Mariah Blake: They Poisoned the World

Join us on August 14 at noon (PT) as we welcome special guest Mariah Blake to discuss her latest book They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals. 

Watch here. 

In They Poisoned the World, investigative journalist Mariah Blake exposes a decades-long cover-up of toxic “forever chemicals” contaminating the drinking water of 170+ million Americans. Tracing the pollution from the Manhattan Project to corporate labs, Blake reveals that manufacturers and the government knew these chemicals caused cancer and birth defects, yet lax regulations allowed the public to become unwitting test subjects. Based on extensive research, the book chronicles how a small New York village discovered the contamination in 2014, fought chemical giants, and ignited a powerful, historic grassroots environmental movement to protect public health.

Mariah Blake is an award-winning investigative journalist whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The New Republic, and other publications. She was a Murrey Marder Nieman Fellow in Watchdog Journalism at Harvard University. Her book, They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals, was named on of the best nonfiction books of 2025 by The Washington Post and Scientific American.