January 5, 2021 • 27 mins
Hosts Holly Frey and Maria Trimarchi are joined by "The Poisoner's Handbook" author and Pulitzer Prize recipient Deborah Blum.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the
latest episode of Criminalia. For this season, we're exploring the
lives and motivations of some of the most notorious lady
poisoners throughout history. I'm Maria Try and I'm Holly Fry
(00:22):
and today we have a special guest with us, Deborah Blum.
Deborah is amazing and you've probably heard of her if
you follow Poison at All. She's a Pulitzer Prize winning
science journalist. She is the author of six books. She
is also now the director of the night Science Journalism
program at M I T. And we worship her. So
we have light resume there, nothing to check the box
(00:45):
at the watch. But we have her here with us
today because she is the author of the New York
Times notable book Poison Squad and the New York Times
bestseller The Poisoner's Handbook. Deborah, welcome. Do you want to
add anything to let us know who you are? Our
poison expert extraordinaire here, Like, just overwhelmed by how nice
(01:10):
you guys are. Really a pleasure to be here, and
you know you're cover so many of my favorite subjects.
It's actually fun for me not to be talking about
how to run a remote fellowship program in the time
of and I imagine so talking about how to kill
(01:34):
people and other things that are more interested about arsenic symptoms. Listen, Love,
We're gonna talk to you about some arsenic You are,
of course, very well known as a journalist, and your
love of science has driven so much of your work.
Will you talk about how you ended up writing about science, science, history,
(01:58):
and specifically poison, George, that's great territory for me to
cover and and you know, just stopped me. I grew
up in the South and Louisiana and Georgia, so I'm
perfectly capable of going on about this stuff, you know,
for the until the end of time. So if I
do this. So I'm a failed chemistry major. My dad
was an entomologist and chemical ecologist at the University of Georgia.
(02:22):
And I and I when I started college, I wanted
to be a chemist. And I discovered the some of
the things that make me a good journalist, you know,
having a short attentions man, uh, not working at all
in the laboratory. And and I was actually a danger
to myself and others. I set my hair on fire
in one memorable afternoon, and also at one point generated
(02:45):
speaking of a poison, a toxic cloud that caused them
to have to evacuate the freshman chemistry lab. Your very first,
very early age, right. So, but you know, so I
went into ournalism because for the same reason that I
like chemistry, I like to know how things work. And
(03:05):
then eventually realized, after several years of working for newspapers
that I really wanted to combine both of those loves,
my interest knowing how things work scientifically my interest in
knowing how things work in society. Got a grad degree
in science journalism with a specialty and environmental toxicology, and
(03:28):
went off to be a science writer in California, which
was where I won the bullets er. Although that was
writing about primate research, right, um, but that launched me
into writing books, and I continued to write books. I
kept saying to my agent, I've had the same edge
and ever since I started writing books, and she's wonderful.
I kept saying, you know, I'd really like to write
(03:49):
a book in which poisons are characters, because partly because
I was grounded in chemistry, and partly because I like murder.
I grew up with Agatha Christie and a lot of
early murder mystery writer is Agatha Christian in particular, who
really did a lot of work with poisons um because
she had worked in a hospital dispensary in World War One.
(04:10):
UM And and she kept saying, oh, no, Devra, I
have a better idea, no deveror you could do this,
and finally, or books, and She's like, I can't take
it anymore. It's like the slow drip of torture. Let's
let you write the book that you wanted, right and
so and she said, um, just right, and and this
(04:34):
I have had the same editor for the last three books.
She said, don't write a proposal, just write a delicious
little two page letter to your editor. And I thought
that would be so interesting to sell a book writing
two pages. So I wrote a proposal on the idea
that I was not going to kill my husband but
I could, and a lot of stuff that I knew
(05:00):
about poisons at the time. And my editor at Penguin
Press bought the book. And then this is my advice
to everyone who listens to this focus. Don't be me
and don't do this, because then I sold the book.
I immediately spent the advance and and I'm like, well,
what's this book really about. I can't write a book
about how to poison my husband. That wouldn't be good.
(05:20):
And so I then went into this frantic research that
led me to find the two scientists who are at
the heart of Poisoner's Handbook, which does indeed do what
I had originally thought about, which was both tell their
story but also look at poisons as the fascinating characters
(05:41):
and the personalities that I think they have, which is
a very science journalist way of seeing things. I love
writing about science, and I love writing about chemistry, and
I actually like writing about really dangerous substances because I
think and that we need the too us to navy
get a chemical world. We live in a chemical world.
(06:03):
I am a collection of chemicals myself. I'm inhaling them
as we speak, as are all of us. Most of
them are not dangerous, but most people don't have the
kind of toolkit to say what should it be I'd
be afraid of? And how do I protect myself? And
what should I not? And so a lot of what
I think science journalists like myself do. All I hope
(06:24):
we do is to provide people who are not, you know,
right at the science inner circle, or don't follow it regularly,
some of the tools that just let them navigate in
an intelligent way because they are smart, they just need
the tools. And that's really underlies my love of science
journalism and is probably one of the reasons I'm here
(06:45):
at in I t So that's my long Southern answer.
I love it as I thought it would be. Um So,
one of the hurdles that we often have when we're
preparing our episodes is sometimes the sparse sinus of historical
records just there's nothing out there, or if it is
out there, there might be two or three sources and
(07:07):
they all conflict with each other. Um. I imagine that
you have come across the same challenge. And um I
was wondering if you could talk a little bit over
the years of writing about science history, how he worked
around that kind of challenge. Oh, I'm gonna love answering this.
Um Uh, you know, well, real the inner nerd that
I am, I guess um And and that reminds me.
(07:30):
You know, I've done four books now that are narrative
histories of science too about toxicology. But I love writing
about history of science history in general. But because I
don't think you really understand where you are unless you
know how you got there, and that would be and
and that's another part of you know, how did I
get here? It's certainly true one of the lessons for me,
(07:52):
especially in the Poison Squad book, which is about the
invention of food safety in the United States, and that
history both explain how we came up with the idea that,
you know, we should regulate for food safety, but also
why we do it so badly on a number of
levels even today. So having said that, you know, it's
(08:14):
a real challenge depending on what you're writing about. When
I did Poison Squad, the minor recent book, Harvey Washington Wiley,
who was the chemist at the heart of that story,
had been married to a suffragette librarian. I just love that,
and she had left all of his papers to the
Library of Congress. So the in that case, because I
(08:38):
like to work from original documents, um, it was a
matter of did I have enough time to go through
four hundred linear feet of Harvey Washington wilt papers and
documents and newspaper clippings and memos and letters and trying
to figure out how to be smart that I mean,
you don't always infect you must never get that right.
(08:58):
But in that particular, as I was a wash in
a see of documents which was super helpful, um and
also daunting Poisoner's Handbook, I think better gets at that
the some of the challenges that you mentioned. So as
I said, I, UM, when I finally, after some fairly
(09:19):
hysterical months of research, discovered in the in the newsletters
of the Society Forensic Toxicology that the toxicologists at the
heart of that book, Alexander Getler is considered the father
of American forensic toxicology. UM, I thought, oh, this is great.
I'll just go find a biography of him, and there
(09:40):
was none. And then I went and looked for a
biography of his boss, Charles Norris, who was the you know,
wonderful and pioneering first uh medical examiner in New York City,
and there was none. Right, And so I'm like trolley
around trying to find information about these eyes, which was
(10:00):
the other challenge. And so after much going through and
then some of it you can be smart about. You
can go onto you know, and look at what were
the contemporary toxicology books, the books about legal medicine published
in the early twentieth century. And I bought a lot
of those, um from used booksellers, and I have some
(10:23):
of them to this day. UM. But and then you
can look at contemporary journals. I did that too, So
I can go into the Journal of the American Medical
Association or Science of the Journal of Toxicology and look
for papers published by Alexander Getler. And that was really
essential for me in trying to both understand or look
for papers about arsenic what did we know about arsenic
(10:44):
and nine? Right, So all of that kind of helps
provide a foundation. But then you start kind of saying, well,
are there other archives that have some materials? So in
this case, and this is one of my favorite stories
about the challenges of working with archives and very different
from the Library of Congress, I discovered that the New
(11:04):
York City Municipal Archives had actually archived the letters of
the Medical Examiner's Office from nineteen eighteen to nineteen thirty five,
just the period with Norris though. Oh, this is fantastic,
and I talked on the phone to an archive is
an extremely hostile and unfriendly archivist at the municipal archive. UM.
But and I and it was so I'm like, oh,
(11:27):
I'm so excited about this and I can't wait. I'm
gonna come to New York. Let me take you out
to dinner when I get there to thank you for
your help. And he's like, we do not have to
meet in person, and so I know. But I go
to this archive, which is in an old it's like
one of the old city halls of New York and um,
(11:48):
and it's you know, underfunded and unfriendly um as anyone
will tell you. And so I go up all shiny
and like I have we already look at these papers
and literally the guy the counter says to me, we
don't have those and I go, yes, you do. It
was just like being in kindergarten. He goes, no, we don't.
I go, yes, you do. He goes, no, we don't
(12:10):
come all the way to New York, right. UM. I said, yes,
you do it. In fact, here's the name of the
archivist who won't speak to me, um, and here's his
phone number, and you're welcome to contact him. And so
the guy goes off and he talks I never did
see the archives. UM to the archives, and then he
comes back and says, yes, we do actually have these, UM,
and so here's the forms you have to fill out
(12:32):
to get them. And I fell out the forms and
these box has come up. They've got like a dumb
waiter behind the counter and these it comes creaking up
in a very atmospheric way with these boxes of files
that are covered with dust and apparently some mold. Because
both my I had my one of my grand students
helping me UM when I this was when I was
(12:53):
at Wisconsin UH, and both of us were sick. But
the with the rest of it because we could have
out them in other ways UM. And those files were
amazing and really an unknown resource. So even when they
were working on the documentary failed a Porsoner's handbook, they
went back they said they had arm wrestle them out
(13:14):
to write UM. So it wasn't like I had suddenly
opened the floodgates. So once I had those, I you know,
then looked at other you know, other archives, UM, and
I went over to the New York City Public Library.
I was doing a lot of contemporary you know what
what what was being covered about Geller and Norris and
(13:35):
Poisons at the time, and so I went to the
New York City Public Library because you can get through
ProQuest historical newspapers, the New York Times and a lot
of the big major dailies. But I wanted like the
Brooklyn Eagle and on small papers, and they had those
on microphis. So a lot of that was going in
and finding the stories of micro phish, which I don't recommend,
(13:59):
but we're and you know, printing them out. I did that,
and then the one other thing, and then you know,
we did interviews with um, you know, called people. There
were still a few people left too, had been students
of Getler, the Getler boys and UM. One of the
things I did when I was doing research, and this
(14:20):
will tell you just how anal or researcher I am,
is that I had discovered, uh been able to track
down Alexander Getler's kids and and their kids. And I
knew that his son Joseph had a number of grandid
kids or his grandkids who still lived in the New
(14:41):
York City area. UM, and I didn't have their exact
look and I did, I had their birth records, but
not their exact location. So I went to a friend
of mine who worked for a newspaper who had some
of those super search tools, and I said, if I
give you this person's name and their date of birth
and where they were born, can you find out for
(15:01):
me where they're living now. And she did, and she said,
you know, and don't tell anyone I did this. And
also I'm not giving you his social Security number. Please
don't give me his social Security number. Um. But basically
I had the name. It was Paul Getler, who was
one of Alexander Getler's grandkids. So I used my pages
(15:23):
and I called every single Paul Getler in that county
and I just said, Hi, my name is Debord Woe.
I'm looking for the grandson of Alexander Getler for a
book I'm working on. And eventually got him, and he
was fantastic, and he put me in touch with some
of his siblings, one of whom had had her daughter.
(15:45):
So Getler's great granddaughter had done a high school history
report on him, and they came to my hotel in
New York with her entire presentation and set up the
giant poster boards in the lobby of the hotel too,
I think slightly the horror people at the front desk
(16:05):
of the hotel. But they had like letters and journals
and all kinds of stuff that they lent me. And
when I went on book tour and I went back
to New York to talk about the book at a
Barnes and Noble in New York City, Um, the whole
Getler family was there, filling up the first two rows
of that, you know. Um. And so that was wonderful,
(16:31):
And that was another way that I was able to
get at resources that weren't obvious. I think people who
read these histories, you know, to me, they're a giant mosaic.
And because I'm a narrative writer, I'm also looking for
the pieces that I can put people in the time.
You know, what did the city look like? What did
the city sound like? All of those things, Um, But
(16:54):
you're building this kind of tapestry or mosaic, uh and
out all of these different pistes matter, and it is
a ton of word. We have, as you know, talked
(17:17):
a lot about women poisoners this season, and I know
you have some thoughts on women and poison and why
poison is considered a women's weapon and why that's not
really an accurate characterization, Will you just share your thoughts
on that matter with us? Sure? And in fact, while
I was a blogger at Wired after I did Poisonous
Sound Book, it's been about a decade. I still do
(17:40):
to some extent, you know, researching and writing about poisons things.
I had a blog at Wired called Elemental and a
blog in the New York Times called poison pen Um,
And at Wired I actually did a whole blog on
the myths of the female poisoner, right, which I really enjoyed.
So you know, if you go back even to like
(18:01):
you know, early crime fiction, when you actually looked at
the modern xt FBI statistics, you see that that's not true.
I mean, it's kind of women use poison more preferentially
over other weapons like guns and knives. Right, But if
you look at the whole panoradum of poisoners, there's more
male poisoners than female poisoners. But part of that, again
(18:24):
is that there's more homicidal males than homicidal females. Right,
there's just more men who killed people, is I dis
the entire um, And so there's a lot. So when
you actually look at the numbers, just the great numbers
there's more male poisoners in the United States than female poisoners.
If you analyze the use of weapons, you do see
(18:47):
it tilts a little more female. And it's actually interesting
because I did another book looking at biology and behavior,
and one of the things that people talk about was
that consistent imbalance on violence, right, and that there had
been this idea, for instance, that as you know, guns
became more available to women, there would be more shooting
deaths caused by women than men, or it would equalize out,
(19:09):
but in fact it never did. Right. Women in general,
when you look at crime statistics, um, just don't commit
those kinds of crimes. And you could certainly make this
case I'm going on poison for a minute. If you
look at the history of mass shootings in the United States, right,
women have access to exactly the same women, but you
don't see that pattern of mass shootings, right if there's
(19:32):
just something socially, culturally, biologically, so something in the mix
that So that's why you tend to see this sort
of higher number of male poisoners, because you see a
higher number of male assaults and tempted deaths. But the
myth of the female poisoner probably dates back to the
nineteenth century UM in which poisons were highly accessible in
(19:56):
a domestic way, right, and women actually more access to
them often than men if you looked at it in
that sense, because they were the caretakers of the home
and the distribution of UH jobs in the nineteenth century,
and so um they had access for two pharmaceutical products. Right,
Arsenic was quite common in UM different tonics and treatments
(20:19):
to improve your complexion in Victorian times. Right. Fowler's solution
is a famous example of that. You find these wonderful
advertisements targeting women, you know, in which they talk about,
you know, how arsenic is going to make you more beautiful,
and also how arsenic is entirely safe, which everyone knew
wasn't true, but you know, for some reason, they don't
(20:40):
always tell the truth in advertising. What I know him
and have this incredible access to cosmetics right, containing one
of the world's most famous and at that time handy
homicidal poisons. I mean, arsen was a fabulous poison or
(21:00):
poison in the nineteenth century because it's tasteless, it's odorless,
it mimics the symptoms of a natural illness, and because
they were just figuring out how to detect it in
a corpse. Right, so, um so, women have access to
this in a way, and not that a man couldn't
walk into a drug store and buy file Folwer solution,
(21:21):
but you know it's widely available to women. And a
lot of the home products there were cyanide and some
of the compounds that they used to like polish medal
in the house. You know, there was stryct nine and
pick me up tonics. Say mean, people had this incredible
access to these in a way that triggered no alarm
(21:42):
if you casually went and got something that contained arsenic
or straight nine. Um so it was super easy if
you were annoyed with your husband or your boyfriend or
or was we're trying. Arsenic used to be known as
the inheritance powder, you know, to work your way to
your inheritance to just you know, put it in coffee
or something, and people did. There were some quite notable
(22:06):
women mass poisoners in the nineteenth century like Maryanne Cotton
right who did exactly what I said us. You know,
handily available arsenic to work or to to get eliminate
relatives that stood in the way of money, to eliminate
partners so that you can inherit. I mean, I think
two was in the neighborhood of close to twenty by
(22:27):
the time they caught her, which will tell you. And
so that those kinds of you know, really stand out.
Mass poisonings tended to shape the idea that women did
this um in a way that is both you know,
has a little bit of if I are in the smoke,
but it's partly in largely smoke. We still have so
(22:54):
much more from our great chat with blond and that
is going to be next week's episode, which time thrilled
about because this is easily one of my favorite conversations
I have had all year. That's not even qualified as
in a podcast, etcetera, just in life, one of my
favorite conversations all year. And I am so glad that
she is very graciously helping us close out our season
(23:16):
of Poison, and with that, we're gonna do a little
what's your poison? Right? It actually references something that comes
up in episode two, but it also deals with stuff
that Deborah talked about, which is a prohibition era and
so we're doing prohibition eric cocktails for this one. And
(23:36):
what I thought might be fun for these these ones
as we're nearing the end of the season, is to
talk about kind of a classic cocktail and then how
you can approach them to maybe customize them to be
a little bit more attuned to your palette if they're
not for you as written. So, the first one is
a side car. A sidecar, you'll see the amounts very slightly,
(23:58):
but your basic side car is is usually one and
a half to two ounces of cognac. Anywhere from one
half ounce to one ounce of orange liquor. So you're
thinking like a triple sec or a quantreaux. You could
get crazy and lou use blue curasaw if you wanted.
I suppose, um, and then anywhere from a half ounce
(24:20):
to like three quarters of an ounce of lemon juice,
like freshly squeezed lemon juice. And some people like to
garnish with a sugar rim or they'll put an orange
twist or both of those. Um, so I made one.
I don't love sidecars, They're just not my jam. I
like cognac more in a warm drink, you know, pour
it in a latte or a tea or something. Uh
(24:41):
perfection exactly. So what I decided to do as a
test to see if I can make this a little
bit more to my liking, is actually gonna harken back
a little bit to one of our earlier cocktails. Um
only because it's one of those one of those spirits
you may have on hand if you were following along,
and it's one that I bought for this, and I
was like, I should use that in more things, so
(25:03):
um in lieu of orange liqueur of any kind, but
I wanted to keep the lemon juice. Otherwise you're getting
too far away from from what a sidecar is. I
just used ginger liqueur there. How was that way more
palatable for me, less bitey, and I enjoyed it a
lot more. I still would probably not select that over
(25:24):
other cocktails that we that we have done this year,
or just my usual very boring go to of vodka
and diet coke um like clockwork every time. But but
it is fun and that's kind of one of the
ways that I like to play with cocktail recipes. So
for anyone that's listening, if if you have not really
(25:45):
done that before and you look at it just it
just becomes a matter of like puzzly problem solving of like, well,
this is the one ingredient that is least palatable to me.
I wonder what I could do to shift that out
and subend something else that will also go with the
other ingredients. These are the experiments that will lead you
to magical discoveries. You should I feel like, I mean
(26:07):
your kitchen and you're cleaning to right. Absolutely. I have
a little lounge area in my kitchen. So you just
sit there and I'll just nix in different things to
see which one works. Taste that sounds great, and we
can train. You can sit and I'll make can taste
because it doesn't seem fair. Oh, I don't mind, I'll
(26:29):
prep all night. I love it. Uh So, anyway, that
is that is this week's poison A sidecar or the
sidecar variation of your choice. I was thinking too that
it might be interesting to try other fruit liqueurs in there.
I mean, I think if you did like an apple
liquor in there, it could be really interesting if you did. Um.
I'm trying to think because it is a little bit
(26:50):
you know, you're limited what goes well with koa and
lemon juice. That won't create cacophony in terms of taste. Um,
but you know the word thing that happens. The worst
thing that happens, exactly if you make a terrible mistake,
is that you spit it out and dump it down
the drink. And it's a small enough drink that you're
not wasting a lot of alcohol in that case. This
(27:11):
is my wisdom. Don't sweat it. If you throw out
an ounce and a half of cod, it's fine. Thank
you so much for joining us this week. Do not
forget to join us next week for the second part
of Deborah's interview. We will see you then. Criminalia is
(27:32):
a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the
latest episode of Criminalia. For this season, we're exploring the
lives and motivations of some of the most notorious lady
poisoners throughout history. I'm Maria Try and I'm Holly Fry
(00:22):
and today we have a special guest with us, Deborah Blum.
Deborah is amazing and you've probably heard of her if
you follow Poison at All. She's a Pulitzer Prize winning
science journalist. She is the author of six books. She
is also now the director of the night Science Journalism
program at M I T. And we worship her. So
we have light resume there, nothing to check the box
(00:45):
at the watch. But we have her here with us
today because she is the author of the New York
Times notable book Poison Squad and the New York Times
bestseller The Poisoner's Handbook. Deborah, welcome. Do you want to
add anything to let us know who you are? Our
poison expert extraordinaire here, Like, just overwhelmed by how nice
(01:10):
you guys are. Really a pleasure to be here, and
you know you're cover so many of my favorite subjects.
It's actually fun for me not to be talking about
how to run a remote fellowship program in the time
of and I imagine so talking about how to kill
(01:34):
people and other things that are more interested about arsenic symptoms. Listen, Love,
We're gonna talk to you about some arsenic You are,
of course, very well known as a journalist, and your
love of science has driven so much of your work.
Will you talk about how you ended up writing about science, science, history,
(01:58):
and specifically poison, George, that's great territory for me to
cover and and you know, just stopped me. I grew
up in the South and Louisiana and Georgia, so I'm
perfectly capable of going on about this stuff, you know,
for the until the end of time. So if I
do this. So I'm a failed chemistry major. My dad
was an entomologist and chemical ecologist at the University of Georgia.
(02:22):
And I and I when I started college, I wanted
to be a chemist. And I discovered the some of
the things that make me a good journalist, you know,
having a short attentions man, uh, not working at all
in the laboratory. And and I was actually a danger
to myself and others. I set my hair on fire
in one memorable afternoon, and also at one point generated
(02:45):
speaking of a poison, a toxic cloud that caused them
to have to evacuate the freshman chemistry lab. Your very first,
very early age, right. So, but you know, so I
went into ournalism because for the same reason that I
like chemistry, I like to know how things work. And
(03:05):
then eventually realized, after several years of working for newspapers
that I really wanted to combine both of those loves,
my interest knowing how things work scientifically my interest in
knowing how things work in society. Got a grad degree
in science journalism with a specialty and environmental toxicology, and
(03:28):
went off to be a science writer in California, which
was where I won the bullets er. Although that was
writing about primate research, right, um, but that launched me
into writing books, and I continued to write books. I
kept saying to my agent, I've had the same edge
and ever since I started writing books, and she's wonderful.
I kept saying, you know, I'd really like to write
(03:49):
a book in which poisons are characters, because partly because
I was grounded in chemistry, and partly because I like murder.
I grew up with Agatha Christie and a lot of
early murder mystery writer is Agatha Christian in particular, who
really did a lot of work with poisons um because
she had worked in a hospital dispensary in World War One.
(04:10):
UM And and she kept saying, oh, no, Devra, I
have a better idea, no deveror you could do this,
and finally, or books, and She's like, I can't take
it anymore. It's like the slow drip of torture. Let's
let you write the book that you wanted, right and
so and she said, um, just right, and and this
(04:34):
I have had the same editor for the last three books.
She said, don't write a proposal, just write a delicious
little two page letter to your editor. And I thought
that would be so interesting to sell a book writing
two pages. So I wrote a proposal on the idea
that I was not going to kill my husband but
I could, and a lot of stuff that I knew
(05:00):
about poisons at the time. And my editor at Penguin
Press bought the book. And then this is my advice
to everyone who listens to this focus. Don't be me
and don't do this, because then I sold the book.
I immediately spent the advance and and I'm like, well,
what's this book really about. I can't write a book
about how to poison my husband. That wouldn't be good.
(05:20):
And so I then went into this frantic research that
led me to find the two scientists who are at
the heart of Poisoner's Handbook, which does indeed do what
I had originally thought about, which was both tell their
story but also look at poisons as the fascinating characters
(05:41):
and the personalities that I think they have, which is
a very science journalist way of seeing things. I love
writing about science, and I love writing about chemistry, and
I actually like writing about really dangerous substances because I
think and that we need the too us to navy
get a chemical world. We live in a chemical world.
(06:03):
I am a collection of chemicals myself. I'm inhaling them
as we speak, as are all of us. Most of
them are not dangerous, but most people don't have the
kind of toolkit to say what should it be I'd
be afraid of? And how do I protect myself? And
what should I not? And so a lot of what
I think science journalists like myself do. All I hope
(06:24):
we do is to provide people who are not, you know,
right at the science inner circle, or don't follow it regularly,
some of the tools that just let them navigate in
an intelligent way because they are smart, they just need
the tools. And that's really underlies my love of science
journalism and is probably one of the reasons I'm here
(06:45):
at in I t So that's my long Southern answer.
I love it as I thought it would be. Um So,
one of the hurdles that we often have when we're
preparing our episodes is sometimes the sparse sinus of historical
records just there's nothing out there, or if it is
out there, there might be two or three sources and
(07:07):
they all conflict with each other. Um. I imagine that
you have come across the same challenge. And um I
was wondering if you could talk a little bit over
the years of writing about science history, how he worked
around that kind of challenge. Oh, I'm gonna love answering this.
Um Uh, you know, well, real the inner nerd that
I am, I guess um And and that reminds me.
(07:30):
You know, I've done four books now that are narrative
histories of science too about toxicology. But I love writing
about history of science history in general. But because I
don't think you really understand where you are unless you
know how you got there, and that would be and
and that's another part of you know, how did I
get here? It's certainly true one of the lessons for me,
(07:52):
especially in the Poison Squad book, which is about the
invention of food safety in the United States, and that
history both explain how we came up with the idea that,
you know, we should regulate for food safety, but also
why we do it so badly on a number of
levels even today. So having said that, you know, it's
(08:14):
a real challenge depending on what you're writing about. When
I did Poison Squad, the minor recent book, Harvey Washington Wiley,
who was the chemist at the heart of that story,
had been married to a suffragette librarian. I just love that,
and she had left all of his papers to the
Library of Congress. So the in that case, because I
(08:38):
like to work from original documents, um, it was a
matter of did I have enough time to go through
four hundred linear feet of Harvey Washington wilt papers and
documents and newspaper clippings and memos and letters and trying
to figure out how to be smart that I mean,
you don't always infect you must never get that right.
(08:58):
But in that particular, as I was a wash in
a see of documents which was super helpful, um and
also daunting Poisoner's Handbook, I think better gets at that
the some of the challenges that you mentioned. So as
I said, I, UM, when I finally, after some fairly
(09:19):
hysterical months of research, discovered in the in the newsletters
of the Society Forensic Toxicology that the toxicologists at the
heart of that book, Alexander Getler is considered the father
of American forensic toxicology. UM, I thought, oh, this is great.
I'll just go find a biography of him, and there
(09:40):
was none. And then I went and looked for a
biography of his boss, Charles Norris, who was the you know,
wonderful and pioneering first uh medical examiner in New York City,
and there was none. Right, And so I'm like trolley
around trying to find information about these eyes, which was
(10:00):
the other challenge. And so after much going through and
then some of it you can be smart about. You
can go onto you know, and look at what were
the contemporary toxicology books, the books about legal medicine published
in the early twentieth century. And I bought a lot
of those, um from used booksellers, and I have some
(10:23):
of them to this day. UM. But and then you
can look at contemporary journals. I did that too, So
I can go into the Journal of the American Medical
Association or Science of the Journal of Toxicology and look
for papers published by Alexander Getler. And that was really
essential for me in trying to both understand or look
for papers about arsenic what did we know about arsenic
(10:44):
and nine? Right, So all of that kind of helps
provide a foundation. But then you start kind of saying, well,
are there other archives that have some materials? So in
this case, and this is one of my favorite stories
about the challenges of working with archives and very different
from the Library of Congress, I discovered that the New
(11:04):
York City Municipal Archives had actually archived the letters of
the Medical Examiner's Office from nineteen eighteen to nineteen thirty five,
just the period with Norris though. Oh, this is fantastic,
and I talked on the phone to an archive is
an extremely hostile and unfriendly archivist at the municipal archive. UM.
But and I and it was so I'm like, oh,
(11:27):
I'm so excited about this and I can't wait. I'm
gonna come to New York. Let me take you out
to dinner when I get there to thank you for
your help. And he's like, we do not have to
meet in person, and so I know. But I go
to this archive, which is in an old it's like
one of the old city halls of New York and um,
(11:48):
and it's you know, underfunded and unfriendly um as anyone
will tell you. And so I go up all shiny
and like I have we already look at these papers
and literally the guy the counter says to me, we
don't have those and I go, yes, you do. It
was just like being in kindergarten. He goes, no, we don't.
I go, yes, you do. He goes, no, we don't
(12:10):
come all the way to New York, right. UM. I said, yes,
you do it. In fact, here's the name of the
archivist who won't speak to me, um, and here's his
phone number, and you're welcome to contact him. And so
the guy goes off and he talks I never did
see the archives. UM to the archives, and then he
comes back and says, yes, we do actually have these, UM,
and so here's the forms you have to fill out
(12:32):
to get them. And I fell out the forms and
these box has come up. They've got like a dumb
waiter behind the counter and these it comes creaking up
in a very atmospheric way with these boxes of files
that are covered with dust and apparently some mold. Because
both my I had my one of my grand students
helping me UM when I this was when I was
(12:53):
at Wisconsin UH, and both of us were sick. But
the with the rest of it because we could have
out them in other ways UM. And those files were
amazing and really an unknown resource. So even when they
were working on the documentary failed a Porsoner's handbook, they
went back they said they had arm wrestle them out
(13:14):
to write UM. So it wasn't like I had suddenly
opened the floodgates. So once I had those, I you know,
then looked at other you know, other archives, UM, and
I went over to the New York City Public Library.
I was doing a lot of contemporary you know what
what what was being covered about Geller and Norris and
(13:35):
Poisons at the time, and so I went to the
New York City Public Library because you can get through
ProQuest historical newspapers, the New York Times and a lot
of the big major dailies. But I wanted like the
Brooklyn Eagle and on small papers, and they had those
on microphis. So a lot of that was going in
and finding the stories of micro phish, which I don't recommend,
(13:59):
but we're and you know, printing them out. I did that,
and then the one other thing, and then you know,
we did interviews with um, you know, called people. There
were still a few people left too, had been students
of Getler, the Getler boys and UM. One of the
things I did when I was doing research, and this
(14:20):
will tell you just how anal or researcher I am,
is that I had discovered, uh been able to track
down Alexander Getler's kids and and their kids. And I
knew that his son Joseph had a number of grandid
kids or his grandkids who still lived in the New
(14:41):
York City area. UM, and I didn't have their exact
look and I did, I had their birth records, but
not their exact location. So I went to a friend
of mine who worked for a newspaper who had some
of those super search tools, and I said, if I
give you this person's name and their date of birth
and where they were born, can you find out for
(15:01):
me where they're living now. And she did, and she said,
you know, and don't tell anyone I did this. And
also I'm not giving you his social Security number. Please
don't give me his social Security number. Um. But basically
I had the name. It was Paul Getler, who was
one of Alexander Getler's grandkids. So I used my pages
(15:23):
and I called every single Paul Getler in that county
and I just said, Hi, my name is Debord Woe.
I'm looking for the grandson of Alexander Getler for a
book I'm working on. And eventually got him, and he
was fantastic, and he put me in touch with some
of his siblings, one of whom had had her daughter.
(15:45):
So Getler's great granddaughter had done a high school history
report on him, and they came to my hotel in
New York with her entire presentation and set up the
giant poster boards in the lobby of the hotel too,
I think slightly the horror people at the front desk
(16:05):
of the hotel. But they had like letters and journals
and all kinds of stuff that they lent me. And
when I went on book tour and I went back
to New York to talk about the book at a
Barnes and Noble in New York City, Um, the whole
Getler family was there, filling up the first two rows
of that, you know. Um. And so that was wonderful,
(16:31):
And that was another way that I was able to
get at resources that weren't obvious. I think people who
read these histories, you know, to me, they're a giant mosaic.
And because I'm a narrative writer, I'm also looking for
the pieces that I can put people in the time.
You know, what did the city look like? What did
the city sound like? All of those things, Um, But
(16:54):
you're building this kind of tapestry or mosaic, uh and
out all of these different pistes matter, and it is
a ton of word. We have, as you know, talked
(17:17):
a lot about women poisoners this season, and I know
you have some thoughts on women and poison and why
poison is considered a women's weapon and why that's not
really an accurate characterization, Will you just share your thoughts
on that matter with us? Sure? And in fact, while
I was a blogger at Wired after I did Poisonous
Sound Book, it's been about a decade. I still do
(17:40):
to some extent, you know, researching and writing about poisons things.
I had a blog at Wired called Elemental and a
blog in the New York Times called poison pen Um,
And at Wired I actually did a whole blog on
the myths of the female poisoner, right, which I really enjoyed.
So you know, if you go back even to like
(18:01):
you know, early crime fiction, when you actually looked at
the modern xt FBI statistics, you see that that's not true.
I mean, it's kind of women use poison more preferentially
over other weapons like guns and knives. Right, But if
you look at the whole panoradum of poisoners, there's more
male poisoners than female poisoners. But part of that, again
(18:24):
is that there's more homicidal males than homicidal females. Right,
there's just more men who killed people, is I dis
the entire um, And so there's a lot. So when
you actually look at the numbers, just the great numbers
there's more male poisoners in the United States than female poisoners.
If you analyze the use of weapons, you do see
(18:47):
it tilts a little more female. And it's actually interesting
because I did another book looking at biology and behavior,
and one of the things that people talk about was
that consistent imbalance on violence, right, and that there had
been this idea, for instance, that as you know, guns
became more available to women, there would be more shooting
deaths caused by women than men, or it would equalize out,
(19:09):
but in fact it never did. Right. Women in general,
when you look at crime statistics, um, just don't commit
those kinds of crimes. And you could certainly make this
case I'm going on poison for a minute. If you
look at the history of mass shootings in the United States, right,
women have access to exactly the same women, but you
don't see that pattern of mass shootings, right if there's
(19:32):
just something socially, culturally, biologically, so something in the mix
that So that's why you tend to see this sort
of higher number of male poisoners, because you see a
higher number of male assaults and tempted deaths. But the
myth of the female poisoner probably dates back to the
nineteenth century UM in which poisons were highly accessible in
(19:56):
a domestic way, right, and women actually more access to
them often than men if you looked at it in
that sense, because they were the caretakers of the home
and the distribution of UH jobs in the nineteenth century,
and so um they had access for two pharmaceutical products. Right,
Arsenic was quite common in UM different tonics and treatments
(20:19):
to improve your complexion in Victorian times. Right. Fowler's solution
is a famous example of that. You find these wonderful
advertisements targeting women, you know, in which they talk about,
you know, how arsenic is going to make you more beautiful,
and also how arsenic is entirely safe, which everyone knew
wasn't true, but you know, for some reason, they don't
(20:40):
always tell the truth in advertising. What I know him
and have this incredible access to cosmetics right, containing one
of the world's most famous and at that time handy
homicidal poisons. I mean, arsen was a fabulous poison or
(21:00):
poison in the nineteenth century because it's tasteless, it's odorless,
it mimics the symptoms of a natural illness, and because
they were just figuring out how to detect it in
a corpse. Right, so, um so, women have access to
this in a way, and not that a man couldn't
walk into a drug store and buy file Folwer solution,
(21:21):
but you know it's widely available to women. And a
lot of the home products there were cyanide and some
of the compounds that they used to like polish medal
in the house. You know, there was stryct nine and
pick me up tonics. Say mean, people had this incredible
access to these in a way that triggered no alarm
(21:42):
if you casually went and got something that contained arsenic
or straight nine. Um so it was super easy if
you were annoyed with your husband or your boyfriend or
or was we're trying. Arsenic used to be known as
the inheritance powder, you know, to work your way to
your inheritance to just you know, put it in coffee
or something, and people did. There were some quite notable
(22:06):
women mass poisoners in the nineteenth century like Maryanne Cotton
right who did exactly what I said us. You know,
handily available arsenic to work or to to get eliminate
relatives that stood in the way of money, to eliminate
partners so that you can inherit. I mean, I think
two was in the neighborhood of close to twenty by
(22:27):
the time they caught her, which will tell you. And
so that those kinds of you know, really stand out.
Mass poisonings tended to shape the idea that women did
this um in a way that is both you know,
has a little bit of if I are in the smoke,
but it's partly in largely smoke. We still have so
(22:54):
much more from our great chat with blond and that
is going to be next week's episode, which time thrilled
about because this is easily one of my favorite conversations
I have had all year. That's not even qualified as
in a podcast, etcetera, just in life, one of my
favorite conversations all year. And I am so glad that
she is very graciously helping us close out our season
(23:16):
of Poison, and with that, we're gonna do a little
what's your poison? Right? It actually references something that comes
up in episode two, but it also deals with stuff
that Deborah talked about, which is a prohibition era and
so we're doing prohibition eric cocktails for this one. And
(23:36):
what I thought might be fun for these these ones
as we're nearing the end of the season, is to
talk about kind of a classic cocktail and then how
you can approach them to maybe customize them to be
a little bit more attuned to your palette if they're
not for you as written. So, the first one is
a side car. A sidecar, you'll see the amounts very slightly,
(23:58):
but your basic side car is is usually one and
a half to two ounces of cognac. Anywhere from one
half ounce to one ounce of orange liquor. So you're
thinking like a triple sec or a quantreaux. You could
get crazy and lou use blue curasaw if you wanted.
I suppose, um, and then anywhere from a half ounce
(24:20):
to like three quarters of an ounce of lemon juice,
like freshly squeezed lemon juice. And some people like to
garnish with a sugar rim or they'll put an orange
twist or both of those. Um, so I made one.
I don't love sidecars, They're just not my jam. I
like cognac more in a warm drink, you know, pour
it in a latte or a tea or something. Uh
(24:41):
perfection exactly. So what I decided to do as a
test to see if I can make this a little
bit more to my liking, is actually gonna harken back
a little bit to one of our earlier cocktails. Um
only because it's one of those one of those spirits
you may have on hand if you were following along,
and it's one that I bought for this, and I
was like, I should use that in more things, so
(25:03):
um in lieu of orange liqueur of any kind, but
I wanted to keep the lemon juice. Otherwise you're getting
too far away from from what a sidecar is. I
just used ginger liqueur there. How was that way more
palatable for me, less bitey, and I enjoyed it a
lot more. I still would probably not select that over
(25:24):
other cocktails that we that we have done this year,
or just my usual very boring go to of vodka
and diet coke um like clockwork every time. But but
it is fun and that's kind of one of the
ways that I like to play with cocktail recipes. So
for anyone that's listening, if if you have not really
(25:45):
done that before and you look at it just it
just becomes a matter of like puzzly problem solving of like, well,
this is the one ingredient that is least palatable to me.
I wonder what I could do to shift that out
and subend something else that will also go with the
other ingredients. These are the experiments that will lead you
to magical discoveries. You should I feel like, I mean
(26:07):
your kitchen and you're cleaning to right. Absolutely. I have
a little lounge area in my kitchen. So you just
sit there and I'll just nix in different things to
see which one works. Taste that sounds great, and we
can train. You can sit and I'll make can taste
because it doesn't seem fair. Oh, I don't mind, I'll
(26:29):
prep all night. I love it. Uh So, anyway, that
is that is this week's poison A sidecar or the
sidecar variation of your choice. I was thinking too that
it might be interesting to try other fruit liqueurs in there.
I mean, I think if you did like an apple
liquor in there, it could be really interesting if you did. Um.
I'm trying to think because it is a little bit
(26:50):
you know, you're limited what goes well with koa and
lemon juice. That won't create cacophony in terms of taste. Um,
but you know the word thing that happens. The worst
thing that happens, exactly if you make a terrible mistake,
is that you spit it out and dump it down
the drink. And it's a small enough drink that you're
not wasting a lot of alcohol in that case. This
(27:11):
is my wisdom. Don't sweat it. If you throw out
an ounce and a half of cod, it's fine. Thank
you so much for joining us this week. Do not
forget to join us next week for the second part
of Deborah's interview. We will see you then. Criminalia is
(27:32):
a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Maria Trimarchi
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