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	Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature’s Toxins—From Spices to Vices by Noah Whiteman Price $30.00 Hardcover In Stock

Noah Whiteman at Harvard University

presenting

Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature's Toxins―From Spices to Vices

Date

Sep

Thursday
September 26, 2024
6:00 PM ET
(Doors at 5:15)

Location

Jefferson Lab 250
17 Oxford St, Cambridge MA 02138

Tickets

$0.00 (Free RSVP Required)

Buy Tickets »

$31.88 (book included)

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Harvard Book Store, the Harvard University Division of Science, and the Harvard Library welcome Noah Whiteman—Professor of Genetics, Genomics, Evolution, and Development at the University of California-Berkeley—for a discussion of his new book Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature's Toxins―From Spices to Vices. Following the presentation in Jefferson Lab 250, there will be a reception and book signing in the Physics Library in Jefferson 450.

Ticketing

There are two ticket options available for this event.

Free General Admission Ticket: Includes admission for one.

Book-Included Ticket: Includes admission for one and one hardcover copy of Most Delicious Poison.

About Most Delicious Poison

A deadly secret lurks within our spice racks, medicine cabinets, backyard gardens, and private stashes.

Scratch beneath the surface of a coffee bean, a red pepper flake, a poppy seed, a mold spore, a foxglove leaf, a magic-mushroom cap, a marijuana bud, or an apple seed, and we find a bevy of strange chemicals. We use these to greet our days (caffeine), titillate our tongues (capsaicin), recover from surgery (opioids), cure infections (penicillin), mend our hearts (digoxin), bend our minds (psilocybin), calm our nerves (CBD), and even kill our enemies (cyanide). But why do plants and fungi produce such chemicals? And how did we come to use and abuse some of them?

Based on cutting-edge science in the fields of evolution, chemistry, and neuroscience, Most Delicious Poison reveals:

The origins of toxins produced by plants, mushrooms, microbes, and even some animals
The mechanisms that animals evolved to overcome them
How a co-evolutionary arms race made its way into the human experience
And much more

This perpetual chemical war not only drove the diversification of life on Earth, but also is intimately tied to our own successes and failures. You will never look at a houseplant, mushroom, fruit, vegetable, or even the past five hundred years of human history the same way again.

Praise for Most Delicious Poison

“Magisterial, fascinating, and gripping, Noah Whiteman’s Most Delicious Poison is a tour de force. With infectious enthusiasm and deep knowledge, Whiteman opens the curtain behind the substances that affect all of our lives.” ―Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish

“Noah Whiteman expertly reveals the evolution of the toxins that permeate our daily lives in this deeply researched and fascinating book.” ―Jennifer Doudna, Nobel Laureate and CRISPR gene editing co-inventor

“I wish I could travel the world with Noah Whiteman and enjoy firsthand his deep and eclectic knowledge of the thousands of compounds that plants evolved to defend themselves against predators. Fortunately, he has written Most Delicious Poison. This exuberant, poignant, and mind-blowing guide will transform how you think about plants and how humans use and abuse their toxins to flavor food, treat disease, alter moods, and more.” ―Daniel E. Lieberman, author of The Story of the Human Body and Exercised

Masking Policy

Masks are encouraged but not required.

Noah Whiteman

Noah Whiteman received his Ph.D. in tropical biology from the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 2006 after completing his dissertation work in the Galápagos Islands where he studied co-evolutionary genetics of the Galápagos Hawk and its parasite community. In 2007, he was awarded an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship to work at Harvard with Naomi Pierce and Fred Ausubel on a co-infection system involving the genetic model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, caterpillars, and plant pathogenic bacteria. He discovered that a drosophilid fly called Scaptomyza flava he isolated from mustards growing at Beaver Brook Park in Belmont attacked A. thaliana, and decided to study it as a model plant-herbivore interaction system. Whiteman is now Professor of Genetics, Genomics, Evolution, and Development at the University of California-Berkeley, where he has been faculty since 2016. Whiteman is currently a Miller Faculty Fellow at UC-Berkeley, a Royal Entomological Society Fellow, a California Academy of Sciences Fellow, and an American Ornithological Society Elective Member. In 2020 he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and in 2007 received the Harvard University Distinction in Teaching Award as Head Teaching Fellow for Animal Behavior. As an out gay person and first generation college graduate, he is committed to helping foster a more inclusive and diverse academy.

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Event Series: Harvard Science Book Talks

The Harvard Science Book Talks series is a collaboration between the Harvard University Division of Science, the Harvard Library, and Harvard Book Store. The series features talks by the authors of recently published books on a variety of science-related topics and is open to both the Harvard community and to the general public. Typically, lectures are followed by a book signing with the author and refreshments. Learn more and watch recordings of past talks here.