{"podcast":{"title":"History Shorts","slug":"history-shorts-6691663","podcast_index_feed_id":6691663,"rss_url":"https://feeds.libsyn.com/571725/rss","website_url":"https://www.historyshortspodcast.com","image_url":"https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/e/f/4/7/ef47fe58bf123b5e16c3140a3186d450/pod_37.png","author":"History Shorts Network","episode_count":941,"summary":"Dive into the past with award-winning historian Peter Zablocki in this captivating daily podcast! Uncover hidden stories you never knew existed. And don't miss Friday Conversations where Peter teams up with top experts for riveting, in-depth discussions that bring history to life.","last_synced_at":"2026-09-25T14:18:27.449302+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/history-shorts-6691663"},"episode":{"title":"The Poison Squad","slug":"the-poison-squad","published_at":"2026-09-12T04:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/history-shorts-6691663/the-poison-squad","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/history-shorts-6691663","url":"https://2c68e044-1b71-48bf-a5c5-2792f5a14f4c.libsyn.com/the-poison-squad","audio_url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pdcn.co/e/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/2c68e044-1b71-48bf-a5c5-2792f5a14f4c/Poison_Squad.mp3?dest-id=4947215","summary":"At the turn of the twentieth century, America's food supply could be terrifying. Manufacturers routinely added chemicals and preservatives to food—with little regulation and few requirements to tell consumers what they were eating. So government chemist Harvey Wiley conducted an extraordinary experiment. Beginning in 1902, a group of young men volunteered to eat meals deliberately laced with substances like borax, formaldehyde, and salicylic acid. Newspapers gave them an unforgettable nickname: the Poison Squad. The volunteers were carefully monitored as Wiley gathered evidence about what these additives did to the human body. The experiment became a national sensation and helped build public support for federal food regulation. In this episode of History Shorts , we tell the bizarre story of the men who volunteered to eat potentially dangerous chemicals—and how Harvey Wiley's Poison Squad helped pave the way for the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the modern FDA. SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/c/HistoryShortsPodcast ADVERTISE : https://www.historyshortspodcast.com/advertise LEARN MORE: https://www.historyshortspodcast.com/ SPONSORED BY: https://www.podcastrepublic.net/get-it-now","meta_description":"At the turn of the twentieth century, America's food supply could be terrifying. Manufacturers routinely added chemicals and preservatives to food—with li…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":821,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/history-shorts-6691663/episodes/the-poison-squad/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/history-shorts-6691663/the-poison-squad.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}