Pesticides across history and learning from millions of years of plant-insect warfare

Tiny Matters

On January 27, 1958, newspaper editor Olga Huckins sat down to write an angry letter to a friend. Olga and her husband owned a private two-acre bird sanctuary, and the previous summer the government had sprayed the pesticide DDT all over that two acres to control the mosquitos. She saw wildlife, particularly birds, getting sick and dying. The friend Olga sent the letter to was none other than Rachel Carson, who would go on to write the book Silent Spring, exposing the dangers of synthetic pesticides, including DDT, and helping push forward the modern environmental movement and the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Today on the show we’re going to talk about the history of pesticides and their deployment, and how researchers are working to develop more effective, safer pesticides. We will also take a fascinating dive into the coevolution of plants and pests, specifically insects, and what we’re learning about the effectiveness of pesticides based on hundreds of millions of years of plant and insect evolution.
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Link to the Tiny Show & Tell story is here. You can find BirdCast here. All Tiny Matters transcripts and references are available here.

Chapter

1. Pesticides across history and learning from millions of years of plant-insect warfare (00:00:00)

2. A history of pesticides (00:02:22)

3. Pesticides can be bad, but much of humanity wouldn't exist without them. (00:06:00)

4. Silent Spring (00:09:02)

5. Pesticides and worker safety (00:12:46)

6. Insect-plant coevolution (00:17:47)

7. Tiny show and tell: killifish regeneration and BirdCast (00:24:54)