The Poisoner's Almanac

This is coming to you from our Patreon this week! Lets discuss some forests with dark pasts and spooky reputations. I am covering two with strange ring-like clearings where nothing grows and we do not know why. One is The Tramping Ground in NC and the other is in Transylvania, Romania, of all places. The Hoia-Baciu forest in Romania has a long list of paranormal reports from UFOs to werewolves to...

Hello Poison Friends! The season is getting spooky and so shall we! I mean, more so than usual. We need to take a look at the Manchac Swamp region of Louisiana. We're going over some poisonous plants, dangerous creatures, and the curse of Aunt Julia Brown. A former slave and later landowner in the town of Frenier, Aunt Julia was a healer, and a practitioner of hoodoo/voodoo. While out on her porch...

Hey there Poison Friends! We are ending out run down of Johnson & Johnson here with an episode on their birth control patch from the early 2000s and their metal-on-metal hip replacement implant (Pinnacle). We've obviously covered a lot of lies and cover ups concerning J&J products and it just seems to get worse as they get bolder. Ortho Evra was supposed to be this new way to prevent pregn...

Hello Poison Friends! Erin and I are having some fun this week just looking through some ads from the 1800s and early-mid 1900s, that would never have been approved or allowed today. Many of these are for products that would also be illegal and toxic to those consuming them and yes, some of them were for children as well. We are also covering some old misogynistic ads featuring the "typical 50's h...

Hello Poison Friends! We are working our way through the many skeletons in Johnson & Johnson's closet (alongside some other pharmaceutical companies), and need to discuss their role in the Opioid Crisis here in America. We are covering one of their more dangerous and controversially advertised drugs, the Duragesic fentanyl patch, as well as one from Purdue Pharma--oxycontin. We'll do a refresh...

Hello Poison Friends! We need to discuss Johnson & Johnson's misadventure into mental healthcare. Once their previous antipsychotic, Haldol, neared its patent expiration, the company plotted to come up with a new atypical antipsychotic that could take its place and earn them more money. They presented Risperdal as a safer and more effective treatment for schizophrenia, even though studies sugg...

Hello our Poison Friends! We are back to fill you in on some more shady deeds from Johnson & Johnson's past. We have another Pharma guest appearance in this one, because Amgen was also involved in the synthetic erythropoietin business. Erythropoietin is the hormone released by the kidneys that stimulates red blood cell production. RBCs are produced in the blood marrow within bones. It always a...

Hello Poison Friends! Erin and I are taking a break from our breakdown of Johnson & Johnson's dark deeds, this week. Why? So we can celebrate America's Independence with stories of Founding Fathers and intrepid explorers of the nation and their encounters with poison. We are going a bit deeper into the medicinal chaos of Dr. Benjamin Rush, the only doctor to sign the Declaration of Independenc...

Hey Hey Poison Friends! We are bringing you part 2 of our look into Johnson & Johnson, and the drama is only escalating. We are discussing the expensive end to their use of talc in baby powders as well as the damage that it did to numerous women and likely others exposed to it. J&J apparently learned nothing from this, however. When people began dying of liver failure after taking too much...

Hello Poison Friends! We are covering some long standing pharmaceutical companies and their deep dark secrets over the years, starting here with Johnson & Johnson. This company has been around for generations now, and they have garnered a reputation for their gentleness and trustworthiness--mainly through the sales of baby products and their marketing of such. However, the company was original...

**Erin is out this week for some family time and I was also out of town, so here is a fun episode from the Patreon Bonus vault! Our usual schedule of bi weekly episodes will be back in play beginning next weekend with a new episode! We know the Kellogg name for their cereal's (They'rrrrrreeee Great!) and other such foods. However, the men behind the brand were a a pair of interesting brothers who...

Hello Poison Friends! We have a collection of wild cases to share with you all this episode involving neighbors, roomies, and coworkers that have gone from angry to toxic...literally. Many of these are actually quite recent and investigations may still be ongoing, but arrests have been made and there is plenty of evidence proving their guilt. In one case, a neighbor already guilty of harassment ov...

Hello Poison Friends! This week I am posting an older Bonus episode from our Patreon while Erin is out of town and Mother's Day weekend pulls us away from the desk and microphones. We will have a new episode for you next weekend, though, and from there we'll continue our every other week status! Sir Isaac Newton was big into alchemy and likely suffered from heavy metal poisoning because of it. I m...

Hey Poison Friends! Erin and I are bringing you all a crazy story of two besties and roomies with a very toxic twist. Honestly, numerous toxic twists. Rachel and Janie were best friends for 25 years and Janie always seemed so helpful with Rachel's care after her various back surgeries and with her young son. Others noticed, however, that she was rather controlling and possessive over Rachel. The l...

Hello Poison Friends! Erin and I are back for a little something different today. I have had a disappearance/mysterious death case on my mind for some time and it felt like the right time to talk about it. We are covering the case of the Yuba County Five. In February of 1978, five young men from Yuba County, California, disappeared one night after a trip to see a basketball game. Each of the men l...

I have Erin with me this week to discuss Greek Mythology, especially that surrounding the Oracle of Delphi. Everyone from Kings to common folk who could afford to sought out the Oracle with important questions or life advice. Let's discuss who could be Oracles/High Priestesses and the vapors they may have inhaled to get these "answers" for the masses. Also, why did Apollo need to scare those sailo...

Becca here! It is just me today and I want to talk about two women from different time periods and different parts of the world. Sally Bassett was an enslaved woman in Bermuda in the 1700's, when white slave owners were fearful of being poisoned. Many enslaved women of the day were considered suspect of poisoning and even witchcraft. She, too would be accused and executed for such crimes, but did...

We are finally covering the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including the development, deployment, and aftermath. What were the differences in the two bombs used and how were the targets chosen? We need to break some stuff down and I've got some first hand experiences of survivors to read to you as well. We are detailing what took place the days of the attacks and looking at the immedia...

We are finishing up Unit 731 this week and getting into the thick of what went on among the research, medical, and military personnel involved. We also need to discuss civilians who might have been unknowingly involved as well. Human experimentation involving bio and chemical warfare as well as physical injury were the main activity of both the Pingfang site and the Unit's other branches. Trigger...

Hello Poison Friends! This week we are diving into the background and history behind Japan's Infamous Unit 731 before and during WWII. This episode will be all about what Unit 731 was, who started it up, and the environment and attitudes of Japan and other nations at the time. Ishii Shiro was a man of ambition and cruelty, and he sought to create and run military backed facilities to research and...

Hello Poison Friends! We are diving into some conspiracy theories related to the testing done on Plum Island here in the US and how it got tangled up with the identification of Lime Disease back in the late 70s/early 80s. We also need to cover some shady experiments performed by the US and the UK on their own citizens during the Cold War era, using what was then believed to be harmless chemicals a...

Hello Poison Friends! This episode were are covering the conclusion of the Nazi experiments series we have taken on, including more testimonies of survivors and expert witnesses. We need to cover experiments concerning muscle, bone, and nerve removal and transplantation and the murders of mostly Jewish camp inmates for the purpose of the Nazi's creating skeletons for "educational review." We are a...

Hello Poison Friends! Let's talk poison experiments done by Nazi's during WWII. Alkaloid poisons, corrosive poisons like phenol, and flammable substances used in incendiary weapons like phosphorus. Mustard and Phosgene gas were also experimented with as were various methods of euthanasia. Many of those experimented on them died or were left with permanent injuries. We have excerpts from the testim...

Hello Poison Friends! We are carrying on with our series on Human experimentation during WWII and we are still discussing that done by Nazi doctors and the like. This episode is specifically on the diseases that were intentionally spread to prisoners and experimental subjects being kept at concentration camps, mainly Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler, and Auschwitz (not that it did not happen else...

Hello Poison Friends! We are back with more horrible acts committed by Nazis in WWII. The focus for this episode is a series of experiments done mainly at Dachau, as far as we know from records that were recovered, and they centered around proposals put forth by the Air Force and Navy in Nazi Germany at that time. I will also go over some of the doctors and other personnel responsible for these ho...