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The Acid Queen: An Interview with Susannah Cahalan

October 06, 2026

A conversation with the author of The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary. If you've ever read anything about the history of psychedelics, the name Timothy Leary will probably sound familiar. He was a Harvard psychologist who researched psychedelics within academia before getting fired in 1963 and taking his experiments underground. But you might never have heard of Timothy's wife, Rosemary Woodruff Leary. We talk with author Susannah Cahal...

Jersey City's Secret Water Experiment

September 28, 2026

How did a covert chemical treatment permanently change our drinking water? In 1908, two men, John L. Leal and George Warren Fuller, spent 99 days secretly constructing something that would fundamentally alter the Jersey City water supply. Their decision to add chlorine is one that continues to impact our lives for the better, but there was no large-scale testing or approval process. This episode, brought to us by producer Caitlin Faulds, explores the big questions about Leal and Fuller's grea...

Cigarettes in America, Part 2: The Reckoning

September 22, 2026

Cigarettes: they provide no nutrition and quench no thirst. They serve no purpose other than being an excuse to take a break from the grind before getting right back to it. And on top of that, they're deadly. As far as American vices go, they might be at the top of the list. So how did they get and stay popular for so long? And why are they making a comeback? This two-part episode dives into the rise of this quintessential American product, the science that proved it was dangerous, and the ev...