A Taste for Poison

If you really want to develop an appreciation for those early pathologists who went so far as to taste-tested truly horrible samples from corpses to establish a system for detecting poisons, read a new book by US-based physiology and biophysics professor Neil Bradbury. We discuss Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers who used them: A Taste for Poison in our final episode of the Chemistry World Book Club podcast series. Combining chemistry and biology with true crime, this book is ripped from news headlines and is also based on historical records. Bradbury recounts for us his life-long fascination with science as well as murder mysteries, and how he long-dreamed of using his biochemistry training to write a book delving into process by which various poisons kill a person – what these compounds actually do inside the body. He also discusses narrowing down the book's scope to the 11 poisons and related murders that are featured. After almost seven years, Chemistry World is moving on from the Book Club podcast. We truly thank all of you who read along and listened, as well as those reviewers and authors who participated and made the podcast great. But we have an exciting new monthly podcast in the works, so please follow Chemistry World on Twitter or on Facebook to be the first to hear about it.

You can listen to A Taste for Poison online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

A Taste for Poison is an episode from Chemistry World Book Club by Chemistry World.

This episode is 18:33 long.

This episode was published on May 24, 2022.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Chemistry World Book Club when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.