This week's theme was inspired by the title of my favorite song from Elton John, which is Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters. You don't have to be familiar with the song to listen to the episodes, but if you haven't, it's one of the more underrated of his songs. On Monday, we talked about how the da Vinci painting wasn't as famous until it was stolen in 1911 and how our mind tricks us into seeing Mona Lisa's smile sometimes and other times, not as much.

In this episode, I'm getting into the second part of the Elton John song title. From unknown mercury poisoning in hat factories to the man known for inspiring the character in Lewis Carroll's book "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and through today, even though the actual occupational disease doesn't occur anymore.

I'm your host, Emily Prokop, and this is The Story Behind Mad Hatters.

The role of Johnny Depp was played by Nick from The Epic Film Guys podcast.

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Media:

Music for Makers

Sources:

http://www.cas.org/news/insights/science-connections/mad-hatter

http://www.medicinenet.com/mercury_poisoning/article.htm

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1550196/?page=1

http://www.naturalnews.com/016544.html

http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/where-did-the-phrase-mad-as-a-hatter-come-from

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/weekinreview/07ryan.html

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/the-real-mad-hatter/

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/uncategorized/johnny-depp-explains-how-he-picked-his-poison-with-the-mad-hatter/