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The Story Collider

Deborah Blum: A taste of nature

The Story Collider

Story Collider, Inc.

Performing Arts, Society & Culture, Arts, Personal Journals, Science

4.4824 Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2013

⏱️ 15 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

At age 7, Deborah Blum starts a mystery when she interrupts her parent's dinner party. So their guest, famed biologist E.O. Wilson, investigates. Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer prize-winning science journalist, author and blogger, is the Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Author of five books and a popular guide to science writing, her most recent publication, The Poisoner's Handbook, was a 2011 New York Times best seller and will be the subject of an American Experience documentary on PBS in January. She writes a monthly environmental chemistry column for The New York Times called Poison Pen. She also blogs about toxic compounds at Wired; her blog Elemental was named one of the top 25 blogs of 2013 by Time magazine. She has written for a wide range of other publications including Scientific American , Slate, Tin House, The Atavist, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times and Discover. Before joining the university in 1997, she was a science writer for The Sacramento Bee, where she won the Pulitzer in 1992 for her reporting on ethical issues in primate research. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Science Writing, Best American Nature Writing, and The Open Laboratory: Best Science OnLine. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more and subscribe to our podcast at our website: http://storycollider.org/

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Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:23.1

That's Shopify.com.com slash special offer.

0:28.2

A science story, huh?

0:31.4

Is that all your scientist the...

0:33.2

I felt...

0:34.0

And I just thought, well...

0:36.2

It was that golden moment.

0:39.4

Because science was on my side.

0:54.1

Hey, everyone. I'm Ben Lilly. and welcome to the Story Collider,

0:57.1

where we bring you true stories of how science has affected people's lives.

1:00.6

This week's story is from Deborah Bloom.

1:03.0

The story was recorded in September 2013 at the Middle East in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1:08.2

The theme of the evening was Poisons and Passions.

1:15.5

So my story does take you back into time, and I want to, and I kind of want to start it like this.

1:22.8

It's really easy when you're a kid to think of your father as the crazy guy who keeps bringing

1:30.0

snakes and spiders into the house.

1:33.2

At least that was interesting the way my childhood was.

...

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