Speaker 1: So hey, let's talk about this cool new podcasting push
Speaker 1: called tripod hashtag tripod. There's this really cool thing going
Speaker 1: on right now the podcasting industry, which is one thing
Speaker 1: I love about the podcasting industry is that we all
Speaker 1: like try to support one another. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like what's good for us is good for other shows.
Speaker 1: It's like, uh, all boats ride with the rides with
Speaker 1: the tide or something. That's right. So there's this new
Speaker 1: push going on. It's this cool program called tripod t
Speaker 1: r y pod as in try a pod, right, get it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And the whole basis of this is that we podcasters
Speaker 1: are asking you podcast listeners to go tell a friend
Speaker 1: to go try podcast not necessarily ours. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you want to recommend stuff, you should know, we're always
Speaker 1: fine with that. But even if it's some other one
Speaker 1: that um that you like or love even more, just
Speaker 1: turned a friend onto podcasting is basically the whole point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you're probably gonna hear this on a lot
Speaker 1: of podcasts. And the the whole deal is, even though
Speaker 1: podcasting has come a long way since we've started, it's
Speaker 1: still sort of a baby of a medium. Yeah, half
Speaker 1: of a half of a percent is what we always
Speaker 1: say in the podcasting industry. But a lot of people
Speaker 1: still don't even know what podcasts are. So, uh, get
Speaker 1: out there, tell a family member, tell a friend what
Speaker 1: podcasts are. Recommend when you like, tell them how to
Speaker 1: get it. Uh, you know, just go out in your
Speaker 1: backyard and put your ear to the sky until you
Speaker 1: hear a podcast. Yeah, that's a big one too, because
Speaker 1: a lot of people are like, Okay, sure I've heard
Speaker 1: a podcast, I have no idea where to start. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so recommend a good way to listen, maybe how you listen.
Speaker 1: And we really appreciate it, Like the whole industry appreciates
Speaker 1: you spreading the word. That's how we grow and that's
Speaker 1: how we've grown on behalf of the entire podcasting industry.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Welcome to Stuff you should Know from House
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast
Speaker 1: on Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry
Speaker 1: did jeer stir that should we say what just happened here?
Speaker 1: Or focus like, oh, what is this? Probably twenty something
Speaker 1: thirty something episodes, Let's get up there and for the
Speaker 1: first time ever, right before we went go, Jerry said, focus,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Usually she goes, huh what I
Speaker 1: don't get It is just me so bothering you guys, right, exactly,
Speaker 1: the smell that's so Jerry. Focus Alright. I feel pressure now,
Speaker 1: yeah I do. I'm a little off now, Jerry. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that worked. All right, let's concentrate. All right. So we're
Speaker 1: talking Chuck about use your eye okay, yeah, I got
Speaker 1: something large in it. We're talking about famine today, yes,
Speaker 1: which goes with our super sad uh horrific geo political
Speaker 1: catastrophe sweets. Yeah, this probably will not be chock full
Speaker 1: of humor. No, I try to think of a way
Speaker 1: to insert some jokes. There's not unless we go on
Speaker 1: a tangent. Do you remember the eighties stand up comedians,
Speaker 1: like they would make just the worst jokes that just
Speaker 1: would not fly, Like they get chased off stage by
Speaker 1: people with like like just the jokes they would make
Speaker 1: aids jokes and and famine jokes. Yea, yeah, he's just
Speaker 1: like the material they would make jokes about, and they
Speaker 1: like they weren't even remotely funny, you know, it was
Speaker 1: not not nuance or smarts or anything. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: as Sam Kennison made like starving Ethiopian kid jokes, give
Speaker 1: him a sandwich, cameraman, wouldn't him? Was that him? I
Speaker 1: think so, like just people can't do that today. It's
Speaker 1: a different world. So yeah, there probably won't be any
Speaker 1: jokes in this one. Uh, what there will be is
Speaker 1: tons of information and hopefully everybody who will understand famines
Speaker 1: after this can come together and prevent them for the
Speaker 1: rest of eternity, unless climate change gets that says we'll
Speaker 1: see at the end. Yes, I just spoiled it though,
Speaker 1: didn't I. I'm glad you said that was relevant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so everybody has a pretty good idea of what famine is.
Speaker 1: It's when you run out of food and a bunch
Speaker 1: of people start dying. That's actually pretty close to the
Speaker 1: real definition. But there's this guy who's a scholar of famine.
Speaker 1: His name is Cormac o Grata and he um has
Speaker 1: written several books on famines and studied famines and he's
Speaker 1: a pretty sharp tack. So people kind of looked at
Speaker 1: him to say, what's the actual definition of a famine
Speaker 1: and he says in his best Irish accent, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a lot like malnutrition. But it's a lot worse. There's
Speaker 1: a lot more crisis, there's a lot more death. YEA. Specifically,
Speaker 1: he says, it's a shortage of food or purchasing power
Speaker 1: that leads directly to excess mortality from starvation or hunger
Speaker 1: induced diseases. And um, that's an important addition because it's
Speaker 1: not just hunger starvation related, but all the disease that
Speaker 1: comes along with that that can kill people very much
Speaker 1: more easily because you're so under nourished. Right, And we'll
Speaker 1: find out too, it's a It forms a bit of
Speaker 1: a vicious cycle because people start to get hungry and
Speaker 1: start to starve and start to suffer from disease. They
Speaker 1: have an even harder time, say, working in field produce crops,
Speaker 1: and so the whole thing just keeps getting worse and
Speaker 1: worse and worse. Once it passes um breaking point, it
Speaker 1: really starts to spiral out of control. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a three pronged terror of poverty, hunger, and disease,
Speaker 1: all contributing to one another. Right. So, Cormeco grads definition
Speaker 1: of a famine is a daily death rate um of
Speaker 1: above one per ten thousand people. Is that ten thousand? Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: I had a period and not a comma. That's uh,
Speaker 1: that's European and I didn't, is it. It's gotta be
Speaker 1: because that didn't. That's like point zero zero zero one
Speaker 1: percent of the population per day, is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think that is ten thousand, because just off the
Speaker 1: top of my head, like the normal American death rate
Speaker 1: is like eight hundred and twenty three per one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people, So that is significantly more daily death rate.
Speaker 1: That's the first characteristic. Yeah. Number two is the proportion
Speaker 1: of wasted children is above and wasted means there there
Speaker 1: muscle masses withering away due to starvation. Yeah. Technically it
Speaker 1: means they weigh too standard deviations or more below average.
Speaker 1: And just that term itself is like the most heartbreaking
Speaker 1: thing you can wasted children. Yeah, in any sense, that's
Speaker 1: not a good thing, because especially when it has to
Speaker 1: do with famine. Uh. And then finally, the prevalence of
Speaker 1: what's called quash or core, which is um it's basically
Speaker 1: an extreme malnutrition due to protein deficiency. Yeah, and those
Speaker 1: pictures everybody who grew up in the eighties and saw
Speaker 1: the pictures of the starving children in Africa that were
Speaker 1: just little skin and bone kids, but they had these
Speaker 1: huge bloated pot bellies. That's a classic hallmark of quash core. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very sad. Yeah uh. And then he went on to
Speaker 1: qualify further with severe famine that means a daily death
Speaker 1: rate above five out of ten thousand, uh, proportion of
Speaker 1: wasted children above and then that same quash or core prevalence. Right,
Speaker 1: So if quash your core is around, you got a
Speaker 1: famine on your hands. That's not a normal thing that
Speaker 1: happens in a normal food secure population. Yeah. And that's
Speaker 1: that's the main distinguishing factor between famine and just what
Speaker 1: you would consider malnutrition. And this is all tied into
Speaker 1: what we call food security, right, and we we we
Speaker 1: talked about food security before, I think maybe in desertification
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, I know we have at
Speaker 1: some point, but we talked a lot about the food
Speaker 1: the green Revolution to which factors in but um, food
Speaker 1: security is that means you have you have food available,
Speaker 1: you can get to that food or that food can
Speaker 1: get to you readily, and you can use that food
Speaker 1: to meet your health needs. You can leverage it to
Speaker 1: make your population healthy. Yeah, Like if it's if your
Speaker 1: entire countries food supply is twinkies. You do not have
Speaker 1: food security. There's an abundance of it. People can get
Speaker 1: to it very easily. It's probably affordable for everybody, but
Speaker 1: it's not nutritious. Or if your country has nothing but
Speaker 1: like the finest fruits and vegetables and proteins, but only
Speaker 1: the very wealthy have access to it because it's too expensive, well,
Speaker 1: you don't have food security. So, according to the u N,
Speaker 1: if you have food security in a nation, all people
Speaker 1: at all times have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe,
Speaker 1: and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and get
Speaker 1: this food preferences for an active and healthy life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I mean we'll talk about Ethiopia some later, but
Speaker 1: at one point the goal was, which they you know,
Speaker 1: never met, was that not only would they have food
Speaker 1: one day readily available, but be able to choose what
Speaker 1: they wanted to eat. Like there's something you don't think about.
Speaker 1: You really take that for granted here in the United
Speaker 1: States and elsewhere. Um, it's not just having food, but like,
Speaker 1: oh I might like to eat this or that. You know, uh,
Speaker 1: all right, so a lot of things can affect this
Speaker 1: food security. UM. And We're gonna talk about all these
Speaker 1: as throughout the show as they relate to famine. But
Speaker 1: obviously you think of natural disasters first, and probably drought first. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a big one. If you don't have
Speaker 1: water and rain, you can't grow crops, usually uh, crop blight,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk a little bit about the potato famine
Speaker 1: in Ireland later on. Um, but any kind of disease pest,
Speaker 1: even like over abundance of weeds, could conceivably ruin a
Speaker 1: crop flooding, extraordinarily cold weather, extraordinarily hot weather, we'll just
Speaker 1: say weather patterns in general, Yes, severe weather. And then
Speaker 1: a big one which a lot of people, a lot
Speaker 1: of people I think, mainly think of natural disasters or
Speaker 1: natural factors, and political conflict is one of the big, big,
Speaker 1: big contributors. So here's this is what we're coming to
Speaker 1: though eventually, is there's a big debate on what causes famine.
Speaker 1: And for many, many years everyone said, well, don't be dump,
Speaker 1: droughts caused famine, right, But studies, much more recent studies
Speaker 1: have found that actually, if you kind of peek behind
Speaker 1: the curtain a little bit, yeah, there was a drought
Speaker 1: and it started the famine, But what actually caused the
Speaker 1: famine or caused it to be horrible is usually government,
Speaker 1: either government that has bungled something or um just is
Speaker 1: it moved to actually care to do anything to alleviate
Speaker 1: the famine. As we'll see. Yeah, what I gathered from
Speaker 1: reading this was most famine throughout all of history has
Speaker 1: been caused by natural factors, but modern famine, like from
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century on, has largely been that plus government factors.
Speaker 1: Does that sound about right? I think the very presence
Speaker 1: of famine in the globalized era is just because of
Speaker 1: governments screwing things up. Yes, because there is enough food
Speaker 1: defeat everyone at this point, right, and enough of a
Speaker 1: trade supply lines and government aid agency NGOs who are
Speaker 1: working to get that food to those people, and prices
Speaker 1: that a lot of times there's people standing in their way. Yes.
Speaker 1: Another big It can be sort of a domino effect too.
Speaker 1: So when you have food security in one place start
Speaker 1: to crumble or wayne, uh, then you have another country nearby,
Speaker 1: maybe it may start stockpiling for themselves, uh, fewer exports
Speaker 1: and protecting their own population, and then that drives up
Speaker 1: process prices for people that were depending on importing that
Speaker 1: food and it just starts this big vicious cycle, right exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: back in two eight there were food riots in Bangladesh
Speaker 1: and Haiti and Egypt. Do you remember that because of rice? Right?
Speaker 1: It was because of rice. But the global food price
Speaker 1: head like when they look at food prices, they look
Speaker 1: at baskets of foods around the world, UM, put them
Speaker 1: together and say this is how much food costs these days.
Speaker 1: It rose between two thousand two and two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: Food prices rose a hundred globally, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people got priced out of the market. And when they
Speaker 1: looked at what happened, apparently that price increase was due
Speaker 1: to using food for biofuels, like using crops that normally
Speaker 1: would have gone to food, we're being used to create
Speaker 1: energy like biofuels, right, And so that drove grain prices
Speaker 1: up through the roof because speculators got involved and food
Speaker 1: was being diverted from the food supply into the energy supply,
Speaker 1: and then crop land was being increasingly diverted to produce
Speaker 1: the stuff for the energy supply as well. And it
Speaker 1: had a huge effect that just drove food prices up
Speaker 1: around the world. One of the big problems that can
Speaker 1: contribute to famines. As we'll see in a lot of famines,
Speaker 1: there are people still producing food for export because they
Speaker 1: can't afford it. But their country starving to death. But
Speaker 1: they can't afford it because they don't have the money.
Speaker 1: So ts but the rest of us, you have the money,
Speaker 1: so keep growing that food. Yeah, it's pretty devastating effect. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's obviously most devastating for um. And you always
Speaker 1: hear about this, the two groups, the elderly and the young. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't know about the total number of children, but
Speaker 1: the stat that I have from the u N, the
Speaker 1: most recent STATA have, is that twenty one thousand children
Speaker 1: die of hunger every day day yep, every four seconds.
Speaker 1: Oh it's awful. Yeah, it's sobering to say the least.
Speaker 1: So uh, you know what happens is, especially if you're
Speaker 1: young or you're old. Uh, that disease sets in and
Speaker 1: little kids and old people can't fight it like um,
Speaker 1: you know the parents can. And then you know the
Speaker 1: parents are in bad shape too. Well, it's not like
Speaker 1: anyone's doing great. When you're malnourished, your immune system starts
Speaker 1: to dig cline and when your immune system starts to decline,
Speaker 1: that's the disease comes in, especially if um, a group
Speaker 1: starts to migrate in search of food, because then you
Speaker 1: could be living in um unsanitary conditions and everybody has
Speaker 1: lower immune systems and you're basically in a herd. Now
Speaker 1: moving like moving to a different place to get food,
Speaker 1: and so a disease can just rip through a population.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and and uh that's article points out that
Speaker 1: refugees are not often resettled in, you know, the most
Speaker 1: hospitable areas either, so uh, moving doesn't necessarily help the
Speaker 1: cause in a lot of cases. Um, all right, let's
Speaker 1: take a break and we're gonna come back and talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about some of the more noteworthy famines
Speaker 1: throughout history. All right, So I said, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about historical famines. I lied, that's coming later. Is that
Speaker 1: all right? Yeah? That's fine, all right, So we're gonna talk.
Speaker 1: He sent this great article, Um, what was the name
Speaker 1: of it? The History of Humanity is a history of hunger.
Speaker 1: It was written by a guy named Mark Joseph Stern
Speaker 1: on Slate. This is a good one. Yeah. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: basically ringing the bell. He's saying Hey guys, Uh, there
Speaker 1: seems to be this movement towards looking at famines as
Speaker 1: the result of dictatorships, which we'll get into super interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: but let's not forget something else, and it's a little
Speaker 1: something called global climate change, because I think from Stearns perspective,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't put this explicitly, but he basically says, yes,
Speaker 1: dictatorships can have this effect and have had this effect.
Speaker 1: That's proven. But really, honestly, that's fairly localized from a
Speaker 1: globalized perspective. Right, even if it just happens in China,
Speaker 1: that's still technically local as far as the globe is concerned.
Speaker 1: And that means that there's other people around the globe
Speaker 1: that can help the people in China or Ethiopia or
Speaker 1: Ireland or wherever a famine happens. Again, so we've got
Speaker 1: stuff in place, but if the entire global food supply
Speaker 1: starts to become threatened by climate change, then we're all toast.
Speaker 1: I think is ultimately the message of what he's saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he he was kind of saying like he kind
Speaker 1: of set up really well throughout history and then said,
Speaker 1: but nowadays, you know, things have never been better there's
Speaker 1: more food than ever. Supply chain is more robust, so
Speaker 1: like we shouldn't have anything to worry about, right, like
Speaker 1: on a global scale. And that's when he said, you know,
Speaker 1: you might want to look at some of these studies
Speaker 1: and uh, one of them, there was a report from
Speaker 1: the U N inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change and
Speaker 1: they said that rising temperatures around the globe are cutting
Speaker 1: into global food supply. Um. I think to the point
Speaker 1: now where if it continues at current levels, there could
Speaker 1: be a two cut in crop harvests each decade moving forward.
Speaker 1: And it might not sound like a lot two percent
Speaker 1: a decade though, but when you couple that with a
Speaker 1: rising population, that's a problem. Um. Especially like in the
Speaker 1: short term, you might think, oh, well, you can grow
Speaker 1: more food more places if if it's warmer, if things
Speaker 1: are melting, Yeah, and certainly more CEO two will increase
Speaker 1: yields in the short term, but um, in the long term,
Speaker 1: warming trends will make crops wilt, especially near the tropics.
Speaker 1: I saw one step that said a three percent I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: a three degree celsius increase in temperature at the tropics
Speaker 1: could uh cut on crops. So it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: a real threat. Yeah. Well, even without a massive temperature
Speaker 1: change like that, are an increase in CEO to One
Speaker 1: of the trademarks of UM climate change is severe weather,
Speaker 1: which we're seeing more and more. It seems too much rain.
Speaker 1: Severe weather is not enough. Yeah yeah, or either one
Speaker 1: over like a couple of year period you're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to grow crops, or you're growing season
Speaker 1: is going to be shortened, or the whole crop will
Speaker 1: just be wiped out right there at the end, who
Speaker 1: knows well. And then the other thing you need to
Speaker 1: think about, which he points out, is what we can
Speaker 1: invent our way out of this, like technology will take
Speaker 1: care of it always. And the study from NASA there's
Speaker 1: a more dire wind from NASA than even the U
Speaker 1: n one UM that basically says we're screwed UM And
Speaker 1: the NASA one says technological change tends to raise both
Speaker 1: per capital resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction,
Speaker 1: basically meaning it's just it's sort of a net net,
Speaker 1: like we can't invent our way out of it, Like
Speaker 1: it's net net up to the point where we run
Speaker 1: out of resources and then we're toasts. So there is
Speaker 1: a big threat from climate change. But what Stern's saying
Speaker 1: is actually kind of retro to tell you the truth,
Speaker 1: because up until the last couple of decades, everybody looked
Speaker 1: at famine as strictly a a natural disaster, and it
Speaker 1: it started to become increasingly apparent of what kind of
Speaker 1: a man made disaster famine can be, especially when people
Speaker 1: started to look at China's Great Famine back as part
Speaker 1: of Mao's cultural revolution. So Chuck China I didn't really
Speaker 1: realize this. I don't think I didn't know a lot
Speaker 1: about it either. There is there's a something called when
Speaker 1: Mao took over, when the Communists took over China UM.
Speaker 1: One of the things that Mao set his sights on
Speaker 1: Chairman Mao Mousley doing was that he wanted to show
Speaker 1: the West just how great communism was, the same dream
Speaker 1: of Stalin Um. But he also wanted to be the
Speaker 1: top guy in the communist world too, so he was
Speaker 1: very ambitious and one of the ways to do that
Speaker 1: was one of the same path that Stalin had followed,
Speaker 1: which was what We've got a lot of agriculture here,
Speaker 1: Let's use our agriculture to fund and finance industrialization. We're
Speaker 1: gonna shock the system. We're gonna take these old agrarian
Speaker 1: backwards ways, we're gonna put him together in this great
Speaker 1: communist way, and we're gonna squeeze as much productivity out
Speaker 1: of them as we can. We're gonna funnel that money
Speaker 1: into the workers in the cities. We're gonna make China
Speaker 1: the glorious leader of the world, and we're gonna catch
Speaker 1: up to productivity, uh, to the productivity of the UK
Speaker 1: or the US within ten years, five years, which is insane.
Speaker 1: It's called the Great Leap Forward. Uh. And it was
Speaker 1: a five year plan, which you're right it was. It
Speaker 1: was I mean to call it ambitious, it was. What
Speaker 1: it was was a disaster in the making. Because what
Speaker 1: happened was, especially when you live under someone like mouse Tongue,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have people that are afraid to tell the
Speaker 1: truth about what's going on. So what happened from the
Speaker 1: very beginning is officials, either driven by fear or just
Speaker 1: because they were so caught up in the movement, started
Speaker 1: um exaggerating reports of crop success, like they were literally
Speaker 1: reporting like three to five times what they were really
Speaker 1: bringing in with their crops. Uh. And then the authorities
Speaker 1: came along and basically took those crops to the urban centers,
Speaker 1: killed off anyone who had any opposition to this. Well,
Speaker 1: I think they will also kill off locally to like
Speaker 1: if we were gonna say no, this guy's lying about
Speaker 1: crop yields, but the local people would would take care
Speaker 1: of you. Yeah, you just disappear. Uh. And so what
Speaker 1: happened in this is an actual quote, um mouse tongue said,
Speaker 1: to distribute resources evenly will only ruin the great leap forward.
Speaker 1: When there's not enough to eat, people starved to death.
Speaker 1: It is better to let half the people die so
Speaker 1: that the others can eat their fill. So there you
Speaker 1: have it, right. It was very clearly a man made famine,
Speaker 1: like they were aware of it, um. And you you wonder,
Speaker 1: like why were they coming to grab the grain? Well,
Speaker 1: grain had turned from something that people produced locally for
Speaker 1: basically local consumption, into a national commodity that was used
Speaker 1: to feed these workers and then to sell on the
Speaker 1: global market to finance the glorious revolution. Right, So when
Speaker 1: grain was turned into a commodity and people were given
Speaker 1: quotas to meet, if you wanted to get ahead, you
Speaker 1: could just say, oh, we had this great great yield
Speaker 1: this this year, so we've got all this green. And
Speaker 1: there were cases where the Chinese government would come and
Speaker 1: requisition more grain than the the than they had then
Speaker 1: they'd even grown that based on these false reports. Right,
Speaker 1: So people started to starve. Clearly, Mao had no problem
Speaker 1: with it because it was the people out in the
Speaker 1: and it was the farmers, not the workers, who were starving.
Speaker 1: And in three years, the lowest number anyone's willing to
Speaker 1: say of the total number of people who died in
Speaker 1: three years from this famine is fifteen million people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the lowest. That's what the Chinese government itself officially says. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen numbers. I've seen a total population loss and
Speaker 1: that means thirty five million deaths and forty million people
Speaker 1: that weren't born because of all this, So total population
Speaker 1: loss of seventy five million um. And it's still apparently,
Speaker 1: like I looked into it today, it's very taboo to
Speaker 1: even talk about it today in China, and they don't
Speaker 1: they don't even call it a famine. They call it, uh,
Speaker 1: three years of natural disaster or three years of difficulties.
Speaker 1: That's what they call capitalized. Yeah, yeah, like that's the
Speaker 1: titial name. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, and apparently the um Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't talk about it. It's it's not obviously not
Speaker 1: taught in schools and certainly not taught as the result
Speaker 1: of a calamitous um government policy because that same government,
Speaker 1: the Communist Party, is still in charge there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a huge, enormous famine, and I guess scholarship
Speaker 1: on that sorted to open people's eyes about how human
Speaker 1: intervention could make a famine much much worse. Same thing
Speaker 1: with Ethiopia as well. Um. Ethiopia is almost famous in
Speaker 1: a weird way for for famines. Yeah, they were, especially
Speaker 1: like you said, if you grew up in the eighties,
Speaker 1: it was sort of the face of famine and drought.
Speaker 1: It was Ethiopia. Um. And if you go back, you know,
Speaker 1: back in time Prime Minister uh melists Zenawi. Um. This
Speaker 1: was what more than twenty years ago at this point
Speaker 1: that when I mentioned earlier what his vision for the country,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I hope in ten years that
Speaker 1: Ethiopians will eat three times a day. And after twenty years,
Speaker 1: not only were gonna have enough food, but they're gonna
Speaker 1: have the luxury of choosing what they eat. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was in office for twenty one years before he died
Speaker 1: in power and Uh, things these days aren't a whole
Speaker 1: lot better. No, So Um, Like I remember learning about
Speaker 1: Ethiopia and their famines, and I just was thinking, like, Wow,
Speaker 1: they must have just the worst weather. They've got the
Speaker 1: worst luck with weather. Turns out no, they had the
Speaker 1: worst luck with governments. Um. So they had a famine
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three that the government basically just covered up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Wallow Famine. Yeah. And in that three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people died. Uh. And even though there were there was
Speaker 1: actually plenty of food. The reason the family had come
Speaker 1: along was because food prices had increased just a little bit,
Speaker 1: but the people in the Wallow region were so poor
Speaker 1: they couldn't afford the food that was even available to them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is nineteen seventy three, the same year that
Speaker 1: Emperor Highley Selassie spent thirty five million dollars on his
Speaker 1: eightieth birthday celebration. So he's starting it's starting to kind
Speaker 1: of become clear what's going on. And then the very
Speaker 1: famous famine famous here in the West, the eighty five famine. Um,
Speaker 1: everyone who was funding that. That was when band Aid
Speaker 1: came out. They had that do they know It's Christmas song? Um?
Speaker 1: They had the Live Aid concerts. Phil Collins flew in
Speaker 1: the Concorde from London to the Philadelphia to play two
Speaker 1: shows at the same night. Do you remember Live Aid?
Speaker 1: How old are you? I was eight? Do you remember
Speaker 1: it happening? Like? Did you watch it? I remember the
Speaker 1: Phil Collins thing, of course you do, because he loved
Speaker 1: Phil Collins. Now I totally remember. I was babysitting at
Speaker 1: a summer gig, a regular summer gig where I would
Speaker 1: baby sitting these kids like for half days, like you know,
Speaker 1: money through Friday. And I was babysitting these kids and
Speaker 1: we watched Live Aid and I remember seeing, of course
Speaker 1: Phil Collins, and I remember seeing the amazing performance by
Speaker 1: Queen Like it's still like one of their like hallmark
Speaker 1: performances was their Live Aid. Um. But yeah, it was
Speaker 1: like it was all over the place USA for Africa
Speaker 1: that was one of the big causes because of this famine, right,
Speaker 1: and it was great, like there was all these great
Speaker 1: pictures of not great pictures, but they were pictures spread
Speaker 1: far and wide. They were waking up the west, Like, guys,
Speaker 1: there's a huge problem. You gotta give. And band Aid
Speaker 1: and live Aid raised a hundred and fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: in nine four for famine relief in in Ethiopia. They
Speaker 1: had a significant impact. But what no one realized because
Speaker 1: the reporters were too lazy to report and the government
Speaker 1: was doing a good job covering up. This famine was
Speaker 1: not the direct result of a drought or a crop failure.
Speaker 1: The government was actually fighting a civil war secretly against
Speaker 1: the Um what the group that now makes up Aera Trea,
Speaker 1: the err trean Um ethnic group. Uh. And the government
Speaker 1: was like napalming the crop lands there, blowing up cargo transports, um,
Speaker 1: blowing up farmers markets to affect the food supply and
Speaker 1: to create a famine. It was a man made famine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not only that, you know, I talked about frivolous
Speaker 1: spending by the government. They spent that year and uh,
Speaker 1: I think three they spent between a hundred million and
Speaker 1: two hundred million dollars to celebrate the tenth anniversary of
Speaker 1: the revolution, almost up to two d million dollars. So
Speaker 1: here's here's the thing. I'm reading this article from Spin
Speaker 1: I think it was written in called The Terrible Truth
Speaker 1: about band Aid. And so at the time, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of aid groups working in Ethiopia, and if
Speaker 1: you said anything about how the government was taking this
Speaker 1: um like aid money and using it for themselves and
Speaker 1: not distributing it correctly. They were trying to put tariffs
Speaker 1: and taxes on age shipments into the country just to
Speaker 1: make money off of it. If you said anything, your
Speaker 1: your group would get kicked out. And apparently Medicine Songs,
Speaker 1: Frontier Doctors Without Borders UM had raised the alarms and
Speaker 1: they got kicked out of Ethiopia. And they went to
Speaker 1: Bob Geldof and said, hey, um, we know you have
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty million dollars that you're about to
Speaker 1: give to Ethiopia. Let us tell you what's really going
Speaker 1: on there and then you just wait until there's a
Speaker 1: stable government to give it to. And he was like, no,
Speaker 1: it's fine, it'll be fine. I'd rather I'd rather work
Speaker 1: with these devils and help these people out a little
Speaker 1: bit then than just not right. And a lot of
Speaker 1: people say that he um he was extremely reckless and
Speaker 1: basically he gave a hundred and fifty million dollars to
Speaker 1: an autocratic government that was creating a famine in its
Speaker 1: own country. Is that a new article? It was from?
Speaker 1: All right, I need to check that out. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: called the Terrible Truth about Live about band Aid, About
Speaker 1: band Aid. Uh. Well, there's a great book in the
Speaker 1: same article that's reference that you sent. UM. A Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize winning economist name Marcia Sin wrote a book called
Speaker 1: Development is Freedom and basically kind of backs up what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Uh. Sin says that, you know, authority,
Speaker 1: authoritarian systems are the were the ones who have famines. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they went back and did a historical investigation and
Speaker 1: these are twenty century famines, thirty major famines that happened.
Speaker 1: We're all in countries led by autocratic rule or that
Speaker 1: we're under armed conflict at the time. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: the um this article from I don't I wish I
Speaker 1: knew who wrote it. I feel terrible, but it was
Speaker 1: in huff Po, So there you go. Um. The author said,
Speaker 1: there's a country right next to Ethiopia that that has
Speaker 1: a lot of the same weather, a lot of the
Speaker 1: same soil conditions, growing conditions, crop plant Botswana. They said,
Speaker 1: Botswana is a democracy and it has been. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: has been since the sixties, and since it's been a democracy,
Speaker 1: it's never had a famine. And it's right next door
Speaker 1: to Ethiopia. Well yeah, and the whole idea there is
Speaker 1: that if resources were not being allocated properly, the people
Speaker 1: would have a voice and change the people in power.
Speaker 1: But when you're under autocratic rule, you're either completely squashed
Speaker 1: or so disregarded that they don't care if you are dying. Basically,
Speaker 1: they are in power so and they can't do anything
Speaker 1: to change it. They don't need your vote or your
Speaker 1: support because they've got a barrel of a gun at you.
Speaker 1: That's how they stay in power. Yeah. A group called
Speaker 1: Human Rights Watch, which is great. I know we've talked
Speaker 1: about them before. Uh. In two thousand ten, they did
Speaker 1: a work called Development Without Freedom How AID underwrites repression Ethiopia,
Speaker 1: and it just completely confirms all of this that it's
Speaker 1: just it's suppression of a people and watching them die
Speaker 1: and not caring and it's still going on. So let's
Speaker 1: take another break and then we'll talk about Ireland and
Speaker 1: then we'll talk about how to combat famines. So, chuck Um,
Speaker 1: I think when most people think of famine they think,
Speaker 1: if not of Ethiopia and of Ireland, because Ireland had
Speaker 1: one heck of a famous famine back in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century that actually created Ireland and the Irish as we
Speaker 1: know him today. Yeah, the Irish potato famine. Um are
Speaker 1: cohorts are colleagues Tracy and Hollyott. Stuff you miss in
Speaker 1: history class. They do one on it. Yeah, did a
Speaker 1: great episode just on this. I recommend listening to that.
Speaker 1: But um, here's our knuckle headed overview. Uh. This was
Speaker 1: also called the Great Irish Famine and their famine of
Speaker 1: eighteen forty five to forty nine because that's when it happened. Um.
Speaker 1: This was one of the ones that initially was caused
Speaker 1: by UH disease, it's called late blight, and it basically
Speaker 1: destroyed kind of every part of the potato. Yeah, the leaves,
Speaker 1: the roots, which I mean, if you're eating a potato,
Speaker 1: the root is what you're after. Um. They had I
Speaker 1: guess a cold, rainy spring. Yeah, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: per picked storm of bad luck. Right, and this this
Speaker 1: microbe showed up from North America accidentally from what we understand,
Speaker 1: and so there were three successive years of dead crops.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why this had such an
Speaker 1: impact is that by this time, by the middle of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century in Ireland, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: um Irish farmers who were basically subsistence farmers. A lot
Speaker 1: of farmers in Ireland were small small land farmers who
Speaker 1: are tenant farmers, which means they they work the land
Speaker 1: and they had to give up a substantial amount of
Speaker 1: their crop yield in this case to Great Britain, which
Speaker 1: held Ireland under colonial rule at the time, and then
Speaker 1: they could keep a little bit for themselves to keep
Speaker 1: their family alive, so they could come out and work
Speaker 1: the fields for another day. Right, most of those people
Speaker 1: depended almost exclusively on potatoes. Yeah, not only for income,
Speaker 1: but like what they ate on a daily basis exactly
Speaker 1: so for their nutrition. And not only that, but they
Speaker 1: they had whittled it down to just a couple of
Speaker 1: varieties of potato. It's like, yeah, it's like that's bad
Speaker 1: news if uh, disease strikes or or blight or something
Speaker 1: like that. If you've got just a couple of varieties
Speaker 1: and your dependent on that as a nation, and they're
Speaker 1: both susceptible to that blight yeah, then you're you're screwed.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what happened. Um it said in the
Speaker 1: early eighteen forties, almost half the Irish population depended almost
Speaker 1: exclusively on the potato for diet, and especially the rural
Speaker 1: poor farmers and um in five that uh, that's strain.
Speaker 1: It was called fidoh uh phido thora. I think so,
Speaker 1: I think there's got to be some silent letters in there.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a lot of consonants strung together and
Speaker 1: um like you said that came from North America and
Speaker 1: everything just rotted and uh, this was the natural part
Speaker 1: of it. So then you have England, the controlling body,
Speaker 1: um like needs to step in and do something, and
Speaker 1: they kind of did, but not a chin up. Keep
Speaker 1: that grain coming our way. Yeah, that was a primister
Speaker 1: named Sir Robert Peel, and he he provided a little
Speaker 1: bit of relief. He authorized the import of corn from
Speaker 1: the United States. Helped avoid a little bit of starvation.
Speaker 1: But it was certainly not a problem solver. No, and
Speaker 1: again they really did say, uh, we're sorry to having
Speaker 1: these troubles. We'll see what we can do, but keep
Speaker 1: those grain imports coming. Because just like in the wallow
Speaker 1: Uh famine in Ethiopia. There were plenty of places in
Speaker 1: Ireland where the there was grain in abundance, but the
Speaker 1: people growing the green couldn't afford it. And so because
Speaker 1: the people elsewhere we're having problems with the potato crop,
Speaker 1: the price of food was going through the roof because
Speaker 1: there was less food overall, and the people back in
Speaker 1: great break and still typically had money to pay for
Speaker 1: this food. So they were exporting the stuff out of
Speaker 1: Ireland during a famine for their own consumption, including livestock
Speaker 1: which must be fed that grain. So to add insul
Speaker 1: to injury. They were saying, you guys are starving over there.
Speaker 1: Keep exploring that grain, but feed some of it to
Speaker 1: your livestock, and then export the livestock to us to eat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not only that, it was just so compounded. It's
Speaker 1: just like so frustrating to look at, like through a
Speaker 1: modern lens of like things that they could have done differently.
Speaker 1: But um, these poor farmers like you said that they
Speaker 1: were farming a lot of time on farms owned by
Speaker 1: British absentee landowners. They couldn't farm all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: so they weren't getting paid. So then they in turn
Speaker 1: couldn't pay rent back to the landowners, and so they
Speaker 1: were basically evicted. Hundreds of thousands of tenant farmers were
Speaker 1: evicted under these years. And uh there was an eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty four there was something called the British Poor Law
Speaker 1: and acted in Ireland that said able bodied indigence were
Speaker 1: sent to a workhouse rather than given relief. So now
Speaker 1: you're sent to a workhouse. You're not even like farming
Speaker 1: the land that you lived on to provide for your family, right,
Speaker 1: which is a terrible, terrible move in any famine. Part
Speaker 1: of the spiral that spiral out of control of famine
Speaker 1: is something called livelihood shock, when farmers who can still
Speaker 1: conceivably grow um food get priced out of their own
Speaker 1: crop land and they can't afford to work any longer.
Speaker 1: Your your food supply is taking a further hit, which
Speaker 1: you should not allow to happen. But the British government
Speaker 1: definitely did allow it to happen. Um the guy who
Speaker 1: came after John Peel or Robert Peel, not John Peel.
Speaker 1: Um the guy who came after Robert Peel, Lord John Russell.
Speaker 1: He did even less than Um Peel did. Basically kicked
Speaker 1: it back to Ireland to deal with. But still give
Speaker 1: us your your export that grain to us and we'll
Speaker 1: just leave it to the free markets. If you ever
Speaker 1: leave dealing with the famine to the markets to hammer out,
Speaker 1: you have abdicated all responsibility for dealing with that famine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not okay. The markets aren't equipped to deal with
Speaker 1: the famine, right. The famine happens when the markets break down, right,
Speaker 1: and you need assistance to correct that. It doesn't just
Speaker 1: work itself out. Uh. So you know, Ireland already is
Speaker 1: not so happy to be under the thumb of uh
Speaker 1: the British. Um. This got even worse when there was
Speaker 1: this sort of attitude among sort of the elite of
Speaker 1: of England that, um, you know what this is. This
Speaker 1: is really just a sort of a correction because you know,
Speaker 1: those Irish all they do is have children, and there
Speaker 1: are far too many of them anyway, These poor Irish
Speaker 1: people have ten kids. So this is sort of a
Speaker 1: necessary correction, um in the long run. Apparently at the
Speaker 1: time that was a bit of the mentality of the
Speaker 1: intellectuals of England. Yeah, so that's not going to do
Speaker 1: yourself any favors as far as getting along and one
Speaker 1: of the other things that happened was a consolidation of wealth.
Speaker 1: Like all of those small farms that were that people
Speaker 1: were getting kicked off of because they couldn't pay their rent.
Speaker 1: The their landlords couldn't afford the farms any longer either
Speaker 1: because they weren't able to collect rent, And so wealthier
Speaker 1: landowners said, I'll buy your farm and your farm and
Speaker 1: your farm and your farm, and you're farming here, go
Speaker 1: buy some corn. You can get it from the soup
Speaker 1: kitchen over here. And then they put it together. So
Speaker 1: these small farms that farming these communities now we're single
Speaker 1: large farms owned by single wealthy landowners. As a result,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like that's saying, if there's blood in
Speaker 1: the streets by real estate, that's what those guys were doing.
Speaker 1: Not cool. So in the end, this had a huge
Speaker 1: effect on the I mean, the way you put in
Speaker 1: this article the Dimmock graphic history of Ireland um directly
Speaker 1: caused from the famine. Their population of about eight point
Speaker 1: four million in eighteen eight sorry eighteen forty four fell
Speaker 1: to six point six million, uh just seven years later,
Speaker 1: and about a million people died literally just died from starvation,
Speaker 1: and by the time Ireland achieved independence in nineteen one.
Speaker 1: In twenty one, the population was barely half of what
Speaker 1: it was in the early eighteen forties. Yeah, because that's
Speaker 1: not supposed to happen. Death and emigration, Yeah, how many
Speaker 1: like people? Uh? Another two I think a million died
Speaker 1: in another two million immigrated as a result. New York City, baby, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how New York got to be in New York.
Speaker 1: So we've got, um, we've got a pretty good idea
Speaker 1: of what famines are, how they happen. There is still
Speaker 1: that struggle between how much of it is man made
Speaker 1: how much of it is natural. I think it's a
Speaker 1: combination of the two at this time. Sure, but how
Speaker 1: do you prevent something like a famine? Chuck Well, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of controversy and um, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of controversy surrounding it. A lot of people rightfully are
Speaker 1: saying that even AID groups like what we're doing is
Speaker 1: putting a band aid on something, and they're not like
Speaker 1: getting to the root of some of these problems. And
Speaker 1: aid is great, you know, it's keeping people alive. They're
Speaker 1: not saying don't do that, but it's not addressing the
Speaker 1: real problems, right, and apparently the real problems are autocratic rule.
Speaker 1: Well want one of them for sure. Yeah. Another one
Speaker 1: is you know, just food education. Um, there are food
Speaker 1: for work programs which apparently are working out pretty good.
Speaker 1: So they'll have you know, I think they will deliver
Speaker 1: some food aid to get people able bodied enough to work,
Speaker 1: and then um, try and get people working on infrastructure
Speaker 1: jobs in the country. UM, and exchange for food. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in exchange for food, and I would imagine money. I
Speaker 1: don't know for sure, but I don't think it's straight
Speaker 1: up food. I wonder if like, yeah, I wonder maybe
Speaker 1: it seems like could be a combination the two or
Speaker 1: maybe not. I don't know. Another one is hashing out
Speaker 1: early warning signs. Probably they have different UM scales now
Speaker 1: of food security to kind of gauge where a country
Speaker 1: is as far as it's spiral towards famine, like don't
Speaker 1: wait till you're seeing the unit SEF commercial before you act.
Speaker 1: But not only that, you government of this, this the
Speaker 1: people that are about to enter into a famine. You
Speaker 1: need to do certain things like there's a famine that
Speaker 1: UM is. I believe Ethiopia is on the verge of
Speaker 1: another one again right now. And part of the problem
Speaker 1: is the government denied that this was that this was happening,
Speaker 1: that there was going to be a famine. They said,
Speaker 1: we have food security and they said the author of
Speaker 1: that huff Po article pointed out, no, there's plenty of food,
Speaker 1: but it's too expensive in a lot of places, so
Speaker 1: that's not food security. And they didn't do enough, Like
Speaker 1: they didn't tell um cattle herders to move their their
Speaker 1: um herds closer to like reliable water sources. They didn't.
Speaker 1: There's steps and actions that governments that care about their people,
Speaker 1: or care at least about the food supply um can take.
Speaker 1: And there are early warning signs and apparently they are
Speaker 1: born out of famine codes from nineteenth century India. India
Speaker 1: had a string of famines in the nineteenth century that
Speaker 1: killed like seventeen million people, so they really started to
Speaker 1: pay attention to what made up the warning signs or
Speaker 1: fam of famine. Well, there's something it was created in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five and it may have been based on
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, called the Famine Early Warning Systems Network,
Speaker 1: and they monitor these trends and food prices, UH, food
Speaker 1: security and basically you can compare it to other years,
Speaker 1: other areas and right now because I want to see
Speaker 1: like kind of what the current state of the world was,
Speaker 1: there is a global alert UM emergency food assistant needs
Speaker 1: ON needs are unprecedented. And these four areas right now, Nigeria, Yemen,
Speaker 1: South Sudan and Somalia are the most of the areas
Speaker 1: of the highest concern and has the reasons of concern
Speaker 1: right here Nigeria the Boco Harem conflict. So there you
Speaker 1: have it right, Yeah, it doesn't have to be a
Speaker 1: dictatorship being lazy. You can be in the middle of
Speaker 1: a war torn country and people aren't growing crops like
Speaker 1: they normally do when a wars not on. So there's one.
Speaker 1: In Yemen, extensive conflict has reduced incomes and food prices
Speaker 1: remain elevated. Uh South Sudan conflict severely disrupted trade, humanitarian
Speaker 1: access in livelihoods. And finally Somalia. Somalia was the only
Speaker 1: one of the four that seemed like it was weather
Speaker 1: related and it said that UM the December on aus
Speaker 1: pronounced the y r season. There two rainy seasons, the
Speaker 1: goose season and the day are or dear der season,
Speaker 1: and apparently they've both been below average. So it looks
Speaker 1: like in Somalia it's due to rainfall, but elsewhere it's
Speaker 1: you know, conflict, conflict, conflict. So if you care, if
Speaker 1: you want to help, if you want to make a difference,
Speaker 1: look around, do your research, find an aid group that
Speaker 1: you feel good about, and uh, give money, give time,
Speaker 1: do something. Don't just sit back and eat your big
Speaker 1: mac and forget about the whole thing. I agreed. If
Speaker 1: you want to know more about famine, you can type
Speaker 1: that word into the search part how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Since I said search parts time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: I think this one Trump's homelessness. Surely we won't get
Speaker 1: an email saying that people deserve children, does deserve to
Speaker 1: die every four seconds? I don't know if we do,
Speaker 1: we'll get they'll all start with I believe in a
Speaker 1: vengeful God. Alright, I'm gonna call this one. Uh. Whatever
Speaker 1: happened to super fan Sarah? Remember that? Remember Sarah Sparrow,
Speaker 1: the amazing twelve year old fan? Right? Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: listened to several podcasts per day, guys, Uh, to learn
Speaker 1: something and to drown out the buzz of the office.
Speaker 1: I work in I was going through so many that
Speaker 1: I had caught up to the President forcing me to
Speaker 1: dig way back to the archive instead of waiting for
Speaker 1: the newest one. So he's sandwiching, right, That's fine, it's
Speaker 1: the way to do it. At the end of the
Speaker 1: podcast in two thousand and ten about grandfather's diets shortening
Speaker 1: our lives, um fascinating. By the way, this is June
Speaker 1: two ten. You've got the email from Sarah who had
Speaker 1: been listening to the show, uh since she was eleven.
Speaker 1: At the time she was thirteen. You mentioned you should
Speaker 1: go to a high school graduation and be the keynote speaker.
Speaker 1: You were still doing this. Well, my math is right then. Uh,
Speaker 1: Sarah is twenty years old and halfway through college. So
Speaker 1: I hope you guys don't feel too old. But I
Speaker 1: think is an exceptional accomplishment. You're still doing the show.
Speaker 1: You're more popular than ever. Keep up the good work,
Speaker 1: Josh Taylor and Josh you know he asked about Sarah.
Speaker 1: Sadly we haven't heard from Sarah in years. Were like
Speaker 1: the giving tree, we got ditched, she ditched us and
Speaker 1: um or she just you know, still listens and doesn't
Speaker 1: right in it's playing it cool. Maybe so well she is.
Speaker 1: You know, it's twenty years old. It's not super cool
Speaker 1: to still be the Sarah the amazing seven year old
Speaker 1: for eleven year old band. You're smelly old pseudo uncles.
Speaker 1: But Sarah, if you were out there, hit us up, yeah,
Speaker 1: say hi, send us an email. We would love, love,
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. Yeah, well even guaranteed read
Speaker 1: it on the on the air, and you know what
Speaker 1: that goes for you too, Sam who is in college
Speaker 1: Summer of Sam Sam. So all of our younger listeners, like,
Speaker 1: they girl up and they forget about us. It's so sad,
Speaker 1: but then they turned like and they'll come back. They'll
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Speaker 1: and then forget about us, you can start by tweeting
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