Hey there, Ira here.

We know lead is a harmful neurotoxin, especially for young children.

And yet for much of the 20th century, it was used in a wide variety of everyday consumer products, including gasoline and household paint.

WNYC Studios' new podcast, The Stakes, tells the story of how the lead industry fooled the public into thinking these products were safe.

Here's a hint. It involved a marketing campaign aimed at children and their parents.

And how one pediatrician devised an elaborate study using kids' baby teeth to prove all of that lead was doing harm. That's the stakes from WNYC

studios. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato.

Later in the hour, what can artificial intelligence learn from a real brain? Scientists hooked up

the two together and they found some really

interesting stuff that we'll talk about a bit later. But first, here's a story that may sound

familiar. An inquisitive European naturalist boards a ship, sets sail for South America.

Along the way, he collects countless specimens, scales, mountains, describes everything he

encounters, making countless observations. He develops a new theory about the interrelationship

of the natural world. You're thinking Charles Darwin, right? Sounds like him. But not this time.

It's Alexander von Humboldt, Prussian polymath,

who voyaged on the Pizarro decades before Darwin on the Beagle. And my next guests are here to tell you in a

beautifully illustrated new book that we should be thanking Humboldt for inspiring Darwin, as well as being the first person that we know of to observe human-made climate change.

Here to tell the story are my guests.

Andrea Wolfe, author of The Adventures of Alexander von Hobolt.

Humboldt, she lives in London. Welcome.

Hi there.

And Lillian Melcher, who illustrated the book, she joins us from Boston. Welcome to Science Friday.

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