🎧 The Most Delicious Poison with Dr. Noah Whiteman
Join Dr. Quave and Dr. Whiteman as they examine the fascinating evolutionary history of nature's poisons in our foods and medicine.
Did you know that some everyday foods contain natural toxins that have been developing for millions of years? This week, Dr. Quave talks with Dr. Noah Whiteman, an Evolutionary Biology professor from UC Berkeley and the author of the book “The Most Delicious Poison.” They explore how certain poisons in nature work, how they affect us, and their role in the bigger picture of evolution. They cover a wide range of fascinating subjects, like why your coffee has caffeine, how certain caterpillars can handle toxic substances in plants, what risks are associated with the chemicals in vaping products, and even why the world's largest flowers have such a strong smell. Tune in to learn about an exciting mix of topics from nature, science, medicine, and history!
Learn more about Dr. Whiteman’s book at www.mostdeliciouspoison.com and research at www.whitemanlab.org. You can follow him on social media [@]NKWhiteman on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Bluesky, Threads and Mastadon.
Access a summary of this Foodie Pharmacology episode at the bottom of this post. This special feature is available to paid subscribers of the Nature’s Pharmacy newsletter.
About Noah
An uncle, husband, naturalist, and award-winning professor, Noah Whiteman was raised in northeastern Minnesota, first at the edge of Lake Superior in Duluth along southern reaches of the boreal forest and then deep in the Sax-Zim Bog.
Most Delicious Poison is Whiteman's first book and the hardcover was published in North America on October 24, 2023 by Little, Brown Spark.
Noah Whiteman is Professor of Evolutionary Biology in the Department of Integrative Biology and Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley where he runs a basic research laboratory that studies plant-animal coevolution. At Berkeley, he is also affiliated with the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, Center for Computational Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, and Jepson and University Herbaria, and is Director of the Essig Museum of Entomology. Prior to joining the Berkeley faculty in 2016, he was Assistant and Association Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona.
In 2020, Whiteman received a Guggenheim Fellowship to write Most Delicious Poison and in the same year was elected to the Royal Entomological Society, the California Academy of Sciences, and the Board of Directors of the Genetics Society of America.
He received a B.A. cum laude and with Distinction from Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota in 1998. In the summers during college he worked as a naturalist guide at Gunflint Lodge on the Minnesota-Ontario border and for a northern tallgrass prairie restoration project in Collegeville. He then received his M.S. in aquatic entomology from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2000. For his doctoral research in tropical biology, he studied coevolution between the native birds of the Galápagos Islands and their parasites with Patty Parker, and was awarded his Ph.D. in 2006. He was Head Teaching Fellow for Animal Behavior at Harvard University in 2006 where he won the Distinguished Teaching Award. From 2007-2010 he completed a joint postdoctoral research fellowship in genetics, genomics and molecular biology at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology with Professor Naomi Pierce and at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School with Professor Fred Ausubel.
Whiteman has been featured on NPR's Morning Edition and PBS's Genius by Stephen Hawking and his pathbreaking research has been featured in the New York Times, Der Spiegel, Scientific American, and Popular Science. He lives in Oakland, California with his husband.
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Yours in health, Dr. Quave
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