot of people got pretty pretty fucked by experimenting with

[01:32:47] radiation before they knew how dangerous it was this poison though polonium 210 was also famously used in another bit of fiction and it was used by a Russian agent named Vladimir Putin who was tasked to take out Alexander Levinenko a Russian secret service agent

[01:33:06] turned dissident who was living in exile in the UK he was a longtime adversary and target of Vladimir Putin and he died in London on November 23rd 2006 after 22 agonizing days of radiation poisoning he'd fallen ill earlier that day and he was taken to the hospital

[01:33:29] and initially suffering from severe diarrhea and vomiting and doctors thought he had a stomach infection at first until his condition worsened his white blood cell count plummeted and he became susceptible to infection John Emsley writing in molecules of murder which includes a chapter on polonium poisoning

[01:33:48] he wrote that Levinenko's skin turned yellow indicating liver dysfunction and he was tested for two of the most likely causes hepatitis and AIDS but neither was the case and then his hair began to fall out which is what tipped doctors off

[01:34:02] to the fact that something else was amiss here Wow once they decided that he was suffering from radiation poisoning then they tested and identified polonium as the culprit because it's difficult to diagnose because it kind of disguises itself it looks like Kuru yeah looks

[01:34:19] like guru looks like AIDS hepatitis but once you test for those alpha particles they aren't hard to find and one of the really scary things about polonium 210 is that it doesn't just affect the target I don't know if anybody remembers when this all went down in London but

[01:34:34] sites across the city were shut down because when they realized that he'd been poisoned by polonium people started investigating to figure out where else in the city of London there were still radioactive traces of polonium that could be deadly to anybody who spent any

[01:34:52] time in its presence it's like a Mission Impossible plot yeah basically and in this case polonium 210 or traces of it was later found at a number of London sites as well as two British Airways planes that had flown the Moscow to London route and traces were also

[01:35:11] found in the hotel room where his assassins stayed so much of it was found in the hotel room that investigators think and this sounds like a scene out of a Coen brothers movie that the pair of assassins might have accidentally spilled some of the liquid containing

[01:35:26] the polonium in the room and trying to clean it up oh my because they found it all over the room they found it in the bedsheets and then they found it in bedsheets that had been thrown into the laundry chute oh my god so you know that

[01:35:40] polonium was like had a little bit of tap water in that vial yeah they were like we gotta make it look like the same shit yeah yeah when they gave it to us you know expensive this shit is yeah and it was like you fucking goofball you

[01:35:51] idiot you spilled polonium all over the place like I tried to clean it up yeah and it was like what that's that isn't really funny like Coen brothers scene well in total hundreds of readings were taken from 64 locations in England and

[01:36:04] Germany and they all kind of added up and told the story of this deadly international plot which many books have been written about and we will leave it to you dear listener to do your own research if you want to learn more about the Litvinenko poisoning there's two

[01:36:17] poisons left on this list both of them are animal toxins the first is tetrodoxin which is a venom found in pufferfish and certain newts and I believe the blue-ringed octopus which I just saw a video today on reddit of a person picking up a blue-ringed

[01:36:33] octopus by hand and then posting it on reddit as could anyone identify this animal and that is an animal that's like poisonous in the sense that you can't get it out of the water well it is actually I guess I might be wrong here

[01:36:47] so I wonder what about this surprised you were shocked you I'm well unless you said that he picked it up and then threw it as far as he could know the nets that's shocking the blue-ringed octopus is one of the deadliest animals

[01:36:59] on earth if it bites you you pretty much are dead because the places where it lives in the tide pools of I think Australia of course are so far from any hospital that if it bites you you will not get to a hospital in time what's

[01:37:13] this it has a tiny ass little creepy octopus beak but it's so small so gross most people don't even feel the bite so they don't know that there's anything wrong until they're basically dying it is the most poisonous animal or one of

[01:37:26] the most poisonous animals on earth if you ever see we should just say with these next few toxins any sort of brightly colored animal that makes you go wow what is that don't touch it well that's like your frogs are brightly colored isn't that like a point like

[01:37:41] the brightly colored because of their eyes yes and we're gonna get to that in just a second here I have a quick question for you so what you said that if it bites you you're in trouble but doesn't isn't biting the toxic thing and

[01:37:53] touching is the poison thing hold on now I've got myself all turned around because you said it's one of the most poisonous animals but then if it bites you you only have a little bit of time to go somewhere venomous is the term for

[01:38:05] animals that bite or sting so yes the the blue-ringed octopus is venomous which is the venom here the tetrodotoxin is found in pufferfish and certain newts and I'm pretty sure the blue-ringed octopus this toxin works by blocking sodium channels in your nerves which

[01:38:19] halts normal nerve function which means that when it sets in you feel a paralysis that begins in your extremities and moves inward slowly robbing you of your ability to move speak and eventually breathe oh I hate that which means your heart continues to beat and

[01:38:36] you remain conscious your mind remains lucid as you are trapped in a paralyzed body and die an excruciating death by asphyxiation so don't touch brightly colored animals just don't do it the last poison the poison most near and dear to my heart the deadly toxin found

[01:38:54] in the skin of poison dart frogs but tracotoxin it is the poison found in the golden poison dart frog filibates terabilis this toxin works sort of the exact opposite of the poison in the opposite way as tetrodotoxin but no less deadly this one keeps sodium channels

[01:39:15] open in nerve cells causing uncontrolled nerve impulses which sounds almost more painful you'll experience if you ingest this or if it's shot into your skin on the tip of a poison dart you'll experience severe muscle and nerve damage resulting in intense pain and convulsions paralysis sets in

[01:39:35] rapidly affecting the muscles needed for breathing and the heart death is a merciless end brought on by cardiac arrest or respiratory failure as your body is overwhelmed by the relentless assault of the toxin mmm that sucks man those are two and this is uh where do

[01:39:52] you find this frog where's this frog living uh it is endemic to the rain forests of columbia okay so i'm not yeah stay out of there stay out of fucking there dude yeah in general the rain forests of columbia i think are probably pretty dangerous it's kind of

[01:40:07] interesting about this episode a lot of instances of the word gold hmm like for real there was like one or two of the boozes were had gold in it yeah this is a golden frog there was another gold thing yeah i feel like if you ran this

[01:40:20] episode back and drank every time gold came up you'd probably get a little drunk probably i should note that the golden poison dart frog has a couple of different morphs so there's yellow which is the most common there's also a green an orange and an orange version

[01:40:37] with black feet this is fucking pokemon the blackfoot morph i'm pretty sure is just a captive bred line i don't think they exist in the wild that's something that happens a lot in poison dart frog husbandry there are people who will try to breed very specific very beautiful

[01:40:54] morphs of these dart frogs you can't find in the wild but that make absolutely gorgeous pets and again if you raise them if they are born and raised in captivity they are not poisonous their poison is derived from the bugs that

[01:41:11] they eat oh why are we talking about that like why don't we talk yeah i think you have in the past but why are we talking about these bugs the heart of the poison that exists like we got bugs out here who were just like eat me bro

[01:41:23] and and literally evolve into another more insane creature well it the bugs themselves i don't believe are poisonous i think the when they eat the bug there are alkalines in the bugs that the frogs body breaks down into the particular toxin that makes its skin so

[01:41:41] poisonous so crazy you can be like oh i'm on i'm on a pretty healthy diet of these bugs and how's that going for you i've never felt more dangerous honestly yeah i wonder if we could eat those bugs and

[01:41:54] then we could be toxic oh my god i'm not doing that for you're not gonna even find that in premium guys that's not happening it's not happening so yeah the petrachotoxin the average wild golden poison frog is estimated to contain about one milligram of poison which is

[01:42:13] enough to kill between 10 and 20 people or two african bull elephants so they are wildly poisonous in the wild cheese Louise you got to be very careful don't handle them and then rub your eyes sort of like jalapeno peppers yeah that would

[01:42:31] be the shortest like if they made a youtube channel that's like hot ones but for this it would be just the shortest it would be like there would be no return guests no nope they would in fact they wouldn't even finish the episode so

[01:42:46] no one gets to the part where they can promote their thing they're there do just they're gone but with that we come to the end of our episode on poison and that means that we have to climb the fear tier ed where are you placing

[01:43:02] poison on your personal fear tier it's pretty high it's pretty high not like I think it's high because poison can come at you in a lot of different ways it can come at you from the like poison tips blow dart of a person in the jungle it

[01:43:17] can come at you from a jungle animal it can come at you from the water with one of these fucking cartoon octopuses or octopi you described it can come at you from a loved one from a political opponent like it's just poison is out

[01:43:32] there and it's got to be regulated and I think it is and that's why you're going to probably jail for looking all this up so we're gonna have to do like a go fund me to get you out of jail you just hear

[01:43:43] like a yeah knock on the door and so yeah I think it's like weirdly more present in society I can come at you from like a puffer fish it hasn't been properly cut like that Simpsons episode yeah and that's a real thing I didn't

[01:43:57] put it in the episode but that is a real thing that if certain species of pufferfish are not properly prepared they can be deadly so I guess poison is actually more ever present in our society and we're more susceptible to it including just mistaking vodka for

[01:44:14] Everclear or like a kid grabbing a bottle of what they think is juice and it's you know bleach yeah so I guess it should be high for how much it's around us and you know you might go hey I'm not gonna drink a bottle of isopropyl

[01:44:30] whatever isopropyl alcohol yeah yeah I'm not gonna drink a bottle of isopropyl alcohol but I'd also be like hey did anyone put anything in my drink yeah did anyone put some isopropyl alcohol then he put some visine in my drink so I shit my pants later or the

[01:44:44] hell that maybe it's an urban legend I don't know but yeah so I guess it's pretty high in the sense that like yeah it's it's out there and it's coming for you and it's up to you to take a universal elixir every single day for

[01:44:57] the rest of your life take your myth or data yeah people take your myth or data we should start selling that on the show oh my god scared all the time branded nithridatum yeah what about you no I a poison I think is fairly high on

[01:45:10] my list as well on my fear tier I don't have a great fear of anyone I know trying to poison me for reasons of not liking me you don't have a for cola lives next door to you that's true I'm pretty good about storing food but

[01:45:26] I would say botulism toxin is definitely way up on my list now because I mean how who knows how many restaurants friends relatives improperly store food you just have to fuck it up once you know yeah I do you have any friends who won't eat

[01:45:42] something anymore because they got really bad food poisoning once from it like I have friends straight up who are like I'll never eat sushi again because I had like the worst night of my life from food poisoning from a sushi place or I can never look at a

[01:45:56] hot dog again because I ate you know something and it got me so so sick kind of I as you know I don't eat pork or beef and that actually started while I do you know there's a there's a little

[01:46:07] bit of a moral thing in that and that I feel like pigs in particular but pigs mammals cows you know they're sentient they're smart a lot of pigs are as smart or smarter than dogs feels weird to eat them but the way that all started

[01:46:20] was in college do you remember bennegan's yeah hell yeah dude I think it's gone now yeah well probably because they were poisoning people I had a bennegan's it was like a Guinness glaze burger or something I remember I feel like you ordered that particularly a

[01:46:35] lot I loved those things and one of them made me violently ill and I stopped eating hamburger which was my main source of beef or red meat and I didn't eat it and then by the time I you know moved out to LA it was really

[01:46:49] easy to get either straight-up vegetarian or pescatarian or chicken or turkey and I just sort of phased out red meat mostly you know I still I don't still think of red meat as like Oh food poisoning I'd never have a hamburger

[01:47:04] but that was how it started was I just stopped eating it for so long that it wasn't much of a sacrifice to be like just not gonna eat it anymore okay sure meanwhile I came to see you and I got a dentist and I rewarded myself with a

[01:47:15] McDonald's cheeseburger which I always do after a successful dental work yeah I don't have these phobias you have these burger phobias well I mean I I think we've talked about this before but I also I'm of the mindset that I don't want to support factory farming although

[01:47:30] of course you know chicken and turkey are factory farmed I try to avoid it but it is what it is but generally my anti red meat stance I also feel like you only live once and should I ever have the opportunity to try elk bear alligator

[01:47:46] human being well I draw the line at people I draw the line of cannibalism but any other kinds of red meat I would try assuming that it was being killed and prepared probably not for me exclusively but yeah I would I would try

[01:48:02] others I just I just feel like the if you ever drive up the five past some of the factory farms in California that was the other thing that did it for me once you drive past one of those farms and you see how many fucking miles of cows

[01:48:14] in pens that they can't even move move stop it it truly is just just disgusting it's disgusting on like a humanity a humane level and disgusting on a physically disgusting why would you even eat that meat there it's being raised in just pure filth also there's no

[01:48:32] amount of buttons in your car to block off the outside air that won't smell it'll still just smell so bad I'm like for that entire stretch you're driving yeah it's like that in parts of Texas and stuff I drive to where you draw

[01:48:46] anywhere you drive by one of these really large kind of factory farm places it just reeks yeah well ed we've conquered poison we will start microdosing mithradium or whatever the fuck and we'll survive for next week when we will bring you another tale of

[01:49:02] something deep and dark and scary that keeps us up at night but until then this has been scared all the time I'm Chris and I'm Ed vocola and we will see you next week bye scared all the time is co-produced by Chris Calari and Ed

[01:49:17] vocola written by Chris Calari edited by Ed vocola additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Feifel our theme song is the track scared by perpetual stew and mr. disclaimer is and just a reminder you can now support the podcast on supercast and get all kinds

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[01:49:48] this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission copyright astonishing legends productions night we are in this together together together