On Sunday, January 7, at 2:00 p.m. Noah Whiteman will discuss his book Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature’s Toxins from Spices to Vices in the Community Rooms of the Civic Center Library, 1188 S. Livermore Ave. Registration is not required for this free event.

In Most Delicious Poison, Mr. Whiteman discusses the origins of toxins produced by plants, mushrooms, microbes, and even some animals, and the mechanisms that animals evolved to overcome them. This perpetual chemical war not only drove the diversification of life on Earth, but also is intimately tied to our own successes and failures. You will never look at a houseplant, mushroom, fruit, vegetable, or even the past five hundred years of human history the same way again.

Noah Whiteman is Professor of Genetics, Genomics, Evolution and Development and Director of the Essig Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Berkeley. He also has affiliations with the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, Center for Computational Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, and University and Jepson Herbaria. His laboratory focuses on understanding how and why plants, microbes, and even some animals use toxins in offense and defense, and how some organisms overcome and even steal those toxins, from the monarch butterfly to us. He is also interested in understanding how biological toxins can be leveraged to prevent and treat human disease.

In 2020, Whiteman received a Guggenheim Fellowship to write “Most Delicious Poison” and in the same year, he was elected to the Royal Entomological Society, the California Academy of Sciences, and the Board of Directors of the Genetics Society of America.