About this episode

This episode discusses ergotism, a fungus-driven poisoning linked to contaminated grains, exploring its historical interpretations and biological implications.

This episode, we’re talking ergotism, a fungus-driven poisoning linked to contaminated grains like rye. It’s a vivid One Health case study where weather patterns, crop disease, and human biology collide in ways that were historically interpreted as supernatural, but that we now know are due to the razor thin edge between medicine and poison in the alkaloids nature can produce. We walk through how ergot infects rye, how it survives across seasons, and why insects help spread it. Then we get i...

People in this episode

Host: Galveston National Laboratory

Topics covered

• ergotism
• fungus-driven poisoning
• One Health
• crop disease
• alkaloids
• medicine and poison

Keywords

• ergotism
• fungus
• poisoning
• contaminated grains
• alkaloids
• One Health
• crop disease

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Galveston National Laboratory

Places: rye

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