You're listening to the Joe Gardner Show, the podcast all about gardening, where we cover

everything you need to know to grow like a pro, no experience required.

And now here's your guide, National Gardening Television Host, and the Joe Behind Joe Gardner,

Joe Lampel.

Hi everybody, it's Joe Lampel, the Joe Behind Joe Gardner, and welcome to the Joe Gardner

Show.

I had the recent pleasure of speaking with Frank von Hippel.

He's the author of a book I recently finished reading and titled The Chemical Age, How

Chemist Fought Famine and Disease Killed Millions and Changed Our Relationship with the Earth.

How is that for an opening to this show?

And what a subtitle, right?

This episode definitely qualifies for the coveted geek alert badge, and I have to tell you,

this conversation could have gone a couple of different ways.

This book is an eye-opener.

If you haven't spent much time acquaining yourself with the impact of the evolution of chemicals

and their various uses for good and evil through the past 150 years or so.

From the Irish potato famine of 1846 to the devastating use of wartime chemicals in World

War I and II to the widespread postwar use of DDT to control pest and Rachel Carson's

blockbuster book Silent Spring to bring delight, the unintended yet irreversible consequences

of its use to the environment and wildlife.

This book covers the highs and the lows of how chemicals intended for good took an ugly

turn, and yet as the subtitle of Frank's book, So aptly states, Fought Famine and Disease

...