Ergotism: From Medieval Plague to Modern Medicine

This episode, we’re talking ergotism, a fungus-driven poisoning linked to contaminated grains like rye. It’s a vivid One Health case study where weather patterns, crop disease, and human biology collide in ways that were historically interpreted as supernatural, but that we now know are due to the razor thin edge between medicine and poison in the alkaloids nature can produce. We walk through how ergot infects rye, how it survives across seasons, and why insects help spread it. Then we get i...