Should You Be Eating Poison Oak?

Probably not. But Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz decided to try it anyway, putting his body — and specifically his butt — on the line to answer a seemingly straightforward question: Is it possible to build up a tolerance to poison oak by eating it? (Guest episode) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Nicola Twilley?

  Greetings, Gastropod listeners. As always, I'm Nicola Twilley.

• 0:05Cynthia Graber?

  And I'm Cynthia Graber. And we here at Gastropod Headquarters are hard at work digging out fascinating tales for your listening delight.

• 0:12Nicola Twilley?

  But while we polish up some sparkly new nuggets of culinary science and history for your future audio enjoyment, we wanted to share this super fascinating guest episode to tide you over.

• 0:23Cynthia Graber?

  It is about food, in a way, or at least eating something. But in this case, it's about eating something I would have thought would be a horrible idea. And that's the plant poison oak.

• 0:32Nicola Twilley?

  For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, this is a pretty common North American shrub that if you accidentally touch it while you're out hiking, you will not be happy at all. It is one of the itchiest things known to humanity.

• 0:45Cynthia Graber?

  So why in the world would you eat something like this? I'm uncomfortable just thinking about it. But all will be revealed. Listen on to Unexplainable to find out. And then, of course, find Unexplainable wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode.

• 0:58Nicola Twilley?

  Meanwhile, if you're still short of listening material, we have another new podcast for you. It's a new podcast from the Food and Environment Reporting Network called Forked. Every two weeks, hosts Theodore Ross and Helena Bottommiller-Ivich take on the politics and policy that are turning the American food system on its head. Forked is for anyone who cares about what they eat and where their food comes from. It's informed, incisive, and fun, and hopefully won't leave you feeling too forked. Forked is available wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube at Fern News.

• 1:34Cynthia Graber?

  And now, a nice big bowl of poison oak.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  When is the end of the day and you're settled into the couch looking for your evening watch? You're not looking for Homework the Movie. You're looking for comfort, excitement, or something in between. Whether you're craving something familiar or in the mood to discover something new, Amazon Prime has what you need, from screen to doorstep. Because it's not just about genres or endless content. It's about finding the thing that matches how you're feeling, whatever the mood. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Support for the show comes from Google Gemini. You know that moment when curiosity strikes? You're exploring a new city with the family and a sculpture catches your daughter's eye. What is that? Who made it? With Gemini, you can snap a picture and get a fully interactive breakdown of its history, architecture, and even hidden secrets. Gemini is built for moments like that. Whether you're learning something new, solving a problem, or looking for your next favorite thing, Google Gemini is here to help. Download Gemini, Google's AI app, or visit gemini.google.com to learn more.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  Every year, tens of millions of Americans get poison ivy, poison oak, or poisoned sumac rashes. Tens of thousands of them end up in the ER. And these rashes are the number one cause of disability and sick leave for firefighters in the Forest Service. More than fire. So you'd think we'd have some kind of fix by now, right? Like, we don't tell people to just stay out of the sun or totally avoid mosquitoes when they go on a hike. We've got sunscreen, we've got bug spray. And then for poison ivy, all we've got is just telling people to avoid it, which is what most people try to do. But a couple of months ago, I talked to someone who's not exactly a run-away-from-problems

• 3:41Speaker 04

  kind of guy. He's more of a swallow-the-problem-hole kind of guy. So he decided to try and make himself immune to poison oak by eating it. Now, I assume your first question is just, why would someone do that? I mean, I, uh, I'm kind of an idiot. Jeff Horowitz loves to forage for these big, orange mushrooms called chanterelles.

• 4:09Speaker 05

  But the thing is that the habitat for chanterelles and the habitat for poison oak are pretty much identical. It's kind of almost rare that you'd find chanterelles in a place where poison oak isn't.

• 4:22Speaker 04

  And you still wanted to go get these mushrooms?

• 4:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, I'm like, I'm real dumb. Like, I would see a mushroom in the middle of an obvious thicket of poison oak, where I'm just gonna be crawling hands and knees through poison oak to get to it. And I'd go in. I'd go in, yeah.

• 4:38Speaker 04

  Is it just because they taste so good?

• 4:40Speaker 05

  They're really good. And, look, one of my strengths as an investigative reporter is that I'm pretty tenacious. You know, once committed to a thing, I will get there.

• 4:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, when he's not crawling through poison oak, Jeff works as an investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal. If you've heard of The Facebook Files, that was him.

• 5:00Speaker 05

  You know, I have a hard time, shall we say, not pursuing the target. You know, once committed to a thing, I will get there, barring like some insurmountable impediment. And a future rash does not count as an impediment.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  So over the years, Jeff kind of just got used to rashes.

• 5:17Speaker 05

  You'll go home and be like absentmindedly scratching. And that's when it's too late. The oil has soaked into your skin. And within another 24 hours, redness appears, which then graduates into like a oozy blistering mess that makes you want to scratch your skin off, like down to the bone.

• 5:38Speaker 04

  Did you ever try to not get poison oak?

• 5:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I'd try to wear long-sleeved clothing. As soon as I got home, I would basically strip, throw everything I was wearing into the washing machine. And then I would go shower in cold water with dish soap. So like, just a bottle of Dawn. And that usually did it, but like, sometimes you'd miss a patch. So it was not a foolproof system.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  Eventually, Jeff got so frustrated with getting rash after rash that he started poking around in some online forums.

• 6:16Speaker 05

  People were writing things in all caps, like, "It worked. I'm immune to poison oak." And then describing how they'd been eating the leaves. But keep in mind, I cover social media and Facebook. So like, I am very aware of the weaknesses of seeking confirmation, particularly for something that you want to believe. And like dermatologist organizations, Backpacker Magazine, NPR, various, you know, hospital systems answered the question of like, can you become immune to poison oak? And the answer to that was, hell, no, you can't.

• 6:50Speaker 04

  But remember, I'm kind of an idiot.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  I'm Noam Hastenfeld, and this week on Unexplainable, Jeff puts his body, and specifically his butt, on the line to answer a seemingly straightforward question: Is it possible to build up a tolerance to poison oak by eating it? And if it is, where are all our poison oak pills?

• 7:29Speaker 04

  So we've been talking about poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac. They're different plants, but they all have the same chemical called urusial, which causes an allergic reaction in almost 90% of the population. It's not a toxin, it's just that most people's immune systems kind of go nuts when they touch it. So just like you can build up a tolerance to other kinds of allergens, Jeff thought he might be able to build up a tolerance to poison oak.

• 7:56Speaker 05

  The whole idea here is that you're training your immune system to stop freaking out when it encounters urusial. And so the plan was to like, get to the point when I could just eat the leaves off of the plant and, you know, have poison oak salads.

• 8:12Speaker 04

  There is a big issue here, though, right? Like, just touching the thing gives you a rash, and Jeff was planning to eat it. So he was worried it might give him this kind of inside-out poison oak rash, like poison oak on the inside of his throat or his stomach. But he had a plan. Urusial doesn't work well across certain mucous membranes, so the inside of the mouth, the throat, the stomach, all okay. The main issues would be his lips.

• 8:41Speaker 05

  So I got a straw for drinking poison oak smoothies and poison oak tea.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  And his butt.

• 8:47Speaker 05

  I definitely learned early on the Latin for, I believe it's puritus anni, AKA itchy butthole.

• 8:56Speaker 04

  And just to be clear, itchy butthole might sound like it's not so bad, just a little annoying. But it's a real excruciating pain in the ass.

• 9:06Speaker 05

  Like, I definitely, that was like, kind of the thing that like, I was most afraid of, if I'm being honest, is like, having to show up to the doctor and be like, "Yeah, so I ate a whole bunch of poison oak and I regret that." Like, that seemed like it would be like, really, really bad, you know, just a little mortifying.

• 9:25Speaker 04

  So Jeff reached out to a scientist, Mahmoud El-Soli, who has spent a lot of time researching Yerushal. But unlike Jeff, he's been doing that research in a lab, not on internet forums.

• 9:37Speaker 05

  And I kept on being like, "Yeah, but what if I eat it?" And so the good doctor was like, "I'm not saying it wouldn't work. I'm just saying that you probably don't want to do that." And I was like, "Yeah, but you're saying it might work?" And he's like, "Yeah, but you're gonna regret it." I was like, "Yeah, but that's a personal choice." Like, "You're saying this can work." And he's like-

• 9:57Speaker 06

  I wanted to tell you, Jeff, if you really take the extract orally, you're gonna absolutely get dermalized.

• 10:04Speaker 05

  So this is, basically, your sense is that, or it to work, it's going to be very unpleasant?

• 10:11Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 10:12Speaker 05

  He's like, "You're gonna get a really itchy butt."

• 10:17Speaker 04

  Still, Jeff is stubborn, kind of a glutton for punishment.

• 10:21Speaker 05

  That is an identity, and yes, I do identify as such.

• 10:23Speaker 04

  So he decided on a pretty extreme strategy. He was gonna take a full-on shower immediately after he took a crap. Like, every single time for months. So any of that poison oak coming through his digestive system wouldn't end up doing what Mahmoud was worried about.

• 10:41Speaker 05

  The concern was that perhaps using the bathroom and then not taking a shower might make things worse.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  But Jeff had bigger worries than an itchy butthole, like, whether this could kill him. He did find a reference to potential death from smoke inhalation, like, burning a bunch of poison oak and poison ivy, breathing it all in, getting it on your lungs. But Jeff was just planning to eat the stuff.

• 11:06Speaker 05

  Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I haven't seen very much in the way of deaths from this, correct?

• 11:11Speaker 06

  You're not gonna get that because, but you're gonna get some, you know, kidney or liver issues, but not really lethal.

• 11:18Speaker 05

  I'll cut back on drinking. But your sense here is that, and correct me if I'm wrong here, I'm probably not taking any massive, long-term health risks by doing this, right? It's-

• 11:30Speaker 06

  I wouldn't think so.

• 11:33Speaker 07

  I used to wonder what I missed anytime I stepped out of the shop. But with AT&T Business Wireless, my signal stays strong no matter where the day takes me. Like right now, I'm meeting a photography client

• 11:47Speaker 07

  out here. But I still have a reliable connection, even though I have no idea where I am right now.

• 11:54Speaker 08

  Keep your business connected with AT&T Business Wireless. Visit att.com/5gnetwork. When the connection matters, it has to be AT&T.

• 12:03Speaker 09

  Kayak searches and compares hundreds of travel sites. But unless I repeat the word kayak, Kayak thinks you won't remember that. So Kayak asked me to say kayak as many times as possible. Kayak.

• 12:16Speaker 10

  Kayak. Kayak. Kayak.

• 12:18Speaker 09

  Kayak, kayak, kayak. Kayak. Search and compare travel deals with Kayak. Got that right.

• 12:24Speaker 11

  Are you tired of hearing about business, tech, and finance from the bros? We are the Tiger Sisters, a top business podcast with the Vox Media Podcast Network. Tiger Sisters releases every Monday, and we decode money, power, and love. And who doesn't love all those things? We are the internet's Wall Street and Silicon Valley big sisters. Tune in every Monday for late-night sister talk meets boardroom strategy. Check out Tiger Sisters on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  Welcome to the Tiger fam.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  So this past January, Jeff started eating poison oak.

• 13:00Speaker 05

  I dug up some roots while wearing latex gloves, just to keep it off my skin. And then, you know, made some tea. It was like kind of earthy and, you know, not an unpleasant beverage. I've definitely had much grosser herbal teas. And then a few days later, again, wearing some gloves, I picked some early spring buds, like, you know, half the size of a pea, popped them on in, chewed them up, swallowed, and went back to foraging for mushrooms.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Jeff ate poison oak leaves while hiking. He made omelets, he made tea, he made poison oak smoothies.

• 13:36Speaker 05

  And then every few days, I would up dosage with the idea being that if I, say, hit the point when it was going to start being a problem for me, I would at least, like, not have gone far past that line.

• 13:51Speaker 05

  What does poison oak actually taste like? So poison oak, like the leaves themselves, they're like kind of vaguely tart, have like a Okay. Kind of that, like, little bit of the unripe fruit, cottony feel, slightly sour, but like, not bad. Like, honestly, like, in a salad, if you're eating them, you would not be like, this is bad. Mm-hmm. They're maybe a little bitter, but like, so are endives, right, and radicchio. Yeah. So like, they're perfectly pleasant enough to eat. So if you kept eating more and more poison oak, how big of a dose did you get up to? You know, at first, it was like, maybe, like, one or two leaves, but, you know,

• 14:31Speaker 05

  I was graduating up to like, maybe 10 or 12 or so, um, you know, per smoothie, once every couple of days. And then, meanwhile, when I was out in the woods, I would continue just to like, eat a leaf or two off the plant. And did anything happen? Not for a while. And in fact, I get to a point where I'm like, okay, like, you know, moment of truth, let's see how this is working. And so, I take three or four leaves, and I crush them up, you know, between my fingers, like, roll them around, and then I just smeared this paste on my back. Oh, my god. And then I put a bandage on top of it, and then went to sleep for the night. To like, really smoosh it in?

• 15:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, something like that, yeah. So the idea here was like, direct hit. And so, two days went by. I thought I was like, completely in the clear. And then it started itching. But here's the thing, it was like, a little localized redness, and then it kind of like, dried up and went away without ever graduating to like, blisters. So at this point, I'm like, holy hell, I'm on to something. Like, this actually is working for me, because like, pre-treatment Jeff would have had, like, one gigantic boil. But then, a couple months ago, Jeff flew too close to the sun. At this point, I was like, I thought I was pretty much to full immunity. Mm-hmm. And man, I went big. I went, I went- How big?

• 15:57Speaker 05

  I had like, a full poison oak salad. I had a smoothie that must have had like,

• 16:04Speaker 05

  50 or 60 leaves- Wow. -ground up in there. Okay. It was like, a mega dosage. Like, I just went huge, and, um-

• 16:13Speaker 05

  I had a somewhat difficult week.

• 16:16Speaker 04

  What happened?

• 16:17Speaker 05

  Basically, the urushial went systemic.

• 16:20Speaker 04

  Systemic, like all over your body?

• 16:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, this was bloodborne. I had it popping up behind my ears, like down my jawline, my neck, my inner thighs. It was starting to like run down my arm. So I did manage to get full body poison oak.

• 16:37Speaker 04

  Do you regret going so hard?

• 16:40Speaker 05

  I mean, I think particularly at this point because I was writing a story about it. I was like, okay, that's funny. Like, a man has fucked around and he has found out. You know, and I enjoy both those processes, both the fucking around and the finding out.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Jeff's Icarus moment is a good reminder for anyone else trying to do something like this. The bottom line is that everyone's body and everyone's butt is different. We've all got vastly different responses to allergens. We've got different pain tolerances. And we've obviously got different tolerances for risk.

• 17:14Speaker 05

  I wouldn't want to convey to readers that this was something that could be done with zero cost. There is some element of luck here, right? Like, some people respond super well to the treatment. Other people get less from it and there is more of a cost.

• 17:30Speaker 04

  But in the end, despite a week of full body poison oak, which, again, Jeff absolutely could have avoided.

• 17:39Speaker 05

  I probably could have done this in a way that didn't involve a full body rash, but you know, where's the fun in that?

• 17:45Speaker 04

  It still seems like mission accomplished.

• 17:48Speaker 05

  I think at this point I am functionally immune. I've been exposed to it and, you know, have sort of dispensed with the old Dawn dish soap routine. So like, at this point, I'm pretty much all the way there. It's important to eat some leaves every spring, just sort of to maintain that. And plus, I mean, how could I ever possibly give up that party trick?

• 18:14Speaker 04

  Okay, but if this ended up working for Jeff, why is like every single source from NPR to Backpacker Magazine so dead set against it? Where's my poison oak pill? That's next.

• 18:33Speaker 07

  I used to wonder what I missed any time I stepped out of the shop. But with AT&T Business Wireless, my signal stays strong no matter where the day takes me. Like right now, I'm meeting a photography client

• 18:46Speaker 07

  out here. But I still have a reliable connection, even though I have no idea where I am right now.

• 18:53Speaker 08

  Keep your business connected with AT&T Business Wireless. Visit att.com/5gnetwork. When the connection matters, it has to be AT&T.

• 19:03Speaker 09

  Kayak searches and compares hundreds of travel sites. But unless I repeat the word kayak, Kayak thinks you won't remember that. So Kayak asked me to say kayak as many times as possible. Kayak.

• 19:16Speaker 10

  Kayak. Kayak. Kayak.

• 19:20Speaker 09

  Kayak.

• 19:21Speaker 10

  Kayak. Kai. Ooh. Ak.

• 19:25Speaker 09

  Kai, Kai, Kai, Kai, kayak. Kayak, kayak, kayak. Kayak. Search, compare, and save on your trip. Kayak. Got that right.

• 19:34Speaker 12

  Hey y'all, it's a stud from [email protected]. We know that you have big questions about the world, and so do we. At Vox, we focus on covering the things that matter in your life and the things that make you curious. Whether that's the big politics questions of the day, climate solutions that might actually work, or hopeful news in cancer or Alzheimer's research. We believe that journalism made for the everyday curious person can make a difference in making a better world. And if that sounds like something you want to be a part of, Vox now has a brand new app, and it brings all of our journalism together in one place. Go to vox.com/app to download today.

• 20:21Speaker 10

  And you are?

• 20:24Speaker 13

  Poison. Poison ivy.

• 20:30Speaker 04

  So if Jeff was able to DIY a poison oak fix, why isn't everyone talking about this or doing it themselves? Especially because people have been doing things like this for a long time. Some Native American tribes in California used to drink poison oak tea to desensitize themselves, and it worked so well that they could actually weave baskets out of the stuff without getting rashes.

• 20:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, there are like letters to the AMA back in the 1910s about people effectively treating severe cases of poison ivy.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  And a lot of these letters came from scientists who were kind of like Jeff, you know, getting real results, but in a kind of rear ends justify the means sort of way. Still, Jeff was doing this on his own butt. Like, most of these scientists were not that brave. Like, this one scientist in Texas in the 30s who ran experiments on his eight-year-old neighbor.

• 21:25Speaker 05

  This kid was referred to in the medical literature as $2 Richard, who, for the price of $2, would allow said scientist to basically intentionally expose him.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  That same scientist also experimented on his kid's nurse, and it's honestly kind of horrifying.

• 21:43Speaker 05

  Limbs swilled up to double their size, entire body turned fiery red.

• 21:48Speaker 04

  But it did work.

• 21:50Speaker 05

  She did, after a couple of months of just this like shock and awe, poison ivy treatment, end up resistant.

• 21:57Speaker 04

  These methods weren't great, to say the least, but they got results. And more reputable scientists started to see the potential here. They started developing drugs and running real double-blind studies, like this one study on a drug named Aqua IV, which looked at a group of over 100 Coast Guard cadets.

• 22:16Speaker 05

  They were assigned to like clear brush along the Mississippi River, so it just like poison ivy infested. Half of them received poison ivy extract pills. The other half received placebo's. And this stuff worked overwhelmingly. Like, all but one or two of them were like, fully immune. And then the remaining two had only like, very moderate reactions. Like, very clearly, this was doable.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  Pretty soon, these drugs started taking off. They were being made by big companies, like the predecessors of Merck and Pfizer. They were given to people on military bases. They were handed out to all kinds of outdoor workers.

• 22:54Speaker 05

  There were literally ads in Time Magazine. You know, you'd have a picture of this kid with a straw hat, fishing. And the tagline would be like, "He's up to his hips in poison ivy, but all he's gonna catch is trout."

• 23:09Speaker 04

  So the big question then is just, what happened? We had these double-blind tests. We had publicly available drugs. We had magazine ads. Where'd all that go?

• 23:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, so in the 60s, the FDA started reviewing what were called grandfather drugs. So these are drugs that like, existed before the FDA did and were widely used. And it turns out that some of them were bullshit, right? There were a lot of drugs that just simply didn't work. You know, they'd been around for decades, but like, there just wasn't evidence for them.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 23:43Speaker 05

  And so the FDA formed these various commissions to sort of review which of these medicines are real, which of them need more testing, and which of them should just be thrown in the bin. And the advisory panel on plant-based allergies, they were like, the Ayurveda-based treatments, fully effective, fully safe. We just need to see some of the drug companies put together a study or two demonstrating the appropriate standardized dosage. And this never happened.

• 24:13Speaker 04

  They like, never gave the data to the FDA?

• 24:16Speaker 05

  The drug companies didn't turn it in. The FDA extended the deadline a couple of times. And then, this stuff never got turned in.

• 24:24Speaker 04

  Do we know why?

• 24:25Speaker 05

  So, we basically lost track of some of these records. And I checked in with Merck and Pfizer about this. They don't have records either. Because this is like, you know, five drug company mergers ago.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  Now, it's hard to say exactly what happened here, but there are a few possibilities. One is that they retested the drugs and couldn't conclusively show they worked. Back then, you didn't have to report failed results. It's also possible that there just wasn't enough money in it for the drug companies, especially when people could just make this stuff at home. Or, and this is the explanation that I find most compelling, it might have just been too hard to give the FDA what they asked for, this safe, standardized dosage. Because people have all kinds of different reactions to urushio.

• 25:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, so my brother gets it really bad. Like, seriously, it looks like monster movie, Survivor makeup. I get it a moderate amount. And then, on the other end, my wife just isn't allergic.

• 25:29Speaker 04

  Most people don't get a reaction the first time they're exposed, but they only do once they've come in contact with it a few times. It's what's called sensitization. So companies might have pushed this dose too high at first, just to make sure it actually produced an effect, which has some pretty obvious backsides. I mean, downsides. Like, there was a point in the 70s where there was a recall on a urushio drug.

• 25:55Speaker 05

  There were absolutely instances where people received extremely bad butt rashes slash some level of systemic, skin-based outbreak.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  On the other hand, drug companies might have pushed the dosages too far the other way, trying to play it safe.

• 26:11Speaker 05

  Because, again, massive anal rash is not a side effect that I think many people are cool with, even if it works.

• 26:20Speaker 06

  The issue here really is, it's not like it doesn't work or it works. The issue is the level of how much it works relative to the problems that you get as a result of ingesting those mega doses of poison ivy extract.

• 26:36Speaker 04

  That's what scientist Mahmoud Al-Soli told Jeff when they talked at the beginning of this process. Mahmoud has been doing research on potential treatments for poison ivy and poison oak for decades. So I called him up and I asked him how he first got the itch to work on poison ivy.

• 26:53Speaker 06

  I personally, where I come from, I come from Egypt. We have no woods, we have no poison ivy, we have no, nothing. So I didn't even know what the heck poison ivy is, but then I got to the University of Mississippi in 1975. And when I got through working with the people in the institute, I got to realize this is really a major problem. This is a condition that's really serious, affects a lot of people, but there's no answer to it on the market. I figured there's gotta be a way to take care of that.

• 27:27Speaker 04

  Mahmoud knew that when you swallow Yarushial, most of it ends up getting processed by your gut, by your kidneys. So you need a lot of it to have any real effect. That's why he wanted his drug to be an injection. With an injection, he'd be able to take a derivative of Yarushial and precisely target specific cells. But the drug companies he was working with, they kept pushing for a pill.

• 27:51Speaker 06

  We told them that it's not gonna work orally, but they said, well, we have to try that because eventually you want to have that as a over the counter thing. And you couldn't have an injectable over the counter. So that's why they wanted to go with the oral.

• 28:07Speaker 04

  Those over the counter oral pills ended up failing. The last one was taken off the market in the 90s, which is why Mahmoud thinks the injectable is still the best way forward, the best way to get a useful effect without leading to massive rashes. And he is making progress. His company, Haptin Sciences, is heading into phase two trials on an injectable right now. And when he looks at what Jeff did with his smoothies and salads plan, even though it was successful, Mahmoud isn't convinced it's a legitimate alternative option here.

• 28:41Speaker 06

  It's a one subject experiment. Is that something that would stand scientific scrutiny? No. So we can't really make conclusions based on that.

• 28:56Speaker 06

  Could oral ingestion of poison iv extract lead, no matter what the cost is, to some degree of desensitization or tolerance? Maybe, but I don't believe that it is worth the risk. And then how many people would be willing to go through what he went through to do this?

• 29:18Speaker 04

  Remember, Jeff isn't a normal person. I mean, I, I, I'm kind of an idiot. And that might be the thing that made it work for him. Most people aren't going to go take a full-on shower every time they go to the bathroom for months.

• 29:32Speaker 06

  My personal view and the whole story is this is someone who was curious enough to take the risk of doing something that is out of the norm to see where is this going to take me? I mean, I admire him for doing this, but if it tells me anything, it tells me that's not the way. That's for sure.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  But who knows? Sometimes it takes an idiot to move science forward. Maybe Jeff will end up being someone else's $2 Richard. The kind of reckless one-subject experiment that inspires someone else to take the baton and come up with a new testable solution. Maybe many years from now, science museums are going to have giant busts of Jeff's rash-free butt, even if Jeff isn't exactly having a lot of luck getting people to try out his plan.

• 30:27Speaker 05

  You know, I, I respect that. Makes a lot of sense. Probably the wiser choice.

• 30:43Speaker 04

  This episode was reported and produced by me, Noam Hassenfeld. We had editing from Jorge Just with help from Meredith Hadnot, who runs our team. Mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala, music from me, and fact checking from Melissa Hirsch. Manding Nguyen is looking through the lost and found, and Bird Pinkerton made her pitch to the tortoises. She told them about the octopuses, about the platypuses, about the birds. The head tortoise slowly moved his head up and slowly, slowly moved his head down. The tortoises were in.

• 31:21Speaker 04

  Or at least that's what Bird assumed. They were nodding really, really slowly. Thanks to Raymond Fage for his help this week. And if you have thoughts about the show, send us an email. We're at [email protected]. And you can also leave us a review or a rating wherever you listen. It really helps us find new listeners. You can also support this show and all of Vox's journalism by joining our membership program today. You can go to vox.com/members to sign up. And if you signed up because of our show, send us a note. We'd love to hear from you.

• 31:55Speaker 04

  Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we'll be back next week.

• 32:08Speaker 07

  I used to wonder what I missed any time I stepped out of the shop. But with AT&T Business Wireless, my signal stays strong no matter where the day takes me. Like right now, I'm meeting a photography client. Out here. But I still have a reliable connection, even though I have no idea where I am right now.

• 32:28Speaker 08

  Keep your business connected with AT&T Business Wireless. Visit att.com/5gnetwork. When the connection matters, it has to be AT&T.

• 32:38Speaker 09

  Kayak searches and compares hundreds of travel sites. But unless I repeat the word kayak, Kayak thinks you won't remember that. So Kayak asked me to say kayak as many times as possible. Kayak.

• 32:51Speaker 10

  Kayak. Kayak. Kayak.

• 32:54Speaker 09

  Kayak.

• 32:55Speaker 10

  Kayak. Kai. Ooh. Ak. Kai, Kai, Kai, Kai, kayak.

• 33:01Speaker 09

  Kayak, kayak, kayak. Search, compare, and save on your trip. Kayak. Got that right.