Humans were using plants as medicine—and poison—long before anyone knew what an alkaloid was or how the nervous system worked.

So how did we know what plants could do before we understood why they worked?

For this Halloween companion episode, I’m following that question through screaming mandrakes, poisonous nightshades, witches’ flying ointments and foxglove—a plant people were using medicinally long before science could explain what it was doing to the heart.

Along the way, we’ll get into what atropine and scopolamine actually do to the nervous system, why plants make these chemicals in the first place, how people learned about medicinal plants before modern pharmacology, and why the popular story that accused witches were really persecuted herbalists is a whole lot messier than it sounds.

Because sometimes humans know that something works long before we know why.

And somewhere in that gap, we tend to tell stories.

The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.

Where did we get monsters?

Dragons. Werewolves. Vampires. The Kraken. A whirlpool that could swallow a ship. Strange lights floating over a swamp.

Humans are very good at making things up—but we didn't necessarily make all of this up.

This week, I’m talking with science writer Matt Kaplan, author of The Science of Monsters, about the real animals, fossils, diseases and natural phenomena hiding underneath some of our oldest monster stories.

We get into ancient Greek monsters showing up on actual maps, the surprisingly gross science behind vampires, what rabies may have had to do with werewolves, whether a giant squid could really sink a ship, and why sometimes a monster was simply a really effective way of saying: don't go over there.

Because the more you dig into these stories, the question gets really interesting:

How much of a monster comes from the thing that's actually out there—and how much do we add to it?

Plus, Finn has a very important Kraken question.

Guest: Matt Kaplan, science writer and author of The Science of Monsters, Science of the Magical, and I Told You So: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right.

The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.

Do animals have names for each other—or is naming one more human idea we keep trying to find reflected in the rest of nature?

After giving a backyard downy woodpecker named Needo an entire family life and personal history, Bre begins wondering what other woodpeckers might call him.

This episode follows the evidence from bottlenose dolphin signature whistles and socially learned parrot calls to receiver-specific elephant rumbles and the scientific debate surrounding marmoset “names.” Together, these animals reveal several possible ways of communicating something very close to: you, specifically.

Because “we cannot translate it” is not the same as “nothing is being said.”

This is a companion episode to Why Does a Wild Animal’s Life Feel Different Once We Know Its Name? — with Samantha Miller

Listen and consider: Is a signal only a name if it works the way a human name does?

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